MotoGP takes off with a tumultuous time in Thailand.
In qualifying the Aprilias display their prowess and must have Ducati alert to a real threat this year. Bez continues his hot streak from last season to take the first pole of the season. Raul Fernandez continues his streak for 3rd, Jorge Martin finishes 5th, and Ai Ogura in 8th for all four riders and machines in the top ten. Quite an accomplishment after such a long streak of Ducati dominance. Marc Marquez, while still not physically 100%, pulled a rabbit out of his hat for the 2nd best time with Digi in 4th. Alex Marquez well down in 7th. Bagnaia missed out on Q2 entirely and starts from 13th (!).
Pedro Acosta is top KTM starting from 6th with Binder in 11th, and a pair of Hondas joined Q2 as well.
Yamaha is out to sea and occupying the bottom end of the timing tower.
In the sprint Bez and Marc get off to a good start with Marquez taking first. Bez and Marc exchange places and Marc pressures for a just two laps before Bez loses the front and wrecks out of the sprint. Due to a new rule around restarts riders are now much less likely to rejoin a race as they must keep the bike lit to rejoin from trackside. Otherwise, bike starts must take place behind a barrier (presumably for track personnel safety as they often push the bike for the restart).
Early contact between Alex Marquez, running in hot to a turn, and Digi take both of them into the back field. Digi was able to claw his way back into the points.
Pedro Acosta worked his way to 2nd behind Marc and the two passed back and forth time and again in turn 12 (last turn, slow right hander before main straight). That is until Marc made a very aggressive move which caused Pedro to stand up and go wide. The move was borderline and Marc was penalized one position. Acosta wins his first sprint in MotoGP in his third year in the class. Marc finishes second. Raul Fernandez takes third, with Ai in 4th (his best finish, I believe) Jorge Martin 5th.
In the race proper it is once again Bez out front, this time with a stronger start. Marc doesn't look as strong and fades all the way to 5th at one point. Raul Fernandez bolts away behind Bez who is well ahead. Marc bides his time and watches Acosta and Martin duke it out for third, and then cleanly overtakes both during lap 10. Unfortunately, Marc's sharp racecraft is all for naught as Acosta retakes and then finds a second wind a few laps later. Fernandez begins flagging due to injury around lap 20, and his large gap to 3rd is not enough to keep Acosta behind. Marc goes wide in a turn and hits a curb hard enough that his wheel deforms severely and he loses all the pressure out of the tire. No points for 93, but on the bright side he wasn't slammed to the earth and hurt with a long season ahead. Alex Marquez lost the front and exited race within a lap of this incident.
Joan Mir also had poor luck with his tire partly delaminating toward the end of the race after a very promising looking run in the top 10.
Rookie wise: Diogo Moreira, replacing Somkiat Chantra at LCR Honda, looks strong with a points finish in the race. Toprak finished ahead of Jack Miller and the Ducati test rider (filling in for an injured Fermin Aldeguer). Yamaha looks adrift and struggling on their new V4 platform. With the displacement change next year I actually don't know right now how many allowances they have for engine development this year. Supposedly they're well down on power and they look worse than they did with the venerable inline 4.
Acosta leads the championship going into Brazil in two weeks' time.
Aprilia have a fascinating aero update - an "F duct" running from the front of the fairing, dumping about where the riders' elbows are. It apparently improves ground effect at extreme lean angles, and the riders' forearms block the exit when they're tucked in, minimizing the drag on the straights.
So the dude bought a 15 year old 160k mile n55 car at the absolute height of its depreciation due to a decade's worth of deferred maintenance and then complained about the costs of taking it to a shop to perform well known service on BMW weak points?
Hopefully he used it to get laid before the clutch dies. It was close to end of life and he was definitely burning through it on his test drive. Hopefully he figured out how to slip it a bit better after purchase.
If you go over to that other substack, this was not a bottom barrel car. High mileage but not full of deferred maintenance. They ALL need this much at this age.
