In honor of the American Medical Association changing its policy on medical marijuana Tuesday, we bring you this list of five pot-friendly car flicks—and one bonus flick to sober up to. Were you the type of person to partake (and don't worry, we know you're not), this is what you would watch.

La Carrera Panamericana With Music by Pink Floyd

Year Debuted: 1992, VHS/DVD only
Director: Ian McArthur
Length: 65 minutes

Why Get Baked? Two decades ago, David Gilmour and Nick Mason of Pink Floyd ran La Carrera in a Jaguar C-Type replica while a friend filmed the competition. They then came home, set the whole thing to music, and packaged it for sale. The footage is often cheesy, the sound mix isn't always that great, and you have to be able to tolerate (or preferably enjoy) Pink Floyd, but under the right circumstances, it's the ultimate car-freak chill film. The 65-minute video works best when set on an endless loop in the garage while you're...er...fixing stuff. Yeah—that's all you do out there. Fix stuff.

C'était un Rendezvous

Year Debuted: 1976
Director: Claude Lelouch
Length: 9 minutes

Why Get Baked? Because it's short, romantic, and set to the yowl of a Ferrari 275 GTB. Because it's gloriously detailed—See the pigeons? See the fleeing pedestrians? See the mother on the sidewalk yanking her kid out out of the way?—and rewards repeat viewing. Because it's so multi-layered, it may as well be a cake. And because it's French. And the French always crack your mind open.

The Blues Brothers

Year Debuted: 1980
Director: John Landis
Length: 133 minutes

Why Get Baked? One word: Stax. The car chases are fantastic, the jokes are timeless, and the look on Dan Aykroyd's face—ever solemn, ever grave—is worth the price of admission. But the music is what keeps you coming back. Aykroyd and Belushi's sidemen were little more than the house band from legendary Memphis soul shop Stax Records, and every note they play drips with the hard-earned funk of an all-night tracking session. Few things drop you into a groove like watching a Dodge Monaco take over the world. Fewer still can claim to have an eight-track full of Sam and Dave.

Ronin

Year Debuted: 1998
Director: John Frankenheimer
Length: 122 minutes

Why Get Baked? It's probably safe to say this is the only movie that combines the ear-melting howl of an E34 BMW M5 with the iron-jawed mugging of a middle-aged Robert Deniro. John Frankenheimer—the same man responsible for the epic Grand Prix—directed this one, and it's home to three of the best chase scenes ever filmed. The near-psychotic attention to detail (e.g., the M5 in question is a European-spec car and actually sounds like one) will likely freak you out, but even if you don't know how to spell your own name, the caper plot is easy to keep up with.

Corvette Summer

Year Debuted: 1978
Director: Matthew Robbins
Length: 105 minutes

Why Get Baked? Ingredients: One stolen Corvette. One post-Star-Wars Mark Hamill, deep in the throes of "Hey! I can be more than Luke!" typecasting paranoia. One road trip to get said 'Vette back. And a director who loves his four-wheeled cast so much that the main character comes across as little more than a background prop. Yes, it's cheesy. Yes, it's kitschy. And yes, you might fall asleep. But hell, this thing only makes sense when you're high.

Sober-up Special: Fifty Years of Formula 1 On Board

Year Debuted: 2004, DVD only
Length: 60 minutes
Director: N/A

Why Get Baked? In a word, don't. This is for when you really, really need to sober up. At $34.95 for an hour-long DVD, it's by no means cheap, but it's also more effective than mainlining an oil drum full of Red Bull. Play the clips chronologically, and you'll get a gentle wake-up call that transitions into a full-on, goes-to-eleven smackdown. Stirling Moss testing at Goodwood? Relaxing. Patrick Depallier doing an entire lap of Long Beach sideways? Attention-getting. Ayrton Senna going absolutely batshit during qualifying at Suzuka? Welcome to the world of the coherent. Now put some Visine in your eyes and try not to empty the fridge.

Although far from finished, the F1 racer's been fitted with newly mandated skinnier front tires and a bigger gas tank and it's just finished wind tunnel testing.

