Now, I know a lot of you were on the edge of your seats about this, but: Matt and Jonny finished dead last in class among cars that were running at the end of the race, and 11th of the 20 cars in class that managed to turn laps at all during the race. They were 16 laps behind the winners in class.
As far as I can tell, Jonny's stint was near the end. He put in a non-robust 25 laps that were between 14 and 25 seconds a lap off the team pace. This caused the team to drop 5 places overall so someone finally decided to stop the bleeding at that point.
To put it in perspective, the other drivers did between 35 and 42 laps.
Matt Farah was generally about 6 seconds a lap off team pace during his stint.
Given that Jonny spent the days before the race driving a new Ferrari in Portugal, maybe he was just frustrated at the non-exoticness of his BMW M235i race car?
On a more positive note, it looks like the car only went off track seriously once.
I speak only for myself, but I never read TTAC or The Autopian, and care very little about Motor Trend and nothing at all about Jonny Liebermann.
It's too bad somebody "important" in the autopress is a terrible driver, but this isn't anything new. If he's grifting on the auto company dime and pimping crappy product, that's something I want to know. That he's a bad driver? Meh. I assume they all are.
You and a few others (from the "old" C&D I grew up with) are the only guys I ever felt were real drivers in the autopress. I subscribed to R&T while you and Sam were there, because it seemed like you (both of you) could write, work on a car, and drive. I never got the sense that Zach Bowman could drive, but he seemed like a serviceable wrench. I never cared for his literary style or voice. I never assumed Eddie Alderman could drive, nor anybody at R&T or C&D since.
I'm way more interested in exactly what sort of double-dealing and incest is occurring between the autopress and manufacturers. I'm an innocent at heart, and so this is still new enough to me that I have a hard time digesting how deeply the rot goes. The world really needs neutral and fair reporting of how cars actually drive in the real world -- something for enthusiasts. That it isn't happening is the real story -- not that Jonny Liebermann is slow or corpulent (honestly, he's probably no fatter than me).
I subscribed to no less than 4 monthly car magazines 10 years ago, and none today... primarily because it very much seemed like almost nobody could write a clear paragraph any more, and even fewer people on staff even like cars. Grrrl Power (Elana Scheer, et al) writers and Sharon Freaking Silke Carty as Editor in Chief at C&D sealed the deal for me. I was done after 35+ years as a continual subscriber. Knowing they're unreliable is the real story.
I followed you from R&T to Haggerty, then lost you until I found you here. I honestly don't care about TTAC or The Autopian because I ever read them and you've written at length about the death of TTAC (and I've read it all in the archives). Jonny Liebermann is a complete nobody to me.
"He put in a non-robust 25 laps that were between 14 and 25 seconds a lap off the team pace. This caused the team to drop 5 places overall so someone finally decided to stop the bleeding at that point."
I read somewhere else that Jonny was otherwise engaged mentally in building both a metaphorical and literal house of cards on a modified card table straddling the center console, thus the relaxed pace, and he apparently had built a playing card French Chateau (with three accompanying outbuildings) by the end of his stint.
Matt Farah? That's easier to explain, he was winning a bet in order by completing a game of pick-up sticks before his round was complete.
Late breaking news -- the #62 M235i won their class today!
I've asked Matt to clarify who did the driving -- from what I can see, it was a lot of Tommy Kendall, a lot of Mateo Whatshisname, a little Matt, and no Jonny at all. They also got lucky with some retirements and other problems for their competitors. That being said, you gotta finish a race to win it!
He's good enough at fellating the OEMs to get press cars (I assume, I don't read him) and free rides like this, so chalk this up to The Purpose of a System is What it Does.
Of course he does. He constantly surrounds himself with people who are way more successful and have way more money than him. My Sister in law pulls the same shit, she’s always miserable too.
Yeah but you're tall and handsome and your wife would be better looking than L's wife even if she got hit with two consecutive acid attacks in the street.
That's a rabbit hole I don't want to go down, because I'll start throwing that question around like a confetti-tossing Rip Taylor suddenly grabbing the wrong end of a 220V dryer cord.
This drive is surely free. You or I would pay six grand for it, although I wouldn’t because I have the luxury of driving real race cars in a real race series.
