This virtual tour of the new Qiddiya City racing venue reveals how it is taking motorsport to the next level, with cars racing alongside rollercoasters and driving up a giant cantilevered hairpin! Discover the vision behind this epic project and how its developers plan to build something that is, quite literally, like nothing you have ever seen before.

Thirty years after the death of Formula 1 legend Ayrton Senna at the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix, the world is paying tribute. For this weekend’s Monaco Grand Prix—a race Senna won a record six times—McLaren is going all out. Its F1 cars will wear a Senna tribute livery featuring the blue, yellow, and green of the Brazilian flag, and the company has hand-painted a Senna road car in a similar scheme.

In case the colors, “S” logos, and “Senna” emblazoned on the rear wing didn’t make it obvious, McLaren painted Senna’s face on the rear fenders. On the driver’s side, we see Senna looking off into the distance, while on the passenger side, he’s helmeted. The Senna used is a pre-production car McLaren’s kept in its collection. In addition to the exterior work, the interior features yellow seats and a quote from Senna and his signature on the door trim. It reads “I have no idols. I admire work, dedication and competence.”

The car is also adorned inside and out with all the race numbers Senna’s cars wore for his five Monaco wins with McLaren, achieved in succession from 1989 to 1993. (His 1987 win was with Lotus.)

If you’re in Monaco, first, lucky you, and second, this Senna will be on display throughout the weekend. So keep an eye out.

Honda is known for its small vehicles. But there’s nothing small about the company’s latest concept. It’s a semi-truck infused with hydrogen fuel cells, simply dubbed the Class 8 Hydrogen Fuel Cell Truck Concept. Honda will showcase it, along with other fuel-cell vehicles, at the Advanced Clean Transportation Expo in Las Vegas on May 20.

The truck is a fully functional demonstrator designed to showcase Honda’s current hydrogen tech. It carries three fuel-cell systems, each capable of generating 80 kilowatts. That’s 240 kW of combined energy, powering an unknown number of electric motors. Honda says the truck has an estimated top speed of 70 mph, and can travel 400 miles before refueling. It’s worth noting the range applies to a fully loaded truck/trailer combo weighing 82,000 pounds.

While the truck is a concept, the fuel cells aren’t. They’re new mass-production items currently being built at the joint Honda-General Motors plant in Michigan. With this truck, Honda hopes to grab the interests of potential partners to help pursue a hydrogen-fueled future.

“Commercial vehicles, including Class 8 trucks, where fuel cells offer the best zero-emission replacement for existing diesel applications, are a key part of Honda’s broad hydrogen business strategy,” said Ryan Harty, Honda assistant vice president of sustainability and business development. “Honda is actively seeking business collaborations and customers to help bring these hydrogen fuel cell solutions to market here in North America.”

Honda takes ownership of the concept with its fuel cell internals, but the truck is actually a Peterbilt. To our eye, it looks like a 579EV—a battery electric rig with a pair of e-axles and a range of 150 miles. Honda makes no mention of Peterbilt in its announcement, and images show Peterbilt badges removed from the concept. It’s unclear if there’s any co-development happening between the two brands; we contacted Honda for clarification, and we’ll provide an update if more information becomes available.

BMW loves revealing concept cars at Villa d’Este. This year is no different, with the German carmaker taking the wraps off the Skytop Concept, a two-seater coupe without a roof the company says takes inspiration from its past models. 

“The BMW Concept Skytop is a truly unique and exotic design, in the tradition of the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este,” says Adrian van Hooydonk, head of BMW Group Design. “It offers a combination of driving dynamics and elegance at the highest level, comparable to its historic ancestors, like the BMW Z8 or BMW 503.”

Connections to the Z8 roadster are obvious. The Skytop’s thin taillights and sharknose front end are clear design inspirations lifted from the early 2000s roadster. The sculpted hood design, small headlights, and unique flat-decked rear end remind us of the 503 from the late 1950s. 

From a quick glance, though, you’d think the Skytop was just a rebodied 8 Series. It has similar proportions and uses the 617-horsepower 4.4-liter V-8 from the M8 Competition. We wouldn’t be surprised if BMW simply used an M8 as a base and resculpted the lines.

BMW doesn’t give any other technical or performance specs, though if we had to guess, the Skytop is also using the M8 Competition’s eight-speed automatic transmission and trick all-wheel drive system.

The production-car-like theme continues inside. The dashboard setup looks to be lifted straight from the 8-Series, with a familiar digital gauge cluster, infotainment screen, center stack, and gear selector. While the leather-clad seats and steering wheel look lovely, it’s clear they’re also production-based.

The unique roll bar behind the seats is totally bespoke, though, and features a power-retractable window. The roof is a two-piece item that can be manually removed and stowed in the trunk area.

While the Skytop is likely production-based, we doubt it’ll actually ever see an assembly line. BMW already makes the 8 Series coupe and convertible, so we assume a slick targa version would be cannibalized in the lineup, no matter how cool it looks.

