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New camera!!!

new camera

Last month I wrote about my new dioramas, since I thought that my old track diorama was not good anymore. I even mused that the next upgrade would have to be a new camera, since my old Nikon D90 is by now totally dated. A great camera, but released in 2008, so it just can’t stand up to current hardware. AND, it’s a cropped-sensor camera, so the resolution isn’t the best. But since good cameras are far from cheap, specially a full-frame one, I thought it would take a while.

However, my adorable wife and my dad (!) teamed up and got me a new one for my birthday 🥰. And not just any new camera, but possibly one of the best ones available right now, the Sony A7III!!! The A7III is one of Sony’s professional mirrorless full-frame models, with features that I never dreamt of. With a Zeiss 24-70mm lens it’s a true powerhouse.

Boy oh boy 😊!!! Now I need to learn how to use all those features.

And we have a winner!

Rebel Williams Esports #1 won the first 24 Hours of Le Mans Virtual! 🏆
Piloted by Raffaele Marciello (factory Mercedes GT driver), Louis Deletraz (Haas Formula 1 reserve), Nikodem Wisniewski (sim racer) and Kuba Brzezinski (sim racer), it started eighth in the grid. But slowly the team climbed up and finished in first.

In GTE, the #93 Porsche dominated the race. Piloted by Nick Tandy (Le Mans winner), Ayhancan Guven (Porsche Supercup), Joshua Rogers (Porsche Esports Supercup champion) and Tommy Ostgaard (sim racer), they took the flag. Pretty nice, since this weekend was Porsche’s 50th anniversary of their first overall Le Mans win.

Not the real thing, of course, but you know? It was cool to watch. Graphics were fantastic and the inboard filming looked like you were seeing it from a real race car.

Made me want to fire up Forza 7 on the Xbox One…

Mercedes-Benz Classic workshop

Mercedes has a HUGE (and fantastic!) museum at Stuttgart. The museum counts with around 1100 cars, and for a gearhead it’s basically paradise. And to maintain all those cars, they have a team of highly specialized technicians and mechanics exclusively dedicated to the museum’s cars. Last Tuesday Petrolicious aired a very nice article about the museum’s workshop.

Interestingly though, the director of Mercedes-Benz Classic recounted the story about why the paint was scraped off the W25 to get the car at the maximum 750 kg limit. However, that’s a confirmed fairy tale made up by Alfred Neubauer in his autobiography. Nothing against a little embellishing of an historical event, but I would expect that the head of such an endeavor as the Mercedes-Benz Classic department would be more factual.

Fairy tales aside, Petrolicious’ article (full of photos!!) is a treat.

Is Porsche thinking on getting back to prototype racing? At Le Mans?

According to Motorsport.com, that might be a possibility. If so, Porsche is considering the new LMDh class, that supposedly should start in 2021. Nobody knows much about this new class, but basically it will allow the same car to compete both in WEC and IMSA races. Everything is on hold right now because of the pandemic, but if Porsche is actually thinking about it, maybe there’s hope for the future of endurance racing.

T.50

So far no pics, only a rendering, and not much to see. But Gordon Murray (yes, that Gordon Murray) is working on a new supercar. Not much has been revealed, it’s called T.50 and will be powered by a ground-breaking V12 from Cosworth. According to their website it will be naturally aspirated and deliver 650 hp. It will also be the “highest-revving engine ever in a production car”. From their website you can see the engine actually being tested, so I think the T.50 will actually come to life. Très cool! 😎