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WWE WrestleMania split into 2-night empty arena event
WWE WrestleMania split into 2-night empty arena event
For the most up-to-date news and information about the coronavirus pandemic, visit the
WHO
and
CDC
websites.
WWE announced on Monday that, after weeks of speculation, its WrestleMania event was being moved from Tampa, Florida's Raymond James Stadium to its Performance Center training facility in Orlando, Florida. That means the biggest wrestling show of the year had its audience cut from around 65,000 to "essential personnel" only. On Wednesday, WWE announced a further shake up: WrestleMania will take place over two nights, over several locations.
"WrestleMania 36 is now set for a historic two-night presentation on WWE Network with former New England Patriot Rob Gronkowski hosting The Show of Shows at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT on Saturday, April 4, and Sunday, April 5," read news on the company's site.
"WrestleMania will not only take place at WWE's training facility but will include multiple locations over two nights," WWE said in a statement to CNET. "All locations will be closed sets with only essential personnel."
Fans have previously complained about WrestleMania fatigue, as the event in recent years has exceeded five and even six hours. But the show being split in two is likely more of a reaction to the challenge of hosting such a big event in front of no crowd. Wrestling, as a performance, relies more on crowd reaction than does sport. Holding a five or six hour show in front of no fans could have been a recipe for disaster.
The decision to relocate WrestleMania was made official on Monday. Though WWE says the event will take place in several locations, the Performance Center is currently the only known one.
"In coordination with local partners and government officials, WrestleMania and all related events in Tampa Bay will not take place," the company said in a statement Monday. "Only essential personnel will be on the closed set at WWE's training facility in Orlando, Florida, to produce WrestleMania."
After last Friday's episode of SmackDown was pulled from Detroit's Little Caesars Arena instead broadcasting from its Performance Center training facility in Orlando, Florida, relocation to the Center appears to be WWE's modus operandi from here on out. Monday's episode of Raw, originally scheduled to emanate from Pittsburgh, also aired from the Performance Center. The NBA had to take even more drastic measures, suspending the remainder of its 2019/2020 season after Utah Jazz player Rudy Gobert tested positive for the coronavirus.
It's a big hit for the WWE. Though the company makes most of its money from TV deals with the USA Network and Fox, last year's WrestleMania event brought in over $16 million in event ticket sales. With the show now taking place in front of no crowd, those millions will be lost. Even harder hit will be independent wrestling companies, who usually put their biggest shows on for the tens of thousands of wrestling fans who travel for WrestleMania each year.
After infecting over 121,000 and causing more than 4,300 deaths, the coronavirus outbreak was declared to be a pandemic on Wednesday by the World Health Organization. In the past, the WHO has defined a pandemic as "the worldwide spread of a new disease."
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AMD unveils the 'ultimate 1080p gaming' processor at CES 2020
AMD unveils the 'ultimate 1080p gaming' processor at CES 2020
This story is part of CES, where CNET covers the latest news on the most incredible tech coming soon.
AMD is kicking off the world's biggest consumer tech show by unveiling the third-generation Ryzen 4000-series mobile processors, which will be used in upcoming laptops. A crowd of hundreds lined up for more than an hour before the CES 2020 announcement, filing slowly into the enormous Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas to hear details on AMD's new gaming products Monday afternoon.
AT CES 2019, AMD unveiled Radeon 7, the world's first 7-nanometer gaming graphics card. More than 20 products are now using its 7nm architecture, AMD said Monday.
A year later, the US chip giant is using CES 2020 as a platform to launch its latest graphics processors.
"In 2020, we will be introducing the best laptop processor ever built," AMD CEO Lisa Su said during the press conference. The processors will use AMD's 7nm technology.
It'll be used across gaming and creator laptops, ultrathin consumer laptops, and ultrathin professional laptops. The Ryzen 7 4800U features eight Zen 2 cores, 16 threads, up to 4.2GHz boost, 1.8GHz base, eight Radeon cores and 15W TDP. Graphics will be 28% better than Intel's Core i7, Su said, 90% better on multi-thread performance and 4% higher on single-thread performance.
