World MotoGP Champion Casey Stoner has announced his retirement from the motorbike arena at the end of the season, citing a lack of passion for the sport which has, in his eyes, changed to the point that he no longer enjoys it.

Not that Stoner hasn’t enjoyed his success in recent times. The 26-year-old Australian Repsol Honda rider won the final year of 800cc bikes last year with Honda, and before that in 2007 with Ducati. He currently leads this year’s 1000cc championship by a single point to Jorge Lorenzo.

Stoner made the announcement before the French GP, saying: “After a long time thinking, a lot of time talking with my family and my wife, this has been coming for a couple of years now but at the end of this 2012 season I will be not racing in the 2013 Championship.

“I will be finishing my career at the end of this season in MotoGP, and go forward in different things in my life.

“After so many years of doing this sport which I love, and which myself and my family made so many sacrifices for, after so many years of trying to get to where we have gotten to at this point, this sport has changed a lot and it has changed to the point where I am not enjoying it. I don’t have the passion for it and so at this time it’s better if I retire now.

“There are a lot of things that have disappointed me, and also a lot of things I have loved about this sport, but unfortunately the balance has gone in the wrong direction. And so, basically, we won’t be continuing any more. It would be nice if I could say I would stay one more year, but then where does it stop? So we decided to finish everything as we are now.”

One of the latest funny viral car videos doing the rounds targets The Fast and The Furious.

Anyone who has seen these vids - and has knowledge of cars - usually scoffs at the 10-speed manuals, rear-drive all-wheel-drive cars and seven turn lock-to-lock steering. But some non-car types have picked up and run with it, making a montage of the hyper-quick stick work that still takes nearly two minutes to cover.

The editor has done these montages before, or as he/she calls them, a ’supercuts” - also a rallying term for an extreme corner cut - to cult films such as Pulp Fiction (the swearing), Kickboxer (the kicks) and Transformers (the shape-shifting).

He/she says they are “ashamed of how long this took”, but sandwiched all five movies into one massive, tortured  shift montage.

There are also rules to the cutting, to stop the web nerds from jumping all over it no doubt: “It had to be an obvious gear-shift moment, with the hand/gearshift at least partially showing on screen (there are several moments in the films where you see a character’s shoulder move as they shift gears, but those didn’t count unless you could also see part of the hand). Everything else–barring the brief titles for each film–was cut.”

Enjoy - click HERE.

Bad luck seems to follow some people around, and in the case of Williams, it follows the whole team.

The team had just won its first Formula 1 GP since 2004, and the celebrations for driver Pastor Maldonado’s inaugural victory had only just begun when smoke began billowing out of the pit garage and onto the main straight of the Barcelona track.

Williams said the fire originated from the fuel area. In all, 31 people were treated for injuries ranging from smoke inhalation to minor burns, with seven individuals taken to hospital for treatment.

Caterham said four of its members had been taken to the medical centre for examination, while another Force India mechanic had also suffered from smoke inhalation and was under observation.

“The Williams F1 Team would like to thank all of the teams and the FIA for their support in today’s incident,” said the team in a statement.

“The FIA is collaborating closely with the Spanish authorities investigating this incident and will be providing a further update as soon as more information becomes available,” said the FIA.

It had to turn around sometime, and according to Bloomberg, the time is now.

With the latest U.S. auto sales just out, the financial rag reports that 2012 looks like the best sales year on forecast since 2007; right before the Big Three started to slip. And with the third year of more than 10 percent sales increases, it’s on track to being only the fourth such selling streak since the 1040s and time of the Great Depression.

Bloomberg’s 14 analysts are predicting sales of 14.3 million cars. In 2007, sales hit 16.1 million, compared to the low of 10.4 million in 2009.

“Part of the renaissance is related to the depths of the downturn that led to the bankruptcies of GM and Chrysler,” said Matt Stover, an industry analyst at Guggenheim Partners.

“There is pent-up demand and the cyclical indicators, while still weak, are grudgingly positive and improving.”

Its name is a combination of the words velocity and roadster, so why do Hyundai insist its sharp little sportster is no hot hatch?

Probably because of the lack of a hotted-up engine - until now.

Set for release in the next three months, the Veloster Turbo is the car we always thought - hoped - it would be, with 203hp and 265Nm from the relatively small 1.6-litre four thanks to a twin-scroll turbocharger that ensures the boost is on hand both low and high in the rev range.

The power and torque is doled out very deliberately; it is happy to rev at 6500rpm, but the turbo seeps in after 2500rpm and the cams lift at 4000 – 5000rpm in a measured, calculated fashion.

It certainly has none of the turbo oomph of the class benchmark, the Golf GTI, which develops the same power but 15Nm more torque from its larger 2.0-litre four. But again, Hyundai argues that the Golf GTI has a different demographic to the top-shelf Veloster.

Along with its namesake turbo, the car sat on 18-inch alloys, a more overt aero bodykit on all lower skirts of the car, a twin centre-mounted exhaust, and Turbo badges both outside and inside, the latter stitched into leather bucket-style seats.

