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Under an intense sun, driving a Porsche 911 GT3 Cup Anza Motorsports team, Angel Rafael Benitez achieved the third fastest time in the qualifying session on Friday afternoon, preparing everything for the first race on Saturday early.

In the first test pilot Carabobo – which has the support group and the Ministry Akkad Popular for Sport – a position he lost to Michael Levites (TPC Racing), but after U.S. pressure on the pilot he played with Mitch Landry (Wright Motorsports) and was used by Angel Rafael Benitez to be placed second. After 39 laps on the track of 2462 meters, Benitez crossed the finish line nine seconds at 251 Madison thousandths of Snow (Snow Racing) to score his second podium in a row. American Michael Levites (TPC Racing), the Venezuelan Andres Cisneros (NGT Motorsport) and Mitch Landry rounded out the top five of the test.

In the seventh round Angel Rafael Benitez made off again in the third box and nineteenth overall, 31 Porsche 911 GT3 Cup present. After overcoming several of the senior class, the Platinum, the Venezuelan driver stood in the queue Mitch Landry and fought the second box, but the U.S. pulled out of the track wheel to Creole as a first occasion and then, after a new contact, broke a tire. The work in the pits and change the rubber Benitez would cost five laps, settling for finishing fifth in his class.

After participating in three of the seven rounds of the IMSA GT3 Cup Challenge championship American, Angel Rafael Benitez stands at eighth place with 46 points, held by the U.S. leadership Madison Snow with 124 units. Mitch Landry comes to the second box with 94 points, while the Venezuelan Eduardo Cisneros (NGT Motorsport) drops to third place after missing at Lime Rock. Michael Levites and Glen Gatling complete the top five of the Gold Class with 80 and 64 points respectively, a composite ranking of 13 pilots.

The eighth and ninth round of the IMSA GT3 Cup Challenge will be held at the American route of Mossoro in Canada, where Angel Rafael Benitez quotes will be joined by his son Andres Angel Benitez, who will be contesting the ninth and tenth date of the U.S. F2000 Championship Series.

 

From tomorrow until July 10, Expo Guadalajara, Jalisco will host the Guadalajara International Motor Show (SIAG), considered a world class event that frames all the information generated by national and international automotive industry and looking affect the Latin American market.

For 10 days the assembly plants show the public the news of their brands, launch new models nationally and internationally.

The program includes SIAG in five thematic days:

- Green Day
- Day of Design
- Women’s Day and the car
- Day of the auto industry
- Dealer Day

Remember that from 2011 the SIAG was established as a biennial event based institutional Expo Guadalajara, backed 100 percent by the state and municipal governments in the Metropolitan Area of Jalisco, to help promote regional economy.

Among the participating brands include: Ford, Fiat, Chrysler, Dodge, Acura, Alfa Romeo, Honda, Jeep, Lincoln, Mazda, Peugeot, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Renault, and Mitsubishi.

The public will have the opportunity to see major releases like the Nissan Versa, a compact sedan derived from the new V platform, the Mustang ST 2012, Wolf 2011 Harley Davidson and the new Ford Icon 2012 Hatch. Just as the Lincoln MKZ Hybrid 2011, among others.

General Motors recently announced that Bryan Nesbitt, currently the company’s exterior design lead across its North American brands, will be sent to Shanghai on Aug. 1 as vice president of General Motors international design.

He will also be the so-called brand champion for Waling and Baoji, two automakers with whom G.M. has entered into joint ventures. The man he succeeds, Ken Parkinson, will take on Mr. Nesbitt’s old job.

Mr. Nesbitt, 42, said in a telephone interview that he has not yet “been immersed” in the new situation, but that when he arrives in Shanghai, a top priority will be to tap in to local design talent.

“I’m interested in finding out what is happening in the Chinese design community and finding out the caliber of design education,” he said, adding that he also planned to closely examine trends in Chinese industrial design outside of the automotive realm.

In his role as brand champion, Mr. Nesbitt said he would be responsible for managing visual identity and creating consistency, so that each brand’s designs produced clear recognition among consumers. “With Cadillac, we have high recognition, about 80 or 90 percent,” he said. He will aim for similar results with other brands.

One of his roles, Mr. Nesbitt said, would be to present G.M. as a mobility company, not just a car company. G.M.’s display at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo of its futuristic, networked E-NV pods attracted a lot of attention. Such systems may have a future in China, he said.

G.M. is also looking at expanding beyond China’s megacities to the so-called Tier No. 2, No. 3 and No. 4 cities — not exactly hamlets, but population centers with fewer than 3 million people.

In those markets, the Baoji brand will offer models below Chevrolet in the market pecking order. Waling is more a maker of small and utility vehicles. Mr. Nesbitt’s track record as designer of the Chrysler PT Cruiser and his association with Chevrolet’s HHR might be relevant there.

Led by Buick and the booming Chevrolet, G.M. sales in China are growing. The company also sells Cadillac and Opel vehicles there, meaning that Baoji and Waling must be integrated into the brand ladder without confusion and without the sort of overlap that famously plagued the company in North America over the last two decades.

This is not the first professional foray into China for Mr. Nesbitt. In the mid-’90s, while at Chrysler, he was one of the principal designers of a concept car conceived as a Chinese people’s car. Suggesting a Model T crossed with a Citroën 2CV, the Composite Concept Vehicle, or CCV, was to be built of recycled plastic bottles and kept basic for easy repair in the countryside. Ultimately, the project did not gain traction.

 

The summer collector-car season is off to a clutch-dropping burnout of a start. At a Mecum auction in Indianapolis two weeks ago, $50 million in muscle cars changed hands. While there won’t be any Hemi ‘Codas ripping up the pristine lawns at the Greenwich Concourse d’Élégance this weekend, plenty of Chrysler Hemi power and other examples of Detroit V-8 muscle will be present, as the concourse prominently features postwar European cars with American engines.

These transatlantic cars were known in the collector car world as hybrids long before manufacturers appropriated the term to describe their gasoline-electric power trains. Most manufacturers of European-American hybrids were around for barely lunchtime, so success is a relative term, but Face Vega, an expensive French GT of the 1950s and ’60s packing a Chrysler Hemi V-8, was among the few with staying power.

Mark Hyman, a dealer and collector based in St. Louis, has sold many Faces. “Hybrids in general appeal to me because they’re unusual,” he said in a telephone interview. “Small companies thought outside the box more, and Faces in particular were beautiful, unique, well-engineered and fun to drive.”

Mr. Hyman will be at Greenwich this weekend to survey many obscure hybrids from manufacturers like Jensen, ISO and Intermeccanica, and some better known hybrid cars like the Shelby Cobra, a British roadster with Ford V-8 power, and the De Tomas Pant era, a midengine exotic with an Argentinean-Italian pedigree also powered by a Ford V-8.

The concours consists of two shows, with Saturday’s show strictly for American collectible cars and Sunday’s for imports. Bonham’s, as it has customarily done, is holding an auction in conjunction with the event. Fittingly, the featured car is a hybrid of sorts, a 1952 Lazar no sports racer, a Ferrari-like racer built in Argentina with a Ford flathead V-8, whose presale estimate ranges from $125,000 to $150,000.

While the purpose of any concourse is to highlight compelling cars of the past, the 2011 Greenwich show also will be marked by the absence of Genie Wennerstrom, who co-founded the concourse with her husband, Bruce, and who died in May at the age of 80. Ms. Wennerstrom helped to build the concourse into one of the premiere events of its kind in the United States.