The rich Russian peasant in the village has 2 cows. Everyone else has one. They all complain to the commissar that it isn't fair. The commissar asks "So, you all want another cow?" No, we want you to kill one of his cows so we all have the same.
I have a buddy who is a real estate developer. He is in his late 30s and has been remarkably successful thus far; i.e., he has “fuck you” money and can do and say as he pleases.
He made a LinkedIn post recently that said: “At ________ Alternative Investments [his firm], we are “all-in” on DEI. That’s Debt and Equity Investments, for the avoidance of doubt.”
Open up an ESG certification agency, staff it with people who have all the proper DEI credentials, at least on paper, but are anti-woke, and provide "DEI training" for companies that need to comply with ESG stuff but aren't on board with it. How can anyone call that a scam when DEI/ESG is a grift to begin with?
"We engaged Gramsci DEI Consultants, to provide inclusive training to our employees."
i'm meeting an old high school buddy tonight who has worked his entire adult life as a consulatant quite successfully. he got on the esg bandwagon about a year ago and is doing great. it pays to drink the koolaid.
I am wrapping up the first piece of an “ESG” deal this month and also socializing an actual ESG deal that has significant merit but has some significant hurdles to overcome in terms of incentivizing various parties within a bank to find a way to collaborate on a mutually beneficial arrangement.
And that's how the average Lemons participant feels -- it's a ninety-minute HOLY SHIT SCREAMING MONTAGE -- which is why cheap-car endurance people are so militant about their sport.
But after a certain amount of time you can sit and listen to your favorite music, or even an audiobook, during an endurance race. Even on a bike, although you have more physicality there so that's less likely to happen.
Music is the only way to go! I used to wear wired earbuds way back when! But once as I was leaving the pits at like 2am, my friend called... And I didnt hang up. It was such a good session. we were laughing so hard. V12 POWAR! Until a neon dumped its coolant and I followed it off and after big hit, landed on top the tire wall with a huge BMW 750IL. My friend was like DUUUUUUUDEEEEEE you ok???????????
Yeah but I have no idea where I am. All I can see is sky. Im like on top of tree or something. Seriously. It was so dark and I hit so hard and I cant see anything but sky. I dont know. I guess I'll open the door. Ohhhh it's caved in bad. right to the seat. hmmm. I'lll loosen my belts.... Oh... dude Im like 6' up. On a tire wall! yeah, the whole car. flat on top of the wall.. No I didn't hit it. I hit that little car in the field and sort of landed here? I guess? Not sure. Wait... someones trying to talk to me...
Yeah... Im good. Hook me up and pull me off!!!!!!!
Yeah, hey, I should go. And like be respectful to safety rescue dudes. But my friend was like F that! I want to know if you can drive back to the pits!
ok. fine. Here we go! Ok Im down. Cranking. in gear. And.....Away I go!!!! OMG dude it's fine! like drives straight too!!!!! Heading to the pits. later dude!
They should make the drivers dial into a party line and take criticism all race. Let them explain if they want. I would so watch that!
Bill, just wanted you to know I’m a big fan of your escapades and writing, and you inspired me and another friend to off-road race a cheap and beat to shit beetle in class 5 at a MORE race while we were getting our MBA. It was the most fun ever. We finished dead last and had the most fun of anyone there. Thanks for the inspiration and harping the power of just “buying a book on what you need to learn.” Long love the rally e30
See, you can't have INTERESTING racing, with vehicles at the edge of technology. It'd be about the machines, devoid of the bullshit human drama and photo finishes the sanctioning bodies deem essential in order to get the audience watching.
Plus, it'd be legitimately DANGEROUS - 400-mph, 8g, compression-injury-launch-and-detached-retina-braking dangerous.
What you're talking about is a "Formula Zero" and while there would be no shortage of young white men ready to die in it -- maybe even some of the wheelie-riding brothers, too -- no corporation would touch it.
I can't... especially after the stories of calling the wrong emergency contact because the rider's dog tag was so badly bent the stewards misread the number on it. But the other guy died too, so things worked out in the end.
I recall reading somewhere about a similar thing happening to Indycar. The cars were so fast and made so much downforce that a driver could only really survive the G forces for about 5 laps. They tried to fix it, but if you put a restrictor on the turbo, it'd choke and sputter. If you put smaller wings on it, the car became wildly unstable.
Can't remember what the solution was but if I can find the post I'll link it here.
I'm in the camp of "crank up the power and tear the wings off" school of thought to make racing interesting.
Texas 2001. CART had to cancel the race because during practice drivers were completely fogging out and on the edge of passing out. Gigantic failure by CART in preparing for their first race at this new facility largely blamed on Bobby Rahal. This was the same weekend that the worst racing movie ever made premiered. I consider this the moment CART lost the war and began it's slow, miserable end.
And that's why they added the bumper car stuff to the races, because no one's allowed to push to the edge anymore, so they had to do SOMETHING to keep people watching.
Is it too much to ask for the cars to be less complex? I'd rather have naturally aspirated V10s instead of the hybrid whatevers now. I also don't understand the purpose of all the mods done to the Garage 56 NASCAR. If it's not competing against anything, why bother making it more competitive?
Modified street cars racing for 24 hours might be neat.
I want to see what sort of monster some Doc Brown wannabe would build to win a race.
Like the opening of the "Quantum Leap" series pilot where Dean Stockwell is driving through the desert at like 400 mph in a Testarossa with front-and-rear warp coils.
I suppose I should have specified that I wanted something closer to stock car with a cage and some other modifications (isn't that a GT car?), less like a GT car. Half the excitement would be trying to figure out which car is even competitive!
The other half would be sliding around on DOT legal street tires trying to find out what part breaks first.
I think the point of the G56 car was to show what the potential for a NASCAR road course series might be in Europe. And judging by the response, there's some potential.
And also, perhaps inadvertently, to give NASCRAP fans some bread and circus entertainment. Multiple members of that fanbase told me that the NASCAR was “beating” the GTE cars!
I have to say I've never found being part of AER endurance races boring, but that's entirely due to the teams you've put together. It's always fun seeing everyone. I also enjoyed watching the team in the adjacent garage at Mid-O spend the better part of a weekend making one E30 engine out of two (or was it three?) and getting the car finished in time to make the last lap of the race.
Racing adjacent; this morning I learned from a Mark Hughes tweet about sax player Peter King's Ayrton Senna tribute album "Tamburello" released in 1994 by John Miles' Miles Music. Apparently King was once an aerodynamicist at Vanwall.