One of his co workers told me what he got paid as a contractor after MT dropped him from full time. Its not great. I think you'd make more running a Chik Fil A
"Would you want your wife to work as a literal circus clown at a burlesque show and give handjobs to pay your rent? I think your life choices have been better than that."
The wife is currently sick in bed after having received the amazing gift of illness from a coughing registered nurse who spends most of her time sobbing and hiding from her job...across the street in a business that's tied to the one my wife runs, but she doesn't work for the wife...in my wife's office, and after also having received exactly 16 mind-numbing phone calls in the last five hours from legendarily stupid employees this morning, she saw this job listing of yours and might be interested in a change of career, so if you have the contact information...
I’m still pulling for Oscar, but there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that he’s gonna get the title. It will take a miracle considering who his competition is.
With that said, I’m pretty pleased with whoever pulls it off out of the three, although Max deserves it the most for his brilliant drives with obviously inferior machinery, and dogged season long pursuit of the kids in the McLarens.
I'm one of the cranky old men who insists on Prost being the better driver, and Senna being the better qualifier, and if anything, Prost's record with the more-terrifying equipment from the 1980's kinda leads me to think that Prost simply didn't see the point in doing insane things to qualify after a while, that's how people end up rather deceased.
If anything, I don't hesitate to attach the label of "Brazilian Playboy Edition Ricky Bobby" to Senna, a cursory glance of his W/L record kind of applies the Ricky Bobby "if you're not first, you're last!".
Something else that fascinates me is that I've got some leftover literature (books, magazines, and newspaper bits) which instead of what Ron Dennis and McLaren might have been suggesting later on, the stuff I dug up was sort of loudly indicating that McLaren was only too happy to jettison the wallet/budget-busting Senna onto another team.
Beyond that, dear God, some of the things that man did in qualifying were insane...and wouldn't apply to anything built in the last decade or two.
Senna was also an absolute madman in race traffic. He would dive in and pass guys and cut through traffic like a cockroach. It was amazing watching him.
I remember when Prost spun in qualifying once, and David Hobbs joked, “Mark your calendar, on June 8th, Prost spun.”
You are right in that Prost just did not take chances. I was just astounded by Senna, and was rooting for him against Prost, but when he rammed Prost at the end of that season and took them both out, giving Senna the Championship, that’s when Senna revealed his true nature and I lost all respect for him.
As I've gotten a bit older, and have spent a bit of time hitting the books in regards to driving instruction in the meantime, if you don't know any better about car physics, watching Senna's in-car and related racing video appears to be a masterclass in how to get a car around a course, holy carp, he's pushing his car to 11 or 12 and pulling off blistering lap times, wow, he's a driving God.
...and if you begin to pick up a thing or two, you start to realize that Pepe Le Pew (his steady hopping chase mode) had the right idea, you set the car up correctly first, and then put on the most boring race imaginable...while you either maintain the lead or march up through the field to the front.
"but when he rammed Prost at the end of that season and took them both out, giving Senna the Championship, that’s when Senna revealed his true nature and I lost all respect for him."
I seem to recall it was either Prost or someone else who mentioned that Senna sort of got into a weird mode when he was driving or getting psyched up to drive, and that he had no idea he might be a raging douchebag to other people. And Prost also mentioned that they eventually became friends.
Agreed. I thoroughly enjoyed that series. The acting was so so, but it was more than made up for by the historical accuracy and detail on the cars from the era. It’s clear that much of it was CGI, but it was still done well and they did their homework. If I’m honest, it was a total flashback for me.
Gilles Villeneuve made Senna look cautious. But aerodynamics were less advanced then, so sliding it around was still an option. Nowadays, keeping it on rails is quicker.
My favorite Max Moment was early in his career he had made some (overly?) aggressive move on a competitor and some "journalist" asked him why he had raced so ruthlessly.
Max's response was immediate - "Because my Dad would have kicked me in the nuts if I hadn't!".
His delivery, straight faced with a slight shrug made it plain that that was no empty statement.
I’m tired of seeing Blando’s mom. She looks like the kind that made sure Blando got a participation trophy and went straight to the principal if anyone was teasing Blando at school.
LOL Too true! I would much rather look at Charles Le Clerc's squeeze. Or Max's, or Sainz', or.....I might be crossing a legal limit if it is Antonelli's girl friend?
