Interestingly, at least to me, Onstar recently offered me an option to get driving tips. Ways to be a “better driver”. Speed, acceleration, hard braking, etc. I DID NOT sign up. Their disclosures, which I actually read, didn’t make me feel comfortable about what would be done with my data. And it’s not a matter of me worrying about how I’m driving. The Caddy is super competent at speed, but it never encourages you to drive fast. So I’m sure anyone reading my driving transcript would be content with what they found. But, no one needs to be reading that. GM of late makes it harder and harder to be a fan.
Interesting points about who is/isn't dialed back at Mercedes. Definitely would not put it past Toto to dial Lewis back given how the departure apparently went down. We likely won't know for sure until we see how Lewis drives next year, but maybe it is a combination of (a) dialing down, (b) lack of effort from Lewis (not something he hasn't done before), and (c) his age catching up to him?
Heavy sedans aren't race cars, no matter how many angry pixies you stuff them with. GM sucks a way bigger wang than I thought, but I'm not surprised. Anywaaay,
Big changes coming to Formula Drift this year! Fortunately, I was able to listen to the latest 2hr long “Outerzone” podcast episode, where FD co-founder and solo-president Ryan Sage lays it all out. The tl;dr if you don’t want all the details is as follows: single run qualifying is no more. Instead, the top 16 or 24 drivers (based on previous round’s result and how many show up to the next one) will be locked into the main Top 32 bracket. The rest of the entrants (44 this year) will battle through their own Top 16 or 32 to fill the remaining 8 or 16 spots in the main with no bye-runs. Round 1 will use the 2023 points results for the “locked in” 16 or 24. This means that if all 44 drivers show up, 20 of them will battle to populate the bottom 16 main spots. The goal is to provide more action for the audience, provide incentive for driver improvement, and lower tire consumption overall. Also of note, is the addition of 2023 Drift Master’s European Championship, uh, champion, Conor Shanahan! He isn’t running all 8 rounds of FD, but it will still be interesting to see how he does over here after dominating in Europe. Those are the highlights, and you can feel how you will about them. Keep reading for nitty-gritty and opinions if you’d like!
Drifting competitions are done via “battles,” where 2 drivers tandem drift the course, then switch positions (lead/chase) and go again. Lead drivers need to run a line assigned by the 3 judges, fill all outer zones, and hit all inner clips. Lead drivers also need to have a high degree of drift angle, lots of flare on transitions, and have a run that is actually chaseable. If the lead driver does a shitty lead with many corrections and mistakes, it becomes difficult or impossible for the chase driver to do his job. Speaking of the chase driver, his job is to mimic the lead car. Chase drivers need to follow the lead’s line, angle, anticipate the transitions, and keep as close “proximity” to the lead car as possible (also called “penetration” if you want a laugh). The judges then decide who did the best in each position. If no decision can be made, either because each driver was perfect or because they both sucked, a “one more time” is called, and the drivers go back for fresh tires and run again. The main competition starts with 32 drivers and eventually results in one winner. Championship points are awarded based on which level of the bracket a driver makes it to, with 100 points going to the winner. For 19 years, the Top 32 was entirely filled out by solo qualifying runs, where the driver’s goal is to run their best “lead” run possible for a score out of 100. They had 2 laps back-to-back and the highest score of the 2 was what they took. During that time, the number 1 qualifier for a round got 3 bonus points for the championship. For 2023, this changed slightly. Number 1 still got 3 points, but all drivers only got ONE lap to qualify- initially. If a driver ran a complete lap and got a score, that was their score. Failure to make a complete run on the qualifying lap would allow them to run again, but with the highest possible position now being 25th. This was often referred to as the “not-so-great-eight” by announcer Jared DeAnda. The bottom 8 drivers were those who simply could not earn a high enough score on their first lap, and drivers who did not complete their first lap at all due to either a mistake, or a mechanical issue. The goal of this was to eliminate 1 or 2 drivers as they had 33-34 entrants in 2023, but this resulted in some very wonky top 32 battles, and played with the championship points in interesting ways. Some top drivers who suffered mechanical problems qualified poorly, and battled another top driver immediately which is not “supposed” to happen. Things are much different this year.