As a super casual race fan, BOP never made sense to me. Either make building the car part of the competition like f1, or make a spec series. I watch F1 to see the whole spectacle of it and the crazy tech, and I watch MX5 cup to see more close racing in one 45 minute race than the whole f1 season.
BOP allows you to watch a grid of, say, GT3-class cars from a variety of manufacturers compete equitably (or close to it). Otherwise, how would a Lexus or a BMW M3 compete straight up against a McLaren 720S? Or a Ferrari 296? Or a Lambo Huracan?
Hearing people at work all week discuss how "Ferrari is back!!!11!!1!!" makes me insane. They don't have any knowledge of how the BoP system works or about how the Toyotas got shafted in the name of entertainment.
Having the Ferrari win is good for ratings and bringing a certain crowd to the races.
Writing this as a die hard Ferrari fan for some reason this victory feels hollow.
He is in an abusive relationship with Ferrari. He LOVES Ferrari, perhaps more than anyone else who has driven for the brand since Enzo died (yes, Alesi and Fisi included).
But he wants to have a title tilt against Max; how to achieve that goal?
Ferrari under the cost cap is truly adrift, a consequence of (1) Maranello’s geographic isolation from the UK’s Motorsport Valley (Oxfordshire), (2) poor leadership from the top (Elkann and Vigna), and (3) spaghetti culture.
If Ferrari really wanted to return to the top they should’ve pursued some of the following (perhaps they did):
Hire Brawn as CTO
Hire Vettel as team principal OR
Hire Horner as team principal (they tried, per Marko)
Hire Gerhard Berger in the Lauda / Marko role (Austrians only, clearly)
Fire Inaki Rueda and bring Ruth Buscombe “home”; or hire Hannah Schmitz from RBR
Advocate for higher cost cap (all teams are profitable now)
Be willing to open a satellite office in the UK
And most crucially of all: Scuderia Ferrari’s Team Principal (Vasseur at present) reports directly and exclusively to John Elkann
They can make the same complaint that Toyota - the team that notched up 5 Le Mans “victories” against privateers operating on a shoestring budget - did about BOP: “We failed to win because of BOP. This is political!”
MotoGP sees Ducati dominance continue at Mugello (admittedly their home track). KTM is just on the verge of being competitive at more tracks, but hasn't quite gotten their chassis there yet; certainly the motor is capable with a new MotoGP speed record being set at around 226MPH.
Honda continues to struggle with even the Kalex chassis riders wrecking out repeatedly over the weekend and injuring two riders with bad crashes. They'll need to be back at the drawing board because what they've got is not working whatsoever for any of the four riders. Yamaha, as well, continues to struggle even with Quartararo's bike set back to it's 2021 settings.
Jorge Martin continues to shine in the sprints and is now coming on in the main events as well. Bagnaia must have been on something for the sprint and race as he was riding on a broken ankle from contact three weeks ago and yet took first in both events!
You said it. I was timed at 130 on the back straight at Pocono years ago on a GPz 550 that kept bouncing off the rev limiter. I can’t imagine adding another 100 mph on top of that.
Yamaha went all in on the engine and made functionally no changes to the chassis other than to make the new motor fit.. Both riders say that rideability and feel have been sacrificed for the sake of power, so they are acutely uncomfortable on the bike. Not likely to lead to improved results or the re-signing of their riders. Honda has just been painful to watch. At this point I think all of the non-Ducati riders would be willling to lose the CF aero bits if they could gain a measure of stability and control. Which means it won't happen until someone is badly hurt or worse.
I think having MotoGP stand out as the absolute bleeding edge where prototyping and testing is occurring is a draw to the sport, but I can understand why not everyone would feel the same way.
It isn't just that they're the premiere riders - they're on the nuttiest machinery available.
Definitely a valid point, and one made by Kevin Cameron all the time. It’s a tough one, to be sure. Where is the line drawn? They’ve had spec electronics for years. I conveniently allow myself to ignore that.
I feel the same about F1. I would like to see a return to a single element front wing, extending no wider than the insides of the front tires— no end plates. No “barge boards”, etc. If I’m honest, all this likely has more to do with aesthetics than anything else. When aero was based on assumption, the results were often beautiful— once it became data driven; stuff got ugly. Case in point (and speaking of Le Mans), I have long thought the most beautiful machine ever was the Ferrari 330 P4. Science doesn’t come up with that.
Pecco seems to be hitting his stride; but I thought that the case at the end of last year, too— before some of the gaffs this year.
If Marquez (the “real” one) doesn’t podium in Germany… Honda has to get on top of this, yesterday.
It almost looks like Fabio has given up. That might be off base; but is he thinking “I don’t want to end up in the hospital repeatedly like Marc, trying to drag this dog to the front”? Hell, Franky got better results.
FP2 today in Germany, MM93 gave his Honda the finger after it almost launched him skyward.
Then he destroyed Zarco’s Duc after a lowside. And blamed Zarco for being there! I guess he thinks everyone should know to stay completely away from him as he overrides that recalcitrant thing. Look out, here he comes!!!
A few weeks ago I received a double issue of Road & Track. I do not subscribe so it must have come from some mailing list (ACF? ... nah) to drum up subscriptions. The cover noted Vol. 16 LE MANS and pictured the ex-Whittington Kremer 935 that won LeMans in '79. This gem was a curated group of 16 articles from the first LeMans in '23 through a hamb-fisted test of the Glickenhaus SCG 007 at COTA. Also Included was a history of the Rolex Daytona (the watch), "Brake Dance" about the oversize drums on the '53 LeMans Cunningham C-5R, the '76 race where the Frances took a couple of NASCAR stockers, a great look at the '64 winning 250LM (from the Indy museum), a look at the 3 new Hybrids ... the Cad, the Ferrari and the Porsche, and more interesting articles. A handful of ads, stunning photography and period photos ... a wonderful reimagining of the classic Road & Track. I caught the first and last 2 hrs on M/T and was entertained. Certainly helped by the come from 2 laps down win of the Vette before it's put out to pasture. No point on the NASCAR Camaro ... they did it because they could and it was cool.
Have you subscribed to any related publications in the past? Someone in publishing should correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's called garbit circ.
Sounds like a far more interesting issue than they've had as of late. I guess I'll keep an eye out for it but perhaps it won't make it to the bookstore rack.