I wonder if Gene Haas sees this as an opportunity to grow machine sales in Japan, where Haas has a presence but isn't a major player in the CNC sector there.
Yea I did and thought it was very interesting. Initially thought the same as you. Really probably a great move on his part to grow the business and I am sure Haas will benefit from their help in the F1 area.
I think Toyota will benefit from Haas' experience in the F1 arena.
Toyota has a long and distinguished history of failure in F1 with a virtually unlimited budget. Japanese culture does not allow assembling a team and letting them race without smothering corporate "guidance".
Toyota F1 failed because it was based in Germany. German employment law doesn't allow you to fire useless employees, so eventually they had a massive payroll of people whose job description consisted of staying out of the way. Why do you think AMG Mercedes Petronas is an English team? Toyota's failure had nothing to do with Japanese culture and everything to do with being based in a nanny state.
I did not know the Cologne factory was such a handicap. That would certainly be a dead-weight on success.
That said, the car that was designed and built at Cologne and was testing for the coming season proved to be at least the equal to the Honda that Button drove to a championship. Michelin bought that car and it was a tire test mule for 4-5 years as it was still able to turn competitive times for comparison to current cars.
And the decisions for hiring and firing managers, drivers, and engineers as well as the budget and pulling the plug - for economic reasons? - came from Toyota City I believe?
Thats what’s wonderful is they will have outside influence and not all Toyota calling the shots. Despite the names where are the majority of the teams based and where does the work happen. Not in uni-culture shops. Honda engines did well for Red Bull but they only did the engines.
Would your rancor towards these poor drivers abate if you could let go of the idea that your exclusion from traditional auto writing circles isn’t an unalloyed good? How’s that from some lazy armchair psychoanalysis!
I can't imagine any situation where I would work for Motor Trend, so it's not that. Now, on the other hand, if Jonny gets decapitated during the race maybe I'll remember how Motor Trend called Honda to try to get me fired from my day job while my son was being evaluated for cancerous tumors in his femur, and maybe I won't cry any tears for his inept ass.
Chapeau to you, Jack, for your BMX racing chops. I raced conventional bicycles, road and track for years and never won a race. It's like my old coach used to say, "The other guys want to win too."
I remember the first time I went out on a Sunday morning ride with the Wolverine Sports Club riders. The club has produced multiple world and Olympic champions in cycling and skating (Sheila Young-Ochowicz in both). I realized right away the difference between a serious recreational rider and Cat racers. They were pretty cool, though. As long as I took my turns pulling at the front of the pace line nobody gave me a hard time because the speed dropped from 24 to 21. Another time we were riding over some hills in Oakland County. I just didn't have anything that day and started fading back, one of the other riders put his hand on my butt and pushed me up the hill saying, "You're not getting out this that easy."
The presser with the top three was hilarious. I'm assuming we are all talking about the one where not a single worthwhile question was asked by any of the assembled motoring press. Crofty started off the round with something inane that I already forgot. My favorite was when they were asked "who do you think will win", and all three exchanged looks before Norris picked up the microphone to say "well of course we all will say ourselves", then dropping the microphone in what can only be described as "with contempt". Haha they should have flashed the name of the guy on the screen who asked the stupid question so he could be more roundly mocked.
Max is so totally competing off the track as well, he's mindfucking the other two mercilessly. The math says that Norris will have to screw up pretty badly for Max to get enough points to win the WDC, but its certainly a possibility. Will be an interesting race.
Lando taking out Max would have just gifted the championship to Piastri. At this point I wouldn't be at all surprised if Lando sees this as his only possible Championship and bows out like Nico Rosberg.
What times are they running? In 2020, I bought a seat in a Honda Civic race car for the WRL championship race. I think we were on Bridgestone Potenza's, but definitely some 200 tire. The car was not competitive. If I remember, I had the team's fastest lap at 2:40.1, until a NASCAR guy bought in on the last session (he wanted to get COTA seat time since NASCAR was going there the next season) and laid down a 2:39-something...
Now, I know a lot of you were on the edge of your seats about this, but: Matt and Jonny finished dead last in class among cars that were running at the end of the race, and 11th of the 20 cars in class that managed to turn laps at all during the race. They were 16 laps behind the winners in class.