In 2024, qualifying will also be done via BATTLES! There are 2 ways this goes down depending on how many of the 44 Pro1 drivers or 48 ProSpec drivers enter a given round. For rounds with 33-40 entrants, the top 24 drivers are locked into the Main Top 32 bracket. 25th-32nd and the rest will be placed into a top 16 qualifying bracket, modified by a random number system to keep this bracket mixed up, and battle for the bottom 8 spots in the Main Top 32 bracket. For rounds with 41 or more entrants the system is similar, but only the highest 16 drivers are locked in, and up to 20 drivers have to battle it out to fill in the bottom 16 spots instead of 8. There are many interesting results of this massive format change. From the driver’s perspective, you have more opportunities to learn by doing more battles at every event. You use fewer tires; one solo qual lap would burn an entire pair, battles are 2 laps. You are also able to provide more value for your sponsors because you’re now featured in more actual competition over the weekend. I think the biggest thing a driver should be thinking about is the fact they know exactly who their first battle will be weeks ahead of time. The bracket for Long Beach is set right now, and the event doesn’t happen until April 13th. This is important for drivers to think about because they can find footage of their opponent and study it over and over to develop a strategy. From the audience perspective, this is exciting because the solo-runs were boring and the whole of qualifying was often tedious to watch (almost as tedious as this is to read, maybe). Instead of watching 5 drivers flounder for every 1 exciting run, we get to watch tandem battles all the way through! I expect this to really separate the wheat from the proverival chaff as well. The stakes are higher and the implications are greater, so the drivers will have to give their full effort from the very start.
As I said earlier, the season doesn’t start for another month, so I may not have updates again until the week before, where I summarize the finale of 2023 and paint a picture for the beginning of 2024. I may not be able to watch some of these events live, but I will catch up and bring the results and drama here to ACF every Wednesday once we’re rolling!
Every time something comes out about how terrible modern cars are, like delivering your telemetry straight to your insurance company, I can hear my S2000 get more valuable. At least I feel happier about it.
That being said, I filled out an app with both American Collector and The Hag That Shall Not Be Named, and both spit back the same-ish number, $750/yr for stated value of $25k (probably slightly optimistic but not outrageous). Which is almost 2x what I pay USAA for regular insurance on it now. In the spirit of the Open thread, can someone either A) sell me on why I should double up the price to insure a Honda with chipped paint and 120k miles that’s old enough to drink, or B) reassure me that I should just save my $400/year (about 2 Direzzas shipped and mounted) and USAA will likely more or less make me whole should the unthinkable happen to my really pretty mainstream old used car anyways. Unfortunately neither option will likely stop the 4-5 spam calls I’m now getting a week from each company.
Regarding GM: Ugh... I have a 5V Blackwing and it came with a complimentary data plan when I bought it. The app disclosed serious acceleration events and forceful braking - every single drive. Perhaps I'm not the typical Caddy driver, but those are nothing compared to my times on the track.
And now I know that data is out there somewhere. I'm sure a future insurance company will deny me for "undisclosed" reasons. Which module can I rip out to stop this?
I'm sure the many genius-tier devs gathered here can still outperform this software code generator when it counts, but if it's this good at coding, then why would we assume that it can't do other, bureaucratic make-work (ie 80+% of all knowledge work) jobs?
Hard not to see in this the portents of the apocalypse of the knowledge worker
Thanks for providing yet another reinforcement of my decision to buy an Expedition over a Tahoe. Even if I missed out on sweet 6.2 exhaust note for the twin turbo whine, that data grab is terrifying! I'm amazed they don't share it anonymized, but it does make sense since Tesla does pitch themselves as a "data company" so clearly GM has to follow along.
As for the Porsche (well it's a literal PORKER!), it'll just sell to the same crowd who want to say they drive a PORSCH just like the Panamera Turbo folks. Most of what they're selling are pure Veblen goods for morons at this point, but I'm sure I'll see a bunch of them rolling around Miami.
MotoGP kicks off with some reasonable competition between the sprint and the full length race.
Saturday's sprint had last years' championship runner up and sprint dominator Jorge Martin on a Ducati rode to an easy first place with Brad Binder on his KTM in second (he also did well last year in a number of sprints), and somewhat surprisingly for me Aleix Espargo on the Aprilia coming in third (!). Bagnaia ended up in fourth which was an okay, but not great, start to the weekend.
During the Sunday race Bagnaia was back in form and managed to lead just about the entire way for first place. Jorge Martin battled it out with Brad Binder for second place but couldn't match his pace over the long haul with a couple of errors seeing him manage the ride to third instead of throwing the bike away in a stupid incident which, I thought, showed him maturing as a competitor. Just taking the points instead of trying and pushing too far. This means there's a 3 point spread between first and third going into the next race with Bagnaia at 31, Binder with 29, and Martin at 28.