Generally, I'll agree. Sometimes, though, I'll find something I like. In the current issue, A.J. Baime has an interesting short piece on the '64 Mustang Pace Car and all the work Holman Moody did to it to make it pace car-worthy. Some issues back, someone wrote an interesting article on John Paul Sr. and some of his escapades. But yeah, I don't get to pick up a monthly copy and read Side Glances anymore.
I think if you really want to make endurance racing fun to watch, the only way to do it is to reduce the durability of the cars. Maximum diameter of the wire for valve springs at 70% of normal, top gear is missing a tooth, oil filters forbidden and everybody gets a handful of sand in the crankcase. Goal being that the cars should be able to finish the race, but only if not continuously abused.
There’s an outfit called Air Combat USA that used to travel around the country with a pair of Marchetti SF 260s.
They would take you up (along with their highly qualified safety pilots) and let you try to shoot the other guy down. Each plane had a laser aimed to the front, and a laser detector mounted to the rear to detect any successful firing passes.
I did it a couple of times and would definitely have died trying to win those completely meaningless pretend dogfights. I G-LoC’d myself a couple of times and nearly every battle ended up at the assigned hard deck altitude.
It was probably the single most enjoyable thing I’ve ever done.
Lower the minimum weight, go back to early 2000s dimensions, get rid of the rev limit and up the crash test. Bring back refueling. 1 engine per weekend.
With the budget cap the title competitive cars need to finish, but if you are farther back you can turn up the wick and try to make up places without penalties the following race.
I have been watching top level motorsport since 1998 or so; that was the year I become a fervent fan of both Formula 1 and Le Mans. I had the good fortune to attend the inaugural Petit Le Mans in the early autumn of that year, which occasioned the opportunity to see the Le Mans-winning Porsche 911 GT1-98 (the famous mid-engined “911” prototype in Mobil 1 livery) both compete and - later in the race - take flight. My father and I saw the infamous backflip and assumed - in the pre-social media days - that the driver (Yannick Dalmas) had been badly hurt, or worse. Fortunately, he walked away.
In the earlier days, it was difficult to follow Le Mans, especially as our cable package in remote, rural Appalachia did not include Speedvision. Now, however, things are quite different. You can stream the full 24 hours commercial free. Which I do every year, save for 2018 when I was there to watch Porsche’s “Pink Pig” win the GTE Pro class while guzzling Cristal and noshing on Ox Tartare with Wolfgang Porsche.
I watched about 20 hours of this year’s Grand Prix of Endurance and Efficiency. Obviously, I don’t find it boring! I look forward to Le Mans all year, just as many look forward to The Masters or other sporting events. I even watched the hours of pre-race practice and qualifying with rapt attention.
I thought the BOP was unimpeachable - all of the factory Hypercar efforts had opportunities to lead the race overall on merit. Whereas the other OEMs brought two cars (Ferrari, Toyota, Peugeot) or three cars (Cadillac), Porsche brought four cars (three factory, one privateer). Unfortunately for Porsche, their new 963 proved to be slow, fragile, and operated by a subpar partner in Penske (for the factory cars).
Regarding BOP as a philosophy for managing competition: without BOP, there would be no sports car racing. There is not enough interest in the sport to open up the rule book and allow competitors to run what they brung. It would kill the sport dead swiftly. Ironically, the BOP-free pinnacle of motorsport is Formula 1, which remains Euro-centric culturally. The egalitarian impulse of BOP took off in the land of the free and found favor in the WEC. The top class of Le Mans was BOP-free as recently as 2017.
On Jack’s point about the cars being slower around the Circuit de la Sarthe than they were in previous years: sanctioning bodies carefully manage top speed and outright lap times for many reasons. Formula 1 routinely makes efforts to slow down the cars for safety (and tire limitations). NASCAR has run restrictor plates at Superspeedways for decades. The Circuit de la Sarthe is, fundamentally, a street circuit, so safety (and insurance) are considerations, especially given the closing speeds between top class prototypes driven by ex-Formula 1 drivers and slower GT cars driven by prosperous dentists or Dollywood heirs. In the rain. At night.
I’ve been following racing since the June 1961 issue of Road & Track with Ritchie Ginther in the shark nose Ferrari on the cover. Later, Competition Press and Autoweek kept me up to date. I also remember grainy, b&w Telstar coverage of Monaco sometime in the sixties and the one week-delayed, hour-long summary of the 1967 Le Mans 24 on ABC’s Wide World of Sports.
So, yeah, racing is easier to access today. I watched most of the 100th anniversary on Motor Trend TV+ until the internet went down in my neighborhood and I had to run out to Panera to watch the finish!
FWIW, the first race I attended was the 1969 Bryar, NH Trans Am in my brand-new Dodge Dart 340 GTS and the most recent was the IMSA/WEC Sebring doubleheader, staying for five days... the longest I’ve ever spent at a race track. I was also at the 1975 Le Mans where the Calder BMW made its only race appearance. The photos I took there generated several drawings that R&T published.
And here I sit typing this on my phone at 3:00 am due to yet another power outage. It’s a Central Florida thing. 😡
I plug it frequently on here - and I know that JB is personally not a fan of the publication - but I find The Road Rat to be what Road & Track once was, and then some.
It’s not cheap - think of it as a coffee table book that is published quarterly in softbound format - but it is a tremendous “magazine.”
The struggle is getting OEMs involved without BOP (in the context of non-Formula 1 four-wheeled motorsport).
I haven’t seen viewing figures yet for this year’s Le Mans, but the crowd was certainly large compared to the past (325K reported), and there was much more coverage of the event on automotive and motorsport related websites. That was because Ferrari and Porsche and Cadillac and Peugeot came to compete against Toyota and the privateers. And bear in mind that the vast majority of people who are aware of this year’s Le Mans outcome maybe saw a headline somewhere, or saw it on Twitter, or Instagram, or Facebook, or clips on YouTube, or caught a few hours of the race. What they know is that Ferrari won, and that Ferrari beat Toyota, Porsche, Cadillac, and Peugeot in doing so. Only the diehard nerds even know about BOP. The slightly diminished prestige of a BOP-driven victory is surely outweighed by the substantially lower cost of entry for the OEM competitors.
Only in Formula 1 is there sufficient exposure to justify involvement in the sport without a credible opportunity to win at every event. Red Bull, which is obviously NOT a carmaker, has won every race this year. That means that Ferrari, Mercedes, and Alpine (Renault) must justify NOT winning a single race to their respective Boards of Directors, who all appear to understand the value of being in Formula 1 (even if they’re just “making up the numbers”).
