2009 Ferrari F430 Base Coupe 2-door 4.3l on 2040-cars

Auto blog

The pre-race and first in-race report from Le Mans

The 2013, 90th anniversary edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans has begun, tragedy marking the opening laps with the death of Allan Simonsen. We're at the track now as a guest of Audi and plan to stay through the evening, and even we haven't been able to find out what caused the accident - the only video is from just after the incident, and beyond the statement from ACO there's been no more news. The Aston Martin in the LM GTE Am class and its all-Danish drivers had taken pole in its class and was one of the favorites to win.
The pre-race report will come first, and even thought we can't spoil the race because we're only five hours into it at the time of writing, we'll put all of the news at the end in case you don't even want the updates.
Or you can go straight to the high-res galleries above.

Ferrari launches F14 T and yet another Formula One nose

Ferrari CEO Luca di Montezemolo said of the 2014 Formula One season, "It's time to win." This is the chassis that's meant to do it, and it is also Exhibit C in this wild, function-over-form F1 pre-season: the Ferrari F14 T. The low, trunk-like snout is another imagining of the year's regulations, after the probing proboscides found on the McLaren and in the image of the coming Williams. The public name of the chassis internally called 665 was chosen by Ferrari's social media fans, F14 T referring to the brand, the year and the turbocharged powerplant, not the McDonnell-Douglas F14 Tomcat.
The 60th Ferrari to contest an F1 season, it keeps the pull-rod front and rear suspensions of cars from the last two years but little else. The narrower front wing, having to package and cool the additional power unit equipment, reworking the rear wing and even moving to brake-by-wire has changed every other aspect of the car.
Fernando Alonso is hoping the F14 T will make the fifth time the charm; in his fifth year with the team, he wants to win the championship this year instead of coming in second again, just like Michael Schumacher won his first title with Ferrari after five years with the team. Our guess is that Kimi Räikkönen has no opinion on anything other than winning races and getting paid for it. A press release below offers a number of details, while the high-res gallery above to can help prepare you for what's coming.

Fiat gives outgoing Ferrari chairman $35M severance package

Luca di Montezemolo may not have wanted to leave Ferrari this way, but don't feel too bad for the departing chairman, because he'll be hitting the ground with a golden parachute so big that he'll never have to work again.
According to the latest reports, Fiat will pay Montezemolo 26.95 million euros (nearly $35 million) in severance pay. A little more than half of that will be paid in a lump sum of 13.71 million euros ($17.7M, equivalent to five times his annual salary) on January 31, 2015, with the rest to be paid within the next 20 years.
The payment is contingent on Montezemolo not going to work for a competitor, so don't expect to see him replacing Stephan Winkelmann at Lamborghini or Wolfgang Dürheimer at Bugatti any time soon. At least not until March 2017. Of course with that much cash on hand, the 67-year-old marquis need never work again, but considering how busy he's used to keeping himself, we'd be surprised if he didn't pop up again somewhere.