More than 100 systems will be using the series by the end of 2020, with the first laptops expected in the first quarter. One laptop that will use it is the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7, also being announced at CES 2020.
Su also provided details on the anticipated Ryzen Threadripper 3990X. AMD had been expected to announce the new flagship consumer processor at CES 2020, but it dropped some details in late November. At that time, it announced it'll have 64 cores, 288MB of cache and is designed for a 280-watt power draw. Now, we also know it'll be available for $3,990, coming with 128 threads, up to 4.3GHz boost and 2.9GHz base. The Ryzen Threadripper 3990X will be available in February.
It follows the announcement of the 32-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X and the 24-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3960X boxed processors, which shipped in September.
AMD's new Ryzen Threadripper 3990X.
James Martin/CNET
AMD also announced the AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT, which it called the "ultimate 1080p gaming." It will deliver the best graphics across all games in comparison to the competition, according to the processor giant. The 5600 will be available worldwide on Jan. 21 for $279.
It will also be coming to mobile in the first half of 2020, launching as the 5600M.
Su said AMD has partnered on Sony's PlayStation 5, the Xbox Series X, Microsoft'sxCloud and GoogleStadiagaming consoles and cloud services. Its graphics cards are also being used in Apple's new Mac Pro and the Microsoft Surface. Its processors are behind Twitter, and the data centers Google is using.
AMD's Frank Azor shows off the new Asus Zephyrus gaming laptop.
James Martin/CNET
Alienware co-founder Frank Azor, who made the jump to AMD last year, additionally announced the AMD Ryzen 7 4800H, aimed at gamers and creators. It comes with eight cores, 16 threads, up to 4.2GHz boost, 2.9GHz base and 45W TDP.
Azor showed off the new Asus ROG Zephyrus G14/G15 and the Dell G5 special edition gaming laptop. The Dell laptop will use AMD's new SmartShift technology coming in the second quarter of 2020, as well as AMD's Radeon 5600M, Ryzen, FreeSync and Radeon software.
SmartShift automatically brings AMD's discrete GPU into the equation when the CPU is allocating graphics resources, just like it does for the integrated GPU, without any size increases.
CNET's Lori Grunin also contributed to this report.
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WWE Star Triple H Has Retired From Wrestling
WWE Star Triple H Has Retired From Wrestling
One of the WWE's most popular and successful in-ring performers, Triple H, has just announced he's retiring from professional wrestling. Triple H, real name Paul Levesque, made the announcement during an interview with ESPN's Stephen A. Smith.
"For me, as far as in-ring... I'm done," Levesque said. "I won't, no, I would never wrestle again."
Levesque, 52, has been struggling with health issues. In September last year he suffered from viral pneumonia, which led to heart failure. He subsequently underwent a successful medical procedure, which installed a defibrillator in his chest.
"I was nose-diving and sort of at the 1-yard line of where you don't want to be really, for your family and your future," Levesque said. "There's moments in there when they're putting you out for stuff and you think, 'Is this it? Do you wake up from this?' That's tough to swallow and makes you think differently."
Levesque, who's married to Stephanie McMahon, the longtime owner of WWE, was successful in almost every possible way. He held 14 WWE world titles and was one of the company's biggest stars during the "Attitude Era," the time during which the WWE produced stars like Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock. He's also competed in the main event of the WWE's marquee show, Wrestlemania, an incredible seven times. Only Hulk Hogan has wrestled in more.
Levesque's last televised match was against Randy Orton in June 7, 2019. He's now the head of the WWE's wildly successful development brand, NXT, which has been the breeding ground for many of the WWE's current biggest stars.
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DIY Pipe Shelves: Stylish, Affordable and Ultra-Easy to Build
DIY Pipe Shelves: Stylish, Affordable and Ultra-Easy to Build
This story is part of Home Tips, CNET's collection of practical advice for getting the most out of your home, inside and out.
