It’s almost like if you make a vehicle look good, it’ll sell.

The two Hyundai/Kia products my wife bought were bulletproof. As in, 200k miles with basic maintenance, everything still worked at the time of sale.

Maybe, just maybe, people don’t want to finance $50k+ at 8% interest. This “EV sales are growing hugely YOY!” argument completely ignores the factor of free money. 2020/2021/2022 were complete outliers in terms of interest rates and loan spending.

Exactly. Give me a 2005 Honda V10 car in Monza spec, they were capable of 0-300 km/h in well under 10 seconds even with the traction limitations off the line.

I mean, they put it against the slowest modern F1 car in a straight line. 2005 V10 car would be much much quicker, ditto with the current hybrids.

Ya know, a lot of these 90s cars I thought would age terribly, and somehow they did seem a bit terrible in the early 2000s, look pretty good now. Modern cars are hideous.

You’re making the assumption that Perez is that bad.

That’s the question, isn’t it? How good/bad is Perez? Two years ago I’d have said he was the equal of Norris, so has Max buried him that far mentally or is Max just that good?

I want to hate this car for being so expensive, and for the fact it’ll be bought by wealthy speculators who never drive it. It’s too awesome for me to hate.

I guess what I’m saying is: the “gap” in performance doesn’t look so huge if you take Max out of the RB. You look at races and qualifying minus Max and it doesn’t look like RB has a giant advantage. Hell, Max has been outqualified by the Merc.

I know, it’s nuts. It’s scary how composed and mature he’s become as well, he’s always been fast but now there’s this confidence and smoothness he didn’t have before. You get the impression he’s well within his limits while simultaneously blowing everyone away.

You still have to execute, he’s developed into a very shrewd driver that knows exactly when to push and when not to. He isn’t making mistakes anymore, the combination of his speed and maturity is incredible.

Agreed. I’m just not buying into the idea Perez is a second rate driver, the narrative around F1 at the moment seems to be that Perez isn’t good enough. I don’t think he’d be getting destroyed like this at any other team, I don’t think Hamilton would own him like this.

He’s a second a lap faster than Perez, even if he’s 0.5s a lap faster than Leclerc in Leclerc’s car, he wins races.

As an Alonso fan, and before that Mika, I’m familiar with the boredom that comes from dominance. While this RB is very dominant, as a team they’ve still got a ways to go to match what we witnessed from Merc in the V6 era. I guess what I’m saying is this isn’t new, it’s simply new fans complaining about an old problem.

I think we have to entertain the idea that Max is that good. What if the slip isn’t a conspiracy, it’s just Verstappen making sure no one thinks Perez is as good as him?

I’m not so sure. I think you put Max in the Ferrari or Merc and he still wins. Maybe not as many races, but definitely the drivers title.

Interesting. Nice thing about the GT4 version is you can do real international racing, so the price increase kinda seems worth it.

This is really tempting. Wonder what pricing will be, if it’s under $100k I could see this being an awesome deal. Even after the series goes bust, you’ve got a cool track day car.

So...brand new race car can’t compete with well developed race car? I’m shocked.