Performance

I've lately seen a lot of Facebook posts comparing preferred vehicles against those deemed inferior in automotive groups. One had a photograph of a bunch of JDM cars that look like they've been fitted with a lot of aftermarket parts, and another photograph of a bunch of large pickup trucks that were all lifted, with captions declaring the cars were for boys and the trucks were for men. Another had a man posing next to a V8 engine with a caption along the lines of "if your engine needs a turbo you didn't build a good engine".

These sorts of ideologies aren't held universally, but rather by certain demographics. These people prefer simpler, more basic automotive designs, perhaps viewing them as more pure and less expensive. It brings to mind the old saying that "there's no replacement for displacement".

I'm reminded of something I once read about Enzo Ferrari. …

A common comment I heard from armchair experts in the past was that race cars with lower weight and lots of downforce are easier to drive, that adding all that downforce is to make them easier and require less skill. Of course, I've never heard this from anyone that's actually done any racing, not even virtually. It was always from folks that watch NASCAR on television and turn their nose up at open-wheel racing series like F1 or IndyCar.

I kind of get how it might seem this way. Folks with this perspective cite high car weight and almost now downforce as making the cars difficult to race, requiring extreme driver skill to handle them. This does NASCAR some unintentional injustice, as it gives the cars too little credit. Yes, they are heavier than most other types of race cars, and they have relatively miniscule downforce. However, as was st…

"What car is fastest?"

That should have a simple answer, right? Well..., no. Almost a year ago, on a Facebook group for the The Crew games, someone posed this question about The Crew: Motorfest. They expected a simple answer, as if one single car is simply the fastest and that's the end of it. They were mistaken, and didn't understand why. They were not alone, however. Several other community members were equally lost on the idea.

At face value, the question of fastest should be as simple as nailing down which car has the highest top speed. That should clearly be "fastest," right? Well, if we hop into a race around Watkins Glen, Road Atlanta, or Mid-Ohio, me in a Formula One car with a top speed of a little over 200 MPH and you in an Indy car with a top speed of like 240-ish, you might expect …