Motorsport Discussion

I saw a short video on Facebook, in which a rally car raced through a section of street rather quickly, basically "blink and you'll miss it", with a caption that seemed critical of the speed they were going and then a comment ranting about how rallies shut down entire countries or whole regions and nobody can go to work or anything. Evidently rally isn't fully understood by a lot of people, and I get that. It's not all over television like some other forms of motorsport, and it doesn't work the same way. I addressed the video clip and comment by trying to clear up some misunderstanding and correct some misinformation, but I'll touch on them further here.

They do not shut down entire countries, or regions, and people definitely can go to work, school, the store, or home. Rally races aren't typically done on highways or major streets. Inste…

Neil deGrasse Tyson checks out Formula 1 and the physics and engineering behind it.

A common complaint I've heard from armchair enthusiasts is about overtaking/passing or, more precisely, lack thereof. I've heard NASCAR fans bemoan insufficient passing on road courses, and even at local dirt tracks I've heard lifelong fans complain about "follow the leader" and "no passing."

It sort of reminds me about American criticism of football ("soccer", the football actually played with feet) and lack of scoring. The American philosophy seems to be that the easier it is to get points, resulting in bigger scores, the better. Sports aren't supposed to be challenging, it would appear. Just imagine how much better we could make basketball by dramatically ramping up the scoring if we drop the hoops to like two feet above the court and make them ten feet wide. A blind man in a wheelchair could sink tons of baskets. Scores would be huge. Heck, why stop there. Take the ho…