I'm hoping KTM stays competitive, but Miller's early crash due to cold tires (?) from a strange delayed start sequence means the spotlight and weight is all on Brad.
Pedro Acosta, who has a hype train running moved nowhere in the sprint and learned a valuable lesson about tire management in the full race. He went from 8 -> 9 and worked up to 4th position before it became clear he had used too much tire too early and rapidly fell back through the pack to a 9th place finish.
Marc Marquez finished 5th and 4th riding a year old Ducati and it was, frankly, nice to see him be competitive without risking everything or looking like he was on the absolute limit all the time.
ETA: MotoAmerica ran the Daytona 200 and I watched about half the events.
Newcomer to King of the Baggers, Troy Herfoss (?), immediately looks strong on the Indian but played the race tactics poorly and Kyle Wyman took first in both due to unforced errors. In the last lap of the last race Herfoss looked over his shoulder and took his bike OFF LINE and scrubbed entirely too much speed.
I still don't like the supersport Daytona 200 format though several riders ran out of gas at various points which was good for laughs (not for them).
I haven't caught up on the Super Hooligans but there should be a broader bike variety than last year with a Triumph Triple and an MT-09 both in the field. In the meantime - Indian is walking away with the most points on the factory FTRs again.
I’m curious what our resident designer-commenter-Goth Adrian Clarke’s original article on the Rivian R3X was before it was very toned down by the editorial board.
Mar 13·edited Mar 14Liked by Sherman McCoy, Jack Baruth
If Mom reads the free ones I imagine you should expect a phone call but I'm guessing this would be one of the more minor offenses you've bothered her with.
Of course Ms Spice is a formerly worldly slut of the first order who only now masquerades as a Lady of the Manor but she must have faced a mountain of pressure to dump Mr Horny. Let this be a lesson to all of us; Do whatever Bernie says.
“…Right there to move his lips up and down the shaft of this profoundly stupid disaster…” That’s just fucking brilliant.
Another mostly procession in Jedda. Happy to see Ferrari best of the rest again with LeClerq’s podium and Bearman’s very impressive debut. Lots of aggression against established drivers. The guy’s got balls.
What the hell is wrong with those RBs? Same engine as the Red Bulls but that chassis appears to be a piece of shit. Curious to see some inside scoop on that.
Elsewhere the INDYCAR season opener in Saint Pete also turned out to be a bit of a procession with Joseph Newgarden doing his best to imitate Max Verstappen by leading most of the race despite several safety car periods bunching up the pack. He just simply walked away on every restart. Young Pado O’Ward did his best to keep Joseph in sight and resisted the temptation to wreck another car, ultimately finishing second just ahead of the other two Penskes. I love to watch this kid drive, and if he’s matured enough to bring it home like this for the rest of the season, he’s got a good shot at the championship.
I doubt 12-15 year old Verstappen could have outraced Vettel! (Yes, yes, I know what you meant). Anyway, I'm not sure why you're dissing him. He did, after all, win the drivers' championship four years in a row, in much more closely-matched cars than Verstappen or Hamilton have had. Babe Ruth being the greatest Yankee doesn't make Lou Gehrig any less great. It was also a completely different era of the sport. Cornering Gs have nearly doubled, pit stop times halved, and the number+precision of parameters the team and driver can monitor and adjust on the fly has gone up a hundred-fold. What would now be considered accurate simulators didn't exist, nor did accurate CFD.
Is the data thing really all that outrageous? How many years now have we been hearing about how cars can/should have "black box" capability to record your driving behavior? Since the '90s? And with Onstar, GM's been poised to hand that data off to third party longer than anyone.
Might as well throw your smartphone away while you're at it, you have no privacy or anonymity anymore. Everything from your politics to your porn preferences are there for the taking.
The last four years have shown what a spinelessly compliant society we are, so don't expect any constructive outrage over this. Meanwhile, some "far-right" politician in Belgium got sentenced to a year in prison for sharing racist memes in a Facebook group. The only outrage over this was that Elon Musk retweeted a post calling this tyrannical. GM telling LexisNexis I like to floor my CT5-V on occasion feels like small ball in comparison.
