Wednesday ORT: Princess Crowned, Blaney Wins, Montana, Prelude, The "Outlaw" Sells Out, Throwing Bombs

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it looks the part, at least

By popular demand, Thunderdome: Iran Edition will return tomorrow. We will discuss the current state of affairs, and perhaps gently mock CNN for adding a “THIS IS THE PRICE OF GAS TODAY” graphic on their homepage; in 2022, when the national average was nearly a dollar higher than it is even today, they didn’t seem to have such a graphic available. If you want to participate in Thunderdome, you’ll need to be a paid subscriber.

Alright, let’s get about today’s business.

It’s a race, George, but not as we know it

For once, all the conventional wisdom in the paddock was correct. Mercedes has the fastest car, enough for Kimi Antonelli to haul himself up through the field almost without effort. Ferrari starts strong and runs well. Red Bull is going to be a factor, as was apparent in their one-car qualifying effort. McLaren is on the back foot. Haas is strong, Williams is soft, Aston is in massive trouble, and Cadillac is lapped traffic.

There was some excitement to the racing, certainly, but it’s already apparent that managing power is the key to winning. You won’t see a lot of daring moves at the apex. The power management is so complex that the World Champion ran directly into a shoebox-sized item on track because he was busy dicking around with his steering wheel.

The most insightful thing I’ve read this week about the race comes from a Beehiiv newsletter called “The Commercial Table”. It’s not free to read, but it gets emailed for free — Beehiiv is like an even more brain-damaged Substack — so I’ll just excerpt the highlights:

…when the 2026 power unit regulations were agreed upon in 2022, the conversation happening in the room wasn't about what fans wanted from the cars. It was about what would make the business case viable for Audi to enter as a factory team, what would convince Honda to reverse its confirmed exit, and what architecture would align with the electrification roadmaps that every major manufacturer was legally and commercially obligated to pursue. The three-fold increase in electrical power, the near 50-50 hybrid split, the switch to sustainable fuels — these came out of negotiations with manufacturers about what the next decade of their business would look like. By the time those decisions reached the fan base, they arrived as done deals. The fans found out in 2026 when the cars felt different…

The power unit manufacturer count went from three to five in a single regulatory cycle — the highest since the V8 era. That is a commercially meaningful outcome, built over four years of quiet negotiation, and it has nothing to do with whether the cars look spectacular on a qualifying lap.

What happened this week was that a commercially sound product decision got processed by an audience that had never been told, clearly and directly, that their preferences weren’t the primary input…

It was the sound of an audience realising, or rather feeling without quite articulating, that the product they consume is built for someone else's priorities.

I don’t think any of the above is incorrect, and I understand that manufacturer involvement has traditionally been critical to Formula 1. On the other hand… I keep reading thinkpieces about how the “AI Era” will essentially destroy and fractionalize the audience for scripted media. Long before anyone lets “AI” fly a plane or dispense medication in a hospital, it will be possible to create movie-length features based on a very short prompt. In fact, it’s possible now — but most people don’t want to pay for the compute time.

AI-generated movies and television will do to Hollywood what YouTube did to public access TV. Which is fine with me, by the way. But it will also vastly increase demand for real, authentic, live media experiences. Every sports league will see an uptick in audience as a result. (The fact that everyone’s phone has been forcibly turned into a 24/7 legal casino doesn’t hurt with this, by the way.) A lot of lifetime allegiances will be formed in the next five years. If the Formula 1 media product is compelling enough, it doesn’t need manufacturer participation any more than the Premier League doesn’t really need PUMA to pay for the soccer balls.

If I ran F1, I would turn it into a biofuel league built around a fixed amount of available energy, then let the manufacturers run wild. I would trumpet the idea that new fuel economy strategies will be developed as a result, even if no such thing could possibly happen. Then I’d step aside. I have to think it’s cheaper to develop a new 18,000-rpm ethanol V-8 than it is to build these absurd hybrid systems. There is so much money available from media rights and various human-rights nightmare regimes around the world that you might eventually see 11 teams with 11 different homebuilt engines. Manufacturer involvement is nice but look at all the teams that barely mention their engine now: Red Bull, McLaren, Williams, Haas, Alpine.

Max Verstappen has reportedly confronted F1 management about the new cars being simply awful to drive. The fans are restless. And though Toto Wolff has the best mousetrap, he has stated that he is open to changing the rules in the interest of competition. Ask any pilot: the easiest maneuver to make in the face of dangerous weather is a 180-degree turn. F1 should consider at least putting some pressure on the rudder.

Would you like two tires, or four?

The “Straight Talk Wireless 500” at Phoenix came down to strategy. Christopher Bell’s Camry was the dominant car all day, and when a cascade of “cautions-breed-cautions” yellow flag took it down to just 10 laps left, he decided to take four tires in the expectation that he could come back up from 8th place and win decisively.