The team at Lotus got a late start on their entry and as such are working overtime to complete the car by February 2010 for early testing in March. It's been validated in the wind tunnel, but the parts actually need to be built, complete with all machining, carbon fiber work and assembly. The Lotus will be powered by a Cosworth engine and an Xtrac transmission. [Automobile]

Start your journey though our top 20 auto-themed video games by clicking next on the right and give us what you think we missed in the comments below.

Game: Spy Hunter
Creator: Midway
Release Date: 1983
Original Platform: Arcade

Why We Love It: Elegantly designed and incredibly well-balanced, but all we cared about in 1983 is that we had a Z28 with guns on it. Unlimited ammo machine guns. Also oil slicks, smokescreen, anti-air missles, and support infrastructure in the form of the weapons and replacement vans, and what else do you need from life as long as you had access to the sit-down version? Even the Peter Gunn theme never seemed to get old.

Photo: Wikipedia

Game: Pole Position
Creator: Namco
Release Date: 1982
Original Platform: Arcade

Why We Love It: The faux-3D graphics, the inclusion of the more-or-less actual Fuji Racetrack circuit and the qualify-to-race format allowed certain junior car geeks to act aloof and superior to everyone else in the arcades. Hey, we all thought we were going to be nuked at any moment, and we were living for the moment, okay? Pole Position also featured in-game advertising, which seemed cool in those more innocent times.

Photo: Videogamecritic.net

Game: F-Zero
Creator: Nintendo
Release Date: 1991
Original Platform: SNES

Why We Love It: Listen, Mario Kart is great and all, but F-Zero was hardcore stuff. In the 27th century, gigaillionaires race cars which hover a foot over a track lined with damaging walls and festooned with magnets, mines, and slip zones. Unlock the Super Jet boost by putting in a good lap and you're in a for a combination of Pole Position and Sonic the Hedgehog, meaning that it was fun, colorful, and difficult as hell.

Photo: Wikipedia

Game: Newman/Haas Racing Featuring Nigel Mansell
Creator: Acclaim
Release Date: 1994
Original Platform: SNES

Why We Love It: Now YOU can be Nigel Mansell! Er…great? Well, there weren't a lot of licensed games based on actual series for console owners in those days, and Nigel Mansell was pretty much the most complete. In the early '90s Mansell came over to the States from Formula 1, proceeded to trounce everyone on the Indy-series ovals with a combination of talent and stupefying bravery, and then put his intimidating Brit-stache on this perfectly adequate game. Interestingly, you could retire from a race, or a few in a row, with injuries to the driver, which was perhaps a nod to Mansell's 1993 injury at Phoenix, or perhaps just a really silly idea.

Photo: SNESclassics

Game: Daytona USA
Creator: Sega
Release Date: 1995
Original Platform: Arcade

Why We Love It: Hey, you could race against up to eight of your friends! Or most likely the guy in the one other cabinet who has $14 in quarters up there, won't leave, and smells like gerbil bedding. Still, it was cool, and several different oval, road, and street courses were on offer, plus the option of manual transmissions, so you could actually get pretty wrapped up in it. And it ran extremely fast and smooth for the time. Sadly, instead of an evolved version, Buck Hunter and Golden Tee rule today's bowling alleys and bars.

Photo: Softpedia

Game: Twisted Metal
Creator: SingleTrac
Release Date: 1995
Original Platform: PlayStation

Why We Love It: Mario Kart was cute and all, but character-based car games were going away from races and more towards the fighting-game model. Twisted Metal was the car-combat result, and it was a huge success, even though its evil boss character was the already played-out evil clown. More importantly it had surprising tactical depth and a decent variety of stages and vehicles. Plus you could drop the Eiffel Tower on people, always a must for any fantastical demolition derby. Sadly, the series got "darker," supposedly, and less fun as time went on and people got bored by scary clowns.

Photo: SCEA

Game: WipEout series
Creator: Psygnosis/SCE Liverpool
Release Date: 1995
Original Platform: PlayStation, PC

Why We Love It: Rave on, racers! While in many respects these games hew close to the F-Zero hovering rocket-car format, the production design is extremely 90s and the throbbing electronic soundtrack is extremely throbbing. It also happens to be very good arcade racing, if you can tolerate the well-executed if psychedelic atmosphere. Still popular among people who like their racing alternate and futuristic, their music futuristic and throbbing, and their consciousness throbbing and altered.

