Formula 1 racing is struggling this season. The new hybrid engines are finicky. Normally, racing should be on the edge of failure, but the new ones are more like the edge of functioning. Most of the time, they're broken. And for most of the teams, the irritation is getting to the point that two of the three leading teams are threatening to dump the entire series entirely, one of those being Ferrari. You can't have Formula 1 without Ferrari. Red Bull (Renault racing) is also struggling and their chief driver Sebastian Vettel was 4 time world champion in the prior series car. In this he struggles to finish. When world champion race drivers can't rely on their car to actually finish a race? You have serious problems. Teams are going through engines and taking penalties for changing them. The cars lack sufficient front grip for passing in most of the places they like to pass, and the tires are unreliable and finicky for their operating temperatures too, to make up for this. They don't wear well when they're working, either. This formula sucks. There was a sign posted opposite the pits at Monza this morning: "Formula 1 Is Dead." And these are Italian fans.
Guys, you gotta fix this. Over two thirds of the teams are threatening to dump the formula and take their teams and money elsewhere, probably to American Le Mans or possibly start a new series. What they should do is put their collective foot down and dump this car. It sucks. It is a disaster. My Dad, who has been watching formula one for most of his life, suggested a really simple solution.
Offer two engine choices.
V6 turbo, 2.5 liters.
3.0 Liter V8 normally aspirated.
That's it. Give them back the wings. No more ERS/KERS, no more electric motors and batteries. Let the drivers be 20 pounds heavier. Driver weight is an actual rule, btw. They are stick thin and just this side of actual starvation. Most doctors would put them on IV nutrition and hospitalize them, based on how they look. Their blood tests are probably showing all sorts of dangerous chemistry and organ failure happens in starvation like this. Did you know that? It is true.
Anyway, those two engine choices, more front and rear wing. I don't care if this is like the older cars. The older cars were better and with more downforce they can pass in more places and that's more interesting than watching the drivers skid off the track because the stupid cars have about 500 pounds of battery onboard, which overheats, causing the rear brakes to fail since those are actually shifting energy to the battery, which then causes the front brakes to overcompensate and skid instead of stopping and has caused most of the crashes under braking this season. A hundred million dollars worth of damage and its life threatening too. Eventually it is going to kill a driver. So get rid of it.
Racing is NOT regular car driving. This is important. With this latest hybrid mess, the series organizers said this would relate more to modern driving but it really doesn't. All it does is show how horrible electric cars are, and how unreliable and dangerous they are. Let Formula 1 be actual race cars. If there were no gasoline for my car anymore I would ride my bicycle to the track and camp overnight to watch it. That's how much I like racing. If there were no fuel coming out of the ground we'd synthesize the gasoline for the race by converting it from coal or cracking it from algal biodiesel. Whatever. These are things that can be done.
In 1911, before WW1, people used to ride on horsedrawn carts to the race track to watch those newfangled automobiles and see those barnstormer fabric wing airplanes, and wing walker acrobats. Warren't that the finest show? Indeed!
So yes, stop pretending that Formula 1 should have squat to do with a Prius Hybrid and turn them back into the fastest cars again. Right now, Indycars are 20 mph faster than Formula 1, and that's just embarrassing.
Dump the hybrids, Bernie. Get back to regular engines.
California needs to be its own country. One with trade agreements with its neighbors, but its own country just the same. Realistically, most western states are treated like garbage dumps by people who don't live here. This is wrong, and needs to stop. If that means turning the West coast and Great Basin states into a new nation, or series of nations... well so be it. Its not like we'd go to war with each other once jackasses from Kenya Hawaii Chicago have no power over us. Once we stop watching TV from foreign nations like New York City nobody living here will give two damns about them. We have plenty to talk about in our side of the continent. We should get the news from Japan, Shanghai, Taipei (Taiwan), Singapore, Hong Kong, Austalia, New Zealand, Hawaii, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Mexico City, Panama canal freight report, El Salvador and Nicaragua... not Washington DC. Who Cares about DC? They never do anything good. These other pacific nations are our trade partners. I want to know what the news is in Boise, and Seattle and Spokane and Reno and Portland. News should cover the nations close to us, not DC. DC is full of evil people who exist to steal from decent people. It's a monument to thieves and parasites.
I was watching Top Gear video clips on their website and thinking how great it would be if those hot hatchbacks that we can't buy in America because goons in Detroit decided that allowing better cars to be sold here was unfair competition for their shoddy union work, so they paid bribes to DC officials to ban them.
Then I drove cars in my Xbox simulator, Forza 4. You know, I liked the Golf GTI. It's fast. But I loved the Lotus Evora, right up until the rear wheels spun loose and it killed me, over and over. But up until the wheels get loose, which you can feel in a real car but not in a game, it was fantastic. I also found that since I'd once owned a pre-M3 BMW 320i, I still know how to drive the newer M3 fast. Fantastic.
When I was a lad, there were many better cars available, but then the whining safety fools moved here from DC and Massachussets and destroyed everything good about California roads. It has never bothered me that people died driving stupidly. Its only natural. And it ridded me of competition for food, water, and resources like jobs. Death on the highway was Darwinism at work. The solution to Idiocracy is to remove safety labels and warning signs for a few generations. Do that and the dumb ones die out. And people start thinking again. None of this irresponsible BS and whining.
