Aston Martin Prototype Racer testing at Prodrive Proving Grounds

Things are heating up for this year's 24 Hours of Le Mans. Not only will returning champions Audi have to watch over its spoiler for its diesel rival Peugeot, but now the TDI champs will have to duke it out with Aston Martin as well. As we reported earlier, Prodrive is dangling its feet in the waters of the highly-competitive LMP1 class to fight for overall victory in the famous endurance race, in addition to fielding Astons for the first time all the sportscar classes including GT1, GT2, GT3 and GT4.

This past Saturday and Tuesday, the Aston DBR9-powered Lola B08/60 went out for its first laps as Jan Charouz, the gentleman racer at the head of Charouz Racing, drove the Lola-Aston around Prodrive's test track outside of Warwick, England. The Prodrive-backed Lola will run alongside a second Judd-powered Lola, giving us two more reasons to look forward to this year's race.

New livery for Corvette Racing C6R revealed

Yellow and black, it's a classic combination. It can convey speed yet spur people to make cautious moves. After all, Wasps are yellow and black, and if you're not careful, you'll regret denying them deference. Bad Boy Vettes has been delivering stings on the racetrack with its C6R, and the car gets a revised livery for 2008. The main color is Velocity Yellow, with lots of BadBoy Black accents. A blacked out tail panel returns, reprising the BlackTail descriptor, and there's a new "scrape stripe" based on the teeth of mascot skull Jake. The headlights also get a blackout treatment; all the better for intimidating the competition. Obsidian also graces the rockers, and it shouldn't be hard to spot the new C6Rs with this color scheme as they compete wheel-to-blacked-out-wheel in the upcoming ALMS season.