I started going with car friends in 2012, and the group has grown and aged / matured to the point that we won’t go without a nice itinerary:
-Lunch at Porsche HQ OR Dinner in the cigar friendly private club at Chops on Thursday
-Stay at Chateau Elan or a nearby Airbnb (or sometimes more piecemeal hotel rooms; lodging has become less important as the impulse to overindulge has waned)
-OEM Hospitality (Porsche or Cadillac) for Friday and Saturday
-Golf cart(s)
-Chateau Elan Bar Friday night and Saturday post-race
it was pretty cool to see the garage 56 car go around indeed. I didnt have much else to do on my weekend shift but LeMans proved to be good fun with 1/3 of the grid retiring
the constant slow zones were annoying though. im excited to see hypecar next year as bmw, lamborghini, and alpine join the mix
You want "LeMans" the movie, not LeMans the race. Stoic, hard, tough, gritty. I doubt that back then that "LeMans" the movie was LeMans the race even then.
We want to be the hero drivers. "Jack, you need to break the Ferraris, that is your job", says the team boss with a WWII scar on his face that he got on the Russian front. He had to eat his boots there to stay alive. He knows what tough is. Don't let him down. So, you put you put your kerchief and googles on and nod your head. You. Know. What. To. Do. When you break in the 20th hour, you go sack out until the end. You attend the ceremony. Your sister car wins. The winning drivers nod your way and give you a thumbs up. You are satisfied for a job well done because you are a team player.
Hey, I love Veuve Cliquot, so by the transitive properties that apparently make dentists cool when they buy 911s and Rolex Daytonas I must also be cool.
Sorry, it’s the Sophia Loren lookalikes banging your to death that makes you cool. The champagne and caviar are just there to nourish you while you give it your all.
There's this attitude, to which I DO NOT subscribe, that states that a car-themed TV show or movie is "Good" in direct relation to how closely it resembles a fly-on-the-wall documentary or how-to instructional video.
According to this belief, "bad" movies have stylized portrayals of cars & driving, or take artistic liberties with actual vehicle operation or driving techniques for the sake of the story.
I'm also okay with CGI, provided it's done well and also provided it's used for things that'd be too dangerous or expensive to do in real life, or for experimental/prototype vehicles that don't actually exist - skycars, transforming vehicles, etc.
All of this means that I'm not a Real Car Guy, or course.
"Bad" movies are like the Stallone "Driven". All I can remember of it is upshifting, upshifting, upshifting...... in areas of the track that no one would do in real life. "Hmm, he's in 10th gear now in the short quarter mile straight and he's been on the straight for 40 seconds." At the same time Stallone is in the car and says over the radio "Next pit stop Micky, CUT ME!!!!".
balance...etc. is beyond loathsome...it's the 'political/sociological equity' of motor racing. ptui!
i have no idea who/what that is
And free to read, if you have a moment!
https://archive.org/stream/HarrisonBergeron/Harrison%20Bergeron_djvu.txt
Thanks for sharing that. I've read alot of Vonnegut, but missed that. Scarey.
"Equity".
The rich Russian peasant in the village has 2 cows. Everyone else has one. They all complain to the commissar that it isn't fair. The commissar asks "So, you all want another cow?" No, we want you to kill one of his cows so we all have the same.
Every time I see the word "equity" outside of real estate finance it makes me die a little bit on the inside.
I have a buddy who is a real estate developer. He is in his late 30s and has been remarkably successful thus far; i.e., he has “fuck you” money and can do and say as he pleases.
He made a LinkedIn post recently that said: “At ________ Alternative Investments [his firm], we are “all-in” on DEI. That’s Debt and Equity Investments, for the avoidance of doubt.”
Open up an ESG certification agency, staff it with people who have all the proper DEI credentials, at least on paper, but are anti-woke, and provide "DEI training" for companies that need to comply with ESG stuff but aren't on board with it. How can anyone call that a scam when DEI/ESG is a grift to begin with?
"We engaged Gramsci DEI Consultants, to provide inclusive training to our employees."
i'm meeting an old high school buddy tonight who has worked his entire adult life as a consulatant quite successfully. he got on the esg bandwagon about a year ago and is doing great. it pays to drink the koolaid.
I am wrapping up the first piece of an “ESG” deal this month and also socializing an actual ESG deal that has significant merit but has some significant hurdles to overcome in terms of incentivizing various parties within a bank to find a way to collaborate on a mutually beneficial arrangement.
"How do you feel about DEI?"
I was more of a Hendrick guy, personally.
That’s exactly how I responded to him!
Well said!
LeMans is boring AF so I echo the point. Watch MotoGP! Asian drivers wreck there too!
I did a couple of motorcycle endurance races thirty years ago, at Nelson Ledges, I believe. I was too scared to be bored.
And that's how the average Lemons participant feels -- it's a ninety-minute HOLY SHIT SCREAMING MONTAGE -- which is why cheap-car endurance people are so militant about their sport.
But after a certain amount of time you can sit and listen to your favorite music, or even an audiobook, during an endurance race. Even on a bike, although you have more physicality there so that's less likely to happen.
Music is the only way to go! I used to wear wired earbuds way back when! But once as I was leaving the pits at like 2am, my friend called... And I didnt hang up. It was such a good session. we were laughing so hard. V12 POWAR! Until a neon dumped its coolant and I followed it off and after big hit, landed on top the tire wall with a huge BMW 750IL. My friend was like DUUUUUUUDEEEEEE you ok???????????
Yeah but I have no idea where I am. All I can see is sky. Im like on top of tree or something. Seriously. It was so dark and I hit so hard and I cant see anything but sky. I dont know. I guess I'll open the door. Ohhhh it's caved in bad. right to the seat. hmmm. I'lll loosen my belts.... Oh... dude Im like 6' up. On a tire wall! yeah, the whole car. flat on top of the wall.. No I didn't hit it. I hit that little car in the field and sort of landed here? I guess? Not sure. Wait... someones trying to talk to me...
Yeah... Im good. Hook me up and pull me off!!!!!!!
Yeah, hey, I should go. And like be respectful to safety rescue dudes. But my friend was like F that! I want to know if you can drive back to the pits!
ok. fine. Here we go! Ok Im down. Cranking. in gear. And.....Away I go!!!! OMG dude it's fine! like drives straight too!!!!! Heading to the pits. later dude!
They should make the drivers dial into a party line and take criticism all race. Let them explain if they want. I would so watch that!