The only good thing Nerfherders have done for California driving was Bot-Dots in the centerline and that white line on the edge of our roads, and yellow signs instead of white. Those are easier to see in the fog and at night. Driving in fog still kills foolish people who refuse to slow down. I suspect Jeremy Clarkson would be wrecked driving fast in Fog in the Russian River Valley. Those sharp turns sneak up on you if you can't see them coming and brake in time. I wonder how he would feel about wrecking a Ferrari in a road test in my home town?
America, or rather California, should embrace risk and not make such a fuss over death on the highway. So what if people die? Everybody will eventually. If they die while they're happy, isn't that better than dying miserable and sad, having never experienced joy?
I would love for the new states of California, like Jefferson and North California, to carefully digitize the neat roads with the hairpin turns and get them into DLC (Download Content) for Forza 4 and 5 and the competing Sony Playstation game called Gran Tourismo. If you can drive the classics and the new cars on these fancy real world roads, like Hwy 20 from Clearlake to Williams, which is FUN, or Hwy 70 up the Feather River Canyon from Oroville Dam to Quincy, or Hwy 49 from Auburn to Cool (a 3 mile sprint with hairpin turns down and then up, crossing the American River at the bottom), or the Trinity Grade from Valley of the Moon to Napa Valley over the Maacamas Mountains. I'd love to see these games include weather and variable grip from water and moss and algae on the road. They have the technology. So why not? This would be good road training and really cut down on deaths while allowing the best cars of Top Gear onto our roads to actually drive them. And with all the practice, speeds should be better. Even with Six Californias, driving would be better, so long as they can afford to pave roads.
Did you know that Ford Fiesta STI 2-door is a couple hundred pounds lighter than the 4 door, which is the only model sold in the USA. The 2-door is the one you want. Idiots. "But....SAFETY!" Bugger off your safety. And that the Eurodiesels are both fuel efficient, clean burning, and comparatively faster than say a Prius, scale up because they need no batteries, and affordable. Honda and Subaru make them, were going to sell them here, but the Big 3 paid a bribe offered concerns to certain senators and congressmen who then blocked their import. And why aren't they sold in the USA? It made the American car companies, two of which bankrupted and one of which barely exists anymore, look bad because our diesels are monsters, noisy, and gutless. The Japanese diesels are 60 mpg, all of them, modern, dead quiet. It made the Big 3 look bad and would hurt their profits. This is something that should be fixed. If California were its own country, the Big 3 would have NO PULL HERE because they don't manufacture here and offer no jobs. The last car builder shut down. Now its only Tesla, and they're not exactly busy. I'd love to see a Caterham builder in Colusa, and a Subaru Outback plant in Chico. And maybe a Nissan GTR plant in Red Bluff. Why not? There's people to do the work. There's cheap land. Local hydroelectric power plants. Why not? Give people jobs building cars that people want.
I keep wondering about ultralight versions of the Subaru, built of Aluminum and carbon fiber, with most of the design focused on a street-rally car, able to deal with crappy roads at speed. I think most vehicles should be built that light. That allows a smaller engine and saves a ton of fuel. Selling cars with steel wheels, for example, is ridiculous. Aluminum wheels are readily available and cheap. They design cars for that weight, so the suspension works right. So it grips the road. Once the 6 states happen, actual budgets will get very interesting. Chaotic as they figure things out, would be a good description.
I'd love to see a cheap importer in California for the ultralight convertibles like the Ariel Atom, the Crossbow, and the Caterham. Those would be fun here. With only 60 days of rain a year, you could actually use them as intended. To drive. People say nasty things about the Mazda Miata being for gay men, but its actually a British Convertible that works, that starts. That doesn't die on you partway into your drive like the British ones do. For this reason, they're much cheaper. And no, that isn't logical. I saw plenty on the roads in the 1990's, winding back and forth between wineries and they were having lots of fun. In a time where there was more respect for other's property, it was a fine vehicle for California. Trickier now. But that depends on where you live, and if people there don't burgle each other because its easy. Right now that seems unlikely, so an open top roadster is something you park in a garage or you won't keep it very long. A pity.
I'd like to see the new Republic drop the 3-wheel DMV requirement and allow ultralight 4-wheel cars so inventers can experiment with very small engines, very light chassis, using new materials and worrying less about crash safety. Who cares that James Dean died in a race car? He was happy. He loved racing that car. Lots of other movie stars have owned unsafe cars and LIVED. And they're just movie stars. There's always a new face to replace them. Stop fussing about it.
If someone chooses to die, give them the respect to make their choice. People are all bent out of shape over Robin Williams, but he was old and had Parkinson's Disease and it was killing him. So he'd be the one to know to choose his end and we should all respect his choice. Everybody riding around in unsafe vehicles is making a choice too. Respect it. And if they die from that choice, respect that too.
In the meantime, think about the business opportunities of manufacturing in California, somewhere other than the Bay Area or LA, and how domestic sales will benefit from employing our population, once the safety bigots are out of the way.
