The Concours D’Elegance and Festivals of Speed take place this weekend at Amelia Island. Hey speed enthusiasts – Got plans for the weekend? If you’re in the area, E3 Spark Plugs recommends you take a joy ride to Amelia Island, Florida for the Festivals of Speed and Concours D’Elegance. The Festivals of Speed revs up with a Luxury Lifestyle Cocktail Reception at the tony Omni Amelia Island Plantation Resort on Friday evening. Smooth jazz, premium handcrafted cocktails, luxury product displays and some casual conversation with fellow car buffs. But the real draw begins on Saturday with the Festival of Speed’s display of dozens of the world’s most exotic cars, motorcycles and watercraft on the resort’s 9th fairway. This year’s event...

Team E3 Racing winner David Cerer co-founded Lawmen Racing, Inc. If you’re cruising the highways of Antioch, Ill, it’s best not to speed. You won’t outrun Officer David Cerer. A no-nonsense law enforcer by weekday, Cerer revs things up on the tracks every weekend, competing as part of the Lawmen Racing Team. Lawmen Racing’s founder, drivers and crew all are past or current fulltime police officers dedicated to the “pursuit of speed.” And Cerer is one of the team’s stars. He, along with fellow lawman and racer Erik Gherke, also is the newest Team E3 Racing Tier 1 winner. David has raced competitively for more than a decade, starting with Mini-Modified Sprint Cars in 1994. In 1997, he founded his first race team, CPM (Cerer Performance...

Christmas Abbott is busting through the gender barriers in professional racing, making history as the first NASCAR pit crew member. NASCAR pit crew members are a rare breed. They’ve got to be seriously strong, crazy fast, precision-minded and able to endure long hours in hot, chaotic conditions. And until now, they were all guys. Enter Christmas Abbott, a petite but powerful crossfit champion and former Olympic weightlifting trainer who recently became the first female to dare to brave the crew pit. Several celebrated women have slipped behind the wheel to compete on the tracks – most notably Danica Patrick, who earlier this month became the first woman ever to claim the Spring Cup pole at the Daytona 500. But Abbott, a 5’3″, 115-pound blonde beauty, is the...

9-year-old Parker Abed is a Kid Kart champion and a Team E3 Racing member. He’s a national champion at just nine years old. And he’s got some very grown up ambitions. That’s why Parker Abed is the newest Team E3 Racing Tier 2 winner. “My name is Parker Abed and I want to be a Formula One race car driver when I grow up,” Abed writes on his website, noting Ayrton Senna, Michael Schumacher and Sebastian Vettle among his favorite drivers. Abed first hit the tracks at age five and, within a year, took third place in the 2010 Kid Kart Nationals Comer Unrestricted Class in St. Louis, MO. He’s since traveled the country competing in the World Karting Association Manufacturers Cup, WKA Midwest Sprint Series and NRKA series. Along the way, he’s set...

Competitive powerboat racer Dan Bunting (center) takes his sophomore turn with Team E3 Racing. Dan Bunting returns for his second stint as a Team E3 Racing Tier 1 winner. And this time, he’s got two new rides and a world record to his name. Bunting is a longtime competitive racer and owner of Extreme Powerboat Racing, a professional driving school that also offers marketing, design and promotional items plus safety and performance products geared toward the sport. Last year, he and his team made history by establishing the 1/4 mile straightaway speed record in their class at the American Power Boat Association (APBA) Records Run in New Martinsville, West Virginia. – a feat powered by E3 Spark Plugs. The Extreme Powerboat Racing team, along with Flex Seal, finished the...

A shot from the $11 million car chase scene in “A Good Day to Die Hard.” Sometime last year, producers thought it a good day to drop $11 million and let 132 rides die hard – literally. And it was all for just one scene in actor Bruce Willis’ A Good Day to Die Hard, the latest in Hollywood’s Die Hard franchise. In this latest installment, filmed in Budapest, Hungary on a $92 million budget, Willis’ iconic John McClane character jets off to Mother Russia looking for his wayward son, Jack, whom John believes is up to no good. Turns out, Jack is a good guy after all. Unbeknownst to dear ol’ dad, Jack is actually a highly-trained CIA operative out to stop a nuclear weapons heist. With the Russian underworld in hot pursuit, and battling a countdown...

Guerlain Chicherit made history on Sunday, becoming the first to successfully land a back flip in a car. Last month, E3 Spark Plugs brought you the story of French stunt driver Guerlain Chicherit’s apparent history-making back flip in a modified Mini Countryman on New Year’s Day. Video posted on his Facebook page teased the feat, but stopped just short of showing the landing and touted a public attempt slated for February 17. Those waiting with bated breath for Chicherit’s second try at an unassisted mid-air backflip in a car were rewarded handsomely this weekend when the four-time free skiing world champion and the 2009 Rally Raid World champ successfully delivered. With the snowy reaches of the Tignes, France mountains as a backdrop, Chicherit gunned it up a...

Danica Patrick made history this weekend, becoming the first woman ever to win the pole position at the Daytona 500. It was a history-making day in Daytona for NASCAR beauty Danica Patrick, who won the pole at the Daytona 500 qualifying – becoming the first woman ever to claim Spring Cup’s top starting spot. E3 Spark Plugs sends congratulations. This is isn’t the first of Patrick’s firsts for women in the racing profession. She’s was the first woman to lead a lap at the Indianapolis 500 in her 2005 debut, and the first woman to win a major closed-course auto race in a 2008 IndyCar Series event in Japan. She also boasts the highest finish of any female in the Indianapolis 500 (third), the highest finish of any female in a NASCAR national touring series...

BBC’s “Top Gear” host Jeremy Clarkson recently unveiled the Peel P45, touted as the world’s smallest car. Would you drive it? Once upon a time, a single computer took up the space of a huge room. Now, we can hold them in our hands. The first cell phones were a bit like holding shoe boxes to our gourds, but today’s fit in our pockets.  And those unwieldy 8-track cassette players have given way to tiny MP3 players. That’s the way it goes with so many of the products that we use every day. So why wouldn’t the automobile also experience a devolution of sorts? Enter Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson and his P45. Touted as the world’s smallest car (actually, the Peel P50 lays claim to being the world’s smallest street-legal production...

E3 Spark Plugs congratulates the newest class of Team E3 Racing Tier 1 Winners. We’ve selected 12 of the most promising up-and-coming racing pros and pro-ams. And you’ll recognize a few of the names. Making their sophomore appearance on Team E3 Racing are: Stephen Foster Kildahl, a competitive speedboat racer since age 16; Dan Bunting, a world record-setting competitive speedboat racer; Brandon Williams, a dirt track racer and founder of online magazine DirtXtra.com; Powered by the Complex, a lawn mower racing team; Erik Gehrke, a mini cup racer. New on the team are: Kevin Harter, a kart racer and race team manager; Cheyanne Phillips Shea Holbrook, a car racer and Living Legends honoree; Don Demeny, Traxxas Torc series racer and 28-year racing veteran; James R....