I like the idea of having a German car, but the reality is that the UP simply has nowhere to go to maintain it. And if it breaks I don't want to have it towed to frickin' Toledo.
If anyone ever wondered why the gas door was left open on a yellow Viper GTS at Yark BMW, it’s because pre-teen me touched it. I am deeply sorry.
My dad and I often used to go down there on Sunday mornings and look at cars. They always had cool cars on the lot. I remember being in awe of how fancy Taylor Cadillac was.
I can remember Taylor Kia, but my memory is hazy on where Taylor Cadillac was...
I worked in the detail barn when it was still a brown garage behind the Jeep/Olds/whatever showroom. It was a rare opportunity to touch anything really cool. The other detailers were all sort of jealous of the porters who worked in the BMW/Porsche building and had to wear khakis and never got their hands dirty.
If German cars don't all suck when the Audi is at end of life at 45k miles, I'll highly consider getting another one. There's nothing I like right now but hopefully that changes in 5 years.
Paying other people to work on cars like this always blows my mind. It's a 15 year old high mileage entry level BMW. It's going to be rough. It's a project car. It's implied you're doing the work. If you buy a project car to pay shop labor rates and parts markup, you've lost the plot.
Why does it matter if somebody else is willing to pay for repair work on his car? I wouldn't describe this a project car. Seems like it was used as a daily driver as much as possible during the short ownership period.
"I will probably sell a few bikes and cars of my own in the near future" and you should first post them on the ACF Classified ads page you promised us long ago. :)
Everyone on the right pretty much hated him. A lot of people in Texas hated him. He's anti-gun and very much a rino. As a Texan, I'm glad he's gone, just wish he'd been gone sooner. The more we learned about him, the more we all wanted him gone.
On the glasses - a lot of those glasses are prescription to boot, so they'll always be worn.
Everyone with a brain KNOWS that human beings would be looking at those feeds, especially if anything good or criminal came along.
If it was up to me, everyone who bought a pair would be ruled incapably of handling their own affairs for extreme stupidity. As well as barred from voting or engaging in any other important decision making.
I don't go that far but I unplug my webcam after every zoom/teams meeting and all they'd see is a tired old man sitting at a desk. I assume my phone microphone is on all the time even if siri can't understand a word I say
I listened to him a few times on his podcast and was like, why does everyone hate this guy and then two minutes later I'd go and see something he posted on Twitter and I was like...ohhh.
Guy I shoot with wore Meta glasses to the club one day and was told as soon as he walked into the trailer “take that shit off and never bring it back here ever.”
I personally found the NASCAR trucks bashing around the St. Pete course hilarious. Didn't watch much of it, but it was fun while I did. And what the hell did Alex Palou eat for breakfast before that race? I didn't analyze his progression, but the win was his from half distance.
The idea of a NASCAR road race gets me going, but watching it is a bit like being forced to suffer through women’s basketball. Remember when OEM’s refused to bend the knee to superior UX and charged forward with their own nav systems?
In other news, who is excited about Spring and wrenching season??? I have a solid 60 hours of projects waiting
The 135i experience sounds a lot like my experience with my ‘86 Carrera a few years back. Loved the car, did some of my own maintenance but in general spent a lot more time driving my pickup as my DD than I wanted while it was in the shop.
I think of those folks in the Philippines every time I see a Waymo now.
Interesting experience with AI yesterday - a historian in my hometown posted an alleged photo from a place on his FB page. I knew it was incorrect so I responded with some details on why it was. He responded with a screen shot from AI to back up his point. When I looked closer, I realized the original source of the photo had it misidentified and AI has misinterpreted another website’s listing to come to its conclusions. Garbage In = Garbage Out as we used to say……
The Jasmine Crockett commentary doesn't make a lot of sense. She is 100% pro-Israel, expanded voting "rights", and unlimited immigration/abortions/supreme court justices. So what spice flow was she potentially going to stop?