Climbing up some hilly twists outside of Seoul, Korea on this special sneak preview, that familiar Hyundai trait of loaded steering once again made itself known, with a slight resistance from a half-turn of the steering on tighter cornering.

Otherwise, steering feedback was reasonable and there was no wrenching kick-back over bumps or surface changes.

The suspension itself is quite accomplished; as with the standard car, the corrugations are soaked up reasonably well, while larger lumps in the road don’t upset the car nor crash through the cabin.

The old-school torsion-beam rear axle does not overtly detract from its handling ability, and the car feels planted and confident on faster turns and sections of road.

However, as the cars driven were Korean-tuned, it remains to be seen what suspension setup and tyres the USA cars will wear; and how this will effect the ride and handling.

As for the price - again, wait and see… though it should be around $5,000 to $6,000 more than the mid-spec Veloster Plus model.

The R badge on a Golf used to stand for ‘Racing”. On the Scirocco, it certainly means racy. But on the Polo R Line, apparently the letter stands for ‘resemblance”.

For the Polo R, which has links the the awesome Polo WR car that will grace the World Rally Championship later this year, is in ‘R Line” guise a simple bluff, in name only, with no real racing machinery under its skirts and spoilers.

Of course, its for those wanting the look without coughing up the cash, and we get it. But taking ten seconds to get past 62 mile an hour is hardly requiring the aero package that graces the R Line example.

Along with the skirting, the R Line edition gets a gloss-black grille punctuated by rimmed fog lights, darker tint on the windows, and a different wheel design.

Inside, R-badged sports seats for the front row extend their leather trim to the touch surfaces, and aluminum pedals match the R-badged side sills. It’s a shame the 1.2-liter four doesn’t at least get a decent set of sports pipes to sing through…

At present, the car is designated for Europe and the UK, starting from £15,195 for the three-door model and £15,815 for the five-door.

Lotus has been given a lifeline - or rather, it has managed to scrape the empty barrel and find something to keep itself alive in the car world…

Brit rag Autocar reports that the carmaker is indeed still with a pulse after recent reports revealing it on the brink of bankruptcy after a 60-day financial freeze at its Malaysian parent company, DRB-Hicom.

The past four months have been really tough for us,” admitted Lotus CEO Dany Bahar. “We were working at a pace nobody had seen at Lotus for many years, (and) the shut-down, as I call it, was very hard for us.”

The production line has only just resumed, and with Lotus stacking up the new Elise, Exige and Evora, due for release later this year, it cannot come any sooner.

And with the rumored V8 Esprit also on the line, the re-start of production could not only save the struggling company, but make it a more juicy proposition to potential buyers. So is this a lifeline, or a last resort?

The Festival of Speed team has clinched the Australian Targa Championship in Early Modern for the second time in three years with a podium placing at one of the world’s toughest tarmac rallies, Targa Tasmania.

Despite early problems with a new braking setup and a loose wheel hub nut, this writer along with codriver Daniel Lemish brought the Behind The Drive/FoS Evo VI home in third position and 17th outright from 260 cars after 600 competitive kilometres and around 1800 touring kays - no mean feat for a 13-year-old turbocharged car.

The Early Modern category saw some blistering speed and close competition, with drivers climbing into the top ten and even claiming outright stage wins.

The class was initially led by Hobart local Tony Warren and Natasha Deniese, who won the tricky Rossarden stage and led the class by a massive nine minutes on day two before crashing out, leaving the path clear for Targa veterans Jeff and Nerida Beable in a Skyline R34 GTR.

The pair nearly retired on leg five before a massive effort from many other competitors and locals saw them source and install a new clutch and maintain their lead over the Mitsubishi EVO VI of Danny Stutterd and Richard Scoular.

Right behind us, despite many stages soaked with rain was a Mazda RX-7, and a rear-drive Skyline GTS-T that unfortunately suffered a misfire on the final leg while in second place.

Over 70 of the 260 cars entered did not make the finish line; such is the mechanical toughness of this rally. Even after its relatively trouble-free run, the Evo will need a gearbox and front diff refresh, new front brake calipers and rotors, a new clutch, and a good wash. But it deserves it.

A huge thank you to Behind The Drive Show and Festival of Speed for the support and the subsequent spoils.

The Behind The Drive/FoS Evo 6 of yours truly and codriver Daniel Lemish is just hours away from crossing the ceremonial start line at the 2012 Targa Tasmania rally. And it promises to be the most challenging in the event’s 21 year history, with the longest course ever run and the majority of the route either reversed or completely new.

The number of competitive kilometres will exceed 600km, nearly 120 kilometres more than the previous longest years in 2000 and 2001.

An additional challenge to face the field of around 240 cars is that only 40 per cent of last year’s course will be used this time around.

“This is the most significant change to the course ever, appropriate as we enter our third decade of running the event,” Clerk of Course, Stuart Benson.

“Don’t be surprised to see the underdog come through as the advantage that many of the experienced competitors have had in the past, which is knowing the stages, has gone.

“I think it will really favor the guys that can totally commit to the notes, drive on the call of their co-driver and not what they know is around the corner.