Photo: consolewars

Game: Formula 1
Creator: Psygnosis
Release Date: 1996
Original Platform: PlayStation

Why We Love It: It may not have been a true simulation, but the first in-depth racing game for the PlayStation was a very good one indeed. Formula 1 featured the entire field and all the tracks from the 1995 season, full practice and qualifying sessions, and commentary by Murray Walker himself. Graphically, and in most other ways, it was a big step beyond anything else commonly available, and was arguably better than any of the next couple follow-ups in the series, which eventually bogged down somewhat in gimcrackery and tacked-on arcade modes.

Photo: rscnet

Game: Streets Of Sim City
Creator: Maxis
Release Date: 1997
Original Platform: PC

Why We Love It: Before anyone figured out that manipulating simulated people were where it's at, simulated civil service and urban planning were a huge genre. Streets allowed you to be a puppet master by day and an automotive vigilante puppet by night; the streets you raced and fought on were the very ones you designed. It seemed like a novelty, but besides the racing and car combat it was remarkably absorbing to just cruise the streets of your very own metropolis, consider raising taxes again, and wonder why all your slums were invariably down by your stadium.

Photo: Gosugamers

Game: Interstate '76
Creator: Activision
Release Date: 1997
Original Platform: PC

Why We Dig It The Most, Baby: It's car combat set against a malaise-era oil crisis with a 'sploitation sensibility, and it is funny and it rocks. You play as "Groove Champion," and you fight to stop OPEC from nuking Texas—for reasons that certainly must have seemed sound at the time—from behind the wheel and trigger of an alternate-universe Plymouth Barracuda. The combat mechanics are surprisingly detailed, the driving engine is consistent if unremarkable, and the soundtrack is huge, bass-heavy and fretless. There were sequels, but they didn't have the same magic. A great reason to own an older PC or to emulate.

Photo: Wikipedia

Game: Grand Prix Legends
Creator: Papyrus
Release Date: 1998
Original Platform: PC

Why We Absolutely Adore It: A gem that slowly evolved into a masterpiece and ten years after its release is verging on a magnum opus. You want to talk cult hits and rabid fans? This little game, which started out as an extremely solid simulation of the 1967 Grand Prix season, still has a dedicated playing and modding community today, and when we say dedicated, we mean they're almost done putting together the entire Targa Florio course-all 45 miles of it. It's a classic example of a looks-okay-but-plays-amazing game, and if you're remotely interested in the game type and want to play alongside a passionate, dedicated group, this is exactly what you've been looking for.

Photo: Softpedia

Game: Gran Turismo series
Creator: Polyphony Digital
Release Date: 1998
Original Platform: PlayStation

Why We Love It: Without this game, would people still crave RHD JDM R34 Skylines, we wonder? Probably, but not with the same intensity. Aside from the 176-car menu, Gran Turismo introduced the joy of simulation, with its emphasis on careful setup and car control (if not damage modeling) to consoles. A great racing-school component, challenging event stages, and tantalizing unlockables kept a new generation of digital gearheads playing all night. It was five years in the making, but it was worth it, as every edition since has been a stunner, and there's every reason to suspect that long-delayed GT5 will be astounding as well. As for developer Polyphony Digital, who changed motoring culture by putting Skylines in their product, they now put their product in the Skyline; they famously do the dash graphics for Nissan's GTR.

Photo: Polyphony Digital

Game: Crazy Taxi
Creator: Sega
Release Date: 1999
Original Platform: Arcade

Why We Love It: It's perhaps the last truly great arcade driver, Crazy Taxi is a roaming mission-based game of fare deliver with an odd but consistent physics engine and a great sense of humor. It was simple, buy there was a lot of depth and plenty to enjoy, including the sights and folks of coastal pseudo-California, the ever-present KFC ads, and the jaunty punk soundtrack. It nibbled away your time in happy 90-second bites, and it only got better when it evolved into The Simpsons Hit And Run.