Although the Henry Ford Museum is one of the biggest of its kind in the world, it’s still not large enough to publicly display all the cars. Located in Dearborn, Michigan, the building features a storage facility where access is restricted. However, Top Gear was allowed to discover the Blue Oval’s secret stash of cars, including the Alpe.

What was it? The quirky concept started as a Ford Escort before Ghia turned it into a boxy small crossover that would’ve preceded the Pontiac Aztek by several years. It originally came out in 1996 at the defunct Turin Auto Show and was subsequently exhibited with a slightly different design at the 1998 Detroit Auto Show. A couple of years later, BMW sold Land Rover to Ford, giving it access to a small off-roader in the form of the Freelander.

Alpe was engineered with a naturally aspirated 2.0-liter gasoline engine and four-wheel drive. It had a jacked-up suspension with generous ground clearance and 17-inch wheels. Ford gave it a maroon-colored dashboard, a translucent plexiglass roof, and seat upholstery partially made with recycled soda bottles.

The late Ross Roberts, who was Ford Division General Manager at the time, said the intent behind Alpe was to gauge consumer reaction to a small crossover priced at around $20,000. Ford wanted to go fight the CR-V and RAV4, but it wasn’t until 2001 when the first-gen Escape was launched. The smaller EcoSport came out a couple of years later, although the US market didn’t get it until 2018.

In hindsight, Alpe was probably a missed opportunity given the rise of SUVs in the decades that followed. It also looked less dorky than the Aztek. Then again, the Escort was approaching the end of its life cycle since the Focus took its place in the lineup in the early 2000s. The original Escape co-developed with Mazda gave Ford the smaller crossover it needed, so Alpe ultimately never happened.

You might think you have a cool job, then you learn about the guy who’s paid to shake down a 1,000-horsepower Mercedes-powered doorstop on an empty runway. Sports-car racer Richard Bradley posted a video on Twitter of his test of a Sauber-Mercedes C11 Group C prototype. It sounds incredible.

The C11 was the follow up to Sauber’s Le Mans-winning C9. It used its predecessor’s 5.0-liter V-8, the same basic engine Mercedes used in the SL500, and with two turbochargers, it made around 700 to 750 hp in race trim. For qualifying, though, Sauber cranked up the boost to get the engine beyond 1,000 horsepower. All in a super-high-downforce, carbon-chassis car, that weighed under 2,000 pounds. Sheesh.

Michael Schumacher drove C11s, including today’s subject, before making his Formula 1 debut. With the C11, Sauber and Mercedes dominated the 1990 World SportsCar Championship, but the car never won Le Mans. Sauber sat out the 1990 race, and managed a 5th place at the 1991 race. 

Despite being an intimidating prospect, racer Karl Wendlinger told Motorsport.com that the C11 was easy. “The C11 was a very fast car, a very competitive car, but it was not so difficult to drive,” he said. “First of all, the car had lots of downforce, especially on the rear axle. And if you were once a little bit too fast somewhere, then there was a slight understeer —which is easier to correct than an oversteer.

“The engine was really comfortable to drive, very good pickup, nice rev-band to drive with, good torque, good power, so it was in total—car and engine was a very good compromise.”

Today, it seems like a damn good time. We’re jealous of anyone, like Bradley, who gets a shot behind the wheel.

After a week of build-up, and plenty of lapping, the first-ever A2RL teams got to the event they’d been waiting for: the first-ever race in an all-new extreme motorsport.

In the lead-up to the race, teams had been hot-lapping the circuit as quickly as possible, getting their driverless machines ready for the heat of competition. Keeping an eye on the track, seeing (and hearing) driver-free cars haring along Yas Marina’s main straight wasn’t rare, as each team honed their code ready for the main event.

On the big day, the circuit was a hive of activity. A Fanzone decked out with gaming, VR, and race-related displays greeted the thousands of fans who arrived for the event. As the build-up to the race hotted up, the stands on the start/finish straight were packed with excited racegoers–men, women, children, no matter who you were, A2RL welcomed you.

As the sun was setting, former F1 driver Daniil Kvyat kept crowds entertained by doing laps in a human-driven take on the A2RL’s Dallara-chassised Super Formula car, and then showing off just what Dallara’s own supercar, the Stradale, could do on track. Both looked and sounded rather wonderful.

Kvyat wasn’t there simply to enjoy a giant track day, but to take part in the first of the evening’s events: Man v Machine. Here, he’d take on A2RL’s home team, TII, to show the difference between a human, and a machine–driven car. TII’s car is the most advanced autonomous racer out there, having been developed from the series’ genesis by founders ASPIRE Group. While it put up a good show, Kvyat demonstrated that, for the moment at least, man still has the upper hand over machines. For now at least. Speaking after the event, Kvyat commented: “It’s a great engineering breakthrough. To see these cars driving around at a respectable pace is impressive. To share the track together, even though we just tried to coexist together carefully, knowing there’ll be no unnecessary risk is very important. Competition, in the end, is what moves progress forward.”

