Ignite Game Gets $7.5M in New Live Auto Racing Game
Online gaming company Ignite Game Technologies has raised $7.5 million in Series B financing from private investors in a round led by Steve Bellotti and Bill Budinger. The company raised a $3 million Series A round in 2010 and has raised a total of $12.2 million in funding. The company will use the additional capital for the development of a “new form of auto racing game”. Exactly when it will launch and what it will bring to the table remains unclear. The company operates a website at SIMraceway.com where you can sign up for a beta of a game, which I assume is the one they’re referring to, although this wasn’t made clear in the press statement. In it, the startup posits that it will provide gamers with an entirely new online auto racing experience that is “bound to shake up traditional racing gameplay” by emphasizing live online multiplayer gaming, a high-fidelity physics engine and “proprietary player skill quantification technology”. The product wi...
Posted Tuesday, July 12, 2011F1 teams fail to reach agreement on engines
Formula One faced further turmoil over engine regulations on Sunday after teams failed to reach an agreement at the British Grand Prix. "There's no agreement," Christian Horner, principal of champions Red Bull, told Reuters as he walked back to the team motorhome with technical head Adrian Newey. The governing International Automobile Federation (FIA) had said on Saturday it was prepared to agree a return to pre-Silverstone set-ups and strategies if the teams were in unanimous agreement. The FIA began a clampdown last month on engine electronics to ensure teams did not gain an aerodynamic advantage by using systems that allowed exhaust gases to flow constantly through the rear of the car even when a driver was off the throttle. In Valencia two weeks ago, teams were told they could no longer change engine maps between qualifying and the race -- which would have allowed them to go for extreme settings for the Saturday session before tuning down the engine for race reliability. At Sil...
Posted Sunday, July 10, 2011F1 2011:Alonso wins a challenging British GP
Fernando Alonso comes through to win a challenging British Grand Prix and give the Scuderia its first victory of the year. Alonso eventually finished more than 15 seconds up on Sebastian Vettel, who led from the off until a slow stop on lap 28 cost him around 10 seconds. Vettel held on to take second despite intense late pressure from pole sitter Mark Webber. Webber was eventually told by the team to hold station and had to settle for third. Lewis Hamilton was fourth, despite contact with Felipe Massa on the last lap, as he limped home in fuel conservation mode. Nico Rosberg took sixth for Mercedes followed by Sergio Perez's Sauber and Nick Heidfeld's Renault. Michael Schumacher and Jamie Alguersuari rounded out the points' scorers in ninth and tenth respectively.
Posted Sunday, July 10, 2011F1:Career-best qualifying for Maldonado
Williams F1 2011 rookie Pastor Maldonado is feeling 'quite confident' ahead of today's British Grand Prix at Silverstone and will no doubt be hoping to break his points duck. Maldonado put in his best qualifying performance to date on Saturday and made the most of the changeable conditions to secure seventh on the grid - his time in Q3 a 1 minute 31.933 seconds, which was just 0.004 seconds slower than Paul di Resta in P6. The Venezuelan, who had been fifth in final practice, maintained that momentum throughout qualifying and was even second fastest in Q1. He will now want to get the maximum from his Cosworth-powered FW33 in today's 52-lap race. “Our car is working well and we gave a good performance today. It is Williams' home race so I'm happy for the team,” he said. “I'm quite confident and really looking forward to tomorrow as I always enjoy racing at Silverstone. The circuit with its quick corners suits our car so let's see what happens.” Team-mate Rubens Barriche...
Posted Sunday, July 10, 2011Nationwide finds success
SPARTA, Ky. - In 2008, Nationwide Insurance went NASCAR racing after signing a seven-year contract to sponsor the sport's second-tier series. Simple logic told the board of directors that the company would be a natural in stock car racing because it has the No. 1 market share in North Carolina, the heart of NASCAR country. Success wasn't guaranteed, though; the former Busch Grand National Series resembled an aging rental car. Today, the series looks like a new model right off the showroom floor. SportsBusiness Journal has reported Nationwide's contract with NASCAR for title sponsorship called for $10million for the first season and 6 percent increases the following seasons. The investment has paid off since year one, when the television audience increased by 10 percent (an average of 1.967 million homes per race) from the final year of the Busch contract. This season, television ratings are up 16 percent from the same point in 2010. Nationwide, based in Columbus since it was...
By MARK ZNIDAR Posted Saturday, July 9, 2011Speedway's challenge: three races
SPARTA, Ky. - Less than two weeks after Kentucky Speedway announced that it would host NASCAR Nationwide and Sprint Cup series races on consecutive days, track owner Bruton Smith put even more on the plate. The speedway, he said, would have three races in as many days by running a Camping World Truck Series event. The speedway had never hosted Trucks and Nationwide series races on back-to-back nights since the track opened in 2000, and it never hosted a Sprint Cup race. Was Smith biting off more than he could chew? "NASCAR said, 'You can't announce that,'" Kentucky Speedway general manager Mark Simendinger said. "I said, 'Well, he just did.' Bruton Smith is not short on confidence. There are two things he's confident in and those are Bruton Smith and Kentucky Speedway." Simendinger predicted a crowd of 30,000 to 35,000 for last night's Trucks race, 35,000 to 45,000 for tonight's Nationwide race and approximately 130,000 for the Sprint Cup race on Saturday night. It's a brave, ...