Interestingly, at least to me, Onstar recently offered me an option to get driving tips. Ways to be a “better driver”. Speed, acceleration, hard braking, etc. I DID NOT sign up. Their disclosures, which I actually read, didn’t make me feel comfortable about what would be done with my data. And it’s not a matter of me worrying about how I’m driving. The Caddy is super competent at speed, but it never encourages you to drive fast. So I’m sure anyone reading my driving transcript would be content with what they found. But, no one needs to be reading that. GM of late makes it harder and harder to be a fan.
The gutless porker still weighs less than the Ford. Or apparently some people's mothers.
Interesting points about who is/isn't dialed back at Mercedes. Definitely would not put it past Toto to dial Lewis back given how the departure apparently went down. We likely won't know for sure until we see how Lewis drives next year, but maybe it is a combination of (a) dialing down, (b) lack of effort from Lewis (not something he hasn't done before), and (c) his age catching up to him?
Heavy sedans aren't race cars, no matter how many angry pixies you stuff them with. GM sucks a way bigger wang than I thought, but I'm not surprised. Anywaaay,
Big changes coming to Formula Drift this year! Fortunately, I was able to listen to the latest 2hr long “Outerzone” podcast episode, where FD co-founder and solo-president Ryan Sage lays it all out. The tl;dr if you don’t want all the details is as follows: single run qualifying is no more. Instead, the top 16 or 24 drivers (based on previous round’s result and how many show up to the next one) will be locked into the main Top 32 bracket. The rest of the entrants (44 this year) will battle through their own Top 16 or 32 to fill the remaining 8 or 16 spots in the main with no bye-runs. Round 1 will use the 2023 points results for the “locked in” 16 or 24. This means that if all 44 drivers show up, 20 of them will battle to populate the bottom 16 main spots. The goal is to provide more action for the audience, provide incentive for driver improvement, and lower tire consumption overall. Also of note, is the addition of 2023 Drift Master’s European Championship, uh, champion, Conor Shanahan! He isn’t running all 8 rounds of FD, but it will still be interesting to see how he does over here after dominating in Europe. Those are the highlights, and you can feel how you will about them. Keep reading for nitty-gritty and opinions if you’d like!
Drifting competitions are done via “battles,” where 2 drivers tandem drift the course, then switch positions (lead/chase) and go again. Lead drivers need to run a line assigned by the 3 judges, fill all outer zones, and hit all inner clips. Lead drivers also need to have a high degree of drift angle, lots of flare on transitions, and have a run that is actually chaseable. If the lead driver does a shitty lead with many corrections and mistakes, it becomes difficult or impossible for the chase driver to do his job. Speaking of the chase driver, his job is to mimic the lead car. Chase drivers need to follow the lead’s line, angle, anticipate the transitions, and keep as close “proximity” to the lead car as possible (also called “penetration” if you want a laugh). The judges then decide who did the best in each position. If no decision can be made, either because each driver was perfect or because they both sucked, a “one more time” is called, and the drivers go back for fresh tires and run again. The main competition starts with 32 drivers and eventually results in one winner. Championship points are awarded based on which level of the bracket a driver makes it to, with 100 points going to the winner. For 19 years, the Top 32 was entirely filled out by solo qualifying runs, where the driver’s goal is to run their best “lead” run possible for a score out of 100. They had 2 laps back-to-back and the highest score of the 2 was what they took. During that time, the number 1 qualifier for a round got 3 bonus points for the championship. For 2023, this changed slightly. Number 1 still got 3 points, but all drivers only got ONE lap to qualify- initially. If a driver ran a complete lap and got a score, that was their score. Failure to make a complete run on the qualifying lap would allow them to run again, but with the highest possible position now being 25th. This was often referred to as the “not-so-great-eight” by announcer Jared DeAnda. The bottom 8 drivers were those who simply could not earn a high enough score on their first lap, and drivers who did not complete their first lap at all due to either a mistake, or a mechanical issue. The goal of this was to eliminate 1 or 2 drivers as they had 33-34 entrants in 2023, but this resulted in some very wonky top 32 battles, and played with the championship points in interesting ways. Some top drivers who suffered mechanical problems qualified poorly, and battled another top driver immediately which is not “supposed” to happen. Things are much different this year.