Bill, just wanted you to know I’m a big fan of your escapades and writing, and you inspired me and another friend to off-road race a cheap and beat to shit beetle in class 5 at a MORE race while we were getting our MBA. It was the most fun ever. We finished dead last and had the most fun of anyone there. Thanks for the inspiration and harping the power of just “buying a book on what you need to learn.” Long love the rally e30
See, you can't have INTERESTING racing, with vehicles at the edge of technology. It'd be about the machines, devoid of the bullshit human drama and photo finishes the sanctioning bodies deem essential in order to get the audience watching.
Plus, it'd be legitimately DANGEROUS - 400-mph, 8g, compression-injury-launch-and-detached-retina-braking dangerous.
Which'd actually get me WATCHING a race.
What you're talking about is a "Formula Zero" and while there would be no shortage of young white men ready to die in it -- maybe even some of the wheelie-riding brothers, too -- no corporation would touch it.
Yep.
Though I prefer the name "Formula None."
As a white man who was recently young, I have been ready and willing to die in F-Zero for the majority of my years.
When I was a young man, I felt the same way. Now that I have a young man, I do not. And I hope he doesn’t either.
Funny how that works, isn't it.
About how I felt watching my son ride the expert line at Railyard.
Would they really not? They’re not just so coldly capitalistic that they quantity of eyeballs would force them to advertise?
Corporations are hugely risk averse now... for certain values of risk, mind you.
Isle of Man TT
Yeah, I was MOVED TO TEARS by the mattress someone had thoughfully tied around the phone booth...
I can't... especially after the stories of calling the wrong emergency contact because the rider's dog tag was so badly bent the stewards misread the number on it. But the other guy died too, so things worked out in the end.
Which was canceled for a year or two because of Covid. Yep, that Covid shit is dangerous!
Worse than the death of flesh is the death of life.
I recall reading somewhere about a similar thing happening to Indycar. The cars were so fast and made so much downforce that a driver could only really survive the G forces for about 5 laps. They tried to fix it, but if you put a restrictor on the turbo, it'd choke and sputter. If you put smaller wings on it, the car became wildly unstable.
Can't remember what the solution was but if I can find the post I'll link it here.
I'm in the camp of "crank up the power and tear the wings off" school of thought to make racing interesting.
When they first ran Texas in 1996 they had problems with the constant high Gs. https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/articles/us-scene/indycar/high-banked-ovals-dangerous-business/
I never did find the article I was looking for, but that's pretty much what happened.
Thanks!
Texas 2001. CART had to cancel the race because during practice drivers were completely fogging out and on the edge of passing out. Gigantic failure by CART in preparing for their first race at this new facility largely blamed on Bobby Rahal. This was the same weekend that the worst racing movie ever made premiered. I consider this the moment CART lost the war and began it's slow, miserable end.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firestone_Firehawk_600
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driven_(2001_film)
And that's why they added the bumper car stuff to the races, because no one's allowed to push to the edge anymore, so they had to do SOMETHING to keep people watching.
At least that's my take on it.
Is it too much to ask for the cars to be less complex? I'd rather have naturally aspirated V10s instead of the hybrid whatevers now. I also don't understand the purpose of all the mods done to the Garage 56 NASCAR. If it's not competing against anything, why bother making it more competitive?
Modified street cars racing for 24 hours might be neat.
Bring back IROC, but with a twist: Everyone races bone-stock Miatas with street tires.
I don't give two flying fucks about competition.
I want to see what sort of monster some Doc Brown wannabe would build to win a race.
Like the opening of the "Quantum Leap" series pilot where Dean Stockwell is driving through the desert at like 400 mph in a Testarossa with front-and-rear warp coils.
Don't minimize the joy of seeing Ferrari never tire of finding new ways of stepping on its own dick.
Here's an even better idea: Bring back IROC, call it IROC-Z and have all the drivers be New Jersey guidos.
Eeeeyyyyy!!!
“Italian Retard Out Crusing.” Gilda Radner, ‘80s SNL.
No edit function to fix my typo. What is this, pre-Musk Twitter?
Edit does work.
Modified street cars is supposed to be GT class.
I suppose I should have specified that I wanted something closer to stock car with a cage and some other modifications (isn't that a GT car?), less like a GT car. Half the excitement would be trying to figure out which car is even competitive!
The other half would be sliding around on DOT legal street tires trying to find out what part breaks first.
I think the point of the G56 car was to show what the potential for a NASCAR road course series might be in Europe. And judging by the response, there's some potential.
You’re correct.
And also, perhaps inadvertently, to give NASCRAP fans some bread and circus entertainment. Multiple members of that fanbase told me that the NASCAR was “beating” the GTE cars!
Glad to see I’m not the only one who calls it NASCRAP.
Like the fellow who tried to win an SCCA adjudication with me by noting that he was faster, without mentioning that he was
A - in a faster class
B - 5 seconds off pole
I have to say I've never found being part of AER endurance races boring, but that's entirely due to the teams you've put together. It's always fun seeing everyone. I also enjoyed watching the team in the adjacent garage at Mid-O spend the better part of a weekend making one E30 engine out of two (or was it three?) and getting the car finished in time to make the last lap of the race.
Agreed -- and as a team manager there's no boring moment to it either. But the actual DRIVING can be a bit tame.
Racing adjacent; this morning I learned from a Mark Hughes tweet about sax player Peter King's Ayrton Senna tribute album "Tamburello" released in 1994 by John Miles' Miles Music. Apparently King was once an aerodynamicist at Vanwall.
If you're into Jazz it's swell.
https://tidal.com/album/222586158
Thank you!
As a super casual race fan, BOP never made sense to me. Either make building the car part of the competition like f1, or make a spec series. I watch F1 to see the whole spectacle of it and the crazy tech, and I watch MX5 cup to see more close racing in one 45 minute race than the whole f1 season.
BOP allows you to watch a grid of, say, GT3-class cars from a variety of manufacturers compete equitably (or close to it). Otherwise, how would a Lexus or a BMW M3 compete straight up against a McLaren 720S? Or a Ferrari 296? Or a Lambo Huracan?
That's the problem.
In a world like that, you'd have to build better/faster cars. A Mustang that could run with a 570S at full power. That sort of thing.
In such a world there’s no Lexus or BMW or Acura or Porsche or … any GT3 (or fill in the blank) racing at all, pretty quickly.
Lexus just needs to do what it does. Be reliable. The others will self implode if pushed.
how about mentioning what's been done to slow that car down whenever a specific car is being shown?