Has anyone ever listened to her speak? She is D-U-M-B.
hell yeah the original is one of my favourite bikes ever
"the auction results have been strong at “ModaMiami”"
read this about four times but is that not the mayor destroying nyc? also 7mm for a 250 california sounds low for some reason
"talking incessantly, in his outdoor voice, about himself for nearly a week straight"
i already knew he was insufferable but my heart goes out to the acf members that had to struggle through it irl
"All I ask is that I be paid one dollar more than they paid Jonny, and that the entire hotel room be bleached, sterilized, and lightly irradiated before I get there"
congrats on making $11 then. also they can just set the room on fire to save some time
"I assume you, Dear Reader, don’t have a pair, because it would take a genuine idiot to send every single thing you see and do to “the cloud”"
i was only interested in them for taking helmetcam footage for evaluation and nothing else
"Imagine having to watch the sex lives of Meta Ray-Ban owners"
theyve invented amateur porn but worse in every way for everyone. congrats guys
"“The Chad ES300 Enjoyer”"
how many prompts did it take to get the jacket exactly how you wanted it
"Zilisch made a total of seventy passes for position during the race"
now thats absolutely outstanding. hes gotta win some kind of award at the end of the season for that
"Asian women are the most feminine, Black women least so"
couldnt it also be said that asians have a lower level of testosterone than blacks with black women looking similar to men and asain men looking similar to women? seems to be a lower level of sexual dimorphism than in other races for some reason
I'm sorry, but did you just open up with a "Swedish investigative journalists" and conclude with a ~Chris~ Jim Farley piece AND NOT LINK TO SCHILLERVISION???
23andMe said, until I removed my data, that I have a higher percentage of Neanderthal genes than average. I have been quite successful with women over the years. That is until I got married thirty-five years ago which was my ultimate success with a woman I don’t deserve. I prefer to think my success was due to my stunning good looks and humble personality rather than my Neanderthal genes.
They also said that people with higher percentages of Neanderthal genes tend to sweat more under physical exertion. I can attest to that. I play a lot of tennis and I tell people the only thing I do as well as Rafa Nadal is sweat. Maybe some women like sweaty sex.
MotoGP takes off with a tumultuous time in Thailand.
In qualifying the Aprilias display their prowess and must have Ducati alert to a real threat this year. Bez continues his hot streak from last season to take the first pole of the season. Raul Fernandez continues his streak for 3rd, Jorge Martin finishes 5th, and Ai Ogura in 8th for all four riders and machines in the top ten. Quite an accomplishment after such a long streak of Ducati dominance. Marc Marquez, while still not physically 100%, pulled a rabbit out of his hat for the 2nd best time with Digi in 4th. Alex Marquez well down in 7th. Bagnaia missed out on Q2 entirely and starts from 13th (!).
Pedro Acosta is top KTM starting from 6th with Binder in 11th, and a pair of Hondas joined Q2 as well.
Yamaha is out to sea and occupying the bottom end of the timing tower.
In the sprint Bez and Marc get off to a good start with Marquez taking first. Bez and Marc exchange places and Marc pressures for a just two laps before Bez loses the front and wrecks out of the sprint. Due to a new rule around restarts riders are now much less likely to rejoin a race as they must keep the bike lit to rejoin from trackside. Otherwise, bike starts must take place behind a barrier (presumably for track personnel safety as they often push the bike for the restart).
Early contact between Alex Marquez, running in hot to a turn, and Digi take both of them into the back field. Digi was able to claw his way back into the points.
Pedro Acosta worked his way to 2nd behind Marc and the two passed back and forth time and again in turn 12 (last turn, slow right hander before main straight). That is until Marc made a very aggressive move which caused Pedro to stand up and go wide. The move was borderline and Marc was penalized one position. Acosta wins his first sprint in MotoGP in his third year in the class. Marc finishes second. Raul Fernandez takes third, with Ai in 4th (his best finish, I believe) Jorge Martin 5th.