Large custom-made shelving can be extremely expensive, especially if you hire a carpenter to make bespoke units that fit your space. But by using pipes you can create a storage system that fits perfectly into any space and doesn't require expert fitting or years of DIY skills to put together. By using commonly available screw-fit pipes and precut timber boards, you can easily make shelves any size you want or fit them into awkward positions, often at a lower cost than commissioning custom-built units.
You can create floor-standing shelves or wall-mounted shelves, shelves that reach up to your ceiling, or shelves that stretch the whole of your wall, turning that lovely spare room into a beautiful library.
The great thing is, it's not even that difficult to do. The pipework screws together and the wooden boards sit on top, so there's very little to go wrong. I'm a total novice with DIY -- I've managed to change a lightbulb, but I've never tackled anything like this -- and when I bought my first home, I knew that a big shelving system was exactly what I needed.
Here, then, is my guide on how to build your own custom DIY pipe shelves. (For more, check out how to make custom poster hangers for just $1 and organization ideas for smaller spaces.)
Read more:Best Office Chairs for 2022
Why do you need custom shelves?
I'm a professional photographer and product reviewer for CNET. That means I have a lot of equipment. Like, a lot of equipment. I work from home and needed my office space to function as a photography studio, so I needed a storage solution that was also an easy-access workspace.
A custom-designed shelving system let me create something that fully suited my needs. But it's not just photographers who'd need it; these shelves would make for a wonderful library wall, or for displaying lots of collectibles. The industrial look can work great in your bedroom, an office or running along the wall of your living room, proudly displaying photos of your family, lovely plants and your collection of Friends VHS tapes from the '90s that you can't bear to get rid of.
This is what counted as a shelving "plan" for me.
Andrew Hoyle/CNET
How to design your shelves
Take a look at your space and really consider what it is you need from your shelves. For me, I needed lots of room for storage, but I also needed a clutter-free workspace. So I wanted to keep the floor clear by maximizing the vertical storage space, building my shelves high and taking advantage of my 13-foot ceilings.
I wanted to incorporate my desk, so I sketched a design that would go around it, with room for my computer tower to fit snugly beneath. With five tiers, each stretching over 8 feet in length, I'd have enough room for all my photography equipment and plenty of space for whatever products I'm testing, leaving the rest of the room free to work in.
Consider how your shelves can fit in your space -- perhaps there's a sloping roof and you can build your shelves to fit beneath the slope. Or maybe fit your shelves in the alcoves either side of a chimney breast. My advice is to sketch out some ideas, no matter how roughly, and see what you think will work best in the space you have. The modular nature of pipe shelves means it's not difficult to fit them in even the most awkward spaces.
The empty wall offered a lot of space to fill with the custom shelving. I have a lot of stuff to store.
Andrew Hoyle/CNET
Think as well about how many tiers of shelves you'll need. If it's fitting in a small space, can you really squeeze four tiers in, or will three layers give you more room between each shelf to store taller objects? If it's for a bookshelf, find your tallest book and make sure you're leaving enough space for it to slide in.
Read more: Best Standing Desks of 2022
Measuring and buying shelf components
Once you've settled on your design, it's time to measure up. Your specific measurements will depend entirely on the space and the number of shelves you want. For me, I wanted five levels, going up to about 10 feet in height. That meant I needed gaps of roughly two feet between each shelf.
I say "roughly" as my design allowed for some errors, at least on the vertical measurements. I knew there'd be at least two feet of space above the top shelf, so an inch or two difference when measuring upward didn't matter. That's good, as when I measured the pipes between the shelves, I neglected to include the T-shaped connectors. There were five of these on each vertical support, which added about six inches to the total height.
Some of the pipework and fittings.
Andrew Hoyle/CNET
If I were building the shelves to fit perfectly between the floor and the ceiling, then my shelves wouldn't have fit. As it was, they simply reached slightly higher than planned, which wasn't a problem. As long as each of your vertical supports are the same height, that's what matters. If you're measuring for a specific space then make sure you find out exactly how much length your connectors will add so you know the exact height of your shelves when assembled.