Hearing people at work all week discuss how "Ferrari is back!!!11!!1!!" makes me insane. They don't have any knowledge of how the BoP system works or about how the Toyotas got shafted in the name of entertainment.
Having the Ferrari win is good for ratings and bringing a certain crowd to the races.
Writing this as a die hard Ferrari fan for some reason this victory feels hollow.
im sure Charles LeClerc who was there in the pits was seething that a ferrari team didnt fuck up their strat somehow
He was probably wondering if the history books would remember Antonio Giovinazzi as a more important Ferrari driver than him!
Ewwwwwwww. That one would leave a mark. Tony G who drove a Haas last year late in the season and broke in a FP.
He must have been dying inside.
He is in an abusive relationship with Ferrari. He LOVES Ferrari, perhaps more than anyone else who has driven for the brand since Enzo died (yes, Alesi and Fisi included).
But he wants to have a title tilt against Max; how to achieve that goal?
Ferrari under the cost cap is truly adrift, a consequence of (1) Maranello’s geographic isolation from the UK’s Motorsport Valley (Oxfordshire), (2) poor leadership from the top (Elkann and Vigna), and (3) spaghetti culture.
If Ferrari really wanted to return to the top they should’ve pursued some of the following (perhaps they did):
Hire Brawn as CTO
Hire Vettel as team principal OR
Hire Horner as team principal (they tried, per Marko)
Hire Gerhard Berger in the Lauda / Marko role (Austrians only, clearly)
Fire Inaki Rueda and bring Ruth Buscombe “home”; or hire Hannah Schmitz from RBR
Advocate for higher cost cap (all teams are profitable now)
Be willing to open a satellite office in the UK
And most crucially of all: Scuderia Ferrari’s Team Principal (Vasseur at present) reports directly and exclusively to John Elkann
It wasn’t a BOP shaft IMO.
From memory, Toyota got 37KG, Ferrari got 24KG, and Peugeot gained … 0KG! Why didn’t Peugeot win?
Because the car is slow, obviously. Apparently the aero is all wrong.
They can make the same complaint that Toyota - the team that notched up 5 Le Mans “victories” against privateers operating on a shoestring budget - did about BOP: “We failed to win because of BOP. This is political!”
MotoGP sees Ducati dominance continue at Mugello (admittedly their home track). KTM is just on the verge of being competitive at more tracks, but hasn't quite gotten their chassis there yet; certainly the motor is capable with a new MotoGP speed record being set at around 226MPH.
Honda continues to struggle with even the Kalex chassis riders wrecking out repeatedly over the weekend and injuring two riders with bad crashes. They'll need to be back at the drawing board because what they've got is not working whatsoever for any of the four riders. Yamaha, as well, continues to struggle even with Quartararo's bike set back to it's 2021 settings.
Jorge Martin continues to shine in the sprints and is now coming on in the main events as well. Bagnaia must have been on something for the sprint and race as he was riding on a broken ankle from contact three weeks ago and yet took first in both events!
You said it. I was timed at 130 on the back straight at Pocono years ago on a GPz 550 that kept bouncing off the rev limiter. I can’t imagine adding another 100 mph on top of that.
Yamaha went all in on the engine and made functionally no changes to the chassis other than to make the new motor fit.. Both riders say that rideability and feel have been sacrificed for the sake of power, so they are acutely uncomfortable on the bike. Not likely to lead to improved results or the re-signing of their riders. Honda has just been painful to watch. At this point I think all of the non-Ducati riders would be willling to lose the CF aero bits if they could gain a measure of stability and control. Which means it won't happen until someone is badly hurt or worse.
I would like to see the aero shit gone, or toned down. Ride height crap, too. (And I’m a Ducati guy!) Widowmaker stuff, all of it!
Makes the bikes look like hell, too.
I think having MotoGP stand out as the absolute bleeding edge where prototyping and testing is occurring is a draw to the sport, but I can understand why not everyone would feel the same way.
It isn't just that they're the premiere riders - they're on the nuttiest machinery available.
Definitely a valid point, and one made by Kevin Cameron all the time. It’s a tough one, to be sure. Where is the line drawn? They’ve had spec electronics for years. I conveniently allow myself to ignore that.
I feel the same about F1. I would like to see a return to a single element front wing, extending no wider than the insides of the front tires— no end plates. No “barge boards”, etc. If I’m honest, all this likely has more to do with aesthetics than anything else. When aero was based on assumption, the results were often beautiful— once it became data driven; stuff got ugly. Case in point (and speaking of Le Mans), I have long thought the most beautiful machine ever was the Ferrari 330 P4. Science doesn’t come up with that.
Kevin Cameron has often made the point that full dustbin fairings (pioneered by Moto Guzzi) are the ne plus ultra for motorcycle aerodynamics.
We form over function guys sometimes find ourselves talking out of both sides of our mouths.
The heart wants what the heart wants.
My heart wouldn’t mind Moto GP being frozen around 1984.
I’m partial to 4-stroke bikes; but I hear you.
Pecco seems to be hitting his stride; but I thought that the case at the end of last year, too— before some of the gaffs this year.
If Marquez (the “real” one) doesn’t podium in Germany… Honda has to get on top of this, yesterday.
It almost looks like Fabio has given up. That might be off base; but is he thinking “I don’t want to end up in the hospital repeatedly like Marc, trying to drag this dog to the front”? Hell, Franky got better results.
FP2 today in Germany, MM93 gave his Honda the finger after it almost launched him skyward.
Then he destroyed Zarco’s Duc after a lowside. And blamed Zarco for being there! I guess he thinks everyone should know to stay completely away from him as he overrides that recalcitrant thing. Look out, here he comes!!!
(Actually, I’ll bet everyone does think that.)
That must have been a real pucker moment for Zarco and Marc, sheez.
Looks like a lot of riders were caught on the cold right handers.
Indeed
A few weeks ago I received a double issue of Road & Track. I do not subscribe so it must have come from some mailing list (ACF? ... nah) to drum up subscriptions. The cover noted Vol. 16 LE MANS and pictured the ex-Whittington Kremer 935 that won LeMans in '79. This gem was a curated group of 16 articles from the first LeMans in '23 through a hamb-fisted test of the Glickenhaus SCG 007 at COTA. Also Included was a history of the Rolex Daytona (the watch), "Brake Dance" about the oversize drums on the '53 LeMans Cunningham C-5R, the '76 race where the Frances took a couple of NASCAR stockers, a great look at the '64 winning 250LM (from the Indy museum), a look at the 3 new Hybrids ... the Cad, the Ferrari and the Porsche, and more interesting articles. A handful of ads, stunning photography and period photos ... a wonderful reimagining of the classic Road & Track. I caught the first and last 2 hrs on M/T and was entertained. Certainly helped by the come from 2 laps down win of the Vette before it's put out to pasture. No point on the NASCAR Camaro ... they did it because they could and it was cool.