In the race proper it is once again Bez out front, this time with a stronger start. Marc doesn't look as strong and fades all the way to 5th at one point. Raul Fernandez bolts away behind Bez who is well ahead. Marc bides his time and watches Acosta and Martin duke it out for third, and then cleanly overtakes both during lap 10. Unfortunately, Marc's sharp racecraft is all for naught as Acosta retakes and then finds a second wind a few laps later. Fernandez begins flagging due to injury around lap 20, and his large gap to 3rd is not enough to keep Acosta behind. Marc goes wide in a turn and hits a curb hard enough that his wheel deforms severely and he loses all the pressure out of the tire. No points for 93, but on the bright side he wasn't slammed to the earth and hurt with a long season ahead. Alex Marquez lost the front and exited race within a lap of this incident.
Joan Mir also had poor luck with his tire partly delaminating toward the end of the race after a very promising looking run in the top 10.
Rookie wise: Diogo Moreira, replacing Somkiat Chantra at LCR Honda, looks strong with a points finish in the race. Toprak finished ahead of Jack Miller and the Ducati test rider (filling in for an injured Fermin Aldeguer). Yamaha looks adrift and struggling on their new V4 platform. With the displacement change next year I actually don't know right now how many allowances they have for engine development this year. Supposedly they're well down on power and they look worse than they did with the venerable inline 4.
Acosta leads the championship going into Brazil in two weeks' time.
Aprilia have a fascinating aero update - an "F duct" running from the front of the fairing, dumping about where the riders' elbows are. It apparently improves ground effect at extreme lean angles, and the riders' forearms block the exit when they're tucked in, minimizing the drag on the straights.
Brilliant, as it works as active aero without any moving parts. Explainer here: https://youtu.be/jAg4TgvEQCY?si=FNZhWuQeA1DowzNr
(I made that last sentence up, but you get the idea.) <-- poetry
Crockett wasn't primaried for her house seat; she lost the Senate primary.
Right, I didnt mean to imply that
The guy that primaried her is a progressive theater kid that wears a biblical scholar skin suit
https://chrisbray.substack.com/p/pivoting-to-the-god-thing
Which is still more authentic than Crockett's "girl from the street" who went to fancy prep schools and private undergrad college.
He’s creepy. I think we are going to find out he is the offspring of Jim and Tammy Fae Baker.
So the dude bought a 15 year old 160k mile n55 car at the absolute height of its depreciation due to a decade's worth of deferred maintenance and then complained about the costs of taking it to a shop to perform well known service on BMW weak points?
there's a sucker born every minute
BMW's "expensive to maintain" reputation is 100% based on their third "enthusiast" owner's buying strategy consisting of "sort>price>low to high".
I almost felt bad for the life lesson the kid who purchased my 2007 335 was going to learn
he will have his canon event soon enough
Hopefully he used it to get laid before the clutch dies. It was close to end of life and he was definitely burning through it on his test drive. Hopefully he figured out how to slip it a bit better after purchase.
There’s a nice kid at a local oil change place near me that bought a 3rd Gen BMW 760Li with the V12.
If you go over to that other substack, this was not a bottom barrel car. High mileage but not full of deferred maintenance. They ALL need this much at this age.
I still miss my 335
I like the idea of having a German car, but the reality is that the UP simply has nowhere to go to maintain it. And if it breaks I don't want to have it towed to frickin' Toledo.
or Minneapolis or Milwaukee!
My parents live near Toledo so at least I woudln't need a hotel room.
And after 3 months your parents would ask "why are you still here?" and your reply would be "well, the Bimmer needs a LOT of work ...."
"...and also I had to sell my house, wife, and kids to pay for it..."
COME DOWN TO YARK ON THE GLORIOUS CENTRAL AVENUE STRIP
Haha, I worked there 25 years ago!
If anyone ever wondered why the gas door was left open on a yellow Viper GTS at Yark BMW, it’s because pre-teen me touched it. I am deeply sorry.
My dad and I often used to go down there on Sunday mornings and look at cars. They always had cool cars on the lot. I remember being in awe of how fancy Taylor Cadillac was.
I can remember Taylor Kia, but my memory is hazy on where Taylor Cadillac was...