As far as I can tell, Jonny's stint was near the end. He put in a non-robust 25 laps that were between 14 and 25 seconds a lap off the team pace. This caused the team to drop 5 places overall so someone finally decided to stop the bleeding at that point.
To put it in perspective, the other drivers did between 35 and 42 laps.
Matt Farah was generally about 6 seconds a lap off team pace during his stint.
Given that Jonny spent the days before the race driving a new Ferrari in Portugal, maybe he was just frustrated at the non-exoticness of his BMW M235i race car?
On a more positive note, it looks like the car only went off track seriously once.
More exciting results tomorrow!
14 to 25 secs per lap is retarded. ive never driven on track and im fairly sure i could do better
I speak only for myself, but I never read TTAC or The Autopian, and care very little about Motor Trend and nothing at all about Jonny Liebermann.
It's too bad somebody "important" in the autopress is a terrible driver, but this isn't anything new. If he's grifting on the auto company dime and pimping crappy product, that's something I want to know. That he's a bad driver? Meh. I assume they all are.
You and a few others (from the "old" C&D I grew up with) are the only guys I ever felt were real drivers in the autopress. I subscribed to R&T while you and Sam were there, because it seemed like you (both of you) could write, work on a car, and drive. I never got the sense that Zach Bowman could drive, but he seemed like a serviceable wrench. I never cared for his literary style or voice. I never assumed Eddie Alderman could drive, nor anybody at R&T or C&D since.
I'm way more interested in exactly what sort of double-dealing and incest is occurring between the autopress and manufacturers. I'm an innocent at heart, and so this is still new enough to me that I have a hard time digesting how deeply the rot goes. The world really needs neutral and fair reporting of how cars actually drive in the real world -- something for enthusiasts. That it isn't happening is the real story -- not that Jonny Liebermann is slow or corpulent (honestly, he's probably no fatter than me).
I subscribed to no less than 4 monthly car magazines 10 years ago, and none today... primarily because it very much seemed like almost nobody could write a clear paragraph any more, and even fewer people on staff even like cars. Grrrl Power (Elana Scheer, et al) writers and Sharon Freaking Silke Carty as Editor in Chief at C&D sealed the deal for me. I was done after 35+ years as a continual subscriber. Knowing they're unreliable is the real story.
I followed you from R&T to Haggerty, then lost you until I found you here. I honestly don't care about TTAC or The Autopian because I ever read them and you've written at length about the death of TTAC (and I've read it all in the archives). Jonny Liebermann is a complete nobody to me.
Am I missing something?
https://www.avoidablecontact.com/p/tales-from-the-grift-a-free-honda?utm_source=post-banner&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=posts-open-in-app&triedRedirect=true
Thanks for that, sir.
I read it. WOW.
"He put in a non-robust 25 laps that were between 14 and 25 seconds a lap off the team pace. This caused the team to drop 5 places overall so someone finally decided to stop the bleeding at that point."
I read somewhere else that Jonny was otherwise engaged mentally in building both a metaphorical and literal house of cards on a modified card table straddling the center console, thus the relaxed pace, and he apparently had built a playing card French Chateau (with three accompanying outbuildings) by the end of his stint.
Matt Farah? That's easier to explain, he was winning a bet in order by completing a game of pick-up sticks before his round was complete.
Late breaking news -- the #62 M235i won their class today!
I've asked Matt to clarify who did the driving -- from what I can see, it was a lot of Tommy Kendall, a lot of Mateo Whatshisname, a little Matt, and no Jonny at all. They also got lucky with some retirements and other problems for their competitors. That being said, you gotta finish a race to win it!
Did Matt ever get back to you on this?
EDIT: I've caught up to the Wednesday ORT now and I'm glad to see you guys are speaking again
That's my hope.
Your pal Jonny looks miserable in that photo.
He always looks miserable. You would, too, if you were as bad at your job as he is at his.
He's good enough at fellating the OEMs to get press cars (I assume, I don't read him) and free rides like this, so chalk this up to The Purpose of a System is What it Does.
"You ought to see him when he's actually miserable!"
Of course he does. He constantly surrounds himself with people who are way more successful and have way more money than him. My Sister in law pulls the same shit, she’s always miserable too.
lmao
Yeah but you're tall and handsome and your wife would be better looking than L's wife even if she got hit with two consecutive acid attacks in the street.
