Er, we got to the Moon and back largely due to German engineers, most of whom were brought to the US from Nazi Germany.

Well, for one thing, many foreign airlines get some government subsidies. The also have to work with different labor laws. US airlines have been royally screwing over their staff since at least the ‘80s, largely for the sake of executive level profit. Know why there’s only one agent checking in three flights?…

Not so much... more that while those airlines may have very good customer service, they use personnel policies that can be sexist and would run afoul of sex discrimination laws in the US. It’s just a strike against an otherwise good company reputation.

Actually hearing how the “Top Gun” question was worded, it’s actually a good solid question about how Viñales & Rossi are interacting on the team: mentor-student, true teammates, or rivals? It was just worded a bit more creatively.

Not so much. African airlines have had the worst safety record for years now, followed by the various former Soviet states. You heard about the crashes involving the Asian airlines more because it’s much more likely that they have American &/or European passengers on board. If there’s not “Westerners” (for lack of…

The only problem with many of the Asian airlines is that many of their hiring practices and treatment of their staff (especially the female staff members) is straight out of the 1950s.

That reminded me... Supposedly, when Tagliani went to see Zanardi for the first time after the accident, Zanardi greeted him by teasing Tag that he (Zanardi) was going to be a lot faster now.....

Things happen fast.... The flaggers do their best, but sometimes you just don’t get the flags up fast enough. Even if they do, the driver still has to see the flag & react. Unfortunately, drivers don’t always watch for the flag stations as much as they should.

Not to mention Zanardi’s accident at Lausitz. No matter how good the engineers or how advanced the materials, there are always limits to how much can be done. In the alternative, at least folks like Drs. Watkins, Olvey & Trammel pushed safety & medical preparedness to the point when things like this happen, the…

It sounds like they’re at the motion for summary judgment phase. If so, then the family might well still be able to proceed with their case. That doesn’t mean they have a winnable case. They might just be chasing a lucrative settlement, but my gut says that’s not the case. If it does proceed to a trial, I highly…

I kind of wonder if there might be a protest... That could very easily be seen as passing under a local yellow. But given we’re talking about teammates, who knows what will happen.

That’s pretty bad... Although I’ve seen worse, like this pile-up at the Glen many years ago....

Well, there is this example from a motorcycle race some years back...

“why make a big deal out of the women? I want to see cars.”

Honestly, I think that somewhere in the mid to late 1990s, M-B stopped making cars for Germans and started building cars for everyone else.

Nope. Not the only one. I’ve got just under 160,000 on my 29 year old M-B. Then again, this is the car my Dad bought in ‘90 and has outlived both him and my Mom, so there’s admittedly a ton of sentimental value, too. It’s having a few issues at the moment, but it’s an old car, so it’s going to have some problems…

Eh, that’s kind of the good thing about the late ‘70s & 1980s cars... Sure, there are problems with electrical & electronics stuff, but overall, there isn’t a whole lot of it in there compared to something current.

Correction: they *are* tanks.

Yeah, that bugged me. I’m a part of several older/vintage Mercedes-Benz groups, and there’s a heck of a lot of folks all over the world who just keep racking up the miles on cars from the ‘50s to the early ‘90s. Plus I seem to recall reading that something like 70% of the Porsches ever made are still on the road;…

People always seem to forget that the early Porsches were hard to drive well and not the least bit forgiving. My parents had a pair of 356s, and while they loved them, there was real work involved in driving them. The 550 was even more notorious for biting its drivers in the ass hard for even a small mistake.