Wednesday O/R/T: Jetta Tea Leaves, Julian Free, Sad Lando
Open to all subscribers
Housekeeping: we are going to have a short guest-post section in today’s piece. Let me know:
a) how you feel about that
b) if you’d like to contribute
Now on to the show
Princess George Is Undone
McLaren now has the fastest car — or at least that’s what the paddock pundits say. George Russell had the best start; I think it would be difficult to overstate the amount of skill, awareness, and bravery required to make a 4th-to-1st move at the first corner in a Formula 1 car.
In the end however, Max Verstappen is still the best driver in the sport. With three more laps, the finishing order might have been quite different — or maybe Verstappen was holding a little bit in reserve. Thoughts on the race, in no particular order:
There was a big kerfluffle about a mean email sent by someone to someone else, alleging that Lewis Hamilton was being “sabotaged”. Since the UK is now literally Airstrip One, the police got involved. Clearly there’s some pro-Sir-Lewis sentiment still out there. Is that why George got a long pitstop and a tire strategy that was so bad even Jolyon Palmer noticed? Imagine taking the lead at the start of the race then getting double-fucked by your team back down to your qualifying position. He should be furious. This was on top of some qualifying drama in which Russell clearly felt impeded by Sir Lewis, which reduced his 2024 record to 8-2 against the senior driver.
Sergio Perez should be racing F4 Academy, against the girls. Danny Ric should be racing in regional Spec Miata. And as much as I hate to admit it… it might be time to send Logan Sergeant to IndyCar.
Much respect to Lando Norris for consistently demanding a race-win-focused strategy. He almost got it done, too.
I don’t think Verstappen’s fourth championship is anything close to assured at this point. 14 races left; if Lando beats Max most of the time he’ll be the WDC.
Surely Alpine’s big bounce in the results had nothing to do with the return of Flavio Briatore. Right. RIGHT?
Guest Section: On Italy
Reader Galahad Threepwood chimes in:
Giorgia Meloni was carried to the prime ministership of Italy to a significant degree by what might be called, for lack of a better term, a backlash-backlash.
Readers will recall that in the summer of 2022, she delivered an electrifying speech at a conservative event in Spain. In terms of aggressive defiance of regnant rainbow-flag orthodoxies, the woman has distinguished herself. "Yes to the natural family; no to the LBGT lobby! Yes to natural sexuality; no to gender ideology! Yes to the culture of life; no to the abyss of death!" And more like that.
Admirable clarity, even if you strongly disagree.
What happened next is that essentially all of left-wing media went into its hive-mind, hysterical, denunciation-and-slander routine. People who have never heard of the woman, and might even have trouble locating Italy on a globe, decided without a moment of reflection that Meloni was nothing less than a fascist witch.
So that was the backlash.
But the backlash-backlash, in turn, generated a more subdued and less vocal, but numerically gigantic wave of support for her. All over English-speaking Twitter were clips of speeches in Italian (sometimes with splendid Chesterton epigrams thrown in.) In sum, the backlash-backlash proved momentous.
To many other assets and circumstances, she added this backlash-backlash clout, and cruised to victory to become Italy's first female Prime Minister.
That was 2022.
Since then, the rest of Europe has seen its politics go on an epic bender. Molly and booze and snorting coke off the bare anatomy of call girls.
Germany is a mess. The Dutch establishment got smacked on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper. France is headed for a truly insane election. The UK Prime Minister appears to be walking into an ass-kicking of biblical proportions.
So il Prima Ministra Italiana, far from being a fascist witch, instead looks like the most stable and prestigious leader in all of Europe. This underprivileged daughter of a deadbeat commie, by embracing defiant normalcy, has made herself the Empress of Europe.
Ah, but a kindly Empress -- perfectly willing to assist, with courteous discretion, the senile American wannabe emperor.
Maybe Trump should be looking for his running mate among the ranks of NFL kickers.
I’d still be nervous about getting on that plane
By the time you read this, Julian Assange should be a legally free man, having signed a plea deal with the United States for his time served in a British prison. Assange requested to have his court hearing in Saipan, which is a United States territory in the Pacific (WWII nerds will remember it), citing its proximity to his home country of Australia and his unwillingness to set foot in the United States proper.
Already the era of WikiLeaks seems like a distant memory, a relic of a time when the global Internet was thought to be an advance in human freedom rather than the bones on which the modern panopticon is built. Regardless of how you view Julian Assange, you have to agree that we will never see his like again.