I would really like a breakdown of how Lieberman makes his money.
That's a rabbit hole I don't want to go down, because I'll start throwing that question around like a confetti-tossing Rip Taylor suddenly grabbing the wrong end of a 220V dryer cord.
This drive is surely free. You or I would pay six grand for it, although I wouldn’t because I have the luxury of driving real race cars in a real race series.
Jack, I get that this race is a promo gimme, I am just curious about how much of his lifestyle is just free promo shit, vs. income.
One of his co workers told me what he got paid as a contractor after MT dropped him from full time. Its not great. I think you'd make more running a Chik Fil A
and i bet his current job doesnt give him free burgers either
actually maybe that do at his size
He does appear smaller than I remember. He may even be smaller than me now! (very low standard of course)
I’m just a working slob in bumfuck nowhere, and watching him on Spike’s Car Radio makes me reconsider my life choices.
Would you want your wife to work as a literal circus clown at a burlesque show and give handjobs to pay your rent?
I think your life choices have been better than that.
Shots fired! Alright! THAT is what I’m talking about! I’m here for this.
Thank you, Jack.
Merry Christmas!
“My life is good” as Randy Newman once sang.
"Would you want your wife to work as a literal circus clown at a burlesque show and give handjobs to pay your rent? I think your life choices have been better than that."
The wife is currently sick in bed after having received the amazing gift of illness from a coughing registered nurse who spends most of her time sobbing and hiding from her job...across the street in a business that's tied to the one my wife runs, but she doesn't work for the wife...in my wife's office, and after also having received exactly 16 mind-numbing phone calls in the last five hours from legendarily stupid employees this morning, she saw this job listing of yours and might be interested in a change of career, so if you have the contact information...
So far, it’s the Lando and Max show through FP1 and FP2. looking forward to qually tomorrow!
I've got a weird vibe that Max either wins it by two points or loses it by three.
guess what
He lost it by two points? Hey, I can't get everything right.
Oscar is on the back foot this weekend with his obligatory miss of FP1.
I’m still pulling for Oscar, but there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that he’s gonna get the title. It will take a miracle considering who his competition is.
With that said, I’m pretty pleased with whoever pulls it off out of the three, although Max deserves it the most for his brilliant drives with obviously inferior machinery, and dogged season long pursuit of the kids in the McLarens.
Vamos!
Yup - unless Max and Lando take each other off in T1.
Oscar would be one cool snowball !
Some people just love being in the arena.
Especially with the way I'm usually dressed whenever I go in.
I couldn't make it past the second question. What is worth watching is Senna on Netflix. The way they integrated the old vhs era footage is top notch.
I'm one of the cranky old men who insists on Prost being the better driver, and Senna being the better qualifier, and if anything, Prost's record with the more-terrifying equipment from the 1980's kinda leads me to think that Prost simply didn't see the point in doing insane things to qualify after a while, that's how people end up rather deceased.
If anything, I don't hesitate to attach the label of "Brazilian Playboy Edition Ricky Bobby" to Senna, a cursory glance of his W/L record kind of applies the Ricky Bobby "if you're not first, you're last!".
Something else that fascinates me is that I've got some leftover literature (books, magazines, and newspaper bits) which instead of what Ron Dennis and McLaren might have been suggesting later on, the stuff I dug up was sort of loudly indicating that McLaren was only too happy to jettison the wallet/budget-busting Senna onto another team.
Beyond that, dear God, some of the things that man did in qualifying were insane...and wouldn't apply to anything built in the last decade or two.
Senna was also an absolute madman in race traffic. He would dive in and pass guys and cut through traffic like a cockroach. It was amazing watching him.
I remember when Prost spun in qualifying once, and David Hobbs joked, “Mark your calendar, on June 8th, Prost spun.”
You are right in that Prost just did not take chances. I was just astounded by Senna, and was rooting for him against Prost, but when he rammed Prost at the end of that season and took them both out, giving Senna the Championship, that’s when Senna revealed his true nature and I lost all respect for him.
As I've gotten a bit older, and have spent a bit of time hitting the books in regards to driving instruction in the meantime, if you don't know any better about car physics, watching Senna's in-car and related racing video appears to be a masterclass in how to get a car around a course, holy carp, he's pushing his car to 11 or 12 and pulling off blistering lap times, wow, he's a driving God.