In 2024, qualifying will also be done via BATTLES! There are 2 ways this goes down depending on how many of the 44 Pro1 drivers or 48 ProSpec drivers enter a given round. For rounds with 33-40 entrants, the top 24 drivers are locked into the Main Top 32 bracket. 25th-32nd and the rest will be placed into a top 16 qualifying bracket, modified by a random number system to keep this bracket mixed up, and battle for the bottom 8 spots in the Main Top 32 bracket. For rounds with 41 or more entrants the system is similar, but only the highest 16 drivers are locked in, and up to 20 drivers have to battle it out to fill in the bottom 16 spots instead of 8. There are many interesting results of this massive format change. From the driver’s perspective, you have more opportunities to learn by doing more battles at every event. You use fewer tires; one solo qual lap would burn an entire pair, battles are 2 laps. You are also able to provide more value for your sponsors because you’re now featured in more actual competition over the weekend. I think the biggest thing a driver should be thinking about is the fact they know exactly who their first battle will be weeks ahead of time. The bracket for Long Beach is set right now, and the event doesn’t happen until April 13th. This is important for drivers to think about because they can find footage of their opponent and study it over and over to develop a strategy. From the audience perspective, this is exciting because the solo-runs were boring and the whole of qualifying was often tedious to watch (almost as tedious as this is to read, maybe). Instead of watching 5 drivers flounder for every 1 exciting run, we get to watch tandem battles all the way through! I expect this to really separate the wheat from the proverival chaff as well. The stakes are higher and the implications are greater, so the drivers will have to give their full effort from the very start.
As I said earlier, the season doesn’t start for another month, so I may not have updates again until the week before, where I summarize the finale of 2023 and paint a picture for the beginning of 2024. I may not be able to watch some of these events live, but I will catch up and bring the results and drama here to ACF every Wednesday once we’re rolling!
After reading Jonny’s press release rewrite, I would like to let slip that he is a useful idiot AND a useless idiot.
Every time something comes out about how terrible modern cars are, like delivering your telemetry straight to your insurance company, I can hear my S2000 get more valuable. At least I feel happier about it.
That being said, I filled out an app with both American Collector and The Hag That Shall Not Be Named, and both spit back the same-ish number, $750/yr for stated value of $25k (probably slightly optimistic but not outrageous). Which is almost 2x what I pay USAA for regular insurance on it now. In the spirit of the Open thread, can someone either A) sell me on why I should double up the price to insure a Honda with chipped paint and 120k miles that’s old enough to drink, or B) reassure me that I should just save my $400/year (about 2 Direzzas shipped and mounted) and USAA will likely more or less make me whole should the unthinkable happen to my really pretty mainstream old used car anyways. Unfortunately neither option will likely stop the 4-5 spam calls I’m now getting a week from each company.
Regarding GM: Ugh... I have a 5V Blackwing and it came with a complimentary data plan when I bought it. The app disclosed serious acceleration events and forceful braking - every single drive. Perhaps I'm not the typical Caddy driver, but those are nothing compared to my times on the track.
And now I know that data is out there somewhere. I'm sure a future insurance company will deny me for "undisclosed" reasons. Which module can I rip out to stop this?
Perhaps the most horrifying AI video yet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjHtjT7GO1c
I'm sure the many genius-tier devs gathered here can still outperform this software code generator when it counts, but if it's this good at coding, then why would we assume that it can't do other, bureaucratic make-work (ie 80+% of all knowledge work) jobs?
Hard not to see in this the portents of the apocalypse of the knowledge worker
Not a contest I would have entered! Not nice to talk ill of someone’s mother like that, I seen the exchange, no one won.
Thanks for providing yet another reinforcement of my decision to buy an Expedition over a Tahoe. Even if I missed out on sweet 6.2 exhaust note for the twin turbo whine, that data grab is terrifying! I'm amazed they don't share it anonymized, but it does make sense since Tesla does pitch themselves as a "data company" so clearly GM has to follow along.
As for the Porsche (well it's a literal PORKER!), it'll just sell to the same crowd who want to say they drive a PORSCH just like the Panamera Turbo folks. Most of what they're selling are pure Veblen goods for morons at this point, but I'm sure I'll see a bunch of them rolling around Miami.
MotoGP kicks off with some reasonable competition between the sprint and the full length race.
Saturday's sprint had last years' championship runner up and sprint dominator Jorge Martin on a Ducati rode to an easy first place with Brad Binder on his KTM in second (he also did well last year in a number of sprints), and somewhat surprisingly for me Aleix Espargo on the Aprilia coming in third (!). Bagnaia ended up in fourth which was an okay, but not great, start to the weekend.