Your retailer should be able to help with this. Most big hardware stores will likely sell pipework and fittings that will be suitable, but an increasing number of specialist plumbing companies sell pipes specifically for building furniture. These have often been given an aged look -- or other more visually appealing aesthetic -- that will look great.
My shelves would stand on the floor but I also mounted them against the wall. For each upright support, I required five longer pipes (the pipes standing vertically between each level), five shorter pipes (connecting between the wall and the vertical pipes, the length being two inches longer than the wooden boards I'd ordered). I then needed five T-shaped connectors and six wall plates (five to attach to the wall, one to act as a 'foot' for the pipes to stand on the floor).
The shelves attach to the wall using these iron 'feet'. Because there are 20 of these, the weight is spread across the whole wall, rather than putting too much weight on a single mounting point.
Andrew Hoyle/CNET
I had four uprights, so ordered four lots of all of the above. Each pipe had been screw threaded to allow it to simply screw into the fittings. I used 3/4-inch steel pipe, which provides more than enough strength to support the shelves. My retailer also provided reclaimed oak timber in various forms so I also ordered that, cut to size, treated and scorched to give a beautiful aesthetic. Oak can be quite expensive however, and you can get similar results with pine or even plywood. Check with your local lumber yard and see what they can offer.
Building DIY pipe shelves
Once your components have arrived it's time to get building. Start by making a cup of tea and putting on a good playlist. Then make sure your work area is clear and you've got the space you need to build and install.
I started by connecting the pipework to build each upright support. It took some doing and I ended up having to put a lot more effort into screwing everything together than I imagined. Once done, I stood the vertical pipe on the floor and leaned it against the wall in the position it would be, using a spirit level to check it was in line both vertically and horizontally. I marked the position of the screw holes using a pen and then laid the pipe back down. Repeat for all four upright supports.
As I installed each vertical strut, I used a spirit level to check it was exactly vertical and used a temporary 'shelf' (in this case, a roll of paper) to allow me to check that the real shelves would also be perfectly level.
Andrew Hoyle/CNET
I used a stud and wire detector at each of the marks I'd make to check if it was safe to drill and then used a 7mm masonry drill bit and a hammer drill to drill around an inch deep. I then hammered in wall plugs to help further secure the screws. Some didn't go quite deep enough so I used wire cutters to trim them down.
When I finished drilling the holes, I held the pipes back up and shimmied them into the perfect position before screwing them into place using screws I'd already checked had wide enough heads to properly secure the mounting plates (the first lot I bought simply passed straight through the holes so would not be suitable).
I was nervous about whether my old walls would support the weight (my house was built in the 1860s) but it was the floor that would take most of the weight, with the rest being spread across 20 mounting plates on the wall. The more mounting points I used across the shelves, the more that weight would be spread out and easier for the wall to hold. A year on, they've not collapsed.
I used a multi-function stud, wire and pipe detector to make sure that wherever I drilled was safe and wouldn't cause any harm to either myself or my house. If you're in any doubt about safety, consult an expert.
Andrew Hoyle/CNET
Once the upright metalwork was in place I laid a roll of paper across and used a spirit level to check that it was completely level. The bubble sat in the middle, so I was all good. Then it was simply a case of sliding the timber boards onto the horizontal supports. The oak boards were almost 2 inches thick, so they're extremely heavy, but there's no flex in them so I wasn't concerned about them bending when I put things on them.
I secured them in place using simple metal brackets that wrapped around the pipes they sat on and screwed underneath the wood. Finally, I loaded up the shelves with my photography gear and took a step back to admire my work.
These gorgeous oak boards are actually reclaimed from old planks used by a scaffolding firm. They'd been stripped and aesthetically charred, and although cheaper wood is available, the overall look was exactly what I wanted.
Andrew Hoyle/CNET
Would I build these shelves again?
I was pleased with how straightforward the building process was once I had my plans in place. Having never done anything like this before, I was nervous about getting the measurements wrong or, even worse, managing to collapse the whole wall in the period property I'd just bought. Mercifully, everything seemed to work out pretty well and the shelves have been extremely useful so far.
