Wednesday Night ORT: Max Attack, Ridin' The Strom Out, Farley's Xiaomi

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oh my love, a million days in your arms is never too much

Housekeeping: The THUNDERDOME is now closed. I want to thank everyone who participated. To the two of you who chose to leave the site, I hope you’ll consider returning in the future. On to the show…

Can I just say how thrilled I am to have a picture of my Neon racing in 2024? To think that I’ve owned this car for seventeen years (17) and it’s still capable of winning races. At least it would be, if we put the shifter bushings in correctly. I’ll be running it at WHRRI next year and in a few SCCA events as well. Going back and forth between it and the SR8 is, well, I would say it can be daunting, but it’s fun and I hope it will make me a better driver. Maybe a little more conscious about how I do things on track. Enough about me; there was a real race goin’ on this past weekend.

This must be a petting zoo, because I see a GOAT

Anyone want to disagree with Alain Prost in his uncharitable opinion of Lando Norris? Not me, said the little red hen. Once again, McLaren’s theoretical lead driver proved he was softer than butter when the chips were down.

That being said, if ever there was a race weekend where a bit of failure seemed acceptable, it was this frequently-red-flagged, monsoon-weather contest. I don’t think I’ve ever spent quite as much time watching F1TV as I did this past weekend. Endless stops and starts. Huge mistakes by a dozen drivers. A Williams that seemed determined to humiliate its occupants. Poor Oscar Piastri had to hand over position to Lando like they were in the running for a WDC, only for Lando to leave the weekend eighteen points behind where he’d started it.

Brazil 2024 will go down in history for Max Verstappen’s absolutely flawless drive to victory. Yes, he had help on the strategy side and the tech-regulations side; George Russell could have won the race had his team’s strategists been as smart, or as lucky, as RedBull’s Hannah Schmitz. (Apropos of nothing, I just adore how sad she looks at the races. No wonder she’s wifed-up with two kids already.) Those minor caveats aside, Max set seventeen fastest laps in the process of wiping the track clean with a car that, in the incompetent hands of his teammate, strongly resembled a Mahindra tractor.

Other things to catch my eye during the marathon watch sessions:

• Justice For Yuki! We always hear about how the best drivers shine in the rain. Well, at Interlagos the man who did the most with the least car was Tsunoda-san, yo. Liam looked brilliant and mentally strong as well, but Yuki definitely put it down when it mattered. Naturally, he got the worst possible strategy throughout the race but still snagged a few points. Doesn’t Hannah Schmitz have a sister who could work at VCARB?

• Flavio’s magic? “From ninth place to sixth place is not 30 million [euros],” Briatore said. “It's 29.2 million! It's the first thing I asked.” Alpine has had some feckless leaders over the years, but The Man In Blue is well and truly back. Was he responsible for the changes that saw Ocon and Gasly take the podium together and, however briefly, return to being best friends? I’ll tell you this: certainly Flavio’s involvement hasn’t hurt. I also like the idea of getting out of the engine business, which if rumor can be believed is the primary source of internecine British/French drama at Alpine.

• Alonso finishes the race: As someone whose back has been hurting lately from just a couple dozen 137-mph skidplate hits in my Radical, I had infinite sympathy for fellow old racer Fernando Alonso as he struggled in the Aston Martin. Let’s hope the car gets better for him next year; it doesn’t appear like it could get any worse.

• Checo is checked out, or should be: Honestly, I’m to the point now where I’m just embarrassed for Sergio Perez. This is a business where you need absolute self-confidence, and he no longer has it. Liam Lawson is making him look stupid in what amounts to the world’s most widely-seen job interview.

• Princess George still got it done: It should be obvious to everyone that Russell has Hamilton on the run. To put things in perspective, Lance Stroll is showing better against Alonso this year than the 7-time WDC is vs. George. This was a strong race weekend with very few mistakes. GR now leads his team in driver points, which is no mean feat when the FIA takes your win and gives it to your teammate.

• All the young dudes: Wasn’t it just yesterday that F1 seemed dead static? Now we have Bearman, Colapinto, and the new Sauber driver, Gabriel Bortoleto — plus there’s Kimi Antonelli showing up either next year or next race, depending on whom you believe. It’s not too early to become emotionally involved with their careers and let it affect how much you enjoy your everyday life, the way I did with Jenson Button and JV in their BAR years!