...and if you begin to pick up a thing or two, you start to realize that Pepe Le Pew (his steady hopping chase mode) had the right idea, you set the car up correctly first, and then put on the most boring race imaginable...while you either maintain the lead or march up through the field to the front.
"but when he rammed Prost at the end of that season and took them both out, giving Senna the Championship, that’s when Senna revealed his true nature and I lost all respect for him."
I seem to recall it was either Prost or someone else who mentioned that Senna sort of got into a weird mode when he was driving or getting psyched up to drive, and that he had no idea he might be a raging douchebag to other people. And Prost also mentioned that they eventually became friends.
And then 1994 rolled along.
a win is a win.
Agreed. I thoroughly enjoyed that series. The acting was so so, but it was more than made up for by the historical accuracy and detail on the cars from the era. It’s clear that much of it was CGI, but it was still done well and they did their homework. If I’m honest, it was a total flashback for me.
I've never quite understood the cult of personality around Saint Ayrton. Perhaps someone can explain it to me.
he was fast and looked the part while racing
jeremy clarkson helped popularizing him too
i preferred gilles villeneuve
Gilles Villeneuve made Senna look cautious. But aerodynamics were less advanced then, so sliding it around was still an option. Nowadays, keeping it on rails is quicker.
Yes! 27 rocked!
RIP Gilles
Well, he was photographed on a Ducati Monster while wearing a tuxedo.
That was enough for me.
youd think after that long hed be kinda good at it by now but i guess it doesnt always work like that
as ive said before im hoping max makes this 5 in a row which means they have to not crash on lap 1. very excited to see the result
I watched the interview. Observations:
1) Lando is way too nice for this gig. WAY too nice.
2) Oscar has a will to win, in a system where deference to one's teammate is expected
3) Max confirms yet again that he is an absolute assassin. He's a MAN among porcelain princesses.
"My family is not like that". "They don't need to motivate me". "Dad will be rallying in Africa".
Excellence is ABSOLUTELY expected in the Verstappen household. There will be no participation trophies in their cabinet.
I have a hard time envisioning a scenario when he doesn't come out on top.
My favorite Max Moment was early in his career he had made some (overly?) aggressive move on a competitor and some "journalist" asked him why he had raced so ruthlessly.
Max's response was immediate - "Because my Dad would have kicked me in the nuts if I hadn't!".
His delivery, straight faced with a slight shrug made it plain that that was no empty statement.
I’m tired of seeing Blando’s mom. She looks like the kind that made sure Blando got a participation trophy and went straight to the principal if anyone was teasing Blando at school.
LOL Too true! I would much rather look at Charles Le Clerc's squeeze. Or Max's, or Sainz', or.....I might be crossing a legal limit if it is Antonelli's girl friend?
Does Blando even have a girlfriend?
At COTA there were brief shots of a stunning blond girl that the commenters lead me to believe was his honey.
FWIW - my wife insists he is gay. I refuse to go along with that.
+1 on your wife’s theory. Not that there is anything wrong with that.
Magui Corceiro
Since I pull for Haas I am watching down the field and the top ends as it does. Will be excited to see how it shakes out.
This season I have been very impressed by Antonelli but can’t help but wonder if Bearman would beat him in the same car.
Did you see about Haas' deal with Toyota?
I wonder if Gene Haas sees this as an opportunity to grow machine sales in Japan, where Haas has a presence but isn't a major player in the CNC sector there.
Yea I did and thought it was very interesting. Initially thought the same as you. Really probably a great move on his part to grow the business and I am sure Haas will benefit from their help in the F1 area.
I think Toyota will benefit from Haas' experience in the F1 arena.
Toyota has a long and distinguished history of failure in F1 with a virtually unlimited budget. Japanese culture does not allow assembling a team and letting them race without smothering corporate "guidance".
Toyota F1 failed because it was based in Germany. German employment law doesn't allow you to fire useless employees, so eventually they had a massive payroll of people whose job description consisted of staying out of the way. Why do you think AMG Mercedes Petronas is an English team? Toyota's failure had nothing to do with Japanese culture and everything to do with being based in a nanny state.
I did not know the Cologne factory was such a handicap. That would certainly be a dead-weight on success.