That said, with a total bill of materials somewhere around the $1,000 mark, it wasn't a cheap process and with zero experience with projects like this, things could easily have gone wrong and that money would have been wasted. While getting a similar custom-designed shelving system installed by professional carpenters would have likely been a lot more expensive (potentially several times over), those risks would be much lower.
I'd absolutely do a similar build again though, even if it's just creating a single shelf or two in my bathroom or some small bookshelves for the bedroom. It's a straightforward process and the pride at having created from scratch a genuinely useful addition into the home is well worth the effort.
For more organization tips, check out the best way to organize a fridge and how to declutter your closet.
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AMD unveils Ryzen 9 5950X gaming PC CPU with 16 cores, Zen 3
AMD unveils Ryzen 9 5950X gaming PC CPU with 16 cores, Zen 3
AMD on Thursday announced the Ryzen 5000 series, its flagship consumer desktop CPUs for gaming and creation. And if the company's smattering of benchmarks are to be believed, it's managed to squeeze quite a performance increase out of the new processors without changing the basic specs -- like number of cores, total cache and power envelope -- and just switching to the new Zen 3 architecture. AMD also gave us a quickie preview of the eagerly anticipated Radeon RX 6000 graphics card, which it will launch on Oct. 28.
The CPUs mark the debut of Zen 3, which builds on the previous generation of AMD's 7-nanometer architecture with optimizations that the company says deliver around 19% more instructions per clock cycle over the 3000 series -- which is already pretty fast -- across the board. One of the big changes between generations is a move from a four-core block to eight-core blocks in the die layout, with double the amount of L3 cache. In practice, that means more memory is closer to the cores on the CPU die, reducing overall latency, which means it responds more quickly for any CPU-related activities.
Ryzen 5000-series CPUs
Base clock
Boost clock
Cores/threads
Cache
System power target (watts)
US price
Ryzen 9 5950X
3.4
4.9
16/32
72MB
105
$799
Ryzen 9 5900X
3.7
4.8
12/24
70MB
105
$549
Ryzen 7 5800X
3.8
4.7
8/16
36MB
105
$449
Ryzen 5 5600X
3.7
4.6
6/12
35MB
65
$299
Zen 3 CPUs also get a boost from more efficient arithmetical operations and instruction prediction. All while achieving a 24% improvement in performance per watt, according to AMD, and they will be able to work in the same motherboards. Base and boost clock speeds are only slightly different from their predecessors. As far as I can tell, there are no changes in supporting chipset-related specs, such as maximum amount of memory or number of PCI 4 lanes.
You'll notice there's still a gap in the lineup where a 10-core option to compete directly with the Intel Core i9-10900K would be.
AMD's target launch date of Nov. 5 is aggressive, especially since Intel has yet to unveil its competing flagship next-generation desktop CPUs. Intel recently confirmed that the new architecture, code named "Rocket Lake," based on Cypress Cove (10nm cores adapted and validated for Rocket Lake's 14nm process) would first appear in the 11th-gen midrange Rocket Lake-S chips in early 2021. Intel claims its Rocket Lake processors will have better performance with more IPC -- ironically, a metric AMD pushed into popularity over clock frequencies a few years ago -- support for PCIe 4.0, expanded AI acceleration capabilities and Xe graphics architecture, with its much faster integrated graphics.
The new processors jump the 4000-series naming convention, possibly to eliminate confusion with the Zen 2-based mobile processors that bear that designation.
For its preview of the the RX 6000 (nicknamed "Big Navi") graphics card line, which incorporates the RDNA 2-architecture we've heard so much about with the upcoming Xbox Series X and PS5 consoles, AMD highlighted 4K performance. That's a little unusual for the company, which has been concentrating on promoting its 1440p capability at the higher end of the RX 5000 line. It's not surprising, though, given that its similar new console chips target 4K at 120fps.
