Amen to that. Azerbaijan is fairly westernized country, but look at their culture and history. The primary language is Azeri language, which is a Turkik language, which is a hardly European family of languages. Their primary religion is Shia Islam. Among their neighbors are Iran and Turkey. People still debate whether…

The high revving F1 engines were hardly road car relevant, EVER. Outside the exotic Ferrari and Porsche road car engines or the like, the only mainstream car maker that built a high revving road engine was Honda when they built the S2000 (and then again 9000RPM, is not exactly even close to +15K RPM). On the other…

CART racing was pretty cool in the 1980s.

Little did Ferrari know at the time that this V12 engine will become the primary reason why Ferrari will be so uncompetitive between 1991 and 1995. Recall how Prost famously called the 1991 car a “truck”, and was promptly fired. In fact, 1990 and 1991 seasons, were the only seasons when the V12 engines shined (V12…

All I can say is that I am glad that 24Hours of Le Mans is on the same weekend. I’d rather watch the world’s best sportscar race instead of another race in a caricature nuvo-riche petro dictatorship.

Enough with Ferrari V12 fetish already. Jalopnik seems to be the only news site so obsessed by about it. That V12 engine was the reason why Ferrari was the laughing stock of F1 between 1991 and 1995. Recall how Prost called the 1991 Ferrari car a “truck” and got promptly booted out of the team. In fact, almost…

Supposedly, it’s not that simple. The current power units also harvest energy from the exhaust gases, which also has impact on the sound.

What JR has accomplished in Indy racing since the 2011 Indy 500 race confirmed that he was a pretty average and effectively expendable driver, but the judgement is still out on Rossi.

The PDVSA’s check was rumored to be in the neighborhood of 25-30 million USD. That was quite a generous deal. A lot of pay drivers bring in significantly less money into the teams. Perhaps this is why Maldonado was tolerated for so long. Having said that, no way Rossi can still afford to pay out of pocket to race in…

There is a lot more items that can be added to this list:

This was a disappointing GP because of how every fan was pumped up before it started. But what happened in the race? First the unprecedented 8 lap trek behind the safety car. They gotta be joking. Monaco GP races went on under much heavier rain the past. Next, Hamilton gains two spots for the win, where the Rosberg’s…

Ricciardo lost +10 seconds on the final stop.

I used to be a Kvyat fan, but now it is clear that he is slowly turning into a new Maldonado. His driving is erratic, and he remains arrogant and unapologetic after every incident. He will certainly not have his Red Bull/STR contract renewed for 2017, and chances are good he may not even finish this season in STR.

It’s an interesting place. Sakha contains the world’s coldest biggish city, Yakutsk, the capital of Sakha.

I don’t think such sales tend to help the entire economy of Russia. Even though Russia is world’s second biggest weapons exporter, the weapons sales are still a relatively small portion of their GDP or exports. However, the weapons sales, even for export, do help to maintain the military-industrial complex of Russia…

If re-opening the line is possible, it’s still going to cost mucho dinero. On the other hand, the Su-34 production is still very much at beginning stages of its run.

Russian fighter jets and attack aircraft are still in Syria. Russian's did not really withdraw that force. What they did was simply to rotate the forces, except that they only advertised the part when the jets were taking off. But then quietly, new Su-35s arrived to replace the Su-30s that left, and new helicopters…

A “large Russian pullout” actually never took place. What Russians did was to rotate their forces. Instead of Su-30s, new Su-35s arrives. Instead of Mi-24 helicopters, newer Mi-28 and Ka-52 arrived. They never really ceased operations against ISIS. However, when the pullout of the first round of forces happened,…

That’s far from reality. The Russian population dynamics are very similar to that of Europe. Very slow population growth, and even that with the help of immigrant communities as well as a Muslim minority in some provinces where families tend to have more children. Russia experienced a big population drop in the 1990s,…

Based on the more recent news, it sounds like Russia still left a pretty significant force in Syria. In fact, they sent the Mi-28 and Ka-52 helicopters that probably haven't been seen there before. Putin just gave a speech explaining that Russia is not withdrawing completely, and that Russia can basically return its…