Have you subscribed to any related publications in the past? Someone in publishing should correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's called garbit circ.
Sounds like a far more interesting issue than they've had as of late. I guess I'll keep an eye out for it but perhaps it won't make it to the bookstore rack.
R&T is such a bullshit dumpster fire full of candy-assed cowards now.
With the exception, naturally, of my racing teammate Travis Okulski!
Generally, I'll agree. Sometimes, though, I'll find something I like. In the current issue, A.J. Baime has an interesting short piece on the '64 Mustang Pace Car and all the work Holman Moody did to it to make it pace car-worthy. Some issues back, someone wrote an interesting article on John Paul Sr. and some of his escapades. But yeah, I don't get to pick up a monthly copy and read Side Glances anymore.
The end of Side Glances was almost the end of R&T for me. The end of Avoidable Contact was the final nail in the coffin.
Life is short.
Just read The Road Rat and skim R&T online.
Carpe canum.
"Seize the dog?"
That can't be right.
I think if you really want to make endurance racing fun to watch, the only way to do it is to reduce the durability of the cars. Maximum diameter of the wire for valve springs at 70% of normal, top gear is missing a tooth, oil filters forbidden and everybody gets a handful of sand in the crankcase. Goal being that the cars should be able to finish the race, but only if not continuously abused.
Racing is too Clean and reliable these days.
Because they're not letting the cars go faster. Remove the restrictions and shit will start blowing up left and right.
Might as well put those safety cells to the test, right?
And people will get killed more.
That's why there's no trophy at Top Gun for Best Student.
Those guys'd kill themselves trying to win it.
There’s an outfit called Air Combat USA that used to travel around the country with a pair of Marchetti SF 260s.
They would take you up (along with their highly qualified safety pilots) and let you try to shoot the other guy down. Each plane had a laser aimed to the front, and a laser detector mounted to the rear to detect any successful firing passes.
I did it a couple of times and would definitely have died trying to win those completely meaningless pretend dogfights. I G-LoC’d myself a couple of times and nearly every battle ended up at the assigned hard deck altitude.
It was probably the single most enjoyable thing I’ve ever done.
Lower the minimum weight, go back to early 2000s dimensions, get rid of the rev limit and up the crash test. Bring back refueling. 1 engine per weekend.
With the budget cap the title competitive cars need to finish, but if you are farther back you can turn up the wick and try to make up places without penalties the following race.
no refueling. NO pit stops...racing is done on the track!
How about drivers refuelling their own cars?
We need to go back to the glory days of NASCAR when all the drivers looked like Jerry Reed and got in fistfights after the races.
I have been watching top level motorsport since 1998 or so; that was the year I become a fervent fan of both Formula 1 and Le Mans. I had the good fortune to attend the inaugural Petit Le Mans in the early autumn of that year, which occasioned the opportunity to see the Le Mans-winning Porsche 911 GT1-98 (the famous mid-engined “911” prototype in Mobil 1 livery) both compete and - later in the race - take flight. My father and I saw the infamous backflip and assumed - in the pre-social media days - that the driver (Yannick Dalmas) had been badly hurt, or worse. Fortunately, he walked away.
In the earlier days, it was difficult to follow Le Mans, especially as our cable package in remote, rural Appalachia did not include Speedvision. Now, however, things are quite different. You can stream the full 24 hours commercial free. Which I do every year, save for 2018 when I was there to watch Porsche’s “Pink Pig” win the GTE Pro class while guzzling Cristal and noshing on Ox Tartare with Wolfgang Porsche.
I watched about 20 hours of this year’s Grand Prix of Endurance and Efficiency. Obviously, I don’t find it boring! I look forward to Le Mans all year, just as many look forward to The Masters or other sporting events. I even watched the hours of pre-race practice and qualifying with rapt attention.
I thought the BOP was unimpeachable - all of the factory Hypercar efforts had opportunities to lead the race overall on merit. Whereas the other OEMs brought two cars (Ferrari, Toyota, Peugeot) or three cars (Cadillac), Porsche brought four cars (three factory, one privateer). Unfortunately for Porsche, their new 963 proved to be slow, fragile, and operated by a subpar partner in Penske (for the factory cars).
Regarding BOP as a philosophy for managing competition: without BOP, there would be no sports car racing. There is not enough interest in the sport to open up the rule book and allow competitors to run what they brung. It would kill the sport dead swiftly. Ironically, the BOP-free pinnacle of motorsport is Formula 1, which remains Euro-centric culturally. The egalitarian impulse of BOP took off in the land of the free and found favor in the WEC. The top class of Le Mans was BOP-free as recently as 2017.
On Jack’s point about the cars being slower around the Circuit de la Sarthe than they were in previous years: sanctioning bodies carefully manage top speed and outright lap times for many reasons. Formula 1 routinely makes efforts to slow down the cars for safety (and tire limitations). NASCAR has run restrictor plates at Superspeedways for decades. The Circuit de la Sarthe is, fundamentally, a street circuit, so safety (and insurance) are considerations, especially given the closing speeds between top class prototypes driven by ex-Formula 1 drivers and slower GT cars driven by prosperous dentists or Dollywood heirs. In the rain. At night.
Excellent!
I’ve been following racing since the June 1961 issue of Road & Track with Ritchie Ginther in the shark nose Ferrari on the cover. Later, Competition Press and Autoweek kept me up to date. I also remember grainy, b&w Telstar coverage of Monaco sometime in the sixties and the one week-delayed, hour-long summary of the 1967 Le Mans 24 on ABC’s Wide World of Sports.
So, yeah, racing is easier to access today. I watched most of the 100th anniversary on Motor Trend TV+ until the internet went down in my neighborhood and I had to run out to Panera to watch the finish!
FWIW, the first race I attended was the 1969 Bryar, NH Trans Am in my brand-new Dodge Dart 340 GTS and the most recent was the IMSA/WEC Sebring doubleheader, staying for five days... the longest I’ve ever spent at a race track. I was also at the 1975 Le Mans where the Calder BMW made its only race appearance. The photos I took there generated several drawings that R&T published.