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Acer Aspire S 13 review: An affordable, fingerprint-resistant MacBook Air alternative
Acer Aspire S 13 review: An affordable, fingerprint-resistant MacBook Air alternative
Technically, you can buy an Acer Aspire S13 in the United States for just $580, and the laptop typically comes in black.
Realistically, just forget about both of those things. I'm reviewing the Acer Aspire S13 in white -- which starts at $800, £650 or AU$1,399 -- because it's the one doing something particularly neat.
Many laptops this thin don't have great performance. Many laptops this powerful don't have great battery life. Many laptops this price skimp on the storage and memory you need. And the ones that don't -- our favorite laptops -- typically are made of smooth metal and glass that attracts loads of glare and gobs of oily fingerprints.
The 13-inch Acer Aspire S13 -- the white one -- doesn't suffer from any of those weaknesses.
The Acer Aspire S13. Also pictured: an amazingly photogenic cushion.
Josh Miller/CNET
At 3.0 pounds and 0.57 inche thick, with a dual-core 2.3GHz Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM, 256GB of solid-state storage and a crisp 1,920x1,080-pixel resolution IPS touchscreen, it's as thin, fast and spacious as the competition. (I tested the $1,000 Core i7 model with 512GB of storage -- impressive specs for the price.)
In fact, the Aspire S13's battery life is better than most. We got 9 hours, 45 minutes in our standard streaming video drain test, and I found I could typically work 6 to 7 full hours before needing to recharge. That's just a stone's throw away from the battery life we get with a MacBook Air, only this Acer has a far better screen and speakers.
But the white Acer Aspire S13 also does something I've never seen before. It's a thin metal touchscreen laptop that doesn't trap light and grease. The pure white matte aluminum surfaces simply don't pick up fingerprints. (Aside from a fine coating of dust, our S13 looks just as good today as when we took it out of the box weeks ago.) And where most every single laptop manufacturer covers their touchscreens in sheets of mirrorlike glass, the S13 has an antiglare coating.
Not a lot of ports on the S13, but they're the ones you'll generally need.
Josh Miller/CNET
(The cheaper black versions of the laptop aren't as fingerprint-resistant, since they use brushed aluminum, which can trap oils, for their keyboard deck.)
By the way, the Aspire S13's Dolby-branded speakers are well above average -- excellent, even -- for a laptop this thin. There's not much in the way of bass, and setting it on your lap muffles the downward-facing drivers. But on a solid table there's a lot of volume and some remarkably clear mids.
The only things that keep the Aspire S13 from graduating into the upper echelons of worthy laptops are the same that plague so many thin Windows machines: a stiff, shallow keyboard, and a touchpad that can't be trusted not to jump around while you're typing. They're bearable, but as a writer, I'd probably pick a different PC.
It's rare to find an antiglare touchscreen display on a laptop.
Josh Miller/CNET
It also doesn't help that the laptop has uneven backlighting under the keyboard, notably thick bezels around the screen (at a time when bezels are starting to shrink), a USB-C port that can't charge the laptop and a sixth-gen Intel Core processor instead of the new seventh-gen chips (though that might not be a big deal). This Acer is a little behind the times.
But if you can live without a few creature comforts, the Acer Aspire S13 is still a solid choice.
The ability to resist fingerprints, and the ability to resist glare, will never go out of style.
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Porsche 911 Turbo S Proves Internal Combustion Isn't Dead at Pikes Peak
Porsche 911 Turbo S Proves Internal Combustion Isn't Dead at Pikes Peak
"Keep it low stress, keep it fun," David Donner breezily says about three and a half minutes into the film above. He might be describing a casual BBQ that he's organizing or a weekend game of golf. But he's not. He's talking about driving up the perilous Pikes Peak Hill Climb, all 12.42 miles of it. And he's talking about trying to do so while setting a record time.
Hold Donner's cheery words in mind and then skip forward a dozen or so minutes. He catches a slide to stop the car from falling into an abyss. Utterly unfazed, he then accelerates hard, plunging deeper into the a cloud. The car is consumed by a white fog. There's another bend ahead, another drop on the outside. But where? When to switch pressure from accelerator pedal to brake pedal? Swap too late and the car won't be able to stop on the slippery asphalt.
