PARIS — Renault's new sports division Alpine will enter the 2021 World Endurance Championship, a series whose jewel in the crown is the Le Mans 24 Hours, the brand's general manager said on Monday.

Loss-making Renault's new chief executive, Luca de Meo, sees Alpine as central to the carmaker's recovery and this month announced Renault's Formula One team will be rebranded as Alpine next year.

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The crossover between gearheads and gamers is growing every day. Professional race car drivers develop their chops digitally before ever stepping foot onto certain tracks thanks to racing simulators like iRacing. Entertainers like T-Pain are simultaneously diving into both automotive and gaming ventures.We even see the overlap first-hand every on our very own livestreams, where car enthusiasts of all ages from around the world join us to talk about not only their favorite cars, but also, their favorite racing and driving games. Because of all the hype, we wanted to create a place on Autoblog to talk about the gaming news of the week, and how it might relate to the automotive world (and for any parents out there, we'll try to help you make sense of some of the madness.) Enter: Autoblog's Gaming Roundup. Let's dive in. 

The iconic Castrol TOM's Racing Toyota Supra has been found and the racing team has embarked on a project to restore it to its former glory.

Originally designed on a napkin, the world-famous Mini launched by the British Motor Corporation (BMC) in 1959 was envisioned as a cheap, practical city car for families on a budget. Now, 61 years later, it's a sought-after classic that many aftermarket companies hail as the ideal foundation on which to build their wildest dreams. Gildred Racing thought further out of the box than most by turning a Mini into a mid-engined, 500-horsepower sleeper.

Starting with a 1974 model, the California-based firm removed the original four-cylinder engine (and the four-speed manual transmission bolted right under it, where you'd normally expect to find the oil sump) and completely stripped the interior. Only the front seats ended up going back in; the space occupied by the tiny rear bench is now home to a 3.2-liter V6 that started life under the hood of an Acura CL Type S from the early 2000s. It's mounted transversely, and it spins the rear wheels via a six-speed manual transmission.

This is the Honda Civic Si Coupe, a sporty compact with a $25,200 MSRP in the United States, which is a more tamed variant of the full-blown Civic Type R hot hatch that starts at $36,995 and brings 306 HP to the party.

During a roundtable during a recent event hosted by Honda, we joined in on a roundtable interview with Honda Technical Consultant Ko Yamamoto and Honda Civic Type R Project Leader Hideki Kakinuma. Questions were asked about the Type R brand broadly, as well as the potential for some new projects. The answers were both good news and disappointing news for Honda fans.

The good news is that Honda takes the Type R name and brand very seriously. Yamamoto and Kakinuma explained that the name and its associated red "H" badge are only for vehicles with a racing connection, such as the Honda Civic Type R that has a couple of racing variants. As such, you won't be seeing a CR-V, Odyssey or Insight with the Type R name. Furthermore, the Type R name is only for Honda-badged vehicles, despite the existence of the Acura Integra Type R a couple decades ago.

If you’ve always thought the Toyota Century looked a little too old fashioned for your taste, then perhaps this modded version currently showcased at the 2020 Tokyo Auto Salon will be more to your liking.