Ryan Blaney, on the other hand, put two tires on his Mustang, popped out at the front, and held off a charging Bell to win it by four-tenths of a second. It was the second Penske win of the weekend in an IndyCar/NASCAR doubleheader. He’s now second overall behind Tyler Reddick by a considerable margin, and just ahead of Bubba Wallace by a small one. Reddick is the only driver to finish all four races in the top ten.

The most interesting part of the race was watching Toyota driver Ty Gibbs give his right front tire man, who is also his cousin, no slack on the pit exit:

Much is made of the athletic nature of NASCAR’s modern pit crew; many of them were Division 1 athletes prior to coming over. I don’t think Jackson Gibbs played a college sport, but you can’t say he is anything but a superb athlete.

As if millions of C&C cucks cried out in pain and were suddenly silenced

This will annoy some of you, but I have just about zero patience for wealthy people who evade the consequences of their own voting and political-support decisions. If you support open borders but you live in a gated community and don’t take public transportation, I will clown you every chance I get. And if you vote for the California kleptocracy but then use your wealth and privilege to evade taxes, I will snitch on you immediately. If the mom of three driving a ratted-out Civic to work at In-N-Out has to pay full sales and vehicle taxes out of her $15-an-hour job, then I think you should have to pay full pop for your Carrera GT. If you don’t like it, move to a red state and vote to keep it that way. South Carolina won’t charge you more than $500 on any new-car purchase, by the way.

So while I think that California AG Rob Bonta is a worthless human being who is fighting desperately to uphold racist and discriminatory college admissions policies in California, I fully support his crackdown on people who register luxury cars in Montana and then drive them in California. He’s currently charging 14 people with fraud for registering $20 million worth of vehicles in Montana. His office released a particularly amusing text message:

Another defendant added: “70k saved — I can’t believe the registration lasts for five years — that’s crazy. Stupid California. Paid 3k to own a 600k car for 5 years — lol in Cali that’s like 75k for 5 years. Hella dumb.”

The use of “lol”, “crazy”, and “hella” all in one message makes me think I might personally know the defendant in question, but maybe they’re all like that.

Honestly, I’m surprised that Bonta is doing this. Everyone knows that there are three Californias: the one experienced by the indigent, the one experienced by the average working stiff, and the one experienced by the ultra-wealthy. The state has long permitted the last category to dodge the worst of Californian anarcho-tyranny in exchange for their undying support, to wit: we don’t let the homeless overrun Malibu and you keep voting for La Sombrita.

As with New York City, however, the state of California has somehow managed to spend more money than they can take in by levying outrageous taxes on the biggest local economies in human history, so… the spice must flow, even if some of it is obtained by crushing (let’s hope) a 918 Spyder.

Guess he didn’t make enough money from the porn

If you’re a paid subscriber to ACF, you know a bit more about how Magnus Walker made his fortune than most people do. In that article, I note that

Five years ago, he was reputed to have had a very lucrative contract with Porsche, just to do his “outlaw” thing and try to make the brand a little less lame in the process. Supposedly Porsche got tired of paying him, which left him ass-out to the point where he was willing to do videos for an insurance company.

At some point, he’ll auction his cars and disappear back into the world of moderately wealthy Los Angeles residents, I suppose.

Looks like I was right, again. RM Sotheby’s has put a combined pre-sale valuation of between $1.175 million and $1.555 million on the 17 cars being sold by Walker in “The Outlaw Collection”.

A brief diversion: Nothing in this world is quite as pathetic, IMO, as this “outlaw Porsche” business. I know just one convicted violent felon who street-drove a white Nine Eleven around at triple-digit speeds for most of this century, and his name is not Magnus Walker. Being an “outlaw” is a tough business in every way you can imagine, from the obvious (every traffic stop is a potential execution-by-cop scene in front of your son) to the less-obvious (you are continually consulting an attorney to find out how the law differs for you now). Magnus Walker sold used clothing. He is softer than warm butter and he has about as much “outlaw” status as Kelly Clarkson.

Anyway. Mr. Walker’s one outlaw-ish trait, if some of my former colleagues can be believed, is that he is always spending himself into trouble. So his junk sale — and most of these cars are, more or less, junk — is probably an attempt to address that. It could also reflect an insider-informed belief that we have reached the absolute lurid top of the used-PORSH market. Especially for beat-to-shit examples with Uber-driver mileage and a history of appearing in, ah, questionable media. Here is what I know: If I owned any non-daily-use Porsches, especially water-cooled cars and cars in buy-here-pay-here condition, I would be selling.