That said, the car that was designed and built at Cologne and was testing for the coming season proved to be at least the equal to the Honda that Button drove to a championship. Michelin bought that car and it was a tire test mule for 4-5 years as it was still able to turn competitive times for comparison to current cars.
And the decisions for hiring and firing managers, drivers, and engineers as well as the budget and pulling the plug - for economic reasons? - came from Toyota City I believe?
"Ve haff engineers in Stuttgart," is how a high level Roush guy described M-B's attitude when they owned Chrysler.
Operating out of Germany is the handicap.
Source: Nearly a decade at German companies.
Thats what’s wonderful is they will have outside influence and not all Toyota calling the shots. Despite the names where are the majority of the teams based and where does the work happen. Not in uni-culture shops. Honda engines did well for Red Bull but they only did the engines.
Haas fans will be gratified by something I'm going to write early next year... from NC
Dont be a tease!
Hoping this is your next gig!
Not a gig just an article
Would your rancor towards these poor drivers abate if you could let go of the idea that your exclusion from traditional auto writing circles isn’t an unalloyed good? How’s that from some lazy armchair psychoanalysis!
I can't imagine any situation where I would work for Motor Trend, so it's not that. Now, on the other hand, if Jonny gets decapitated during the race maybe I'll remember how Motor Trend called Honda to try to get me fired from my day job while my son was being evaluated for cancerous tumors in his femur, and maybe I won't cry any tears for his inept ass.
Honda PR called my plant and the plant told them to
FUUUUUUCK
OFFFFF
Chapeau to you, Jack, for your BMX racing chops. I raced conventional bicycles, road and track for years and never won a race. It's like my old coach used to say, "The other guys want to win too."
Yeah I was an awful Cat 4 rider, I sympathize!
I remember the first time I went out on a Sunday morning ride with the Wolverine Sports Club riders. The club has produced multiple world and Olympic champions in cycling and skating (Sheila Young-Ochowicz in both). I realized right away the difference between a serious recreational rider and Cat racers. They were pretty cool, though. As long as I took my turns pulling at the front of the pace line nobody gave me a hard time because the speed dropped from 24 to 21. Another time we were riding over some hills in Oakland County. I just didn't have anything that day and started fading back, one of the other riders put his hand on my butt and pushed me up the hill saying, "You're not getting out this that easy."
the more i hear about/from bikers the weirder they get. they passed swimmers recently in my oddball rankings.
The presser with the top three was hilarious. I'm assuming we are all talking about the one where not a single worthwhile question was asked by any of the assembled motoring press. Crofty started off the round with something inane that I already forgot. My favorite was when they were asked "who do you think will win", and all three exchanged looks before Norris picked up the microphone to say "well of course we all will say ourselves", then dropping the microphone in what can only be described as "with contempt". Haha they should have flashed the name of the guy on the screen who asked the stupid question so he could be more roundly mocked.
Max is so totally competing off the track as well, he's mindfucking the other two mercilessly. The math says that Norris will have to screw up pretty badly for Max to get enough points to win the WDC, but its certainly a possibility. Will be an interesting race.
The most interesting possibility is if Norris out qualifies Piastri. Something WILL happen.
Well... he did. I guess we'll see what happens.
Lando taking out Max would have just gifted the championship to Piastri. At this point I wouldn't be at all surprised if Lando sees this as his only possible Championship and bows out like Nico Rosberg.
I’m guessing he will Jenson Button and bumble around for a couple of years more with middling results.
Perhaps. Jenson is from a racing family however and Lando is of the Lizards.
I would strongly suspect that as well. He is the least competitive world champion "anything" that I've ever witnessed.
"All of the times seem awful slow to me..."
What times are they running? In 2020, I bought a seat in a Honda Civic race car for the WRL championship race. I think we were on Bridgestone Potenza's, but definitely some 200 tire. The car was not competitive. If I remember, I had the team's fastest lap at 2:40.1, until a NASCAR guy bought in on the last session (he wanted to get COTA seat time since NASCAR was going there the next season) and laid down a 2:39-something...
oh so youre proper fast then
Well, apparently 20 secs behind Jack in a Lamborghini... haha
But only four seconds behind a God damned 350hp BMW body in white race car.
I will watch if there is a chance for Max. Anybody that can cut through the usual F1 BS AND keep taking the glam off his lordship. that's my guy.