Photo: Loot Ninja

Game: Midnight Club
Creator: Angel Studios
Release Date: 2000
Original Platform: PlayStation2

Why We Love It: The PS2's debut was a revelation, and aptly-named publisher Rockstar Games was there to capitalize with an open-world off-road free-for-all called Smuggler's Run and this free-roaming street racer. The setting was Manhattan, a semi-open world which seemed huge at the time and provided great choose-your-own-course point-to-point racing. The series continues to evolve and has become even more challenging; it may be the arcade racer with the steepest difficulty curve.

Photo: Gamespy

Game: Colin McRae Rally/ DiRT
Creator: Codemasters
Release Date: 2000
Original Platform: PlayStation, PC

Why We Love It: As indescribably cool as rallying is, there aren't many rally games to choose from. Therefore it's fortunate that the McRae games are very good indeed. Although they trend towards the arcadey side in later editions, all of them are fun, challenging , and smooth, and a fitting pop-culture tribute to one of the greatest drivers of all time. They're also some of the best-looking car games out there regardless of genre, and the sound must be heard to be believed; motorsport, and rallying in particular, is not a quiet activity, and this title does a better job than any other game s of bringing it home to the vicarious driver.

Photo: Gamespot

Game: Grand Theft Auto III-IV
Creator: Rockstar
Release Date: 2001
Original Platform: PlayStation2

Why We Love It: Okay, so it isn't purely or even primarily a car game, despite its title. Yet the driving aspects of these satirical mayhem simulators are so much evil-hearted cinematic fun that it can't be left off this list. Much thought has been put into the cars that populate GTA's hilariously mean-tempered cities, and every model is meticulously detailed and clearly inspired by some real-world counterpart. They all blow up real good, too. And the latest installment finally looks good enough to make the first-person view worth using during police chases, which adds an almost frightening level of immediacy to your inevitable brutal demise.

Photo: IGNl

Game: Burnout series
Creator: Criterion
Release Date: 2002
Original Platform: PlayStation2, Xbox, GameCube

Why We Love It: The problem with many racing games, even the less realistic ones, is that one little crash can render the entire race a moot point. Burnout's genius solution was to make crashing just as important as racing, and just as skill-intensive. All the titles were fun, and though the most recent edition, Burnout Paradise, lost the bowling-for-cars Crash Mode, it added a free-roaming component that more than made up for it. One of the great Neanderthal time-wasters of the videogame world.

Photo: Wikipedia

Game: Need for Speed Most Wanted
Creator: Electronic Arts Canada
Release Date: 2005
Original Platform: PlayStation2, Xbox

Why We Love It: The Need For Speed series has been around just about forever, but frankly not all its editions have been worthwhile. Of the many good ones, we prefer Most Wanted, because if you're going to have a glossy, unrealistic, over-the-top street racer, you should really try to outrun the cops as well. The police pursuits are the best part of this game, which is set in a world where the entire focus of the United States government is apparently dedicated to preventing you from speeding, which results in some wonderfully fun and over-the-top chases, all of them treated with deadly serious attitude. Oooh, those street racers and their pesky nitrouses!

Photo: NFSAddons

Game: Forza Motorsport series
Creator: Forza Motorsport series
Release Date: 2005
Original Platform: Xbox

Why We Love It: While the Xbox had a very pretty and enjoyable arcade racer in Project Gotham, it badly needed a sim-based game. It got a great one in Forza, which had hundreds of cars, very deep graphic customization, extended replays, the Nürburgring Nordschleife, and damage modeling. Finally, a gorgeous, deep console racer where you couldn't just berm off other racers without consequences! Happily, the series continues to evolve in a positive direction, and we have high hopes for the debut of Forza 3 in a couple months.