I worked in the detail barn when it was still a brown garage behind the Jeep/Olds/whatever showroom. It was a rare opportunity to touch anything really cool. The other detailers were all sort of jealous of the porters who worked in the BMW/Porsche building and had to wear khakis and never got their hands dirty.
When I started in the oil biz I drove my Saab 900 to North Dakota every month and worried about this often.
My heart rate increased just thinking about that.
If German cars don't all suck when the Audi is at end of life at 45k miles, I'll highly consider getting another one. There's nothing I like right now but hopefully that changes in 5 years.
What I should get? A Lexus
obviously another triumph street triple, so you can say "I have triple street triples"
The goal is to list it in the next 3 weeks after I fix the brakes. Nothing serious besides me figure out to get new brake fluid in the fronts.
I'm saving up for a Lexus LC500. I will drive my CX-9 until it falls apart.
(whispers in VANOS)
I think Jack is making fun of him in a good natured way. The former BMW owner was not surprised or complaining about the cost.
Paying other people to work on cars like this always blows my mind. It's a 15 year old high mileage entry level BMW. It's going to be rough. It's a project car. It's implied you're doing the work. If you buy a project car to pay shop labor rates and parts markup, you've lost the plot.
Why does it matter if somebody else is willing to pay for repair work on his car? I wouldn't describe this a project car. Seems like it was used as a daily driver as much as possible during the short ownership period.
It's a 1 series with 160k on it. It's a project car.
"I will probably sell a few bikes and cars of my own in the near future" and you should first post them on the ACF Classified ads page you promised us long ago. :)
You now something jack wouldn't regret?
PURCHASING a 2013 Triumph Street triple!
he will try to trade you a beater Lexus, an old KTM, and a raggedy Honda bike for it.
an old KTM, and a raggedy Honda bike for it
I'm listening
Plus some old Ford iron that lives alongside the barn that he doesn't discuss.
On Crenshaw.
Everyone on the right pretty much hated him. A lot of people in Texas hated him. He's anti-gun and very much a rino. As a Texan, I'm glad he's gone, just wish he'd been gone sooner. The more we learned about him, the more we all wanted him gone.
On the glasses - a lot of those glasses are prescription to boot, so they'll always be worn.
Everyone with a brain KNOWS that human beings would be looking at those feeds, especially if anything good or criminal came along.
If it was up to me, everyone who bought a pair would be ruled incapably of handling their own affairs for extreme stupidity. As well as barred from voting or engaging in any other important decision making.
I get odd looks all the time because the front and back of my phone lenses are covered. Doesn't seem so crazy now.
I don't go that far but I unplug my webcam after every zoom/teams meeting and all they'd see is a tired old man sitting at a desk. I assume my phone microphone is on all the time even if siri can't understand a word I say
I listened to him a few times on his podcast and was like, why does everyone hate this guy and then two minutes later I'd go and see something he posted on Twitter and I was like...ohhh.
Wondering who wears glasses during sex.
Really blind people :-)
I want to see you work that into your next novel.
Guy I shoot with wore Meta glasses to the club one day and was told as soon as he walked into the trailer “take that shit off and never bring it back here ever.”
I personally found the NASCAR trucks bashing around the St. Pete course hilarious. Didn't watch much of it, but it was fun while I did. And what the hell did Alex Palou eat for breakfast before that race? I didn't analyze his progression, but the win was his from half distance.
The idea of a NASCAR road race gets me going, but watching it is a bit like being forced to suffer through women’s basketball. Remember when OEM’s refused to bend the knee to superior UX and charged forward with their own nav systems?
In other news, who is excited about Spring and wrenching season??? I have a solid 60 hours of projects waiting
pray tell what "police paking" is. Do I look it up in the statute or urban dictionary? Joking of course.
Wait, where did i say that? I'm tired from the flight but maybe I dont realize how tired I am.
It's in the image macro, chad Lexus owner vs lame-ass german car owner.
Your AI cartoon had a bunch of typos and duplicated words, perhaps, as expected.