Prediction, which is worthless because I’ve been so wrong this year about everything: Max can and will wrap up at Las Vegas. He deserves to. It’s been a long time since he had the best car, but he’s still the best driver.

In which the author just gives up on life, obviously

this is where rodney works now, go see him!

I’ve put almost 600 miles on my 2006 V-Strom since trading for it two weeks ago. Nothing else in my fleet has moved more than ten feet since I became one of these nerd-ass, female-repelling “ADV RIDERZ”. I cannot express how easy it is for me to ride it 80-100 miles without stopping. Yes, the infamous V-Strom helmet buffeting does shake my eyeballs sometimes, but as long as I’m under 100mph it’s tolerable. Which is good, because compared to, say, a Honda Super Blackbird, this is a miserably slow bike. At least it’s characterful with the 95 horsepower it does have. The engine sounds nice and feels like a living thing.

look closely for the trackday club perk that’s visible

Everything about the V-Strom

a) looks stupid

b) works great

including the terminally dorky Givi box in back, which holds my work laptop on the way to the office and my helmet once I’m there. I had a minor issue with surging and backfiring that required removal of the fairings plus the tank to address, but the bike works great now and I’ll safety-wire everything for the long haul come the winter.

Here’s the problem with the big Su-Zook: I don’t ride a motorcycle because I need to. I’m not a Los Angeles commuter or Malaysian courier. I ride motorcycles because I love the excitement and noise and raw you-gonna-die-today! charge that I get from occasionally whipping a superbike down the road at irresponsible pace. Compared to my other bikes, the V-Strom is probably not much less dangerous, but it’s a lot less interesting. I’d hate to get killed while riding this sensible-shoes V-Twin. If it happens, tell my son that I actually died on the ZX-14R.

And yet: I enjoy riding the V-Strom more than I enjoy not riding my other motorcycles because of joint pain and cramping muscles and the general miseries of being almost 53 years old behind the windscreen of a 186-mph musclebike. It’s also a bit handy when things go bad, as they did on Monday:

I left work and found myself in a traffic jam due to a multi-car fatal accident. Google Maps said I’d be sitting there for an hour, maybe more. I accepted my fate for one-half of Clairo’s Charm album, during which my lane moved all of fifty feet. At which point I just rode through the God-blessed grass for almost a mile, using the median, the shoulder, the outside of the ramp, and everything else available. When I was near the accident site I just weaved around all the cars and trucks that were waiting to go past the state troopers one at a time. When I got up to the front, I waved and shrugged my shoulders at the trooper who’d watched me break ten different traffic laws. He smiled and waved me on. That absolutely gave me 90 minutes of my life back, plus I wasn’t trapped out there in traffic like a sitting duck for drivers to hit.

God bless you, V-Strom. You’ve made me an adventure believer. Now for the next question: should I get a decent new ADV bike? The new V-Strom DL1050 is nice and it has a bit more power. I dislike the BMW GS and have always disliked it, so I’m not doing that. KTM has the 1290 Super Adventure R which would be the fastest one. But you know what I kind of want, by which I mean really want?

That’s right. Harley Pan America CVO. It would be the last new motorcycle I ever bought. Would have to be. It costs as much as a Civic Si. I’ve never had a Harley, but I really like the Revolution engine. This would be a neat way to experience it. Feel free to make fun of me, or offer different suggestions, in the comments.

Farley’s Chinese love

I don’t know why the media has been so agitated about Jim Farley’s recent pronouncement that he has been driving the Xiaomi SU7 for about half a year. That’s his job. He needs to understand what’s out there in the market. It’s the precise opposite of what GM executives did for all those bad old years. Imagine if all the Ford and GM senior people had driven 1977 Accords to work for half a year. How much better would the X-cars and Erikas have been?

I have no evidence that GM executives are trying to do the same thing, but maybe it would do them some good. And with this frisky new SU7 Ultra, which makes 673 horsepower, there’s even a chance that Mark Reuss could put it to his usual test of crashing in public setting speed records!

There’s only one thing that Jim Farley would be better off doing than checking out the electric competition: putting his head down to make Ford’s ICE products better. Maybe start by putting some content back into the trucks, and looking at the prices. A 2024 Super Duty Platinum, equipped roughly like my 2022, costs $13,000 more while offering obvious evidence of cost reduction inside and out. Why dontcha get on that, Tommy Boy?