Photo: Kotaku

Game: Test Drive Unlimited
Creator: Eden Games
Release Date: 2006
Original Platform: PC, Xbox360, PlayStation2, PSP

Why We Love It: The Test Drive series began in 1987-1987!-and like NFS, has varied widely in quality. But it's always featured exotic hardware raced in traffic on public roads, and Unlimited does that wonderfully. The developers took a map of Oahu, simplified it down to a mere thousand miles of road, and modeled it for free roaming. The MOOR system, or Massively Open Online Racing, allowed players to race against friends or just cruise with them, which was much more popular than you might think. Your customizable character was visible to other players at the car clubs, although they couldn't come hang out at your mansion and check out your ever-growing collection of undamagable exotics. There was even an in-game photography mode that allowed players to live out their buff-book fantasies. It was really an automotive lifestyle game as much as a racer, and a pretty decent piece of escapism to zone out with.

There's a lot of good games out there, and it was tough to keep this one to just twenty titles. Think we missed big? Know something we should try? Enraged at the omission of Big Rig Racing? Let us know in the comments.

Photo: Gamerhell

Michael A. Salter never grew out of that art-for-scrap mode of thought as evidenced by his life-size and fairly accurate replica Formula One race car made entirely from recycled styrofoam pieces. The installation is currently on display at the South Waterfront John Ross Residency Gallery in Portland, Oregon and also features some of Salter's 2D works. [MichaelSalter]

Ferrari and Renault join a growing number of teams including Red Bull, Toyota and BMW that have also threatened to leave the sport for 2010. The new technical regulations state that the FIA will give certain advantages to budget capped teams, causing a major disrupt in the competitive nature of the sport.

With the May 29th deadline for official entries looming, it appears that only the Williams, Force India and Brawn team will make the entry date for next year's world championship. Rumors are quickly spreading that there could be a split in F1, not unlike that of Indycar and CART, and we all know how well that ended. A full list of the 2010 FIA Sporting Regulations can be seen HERE. (Photo Credit: Flickr) [via FormulaOne: 1, 2]

After seeing this abomination in the flesh, we're beginning to think that certain Chinese brothers can make a better Formula 1 car in their janky garage. Hey, here's an idea. How about every Chinese manufacturer create a race car and then race it for a 24 hour race. We could call it the 24 Hours of Ramons. Hey Murilee....

The race began with a bit of caution, as the group tailed the AMG-supplied SL63 pace car for eight laps before being let loose to the elements. Red Bull Racing's Sebastian Vettel took the pole during Saturday's qualifying session, holding onto the position until today's rain soaked finish. Not only did Red Bull pull a 1st place podium finish, but team mate, Mark Webber also pulled it in, giving Red Bull Racing a one-two finish over the rest of the pack. It was a rather uneventful grand prix, with no real racing taking place except for a few fun laps with McLaren's Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari's Felipe Massa. Series leader, Jenson Button and his Brawn Honda/Mercedes, played hard, but was unable to hold onto his winning streak, eventually finishing 3rd.

Make sure you check out my coverage of Day 1 and Day 2 for more on track and lifestyle images from the event.

2009 FORMULA 1 CHINESE GRAND PRIX FINAL STANDINGS:

Pos No Driver Team Laps Time/Retired Grid Pts
1 15 Sebastian Vettel RBR-Renault 56 1:57:43.485 1 10
2 14 Mark Webber RBR-Renault 56 +10.9 secs 3 8
3 22 Jenson Button Brawn-Mercedes 56 +44.9 secs 5 6
4 23 Rubens Barrichello Brawn-Mercedes 56 +63.7 secs 4 5
5 2 Heikki Kovalainen McLaren-Mercedes 56 +65.1 secs 12 4
6 1 Lewis Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes 56 +71.8 secs 9 3
7 10 Timo Glock Toyota 56 +74.4 secs 19 2
8 12 Sebastien Buemi STR-Ferrari 56 +76.4 secs 10 1
9 7 Fernando Alonso Renault 56 +84.3 secs 2
10 4 Kimi Räikkönen Ferrari 56 +91.7 secs 8
11 11 Sebastien Bourdais STR-Ferrari 56 +94.1 secs 15
12 6 Nick Heidfeld BMW Sauber 56 +95.8 secs 11
13 5 Robert Kubica BMW Sauber 56 + 106.8 secs 17
14 21 Giancarlo Fisichella Force India-Mercedes 55 +1 Lap 20
15 16 Nico Rosberg Williams-Toyota 55 +1 Lap 7
16 8 Nelsinho Piquet Renault 53 +2 Laps 16
17 20 Adrian Sutil Force India-Mercedes 50 +6 Laps 18
Ret 17 Kazuki Nakajima Williams-Toyota 43 +13 Laps 14
Ret 3 Felipe Massa Ferrari 20 +36 Laps 13
Ret 9 Jarno Trulli Toyota 18 +38 Laps 6