During the Sunday race Bagnaia was back in form and managed to lead just about the entire way for first place. Jorge Martin battled it out with Brad Binder for second place but couldn't match his pace over the long haul with a couple of errors seeing him manage the ride to third instead of throwing the bike away in a stupid incident which, I thought, showed him maturing as a competitor. Just taking the points instead of trying and pushing too far. This means there's a 3 point spread between first and third going into the next race with Bagnaia at 31, Binder with 29, and Martin at 28.
I'm hoping KTM stays competitive, but Miller's early crash due to cold tires (?) from a strange delayed start sequence means the spotlight and weight is all on Brad.
Pedro Acosta, who has a hype train running moved nowhere in the sprint and learned a valuable lesson about tire management in the full race. He went from 8 -> 9 and worked up to 4th position before it became clear he had used too much tire too early and rapidly fell back through the pack to a 9th place finish.
Marc Marquez finished 5th and 4th riding a year old Ducati and it was, frankly, nice to see him be competitive without risking everything or looking like he was on the absolute limit all the time.
ETA: MotoAmerica ran the Daytona 200 and I watched about half the events.
Newcomer to King of the Baggers, Troy Herfoss (?), immediately looks strong on the Indian but played the race tactics poorly and Kyle Wyman took first in both due to unforced errors. In the last lap of the last race Herfoss looked over his shoulder and took his bike OFF LINE and scrubbed entirely too much speed.
I still don't like the supersport Daytona 200 format though several riders ran out of gas at various points which was good for laughs (not for them).
I haven't caught up on the Super Hooligans but there should be a broader bike variety than last year with a Triumph Triple and an MT-09 both in the field. In the meantime - Indian is walking away with the most points on the factory FTRs again.
Open Thread so:
I’m curious what our resident designer-commenter-Goth Adrian Clarke’s original article on the Rivian R3X was before it was very toned down by the editorial board.
If Mom reads the free ones I imagine you should expect a phone call but I'm guessing this would be one of the more minor offenses you've bothered her with.
Of course Ms Spice is a formerly worldly slut of the first order who only now masquerades as a Lady of the Manor but she must have faced a mountain of pressure to dump Mr Horny. Let this be a lesson to all of us; Do whatever Bernie says.
“…Right there to move his lips up and down the shaft of this profoundly stupid disaster…” That’s just fucking brilliant.
Another mostly procession in Jedda. Happy to see Ferrari best of the rest again with LeClerq’s podium and Bearman’s very impressive debut. Lots of aggression against established drivers. The guy’s got balls.
What the hell is wrong with those RBs? Same engine as the Red Bulls but that chassis appears to be a piece of shit. Curious to see some inside scoop on that.
Elsewhere the INDYCAR season opener in Saint Pete also turned out to be a bit of a procession with Joseph Newgarden doing his best to imitate Max Verstappen by leading most of the race despite several safety car periods bunching up the pack. He just simply walked away on every restart. Young Pado O’Ward did his best to keep Joseph in sight and resisted the temptation to wreck another car, ultimately finishing second just ahead of the other two Penskes. I love to watch this kid drive, and if he’s matured enough to bring it home like this for the rest of the season, he’s got a good shot at the championship.
I doubt 12-15 year old Verstappen could have outraced Vettel! (Yes, yes, I know what you meant). Anyway, I'm not sure why you're dissing him. He did, after all, win the drivers' championship four years in a row, in much more closely-matched cars than Verstappen or Hamilton have had. Babe Ruth being the greatest Yankee doesn't make Lou Gehrig any less great. It was also a completely different era of the sport. Cornering Gs have nearly doubled, pit stop times halved, and the number+precision of parameters the team and driver can monitor and adjust on the fly has gone up a hundred-fold. What would now be considered accurate simulators didn't exist, nor did accurate CFD.
Is the data thing really all that outrageous? How many years now have we been hearing about how cars can/should have "black box" capability to record your driving behavior? Since the '90s? And with Onstar, GM's been poised to hand that data off to third party longer than anyone.
Might as well throw your smartphone away while you're at it, you have no privacy or anonymity anymore. Everything from your politics to your porn preferences are there for the taking.
The last four years have shown what a spinelessly compliant society we are, so don't expect any constructive outrage over this. Meanwhile, some "far-right" politician in Belgium got sentenced to a year in prison for sharing racist memes in a Facebook group. The only outrage over this was that Elon Musk retweeted a post calling this tyrannical. GM telling LexisNexis I like to floor my CT5-V on occasion feels like small ball in comparison.