From there, it was time to race. Of the eight teams just four–Italian teams PoliMOVE and Unimore, and Germany’s TUM and Constructor (who also represents Switzerland)–qualified for the final. The world’s stage was watching, and listening to see who’d be the first to make history.

The cars had been putting in times around two minutes ahead of the race. Though a human can make it around a touch quicker in the same car, the qualifiers proved that a car can drive autonomously around Yas Marina. When it came to the race, for the first half the four teams were playing nicely with each other – the aim of A2RL is to have driverless cars behave like human-driven ones: overtakes, thrills, and spills are the name of the game–and PoliMOVE was looking to take the chequered flag. Until disaster struck on lap five of the eight-lap final. The luminous green Italian car ground to a halt, then turned towards the wall–thankfully it didn’t drive into it.

PoliMOVE’s lack of movement stopped the race, and all cars returned to the pits for a restart to cover the remaining three laps. The PoliMOVE car didn’t rejoin the field. In its absence, fellow Italians Unimore were in the lead… until their car suffered a similar fate to PoliMOVE and stopped stone dead. The race wasn’t halted this time, and German team TUM stormed to victory, a share of the $2.25-million prize pot, and a place in the history books as the first-ever winner of A2RL. Fellow countrymen Constructor took the second step, while Unimore snatched third.

The race didn’t go, perhaps, to plan, but for a stretch of time, there were four cars driving around Yas Marina without drivers at the helm. As starts go, it was a solid foundation to build on, the lead-up to 2025’s event starts now.

Some automakers are adamant that the combustion engine is worth saving. Toyota believes it can be done by making the ICE burn hydrogen instead of fossil fuels. Porsche and Lamborghini think synthetic fuels might be the gas engine’s savior. Renault’s performance brand Alpine is on team hydrogen, and this Alpenglow Hy4 is a proof of concept.

An evolution of the static 2022 Alpenglow concept, the Hy4 is a running prototype. It rocks a turbocharged 2.0-liter engine developing 340 horsepower. The four-cylinder mill revs to 7,000 rpm and feeds off from three hydrogen tanks, each carrying 4.6 pounds of hydrogen at 700 bar of pressure. Output is channeled to the road via a sequential transmission.

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If you’re finding the four-pot to be underwhelming, Alpine is working on a bigger engine. An all-new V-6 developed entirely in-house specifically for hydrogen applications is coming. A subsequent variant of the Alpenglow, possibly called the Hy6, will premiere in late 2024. In the meantime, the Hy4 is about to hit the track.

It’ll make its public debut tomorrow during the six-hour endurance race at Spa-Francorchamps as part of the FIA WEC 2024 season. It will then head to France to attend the 24 Hours of Le Mans scheduled for June 14-15.

The Hy4 is not a spitting image of the original Alpenglow concept since Alpine tweaked the body. It has a modified crash structure to accommodate a two-seat cabin while the hydrogen tanks are embedded into the side pods. It’s also a bit taller than before and has a reworked aero package, accentuated by the new roof scoop.

While the Hy4 is a track-only machine, Alpine believes the powertrain technology makes sense in a street-legal model as well. The French niche marque goes as far as to say a hydrogen-powered internal combustion engine represents a “tremendously promising solution for road use.”

The idea of modifying a combustion engine to run on hydrogen is much older than Toyota’s experiments with the GR Yaris and GR Corolla. BMW had a V-12 7 Series with a 6.0-liter unit running on hydrogen in 2005. Going even further back in time, the German luxury brand developed a 5 Series (E12) to run on liquid hydrogen in the late 1970s. It’s the 520h featured below in a BMW Group Classic video.

Cadillac’s V-Series.R was the brand’s first racing car to return to the 24 hours of Le Mans in more than 20 years. After success in the North American IMSA GTP class, the car went on to win a podium at the legendary French endurance race. Getting there was not easy. To know just how difficult it was, you can watch Cadillac’s new documentary about it.

Called No Perfect Formula, the film follows Cadillac Racing in its quest to win races on both sides of the Atlantic. The automaker released a trailer promoting the movie on Thursday, which details not only the racing, but the design, development, engineering, and testing of the V-Series.R.

Cadillac’s LMDh car is both very similar and completely unlike its competition. It is the only naturally aspirated machine in the GTP class, with all other major automakers opting for smaller turbocharged engines. This, combined with its cross-plane crankshaft, gives it a distinct sound.

This latest class of hypercar regulations in IMSA and WEC has produced the most exciting sports car racing in years. A documentary following any of the respective teams would be an interesting one. Getting to see the inside story behind the only American team racing in the highest tiers of motorsport is certainly a treat though. 

No Perfect Formula debuts for free on Samsung TV Plus as well as on Hagerty’s Facebook page on May 31st.