[images via TAI, results via formula1]

Today was a busy day at the track with almost twice the attendance as yesterday's practice sessions and with some hot laps being set by the team with wings. Red Bull racing's Sebastian Vettel fought hard to take the pole for the first time since Monza last year. Vettel set his fast lap during the 3rd qualifying session, managing a 1m 36.184s lap, besting his teammate, Mark Webber's 1m 36.466s lap. Yesterday's practice sessions had Jenson Button setting the fast lap in the Brawn, but he fell back to 5th during today's qualifying. Fernando Alonso was able to settle his Renault in between the two Red Bull entries with a 1m 36.381s lap, netting him 2nd on the pole. [images via TAI, times via formula1]

It was a fairly uneventful day with no real incidents, which allowed Jensen Button to continue his hot lap trend. He was able to set the fastest time during the afternoon's second practice session, circling the 3.4 mile track with a time of 1m 35.679s in his Brawn Whatchamacallit. Nico Rosberg set a 1m 35.704s lap in his Williams F1, just ahead of Button's teammate, Rubens Barrichello, who managed a 1m 35.881s lap. I'll be back again tomorrow to see the action during the third round of practice as well as the afternoon's qualifying session, which should prove to be extremely competitive considering today's lap times.

[images via TAI, timing via Formula1]

The FIA official driving the R28 was none other than Mohammed bin Sulayem, the U.A.E. automobile club president and FIA Vice President. According to early reports, the car swung heavily to the right under heavy acceleration on the main straight of the Dubai Autodrome, causing it to crash into a concrete barrier. Sulayem was subsequently sent to the on-track medical center and according to a Renault spokesman, he was uninjured and the car will be repaired to continue this weeks 'Roadshow.' [via F1-live]

If you were to rank extreme habitats for living organisms, the cabin of a contemporary Grand Prix racer would be right on par in harshness with deep sea hydrothermal vents, Subantarctic islands and outer space.

You are squeezed into an iron maiden of a carbon fiber tub with no padding whatsoever. The lack of suspension knocks the very phlegm off the walls of your bronchi to drown to you in your own mucus. And ever since the black art of downforce is applied to racing cars, you can expect to have several g’s of acceleration and deceleration hit your body multiple times on every lap.

It is easy to underestimate the power of g-forces. We have become so used to reading about the wild cornering capabilities of modern supercars with wings and diffusors that it takes a lap on a racetrack to drive home this fact: one g of lateral acceleration means that a force equal to the Earth’s gravity is acting on your body from a wholly unusual direction.

Experiencing it for the first time is a very humbling experience. One g of deceleration at the end of a straight results in your entire body weight hanging helplessly off a four-point racing harness as you try to control your flailing limbs to no avail. Unsecured objects fly about the cabin.

There are corners on Grand Prix circuits where a modern F1 car will generate seven g’s. It is absolutely superhuman to even remain conscious under such circumstances, let alone drive a car with utter precision in excess of 200 MPH. Corner after corner, lap after lap. And there is no cruising in an F1 car: you either stand on the throttle with all your might or you do the same on the brake pedal. It is a brutal environment to live in.

The number of people who have driven Grand Prix cars is roughly the same as the number of people who have left the Earth’s atmosphere in a space rocket. One of the former is my friend Nino Karotta, who was flown down two years ago to Bernie Ecclestone’s private track Circuit Paul Ricard in the South of France to drive the Renault R24.

This was the car that Jarno Trulli and Fernando Alonso drove in the 2004 Formula One season. Alonso would go on to become World Champion the next year with its successor, the R25. The R24 is powered by a 3-liter V10 and in an episode of Top Gear, the Stig drove it around the Top Gear Test Track in 59 seconds: a full 18 seconds quicker than the fastest road cars.

