Wednesday Racing/Open Thread

Open to all subscribers. Initial focus on Abu Dhabi, inter-generational resentment, and a farewell to a friend

he’s okay, and also is your landlord

Let’s get over the Wednesday hump in dramatic fashion!

A brief non-commercial message regarding scams

One of my favorite ACFers reached out in response to Sunday’s thread, noting that he had taken delivery of a stick-shift F-Type… but not before dealing with an impressively plausible sales scam. Read about it here and here, especially if you’ve ever been interested in a car from “Pac Moto Traders”.

The finest season in history, capped dramatically

I have a piece in the Examiner that I’ll link once it goes up, but I should say it here as well: Max Verstappen’s 2023 season has been the greatest one in racing history. Nobody has ever so completely dominated the sport’s top tier, and it doesn’t seem likely than anyone else ever will. He wasn’t just the fastest and best; he was also the most consistent, being just the third driver to complete every possible lap of an F1 season.

Abu Dhabi could have been a snoozer but it turned to be anything but. Notes in no particular order:

• Yuki! Yuki! Yuki! You had to know that I’d be gloating over Tsunoda’s performance in this race, up to and including his ability to out-drive Lewis Hamilton, of all people, in the final two laps. He’s obviously the real deal. Does he have what it takes to be world champion? That’s a different matter. But in any world where 65 percent of Red Bull merch is not sold in Mexico, he would be sitting next to Max.

• Alonso, still teaching Lewis. Fernando’s almost-plausible-but-not-quite short-brake killed Lewis’s momentum and ensured that the Spanish driver would finish fourth in the championship. This season has further cemented Alonso’s reputation and legacy in the sport. I wouldn’t be surprised if twenty years from now he has the same prominence over Hamilton in the public perception that Senna has over Prost.

• Ferrari outsourcing their strategy to the drivers, again. With one more lap to execute his strategy, Charles Leclerc could have secured Ferrari their position ahead of Mercedes in the constructors’ championship. Which means that the pitwall should have been doing that two laps prior. Charles and Carlos need a little help from the team. Or maybe they should poach Hannah Schmitz.

• FIA nimbly switching from Ferrari to Mercedes… Speaking of; I’m not saying the FIA is in Toto’s pocket, but the Norris/Perez incident did seem to be investigated a bit more strongly than, say, the Hamilton/Piastri incident in Las Vegas where Hamilton was not only responsible for the hit but also continued to hog the racing line with a flat tire. Without that five-second penalty on Checo, Ferrari would have won 2nd in the constructors’… No, Mikey! This is so not right!

• The future of the American Eagle? Will Logan Sergeant be back next year? I’d like to see him return, but you can argue that the seat should go somewhere else. There was some impressive driving by the F2 crew during the first free practice. Maybe one of them should get it. I’d say Theo Pourchaire but surely he has a seat waiting for him at Alfa.

Understanding the anti-Boomer sentiment

he also owns all the classic cars

The Woodstock generation makes up a significant percentage of my readers and commenters. One of them e-mailed me this week stating, “I had absolutely no idea about the vitriol against my generation until I started reading ACF...  When I was young we made fun of older folks; and I completely expect that, but wow.” The irony of anti-Boomer sentiment is that most of the Boomers who experience it are people who are actually engaged with the younger generations and in many cases possess few or none of the qualities ascribed to their peers. In their shoes I’d be highly annoyed. It sucks to get keelhauled for stuff you haven’t done. And this reader isn’t the first person to express his dissatisfaction; we had some of it at the Tulsa First Principles meeting as well.

With that in mind, I thought that we could have a bit of a conversation here about why young people are so angry with the Boomers as a generic whole, because it might help clarify some things for everyone involved. It should also give ACF Boomers some peace of mind; why be angry if you were never part of the problem, as most of you simply never were?

I’ll start by listing some of the resentments that my GenX cohort and our Millennial peers have against our parents’ generation. Again, these don’t apply universally.

• A stranglehold on culture. The actors, artists, and musicians of the Boomer Era simply never went away. It would be like if Benny Goodman and Ella Fitzgerald had still been on Top 40 radio and on tour in 1975. The institution of “classic rock”, in particular, was absolutely deadly to the young performers of the Eighties and Nineties. My God, it’s even the case in motor racing; the definition of “classic and vintage” simply never advanced past 1970 in most cases.

• Limitless opportunity. I’ll suggest that this was also true for early Gen Xers. You could literally get a job by reading the newspaper. There was factory work, creative work, you name it. It was possible to move to New York and just get a job and live there. The same was true for Los Angeles. The country and the economy were expanding. Boomers will counter by saying that things were pretty bleak during the Ford and Carter era, and they’ll be right. But they were the last generation who could buy a home and raise a family without being exceptional or lucky, simply by working a regular job.