It's not a real meme otherwise.
"that plays a Lizzo song every time you flick the turn signal" --> this alone would cause massive road rage and the suicide rate to skyrocket.
and then everyone became a bmw driver overnight
The 135i experience sounds a lot like my experience with my ‘86 Carrera a few years back. Loved the car, did some of my own maintenance but in general spent a lot more time driving my pickup as my DD than I wanted while it was in the shop.
I think of those folks in the Philippines every time I see a Waymo now.
Interesting experience with AI yesterday - a historian in my hometown posted an alleged photo from a place on his FB page. I knew it was incorrect so I responded with some details on why it was. He responded with a screen shot from AI to back up his point. When I looked closer, I realized the original source of the photo had it misidentified and AI has misinterpreted another website’s listing to come to its conclusions. Garbage In = Garbage Out as we used to say……
when did historians get that lazy?
um, maybe 2500 years ago?
when ancient history was just last tuesday
Jack, per Ronnie’s recent post (https://substack.com/@carsandculture/note/p-189504930?r=48qsss&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action), how does Farley still have a job? Seriously, what would the yuck-a-puck have to do to get fired?
well obviously its not "lose multiple Billions of dollars".
maybe he told the BoD, "we didn't lose as much as Stellantis"
The Jasmine Crockett commentary doesn't make a lot of sense. She is 100% pro-Israel, expanded voting "rights", and unlimited immigration/abortions/supreme court justices. So what spice flow was she potentially going to stop?
Has anyone ever listened to her speak? She is D-U-M-B.
a republic if you can keep it
she sure sounds like what the fathers had in mind
A daughter of a reverend. She has only attended fancy private schools.
sure looks like that money went to good use
On paper, she is a huge success. In reality, we can't afford to have too many people like her in powerful positions.
"an up-close look at the Norton Manx and Manx R"
hell yeah the original is one of my favourite bikes ever
"the auction results have been strong at “ModaMiami”"
read this about four times but is that not the mayor destroying nyc? also 7mm for a 250 california sounds low for some reason
"talking incessantly, in his outdoor voice, about himself for nearly a week straight"
i already knew he was insufferable but my heart goes out to the acf members that had to struggle through it irl
"All I ask is that I be paid one dollar more than they paid Jonny, and that the entire hotel room be bleached, sterilized, and lightly irradiated before I get there"
congrats on making $11 then. also they can just set the room on fire to save some time
"I assume you, Dear Reader, don’t have a pair, because it would take a genuine idiot to send every single thing you see and do to “the cloud”"
i was only interested in them for taking helmetcam footage for evaluation and nothing else
"Imagine having to watch the sex lives of Meta Ray-Ban owners"
theyve invented amateur porn but worse in every way for everyone. congrats guys
"“The Chad ES300 Enjoyer”"
how many prompts did it take to get the jacket exactly how you wanted it
"Zilisch made a total of seventy passes for position during the race"
now thats absolutely outstanding. hes gotta win some kind of award at the end of the season for that
"Asian women are the most feminine, Black women least so"
couldnt it also be said that asians have a lower level of testosterone than blacks with black women looking similar to men and asain men looking similar to women? seems to be a lower level of sexual dimorphism than in other races for some reason
I love me some amateur porn but certainly not those amateurs.
I'm sorry, but did you just open up with a "Swedish investigative journalists" and conclude with a ~Chris~ Jim Farley piece AND NOT LINK TO SCHILLERVISION???
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdQKVDUBu2g
23andMe said, until I removed my data, that I have a higher percentage of Neanderthal genes than average. I have been quite successful with women over the years. That is until I got married thirty-five years ago which was my ultimate success with a woman I don’t deserve. I prefer to think my success was due to my stunning good looks and humble personality rather than my Neanderthal genes.
They also said that people with higher percentages of Neanderthal genes tend to sweat more under physical exertion. I can attest to that. I play a lot of tennis and I tell people the only thing I do as well as Rafa Nadal is sweat. Maybe some women like sweaty sex.