Nino was given a full day of training by the Renault team. He began his day in a 200 HP Formula Renault racer on his way to the R24. Along the way, he received training on the BATAK device—designed to boost your reaction times to things on the edge of your vision—, learned about the counterintuitive way to apply the brakes in a car producing tons of downforce and learned what said downforce does to a human neck (hint: nothing particularly pleasant).

His epic day out was made into a 20-minute TV special which is now up on YouTube with English subtitles:

Part One

Part Two

Part Three (watch his neck)

And if you’ve already consumed enough hallucinogens for the day, you can hit Google Translate and see how it copes with translating the Bohunk of his written account to something resembling English. Here’s an example:

Seven o'clock in the morning, start the track. Get a fire-resistant clothing, shoes, gloves, Balaklava (under the mask of the helmet), plugs and Smee. We are twenty, and everyone is in the size of each. Fire-resistant, wear clothes labeled comic sensation tingled. Anyway, that's clothes, and the sweat félelemszagú sloppy at the end of the day to be given only to people in return for the buzzer childhood itself.

The Australian Grand Prix begins at 5PM on Sunday, Melbourne time.

Photo Credit: CRISTINA QUICLER/AFP/Getty Images, Bryn Lennon/Getty Images

The threat came in response to a threat from Renault and McLaren, who vowed not to send their cars to the Australian Grand Prix if Bernie didn't cough up some money the two teams said they were owed. In response, Ecclestone pulled out the big gun and called up the freight companies to cancel the shipments.

Said Ecclestone: "So I said what I'd better do is cancel the aircraft obviously. It costs a fortune to charter those things and almost as much to cancel them."

The cars were shipped and it appears the teams blinked first as few believe Ecclestone coughed up the funds. This is just more proof that what happens behind the scenes in F1 is going to continue to generate more press than what actually happens on the track so long as Herr Mosley and Bernie remain in charge.

Photo Credit: The F1 Blog

[The Times via AutoSport]

It would even have held the all-time lap record until lap six of the race, when Dan Gurney in his Eagle broke it with a time of 8 minutes and 18.2 seconds.

The 1967 season was fast, wicked and violent even by the standards of early Formula 1. The cars had just come back into power the year before, when regulations increased maximum engine size from a sewing machine 1.5 liters to a healthy three, and this was the first year when the entire field was made up of 3-liter cars. Speeds were increasing race by race, the cars ran on hard rubber, had no wings, and the tracks they raced on were designed and built in the 1920s.

Add to this the utter madness of the most famous of those tracks: the old Nürburgring Nordschleife. Where trees lined a thin strip of tarmac and these slender aluminum tubes with no downforce skirted right up to the edge on every lap. One would imagine it was not only the Eagle’s exhaust manifolds which were made of titanium but Gurney’s balls as well.

The cars took an incredible beating and the Grand Prix turned into a race of attrition. Gurney, who would go on to break the lap record again with a time of 8:15.1, had to retire from first position with a broken halfshaft. Denny Hulme in the unremarkable but reliable Brabham-Repco won the race and went on to become World Champion.

And yes, the cars took to the air on every lap at the very appropriately named Flugplatz.

Our new favorite Formula 1 team sure has hit the ground running: after Friday’s announcement that Ross Brawn has purchased Honda’s Grand Prix team to race it as his own, we now have footage of the BGP 001 at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona.

While it does lack sponsorship livery, the car certainly certainly exists and can travel along a racetrack at speed. Driver Jenson Button has posted the fourth fastest time of 01'21.140 at yesterday’s test on the 4.665 kilometer track.

“I can feel the car and the road a lot more with this car than with previous cars, which is great—and it's only going to get better,” Button said, who is perhaps looking for his second Grand Prix victory with the Brawn GP car after scoring his only win in 155 races at the 2006 Hungarian Grand Prix.

In additional Brawn GP news, Team Principal Ross Brawn has learned of Jalopnik Space Initiative’s satellite camera and is currently blocking our efforts to take new photographs of his giant outboard brain. Our space team is about to depart from Jalopnik Spaceport to fit a new camera on our imaging satellite which will surely beat the crafty Briton’s cloaking efforts. Please stay tuned.