• Ignoring their kids. Gen X and Millennials are the children of divorce, of distant parenting, of Moms and Dads who were “finding themselves” instead of looking out for their offspring. And the vast majority of Boomers chose to keep at it, retiring to places where they could be with other Boomers instead of living near their grandchildren. Of course, they didn’t start the trend of retiring to Florida; their parents did. And much of Gen X had children late, so by the time we wanted “the grandparents” around they’d long since made other plans.

• Eating the seed corn and importing people to stay rich. A lot of Boomers inherited a lot of money from their disciplined, frugal parents. They’re spending it. They also consistently protect their own interests over the interests of their children by voting for measures that lower labor costs while raising the prices of assets and investments. Having grown up in a homogenous paradise of low house prices and social cohesion, the Clinton generation drastically reshaped the country to their own benefit. The factories that gave them a start were closed and shipped overseas. The starter homes in Van Nuys that let them live the American Dream? Sold for millions to Chinese real-estate interests, rather than handed to their grandchildren.

• The utter destruction of the American university system. Boomer professors and administrators have turned our institutions into luxury-priced indoctrination facilities. They created a student debt system that cripples graduates while ensuring there’s enough profit for Yale to have more admins than students. The Boomers were defined by college, and they’ve made it almost impossible for their grandchildren to do the same, except in the negative I’m-dead-broke sense.

• The mainstreaming of drug culture. The Greatest Generation may have driven drunk, but the Boomers were so drug obsessed that we had to have a public service announcement about it. It worries me that marijuana, X, and DMT are considered to be everyday normal activities for teens and 20-somethings now. We are hollowing out the next generation of leaders and innovators.

Some friends of mine were discussing the (admittedly excellent) Clint Eastwood movie Gran Torino as being an unwitting synecdoche of the Boomer mindset. In that film, Eastwood has contempt for his Land Cruiser-driving son and feckless, fat, disaffected grandchildren — but how did his family get that way? Rather than throw himself headfirst into fixing the situation that he caused, Eastwood’s character simply adopts a bunch of immigrants because he likes their attitude. After giving his literal life for these people who just happen to tickle his fancy, he leaves his union-built car to them — no doubt after a lifetime of voting for politicians who sent jobs overseas. Eastwood feels superior to his son because he built Fords and his son sells Toyotas… but who created the economic and environmental conditions to make that the case?

A lot of vitriol is directed against Millennials for being the “participation trophy” generation — but who ordered those trophies? Who handed them out? Not the ten-year-old children who received them, that’s for sure. We slam Gen Z for being obsessed with their phones. Who holds stock in the phone companies, the telcos, the media firms? Young people are lampooned for not wanting to go outside. Who created the situation where it’s often too dangerous for them to do so?

Some of my Boomer friends point out that they, too, resented their parents, only to eventually revere them as “The Greatest Generation.” Why isn’t the same thing happening for them? Well, that’s what happens when the middle-class economy of a country absolutely craters. People stay mad. If the average Millennial had better prospects than his grandfather enjoyed, we wouldn’t hear any complaints about the Woodstock people. That’s the root of it. Having inherited the literal paradise of 1985 America — yes, yes, I know that it wasn’t that way for everyone — the Boomers handed us the world of 2015 America. Oh, and then they said that all the kids had to get mystery-meat vaccinations for a disease that didn’t affect kids, because otherwise they would be at risk.

All of the above being said, we Gen-Xers and Millennials still need our Boomers. We need them to act as a sanity buffer against the worst excesses of progressivist and reactionary thought. We need them to help prepare a financial future for our children. And if a couple of the old jazz players want to knock out a few more records while they still can, that would be great too. Also, it must be noted that Hillary Clinton may be a Boomer, but it was our Boomer voters who kept her from seizing the reins of power and starting all these wars we’re having now a full six years ago.

So let’s try to pull in the same direction while we still can. We promise to lay off the avocado toast if you’ll do what you can to make things better for your grandchildren and great-grandchildren. And it would also be okay if the Rolling Stones quit touring and left those spots open for, I don’t know, Avenged Sevenfold. They’re not a great band. But how could they have been, in shadows that never lifted?

The final lap of a true racer

the ocelot, leading one last time

Four and a half years ago, I wrote a story for Hagerty that included “Racer Phil” Alspach. I have long admired Phil, who was the backbone of SCCA’s Ohio Valley Region for decades and who was keeping our Solo program alive when I started in 2002. He began his race career late but then never really stopped, volunteering in nontrivial roles for the region well past his 80th birthday. Rarely did he win or trophy in even a regional race. His contribution was far greater. A lot of autocrosses and club races wouldn’t have happened without him.

Phil died last week. I believe he was 84, possibly 85. We will all be poorer for his loss. Before he went into the final round with cancer, he requested that I replace him as the region’s pace car driver, a duty I have been privileged to accept.

I never met a member or competitor who had anything but positive words about Phil. It was a genuine privilege to know him, and to drive with him. Godspeed.