The fine art of reading intention in the press release
Volkwagen’s press release for the 2025 Jetta appears to suggest that there will no longer be a base-model manual-transmission version. The price of the automatic version will be slightly reduced, perhaps as a compensation. In today’s inflation environment, it’s remarkable when the price of a new car doesn’t bump, so kudos to VW. On the other hand, of course, how much can it cost to slap these things together in Mexico? Remember when the Jetta was the German-made alternative to a Pennsylvanian or even Brazilian Golf?
The funny thing is that VW doesn’t say the manual-transmission car is gone. They just imply it. After years of dealing with automotive PR departments, I’d say this is 50% likely to be a masterstroke of Bene Gesserit ambiguity and 50% the completely accidental result of letting the newest hire write the release.
Speaking of cheap new cars: Brother Bark just bought his 16-year-old son a Kia Forte GT-Line sedan, likely judging it to be a better long-term bet than a base Jetta. Readers: Would you have made the same choice? For the record, I have no plans to indulge my son with anything nearly as nice as a Kia Forte GT-Line, which is uncomfortably close to a luxury car in my opinion. Chances are “The Commander” will end up with a pre-crashed Honda Accord out of the current inventory… but I will listen to any advice you have to give!
So on the topic of first car stories.......
Back in my teenage years I had strong envy for anybody whose parents bought them a car in general. The thought of getting a new car was an utterly foreign concept. My parents were against the whole concept of me having a car. They had huge fears that their car-nut kid would slack off on school or school activities in order to get a job to support any car I could come up with. So I was forbidden to buy a car. My first vehicle didn't happen until my freshman year of college when they gave me dad's 15 year old 1975 Mazda Rotary Engine pickup. The same one he repeatedly would use to get a load of barkdust or manure in the morning when he knew I had a date that evening. Dad has a sense of humor and knows how to get a kid to wash his truck. Conveniently the truck became mine sometime after he had blown the engine in it. Their thought was that I would sell the dead thing and use the money for school. Instead $550 of leftover financial aid money turned into delivery of a used replacement engine. Engine swap took much longer than the weekend I had envisioned, but it ran eventually and was my car for the next three years.... until I blew the replacement engine. Sold it for $350 to a guy who towed it away with a 1977 Mazda Rotary Engine pickup. He apparently installed engine #3 as I passed it on the freeway a couple years later.
I do think a Korean car makes sense if you're gonna buy something new off the lot for a 16 year old. They may blow up more than others, but they have the best warranty in the game and they're still pretty cheap to buy and run. The Commander's Honda is cooler though...
Somehow real life keeps getting in the way of watching Formula Drift live streams this year. Previous rounds have overlapped with my own drift days, working on a newly acquired 1964 Imperial Crown 4dr, or in the case of this weekend, cruising around Detroit with a baker’s dozen old cars with about 2 people in each car. I’ve previously mentioned a friend who has an old house on Grand Blvd and recently bought an old filling station on Mack. This weekend was the second cruise he’s organized through the city in what is becoming an annual event. He led the pack in his ‘26 Dodge Bros, which apparently didn’t like the pressure of leading. It vapor locked, leaked fuel, and backfired its tailpipe off all day long (literally, it blew the tailpipe off on Woodward in Campus Martius). The day before and the day after, it ran just fine. I failed to get my Imperial roadworthy in time, so I once again piloted his 1953 Chrysler New Yorker. The NYer is a patinaed tank of a car with manual brakes, manual steering with a gigantic wheel and aggressive self-centering, a 331 hemi under the hood, and a very strange but effective transmission. It’s basically a 2 speed automatic with “low” and “drive” ranges, effectively making it a “four speed,” but it still has a clutch pedal that must be depressed to change ranges and to select reverse. There is no “park” position so you park it in neutral or in gear with the parking brake, which is a band that grabs a drum on the driveshaft. The gear pattern is as follows: R,L,N,D, with those letters. To back the car out, you first apply the brakes, return the parking brake by pulling the T handle out then twisting it counter-clockwise before pushing it back into the dash, push in the clutch, move the shift lever to L, then pull back towards yourself to unlock the gate into R, and continue moving the lever until you feel the reverse dog engage thru the linkage.Then, with your foot STILL ON THE BRAKE, release the clutch. The engine will bog slightly and the car will work against the brakes as the clutch is engaged, but the fluid coupling will then take over and allow the engine to stay running while the car stays stationary. Then you simply lift off the brakes and ease into the throttle. The fluid coupling starts transmitting torque to the wheels, and you begin to roll (which you will need to do before having any steering capability). Once you’ve maneuvered into a place where you can proceed in a forward direction, you stop with the brakes, clutch in once again, pull the shift lever down to D (waiting for the gearbox to sync up which can be felt thru the lever), once again staying on the brakes while letting the clutch out, before finally setting off in normal automatic fashion. Getting the automatic shift to occur however, is another quirk of this transmission; after accelerating to say, 30-35mph, lift off the throttle and wait… until you feel the trans make its way into the next gear. This usually takes about 2-3 seconds - slow ones. Then you may resume acceleration or speed maintenance. Other cars we had in our varied and eclectic group were 2 Model Ts, an absolute stunner of a ‘56 Bel Aire, a sweet custom Dodge B van, an E30, and even a little blue Trabant 601! We were a hilarious and charming sight to behold and be-heard with our honking horns, squeaking suspensions, and modified exhausts. Everyone loved us! I did not see one frown all day from any of our spectators or from any in our group. I’m bummed I didn’t get to drive my own car despite having one now (the E36 was NOT an option for this event), but the lady and I still had a great time with great friends.