Photo Credit: Brawn GP

Hot on the heels of Friday’s announcement that Honda’s forlorn Formula 1 team was picked up by technical director Ross Brawn and will be run as Brawn GP comes Sniff Petrol’s take on the new team’s 2009 livery:

While the photo may question the judgment of launching something as frivolous as an F1 team smack in the middle of the Carpocalypse, the lack of branded livery would not be out of place on Brawn’s cars. For the past two years, Honda has run its racers with no advertising, just a painting of the Earth to cover its curves of carbon fiber.

Brawn’s timing may be akin to Cadillac launching its original V16 in January 1930, but we would not be in any particular hurry to underestimate his prowess. You may already have seen our proof that he is endowed with the largest brain amongst us all — even larger than "The Brain" of Pinky and the Brain fame:

Drivers Rubens Barrichello and Jenson Button will be testing the new car today at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona in preparation for taking over the world, the season’s first race, only three weeks away. We have just one nagging question: which one of them is Pinky?

Photo Credit: Sniff Petrol

Ross Brawn is back! If you’ll recall, the man who made Schumacher the Superman of Formula 1 racing left Ferrari at the end of the 2006 season and ended up at Honda after a one-year sabbatical. Honda was particularly hard hit by the Carpocalypse and decided last December to abandon its F1 efforts. An agreement has now been reached to preserve the team, with Brawn as its new owner and namesake.

Brawn GP will swap its Honda engines for Mercedes V8’s and immediately hit the track at Barcelona on Monday. Honda drivers Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello will remain with the team as they take to their first season on March 29 at the Australian Grand Prix.

This is absolutely wonderful news. As for why, you only need to call to mind last year’s British Grand Prix at Silverstone.

It was a motley ballet of a race, with the recurring gag of a hapless Fernando Alonso spinning his car at every corner and a bunny speeding across the rain-soaked track. Lewis Hamilton massacred the field, but the most remarkable part of the race happened on lap 40.

This was when Ross Brawn, in anticipation of more rain, decided to put Rubens Barrichello on extreme wet tires as opposed to the intermediates on every other car. Then the rain came. Barrichello’s Honda, a hopeless non-contender througout the season, went through the field like butter, outpacing everyone by nine seconds a lap. He ended up at third place, by far the best result for Honda in the entire season.

Yeah yeah yeah, you put on wets when you see the clouds, but if the rain doesn’t come, wet tires slow your car down like molasses. It was a brilliant hustle, but one built on a foundation of data, which Brawn reputedly has an infinite capacity to spot patterns in.

Not evident on most Formula 1 newscasts due to its invisibility to the naked eye is the extremely large outboard brain attached to Ross Brawn’s cerebrum. A picture of which we have obtained with Jalopnik’s imaging satellite parked above the Japanese Home Islands. It really is one bad mother of a brain.

Expect fun things to happen in F1, and expect Brawn to step on Hamilton’s toes at every chance he gets. We at Jalopnik HQ couldn’t be more happier and we hereby celebrate with a six-pack of Brawndo:

Photo Credit: p_c_w, rallycarter, Source: BBC Sport

Bob Varsha of SpeedTV announced today that the USF1 team will enter Formula 1 in the 2010 season. The car will be designed and built in Charlotte, North Carolina and run by Ken Anderson and Peter Windsor.

The USF1 team says their mission is:

‘to prove that American technology, American drivers and the American competitive spirit can compete and win on the F1 global stage'.

Although the team has yet to make a public decision on drivers or engine suppliers, Danica Patrick has been rumored to be a driver for the team, but only if she can be pried out of her sexy bikini and off of that Shelby Cobra. They plan on taking advantage of the recent F1 cost-cutting measures, which will hopefully allow them to be extremely competitive and run an efficient operation.

[via speed, usf1]

The short was created primarily to show off Red Bull Racing's 2009 RB5 F1 car, but it also demonstrates and compares many of the new changes imposed on the F1 series as a whole. We especially like the transformation that occurs from the 2008 car to the 2009 RB5. Thanks to Spencer for the tip!

[Top Gear via YouTube]