And here I sit typing this on my phone at 3:00 am due to yet another power outage. It’s a Central Florida thing. 😡
Power outages are likely to be a nationwide thing sooner rather than later.
I plug it frequently on here - and I know that JB is personally not a fan of the publication - but I find The Road Rat to be what Road & Track once was, and then some.
It’s not cheap - think of it as a coffee table book that is published quarterly in softbound format - but it is a tremendous “magazine.”
I'll check it out, thanks!
Thanks for the recommendation. I'm just curious why Jack isn't a fan, and you are...?
I’ll let Jack speak for himself, but I suspect his grievance relates to a few items:
0-Inaugural issue featured a hagiographic profile of SIR Lewis Hamilton
1-Editor in Chief is a leftist anti-Trumper Brit…
2-…but the content skews toward high dollar escapism (one of the early cover stories was 50+ pages on George Harrison’s McLaren F1)
people will always race cars. seems to me there was a whole lot of good racing before b.o.p.
The struggle is getting OEMs involved without BOP (in the context of non-Formula 1 four-wheeled motorsport).
I haven’t seen viewing figures yet for this year’s Le Mans, but the crowd was certainly large compared to the past (325K reported), and there was much more coverage of the event on automotive and motorsport related websites. That was because Ferrari and Porsche and Cadillac and Peugeot came to compete against Toyota and the privateers. And bear in mind that the vast majority of people who are aware of this year’s Le Mans outcome maybe saw a headline somewhere, or saw it on Twitter, or Instagram, or Facebook, or clips on YouTube, or caught a few hours of the race. What they know is that Ferrari won, and that Ferrari beat Toyota, Porsche, Cadillac, and Peugeot in doing so. Only the diehard nerds even know about BOP. The slightly diminished prestige of a BOP-driven victory is surely outweighed by the substantially lower cost of entry for the OEM competitors.
Only in Formula 1 is there sufficient exposure to justify involvement in the sport without a credible opportunity to win at every event. Red Bull, which is obviously NOT a carmaker, has won every race this year. That means that Ferrari, Mercedes, and Alpine (Renault) must justify NOT winning a single race to their respective Boards of Directors, who all appear to understand the value of being in Formula 1 (even if they’re just “making up the numbers”).
I attended the first 15 or so Petite LeMans, without missing a year. It was magical, such a great facility and race.
I haven't been in a few and miss it.
I have been to every iteration of Petit Le Mans.
I started going with car friends in 2012, and the group has grown and aged / matured to the point that we won’t go without a nice itinerary:
-Lunch at Porsche HQ OR Dinner in the cigar friendly private club at Chops on Thursday
-Stay at Chateau Elan or a nearby Airbnb (or sometimes more piecemeal hotel rooms; lodging has become less important as the impulse to overindulge has waned)
-OEM Hospitality (Porsche or Cadillac) for Friday and Saturday
-Golf cart(s)
-Chateau Elan Bar Friday night and Saturday post-race
it was pretty cool to see the garage 56 car go around indeed. I didnt have much else to do on my weekend shift but LeMans proved to be good fun with 1/3 of the grid retiring
the constant slow zones were annoying though. im excited to see hypecar next year as bmw, lamborghini, and alpine join the mix
It wasn't just cool to see it, it was cool to hear it. That pushrod V8 sounded glorious roaring past the other cars.
The sound was half the fun, listening through my QuietComfort 35 headphones. No highs, no lows, just Bose... but still!
Agree on the slow zones. They made the race very disjointed compared to last years.
You want "LeMans" the movie, not LeMans the race. Stoic, hard, tough, gritty. I doubt that back then that "LeMans" the movie was LeMans the race even then.
We want to be the hero drivers. "Jack, you need to break the Ferraris, that is your job", says the team boss with a WWII scar on his face that he got on the Russian front. He had to eat his boots there to stay alive. He knows what tough is. Don't let him down. So, you put you put your kerchief and googles on and nod your head. You. Know. What. To. Do. When you break in the 20th hour, you go sack out until the end. You attend the ceremony. Your sister car wins. The winning drivers nod your way and give you a thumbs up. You are satisfied for a job well done because you are a team player.
Then offscreen you go die of mesothelioma from all the asbestos you have have been inhaling the whole time.
No way, a dozen bottles of Veuve Cliquot, a pound of caviar, a couple of Sophia Loren lookalikes, and death by bunga-bunga.
Hey, I love Veuve Cliquot, so by the transitive properties that apparently make dentists cool when they buy 911s and Rolex Daytonas I must also be cool.
Sorry, it’s the Sophia Loren lookalikes banging your to death that makes you cool. The champagne and caviar are just there to nourish you while you give it your all.
Panamera guys make 911 guys look cool. Taycan guys make Panamera guys look cool.
After that, I’ve got nothing.
But you die a hero.
I could never get into racing movies.
There's this attitude, to which I DO NOT subscribe, that states that a car-themed TV show or movie is "Good" in direct relation to how closely it resembles a fly-on-the-wall documentary or how-to instructional video.
According to this belief, "bad" movies have stylized portrayals of cars & driving, or take artistic liberties with actual vehicle operation or driving techniques for the sake of the story.
I'm also okay with CGI, provided it's done well and also provided it's used for things that'd be too dangerous or expensive to do in real life, or for experimental/prototype vehicles that don't actually exist - skycars, transforming vehicles, etc.
All of this means that I'm not a Real Car Guy, or course.
Maybe. I enjoyed the hell out of Fast&Furious 1,2,3, and 5.
One thing I learned from the F&F series is that constantly having to go bigger and bigger when writing car movies is not the way to go.
"Bad" movies are like the Stallone "Driven". All I can remember of it is upshifting, upshifting, upshifting...... in areas of the track that no one would do in real life. "Hmm, he's in 10th gear now in the short quarter mile straight and he's been on the straight for 40 seconds." At the same time Stallone is in the car and says over the radio "Next pit stop Micky, CUT ME!!!!".
Also the idea that a driver is suffering from all these issues and is falling all the way to... second place.
Well done CGI like UPN's Viper!
The first-season hex scale, not the Venetian blind armor from seasons 2-4.
One of the last shows, other than Star Trek, where the vehicle was one of the characters.
Rush is not only a good racing movie, but also just a good movie
Personally, I want every other car to break in the first lap so I can spend the time watching the other classes on the televisions.