With the actually fun and interesting story out of the way, here is your Formula Drift New Jersey (FDNJ) recap! I actually did watch some of ProSpec this time, because it was on Friday. I was mainly watching to see my boy Cory Talaska finally put it all together and make it into the Great 8! He was knocked out by the eventual winner, Connor O’Sullivan, but only after forcing a one-more-time battle. Cory’s lead runs were excellent, and his entry technique and style was absolutely PEAK! I’m very proud of him and all my close friends who work on his team; they did a kick ass job and showed what they can really do this weekend! Runner-up to O-Sully was Amanda Sorenson, putting her name in the history books as FD’s first female podium finisher. I have to say, her driving has come a LONG way and she really did perform well. Little brother Brandon didn’t do so well in Pro however, getting knocked out in Top 16 by insurance defrauder and game-playing Taylor Hull. I’m getting ahead of myself here (partly rushing because I didn’t expect the O/T to come out in the morning hours today), so let’s start our Pro report with their Seeding 16 results. Our machine gun Cadillac driving Kentucky man Jonathan Hurst took 2nd overall here, after a very intense battle against ProSpec champ Dmitriy Brutskiy. To get there, he first retired RTR rookie Ben Hobson (who has yet to make any impression beyond “wow” this year), Brazil’s favorite C7 driving cowboy Joao Barion, and BMW driving, beard wielding Andy Hatley. Brutskiy’s path to the Seeding final was paved by Derek Madison (bummer cause D Mad’s S14 was the first pro level car I got to ride in 4 years ago), Mike Power (who took out FD pensioner Vaughn Gittin Jr), and then Frederico Sceriffo and his Ferrari 599, “Fiorella.”
As I said earlier, I didn’t watch any of the Pro battles. So here is a summary of where all out regular characters ended up:
Hurst beat Alec Robbins in Top 32 before being eliminated himself in Top 16 by Chris Forsberg. Sceriffo and Fiorella earned a losing battle against Backchis in Top 32, but at least they made the show this time. Backchis ended up clearing a path to the finals through Turek and Gushi. Conor Shanahan once again showed his insane chasing and transition skills, but was knocked out by Aasbo in Top 16. YouTube superstar Adam LZ then dispatched the 3 time champ in the Great 8 on his way to the 3rd spot on the podium, proving you can still have a competitive car with a front radiator. James Deane’s battles really were like leveling up thru a video game. Starting with the easily handled Kyle Mohan, followed by Rome CP, then Forsberg, then Dylan Hughes, before finally taking on Odi Backchis for the win; and win Deane did!
We are now at the halfway point in the season. Anything can still happen, but with a 74 point lead over Odi, James really seems to have a comfy shot to become the first 4 time FD champion. Aasbo is in 3rd trailing by 114 points, and Simon Olsen is till holding fourth despite not turning a wheel all weekend.
I think it would be cool to see James win a 4th title, but only because it’s been 5 years since the big man won his 3rd. I’d be really excited by Olsen coming out and upsetting more of the top dogs, and I just feel bad for Ryan Turek because he’s been doing this shit for just as long as Forsberg and Gittin Jr but has still never taken it all. FDSTL (St Louis) is next on July 20th.