And now, a differing opinion on the Prelude

My old club-racing teammate and occasional opponent Brian Makse has been ruffling feathers with a series of videos on the new Honda Prelude. I asked him to offer his opinions here, and he obliged:

Sure, Honda's latest Prelude doesn't have the drivetrain we all wanted, [but] it feels better screwed together than any American- or Canadian-assembled Civic and its interior is finished to a higher standard.

Through my entirely unscientific process, the Prelude revealed itself to be a delightful front driver thanks to its Type R-derived suspension, brakes, and steering. The kinematics are calibrated appropriately for its mission, and Honda has clearly stated that it's a GT, evidenced by GT being the default drive mode.

It's softer than a Civic Type R or Integra Type S, firmer than a Civic Si and, similarly, it's dynamically sharper than an Si and more benign than the Type R or Type S. For anyone proficient with front-drive dynamics, it's responsive and rewarding. The nose tucks in on demand and will happily rotate into a corner on entry.

I was ready to write off the S+ Shift function ("fake gears" as much of the internet calls it) as a gimmick until I explored the Prelude's behavior on my handling loop. There, I learned S+ Shift mimics an ICE's engine braking effect reasonably well so that a driver can use that deceleration to achieve the necessary weight transfer onto the nose to set up the Prelude for corner entry. Someone at Honda clearly cared enough about this feature to finish it right.

Despite most of the internet disagreeing with my conclusions, Honda's turned out a driver's car that's a delight to drive and unique in the market. Like I said on YouTube, the Type R-derived chassis doesn't care where torque comes from, whether it's a turbo, an electric motor, or a team of highly motivated hamsters. What made the Prelude special used to live in the drivetrain, but its character now lives in the chassis.

Brian also noted that the awful acceleration numbers reported by most of the press are a consequence of using the “fake shift mode”. If you just leave it in CVT-normal, it’s about as quick from 0-60 as the H22-powered last-generation Prelude. Which doesn’t feel like progress, given how much everything else has improved, but it’s better than Prius-level power.

It’s obvious to me that Honda’s idea of “What is a Prelude?” is currently closer to the Gen 1 “Quaalude” than to the various feisty cars in the four generations that succeeded it. The original Prelude was a personal luxury car. This one is, too. It is handsome, comfortable, easy to own, and likely to last just about forever. I’d rather have my old Accord V-6, but you already knew that, didn’t you?

Impossible to say who threw the bomb

CNN had to delete that Tweet, but some of the responses are great, with my favorite being: “300 Japanese pilots flew to Hawaii for what could have been a spectacular vacation on a beautiful Sunday morning. Hours later, their lives would change after they bombed and destroyed much of the U.S. fleet and plunged the world into war. Here’s what we know now.”

What do we know, really? Let’s check what Da Mayor had to say:

Read that and tell me it doesn’t unashamedly imply that the “white supremacist” threw the bomb. What actually happened, of course, was that a right-wing influencer was protesting outside Gracie Mansion when Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi ran towards the group, yelled “Allah akbhar!” and tossed a pair of homemade, but incompetently homemade, IEDs at Jake Lang, the influencer in question. Balat and Kayumi, who are both the children of naturalized foreign nationals, told investigators they were inspired by ISIS. Balat reportedly said “This isn't a religion that just stands when people talk about the blessed name of the Prophet. We take action. We take action.”

I kind of feel for Mamdani, to be honest. I doubt he read Dune in his youth, but the Bene Gesserit had something to say about the situation likely to face a man who was explicitly elected to advance the cause of Islam in New York City:

When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movements become headlong, faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thoughts of obstacles and forget the precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it's too late.

As a service to the readers of Avoidable Contact Forever, I have thoroughly investigated the beliefs of ISIS, and found them to contain the following:

• Dogs are banned, cats are encouraged;

• Women can’t vote, can’t participate in public discourse, and have to avoid wearing what Sabrina Carpenter calls “my slutty pajamas”;

• No interest can be charged on any loans you might take out for, say, an A. Lange and Sohne Time Zone 1 in 18k white gold with black face;

• All Hollywood-style sexual deviance is forbidden, but men are permitted multiple wives.

• You can ignore your elected officials, and anything they have to say, if your local religious official is cool with you doing so.

• Every young man gets a stamped-steel AKM with a chance to upgrade to a Valmet rifle if circumstances permit.

All of the above is, uh, obviously repugnant to the American way of life and, uh, should in no way be immediately implemented across the country at the earliest possibly opportunity, may it please the Lord. Anyway, I’m not so sure we should be quick to condemn these young men. They were on the way to enjoying the unusually warm weather! The real problem is the dog-lovers and woman-respecters who were protesting the Mayor! Who threw the bomb? Why, it could have been any of us!