How the hell do you "keep it low stress, keep it fun" in this situation? Just watching it gives me the collywobbles and has my heart rate at a level that no medical professional would ever describe as relaxed. It is phenomenal.
Let's rewind a bit. This film is the story of David Donner's drive in the 100th running of the famous Pikes Peak Hill Climb earlier this year. Donner has won Pikes Peak outright three times and remains the last American to be crowned King of the Hill. This year he wasn't aiming for the overall, instead hoping to reclaim the record he once held for the fastest production car up to the finish line at 14,115 feet above sea level.
The weather was atrocious.
Larry Chen Photo
The plan was hatched along with renowned Porschemagazine 000. And the car chosen for the task was a Porsche 911 Turbo S. It really was a production street car as well, licensed to drive on the road. Champion Motorsport prepared the car, with technical director Tom Pelov overseeing operations and Victor Scanapico carrying out the modifications with real artistry. As you'd expect, various additions and alterations had to be made to meet the safety regulations and these included a cage (built to NASCAR specs in NASCAR country), a competition seat, the deletion of all carpets (for fire safety), a fuel cell, a fire extinguisher system and electrical cutoff (with switches so beautifully set into the central cup holder that they look like a factory option).
There were just a couple of performance-enhancing modifications that could be made, the first of which was a new exhaust from Sharkwerks. This was installed mainly to help with turbo speeds at the higher altitudes. Incidentally, some cars apparently had to replace turbos on a daily basis but the factory items on the Turbo S remained bulletproof throughout.
The ECU was also tuned and the car ran on race fuel, but other than that it was stock. No changes were made to the suspension, brakes, transmission, all-wheel-drive system, wheels or aerodynamics. Even the tires were street-legal Michelin Cup 2 Rs.
Actually, there was one other change that might have helped shave a couple of psychological tenths: the rather inspiring livery. Pete Stout, editor of 000, and his team came up with the idea to put pages of one of the magazine's features (about a 930 Turbo) onto the car. Very fitting. And just as you might assume you need an EV to be competitive on Pikes Peak these days, so too is there a narrative in media that digital is the only way forward and "print is dead." As such the combination of an internal combustion engine car and a successful print magazine is rather a pleasing union.
The 911 arrived at Pikes Peak at the start of the week with just 40 miles on the clock. It had covered 340 miles by the time it returned, under its own steam, to Donner's garage at the end. No consumables other than fuel and tires were replenished, nor did it require any alignment work.
Looks like a race car, but it's largely stock under that livery.
Larry Chen Photo
Yet its performance was hardly slow and steady. The weather for the 100th Pikes Peak was atrocious, which realistically put the record out of reach. However, in terms of the pure 2022 competition, the inclement conditions undoubtedly swung the odds in both the driver's and the car's favor.
Using all his skill and years of accumulated knowledge, Donner put in an incredible performance. I can only assume that driving into that thick cloud must have been like running full pelt into dense white smoke and counting your paces in order to dodge the fire you know is in there. But even on the relatively well-sighted lower slopes the commitment and speed is spectacular, especially given the clearly slippery surface. And given the speed it's very easy to forget that the car is a production road car. For just this reason I love it when the film switches to the over-the-shoulder camera angle, as the view is of an almost entirely standard road car interior. The trim is all there on the dashboard along with the familiar central touch screen showing the tire pressure monitoring display. The everyday competition car.
The result for Donner and the Turbo S was a sensational second place. Not in class. Second place overall. They were only beaten by Robin Schute in his wild Unlimited class Wolf TSC-FS (which has Turbo S-rivaling 600 horsepower but weighs only a touch over 1,100 pounds). Obviously the Exhibition class win was Donner's as well, the Turbo S over half a minute clear of the second place Tesla Model 3.
In fact, even with the atrocious weather, Donner was a mere 16 seconds shy of the record he set out to beat. Next year, maybe. Perhaps with even less stress and more fun.