By Mark Znidar Posted Friday, July 8, 2011NASCAR speedway changed a tiny town
Today through Saturday, the town about two hours south of Dayton accelerates from a stop just off Interstate 71 to Kentucky’s third largest city behind only Louisville and Lexington. NASCAR’s long awaited road show — a three-race event highlighted by the Sprint Cup Series’ much-anticipated debut on Saturday — swells Sparta, the official site of the Kentucky Speedway, to more than 110,000 people. The Camping World Truck Series kicked off the event Thursday night, the Nationwide Series takes to the 1.5-mile tri-oval tonight and the crown jewel Sprint Cup finally makes its Kentucky Speedway debut Saturday night. “You can’t go to a manual somewhere, you can’t go to a class and figure out how to put on a party for 180,000 people,” Speedway Motorsports Inc. president Marcus Smith said. “When you put on an event this big it’s bigger than the Super Bowl.” Talk to the drivers and they seem as excited as the fans about having a Sprint Cup race at Kentucky, a track...
By Greg Billing Posted Friday, July 8, 2011NASCAR Camping World Truck UNOH 225
(Start position in parentheses) 1. (8) Kyle Busch, Toyota, 152 , $51,125. 2. (5) Parker Kligerman, Dodge, 152, $40,800. 3. (14) Brendan Gaughan, Toyota, 152, $28,450. 4. (20) Todd Bodine, Toyota, 152, $23,825. 5. (9) Jason White, Chevrolet, 152, $19,300. 6. (4) Elliott Sadler, Chevrolet, 152, $11,175. 7. (6) Joey Coulter, Chevrolet, 152, $12,925. 8. (18) David Starr, Toyota, 152, $12,425. 9. (12) James Buescher, Chevrolet, 152, $12,325. 10. (16) Travis Kvapil, Toyota, 152, $13,525. 11. (22) Max Papis, Toyota, 152, $12,100. 12. (13) Steve Arpin, Chevrolet, 152, $11,925. 13. (23) Ricky Carmichael, Chevrolet, 151, $11,825. 14. (2) Austin Dillon, Chevrolet, 151, $11,725. 15. (17) Justin Lofton, Toyota, 150, $12,925. 16. (25) Timothy Peters, Toyota, 150, $11,500. 17. (28) Clay Rogers, Chevrolet, 149, $11,400. 18. (33) Jack Smith, Ford, 147, $9,050. 19. (26) Ryan Sieg, Chevrolet, 147, $11,200. 20. (30) Charles Vest, Ford, 147, $9,575. 21. (11) Miguel Paludo, Toyota, acci...
Posted Friday, July 8, 2011Auto racing news and notes
•The race: Quaker State 400 •The place: Kentucky Speedway, a 1.5-mile oval in Sparta, Ky. •The time/day: 6:30 p.m. Saturday (TNT) •The distance: 400.5 miles, 267 laps •2010 winner: No race last year; inaugural race. Indianapolis to add three races NASCAR, Grand-Am and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway announced on Wednesday the “Super Weekend” for the 2012 season. The NASCAR Nationwide Series and Grand-Am Road Racing will have events at the Speedway the same weekend as the Brickyard 400 next year, adding a new series and three races to the Speedway’s schedule. Grand-Am will debut at the Speedway with road events for both its Rolex and Continental sports car series on July 27. “This is probably the most significant announcement for Grand-Am that we’ve ever had,” Grand-Am president Tom Bledsoe said. The Nationwide Series will debut at the Speedway on July 28, and the Brickyard 400 will be July 29. It ...
Posted Thursday, July 7, 2011Austin Dillon has the right connections for success
His grandfather, Richard Childress, is one of the kingpins of the sport and his father, Mike Dillon, is a longtime racer who once competed in the NASCAR Nationwide Series. And as the driver of the famed black No. 3 Chevrolet in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, Dillon has a built-in fan base of former Dale Earnhardt fans. But Dillon, 21, didn’t rely solely on his family ties en route to NASCAR. He waited until age 15 before he ran his first race in entry-level Bandolero and Legends cars. And he continues to pay his dues by venturing to dirt Late Model events at tracks such as Volunteer Speedway in Bulls Gap, Tenn., and Wythe Raceway in Rural Retreat, Va. “My grandfather always wanted me and my brother (Ty) to prove ourselves on the short tracks,” said Dillon, in a press conference Tuesday at Bristol Motor Speedway. “To me, the guys I race against on dirt are just as good as anything you see in NASCAR Sprint Cup.” Dillon said his experience at Bulls Gap helped hi...
By Allen Gregory Posted Wednesday, July 6, 2011