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Fiat gives outgoing Ferrari chairman $35M severance package

Luca di Montezemolo may not have wanted to leave Ferrari this way, but don't feel too bad for the departing chairman, because he'll be hitting the ground with a golden parachute so big that he'll never have to work again.
According to the latest reports, Fiat will pay Montezemolo 26.95 million euros (nearly $35 million) in severance pay. A little more than half of that will be paid in a lump sum of 13.71 million euros ($17.7M, equivalent to five times his annual salary) on January 31, 2015, with the rest to be paid within the next 20 years.
The payment is contingent on Montezemolo not going to work for a competitor, so don't expect to see him replacing Stephan Winkelmann at Lamborghini or Wolfgang Dürheimer at Bugatti any time soon. At least not until March 2017. Of course with that much cash on hand, the 67-year-old marquis need never work again, but considering how busy he's used to keeping himself, we'd be surprised if he didn't pop up again somewhere.

Ecclestone wonders if F1's upcoming turbo V6s should get augmented sound [w/videos]

While every team on the Formula One grid is worried about making a good showing in this year's championship at the same time as they develop a brand-new car for next year's championship, Bernie Ecclestone and F1 circuit promoters have a different concern: how next year's cars will sound. The current cars use 2.4-liter, naturally-aspirated V8s that can reach 18,000 revolutions per minute and employ dual exhaust, next year's engine formula calls for 1.4-liter turbocharged V6s that are capped at 15,000 rpm and are constrained to a single exhaust outlet. Ecclestone and promoters like Ron Walker believe the new engines sound like lawnmowers and that the less thrilling audio will keep people from coming to races. If Walker's Australian Grand Prix really is shelling out almost $57 million to hold the race, every ticket counts. As a fix, according to a report in Autoweek, Ecclestone "suggests that the only way to guarantee [a good sound] may be to artificially adjust the tone of the V6s."
However, neither the manufacturers nor the governing body of F1, the FIA, think there will be a problem. Ecclestone fears that if the manufacturers "don't get it right" they'll simply leave the sport, but the only three carmakers and engine builders left next year, Renault (its 2014 "power unit" is pictured), Mercedes-Benz and Ferrari are so embedded that it would stretch belief to think they'd leave the table over an audio hiccup - if said hiccup even occurs. And frankly, these issues always precede changes to engine formulas, as they did when the formula switched from V10 to V8; fans, though, are probably less focused on the engines and more on the mandated standardization of the sport and the spec-series overtones that have come with it.
No one knows yet what next year's engines will sound like, but we've assembled a few videos below to help us all start guessing. The first is an engine check on an Eighties-era John Player Special Renault with a 1.5-liter V6 turbo, after that is Ayrton Senna qualifying in 1986 in the Lotus 98T that also had a 1.5-liter V6 turbo, then you'll find a short with a manufactured range of potential V6 engine notes, and then the sound of turbocharged V6 Indycars testing last year at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Any, or none of them, could be Formula One's future.

Ferrari launches upgraded 458 Challenge Evoluzione

Want to drive an eight-cylinder, mid-engined Ferrari? Assuming you can get your lucky little hands on one, you can drive a 458 Italia, 458 Spider or new 458 Speciale on the street. But the real action is where the road ends and the racetrack begins. Ferrari's Corse Clienti division offers versions for GT2 and GT3 racing, for Grand-Am (likely to be revised for the new United SportsCar Championship), and, of course, for its own Challenge racing series.
It's the latter version that Ferrari revealed it was upgrading last week, and now it's made its debut at the tail end of the rain-soaked Finali Mondiali event at Mugello. Although Ferrari only released limited details and just the one new photo, the new 458 Challenge Evoluzione upgrades on its predecessor as promised with obvious aerodynamic enhancements.
Those upgrades are "aimed at making the car even more driveable" for the customer racers who take part in the series, and seem to bridge the gap (at least visually) between the previous 458 Challenge and the more extreme racing versions that have to contend with more competition than its own kind. The upgrades are being rolled out as a kit that will be obligatory in the various Challenge series that will kick off around the world next year.