I’ve lived my whole life in the Midwest, but luckily on the shores of Lake Michigan and now in the oasis of the Twin Cities. But yes, most of it sucks. When I drive from Minneapolis to Omaha I have to try so hard not to fall asleep. So much nothing.

Is it really torque vectoring if it uses the brakes? I thought that real torque vectoring required a diff to apply reverse torque on the axle whereas brakes can only remove the forces that are being sent to the wheel.

Sorry, I was slow to post my comment because sometimes work distracts me from Jalopnik.

But the difference in grip levels needed between front and rear on a drag strip means that tires that aren’t good enough to use on the rear are still good enough to use on the front.

The theory floating around is that it basically lets drivers carry two sets of rears to the drag strip without a trailer. When they burn up the rear tires all they need to do is swap front to back and they’re ready to go!

I don’t think this confirms AWD. We’ve known about the massive matching front and rear tires for awhile now. And while skinny tires are better for drag racing, the theory floating around is that having matching front and rears would allow for racers to essentially bring two sets of rear tires without a trailer.

I love driving, but I tend to do lots of group activities. This always presents the dilemma of whether I’m willing to let my non-car enthusiast friends abuse my clean car in exchange for the privilege of driving. It doesn’t help that my 100,000 mile Acura is the nicest car in the group (of recent college grads), so of…

The window and roof lines on the side look far more like an Evora to my eyes:

Actually, hull speed is only applicable when the boat is not planing. The long hulls on go-fast boats are for rough water handling. More weight means it’s harder to toss the boat into the air while the length makes the boat stay more level overall.

That would be great if they could find a way to package the batteries that is both safe and easily swappable. But we all know how racing goes, teams would push the limit until something bad happens.

That extra power isn’t to get them going any faster. In fact, compared to last year the cars will have consume less power over the whole race, as between the two cars they had 56kWh, whereas this year they have 54kWh. And between the increased weight and increased efficiency I’d expect them to be running at a similar…

The speed is almost entirely limited by the battery. Faster equals less efficient so I’d imagine that they wanted to get a single battery to last the whole race before they try to make the cars faster.

That’s interesting to know. I’m trying hard to train myself for this. I tried autocrossing for a season and the hardest adjustment was seeing down the track and looking at the next turn instead of the one you were on. As drivers we’re so trained to find danger that we’ve essentially trained ourselves to look at this…

“However, it looks to be that the $50,000 upgrade will only allow the driveshaft to withstand up to 800 HP”

That’s what I thought too. And I’ve gotten myself out of plenty of other hairy situations. But this one was at higher speed and smaller space, so mild panic ensued. The main point of my anecdote is that you’re right to say that target fixation is the most critical, however that becomes tougher and tougher as the…

Doing this in a controlled environment is one thing, but on the open road it’s a different level. Hence, practice until it becomes second nature. For example, when practicing snow driving with my RWD G35 in big open parking lots drift it anywhere I wanted without spinning. And when I practiced in vacant industrial…

When he tells the reader not to build an unsafe ship he is talking about the plane. On the instruction website they often referred to the plane as a “ship” or “airship.”

I was given the privilege of taking the Mustang to school when I was 16. You can probably see where this is going already. But luckily I got out after lunch, meaning there were no crowds present at the time of the almost-incident. Anyway, I was turning out of the parking lot when I decided that I needed to leave my…

While less teams is probably not good for the sport, and I feel awful for all the employees who are now out of work, I won’t miss watching these cars struggle at the back of the pack. They were dead last all but one year. They had a single top ten finish and a grand total of four finishes in the top twelve in all…

Yeah that last line is just mean. Either there is a more powerful version (unlikely), he’s just toying with us (much more likely), or the next gen will be getting a turbo (somewhat likely). If it’s A or C I’d rather he not say anything than hint like that. B is just straight clickbait.