The Q9 was never really going to work, sadly. The batteries for it were immensely heavy and there wasn’t that much space to put them in. For such a big car, there was very little room for that sort of thing. The lithium batteries we have now would have meant it was much more competitive.

Wait. Doug has a friend? When did this happen?

Exactly my thought. I was cringing when he came back down it. Wet diamond plate has nearly caught me out so many times.

Right, but the only reason you’d leave the rubber mounts in is because the rules prohibited it. If you were building a race car, it’s a no brainer. I’m surprised the OP had never seen it before unless they have never actually *seen* a race car underneath.

Well, that’s not precisely what I said, but is pretty much correct. They weren’t designed to be race cars, they were designed to be road cars. Cars that are designed for racing are race cars, but road cars modified for racing are not real, true race cars. Group N falls into the latter category. Cars *based* on road…

Er. I said race cars, not ‘converted road cars for racing’, though.

Every race car has rose joints (spherical bearings) in the damper ends. Just fyi.

That’s not so much of an advantage, though. Going flat out on the power before apex means you have to have been throwing away mid corner speed. You’re able to slam the power down because the car hasn’t got to the maximum lateral grip - no matter the car, if you are at max lateral grip and you add power, you WILL spin…

Oh, it certainly does that. But overcoming inherent flaws is what makes driving interesting. Driving a perfect car is boring.

“The rear-engine layout also lets you get back on the power a little earlier coming out of a turn.”

I think both of them together is perfect. Roborace allows fine control of tyre and road surface management at the limit, but in a relatively stable environment, Rally provides rapidly changing conditions and sudden obstacles/changes of direction stuff.

Screw the coke and Audi thing, I want one of those awesome ‘engine on wheels’ thing he is using to pull that trailer. I have no idea at all how it would be useful to me, but I REALLY want one.

What the hell has any of this to do with Britain?

Thanks for reporting accurately on this, Stef. Can you do all the F1 stuff please?

There was no Vettel penalty when this ‘article’ was written.

The penalty had nothing at all to do with blocking, did you even watch the race?

I have to say, for the mechanics not even knowing he was coming in until they saw him out the front of the garage, that was an incredible pit stop. It took them maybe 5 seconds to get out the garage, and it was still a 9 second stop. Impressive.

What?

Especially when you consider that at the point of impact NEITHER car were fully on the line. Long was inside of the line so had no need to whack into O’Connell. If he’d moved out to the line, and O’Connell hit him at that point? Sure. Penalise the Caddy.

I agree. That was what I was getting at when I said “Long created the incident, but O’Connell created the contact by not backing off”, so to me it is a racing incident also. I can’t see how anyone can blame either driver from that.