FORMULA 1 STC SAUDI ARABIAN GRAND PRIX 2023 - Jeddah....Race.... ▄▀▄▀▄▀ SPOILERS ▄▀▄▀▄▀

Meh, seems like someone’s trolling. Like any car, you have to drive it for yourself.

 

It goes into the ignore category. When I read "Old Age" that can only mean one thing.

 

Back when the first NSX was new, I got a chance to drive one on the Streets of Willow course at Willow Springs. I never was a fan of the exterior. And when I slide behind the steering wheel, I thought..."gee I'm in a Honda Civic." It had very good numbers but driving it for me, was like safe sex with a condom. All the new super cars of today, to me, look like experiments in Japanese animation.

 

Having a garage full of unruly, problematic, sticky Italian divas; some times 'safe sex with a condom' is just what my auto doctor ordered. The 3.2 iteration of the VTEC is a delight, and less likely to leave you holding the (financial) baby.

 

This is more fun than talking about our woeful F1 team...

 

Vasseur: Tyres key to Ferrari Jeddah F1 race form
Ferrari Formula 1 boss Fred Vasseur says that the team performed well in the Saudi Arabian GP until both drivers switched to the hard tyres for the second half of the race.

 

A team of one. Charles did very well 1st stint on the softs. Went fastener and longer than Sainz on the med. Really hard to say what our pace is relative to Merc. Team should have allowed Charles to have a crack at them instead of having to follow Sainz.

 

I was actually a little surprised not to see Ferrari try something different with Leclerc and put him on Mediums. Unless Sainz' mediums already had gone off...

 

It hasn't been until fairly recently that the Corvette hangs with exotic cars. 50s and 60s Jaguars alone would absolutely destroy the Corvette on track, nevermind Cobras, Aston Martins, and Ferraris. Chevy didn't hook the car up with disc brakes until 1965, and even on straights, it was really nothing special.

 

They don't understand how to make works tyres ( Soft medium or hard)
So mediums potentially would have put them in big troubles the last 5 laps ..

 

I didn't know that he said that - interesting.

Yah I like Checo overall. He seems like a decent guy and he obviously puts in his work.

I think he is delusional if he thinks he has any chance of beating Max straight up. On the other hand, to be a competitive driver, you do have to have that mentality to compete. But I would take it more seriously if he could handle the low hanging fruit - like race starts.

 

Let's see - I'll continue to hope while still accepting reality. Talk is cheap as they say - let's see if they can put it on the track. Regardless, I think the best they can do is 2nd this year, and they will have to work hard to do so based on what I've seen so far.

 

Corvettes are an acquired taste...like Jello Salad.

;P

 

100% agree on all fronts. I do think he HAS to have the mindset to say that he can beat Max...But he doesn't need to stir up stories like he's doing.

 

You are talking about cars that were at the time twice or 3 times the price of a 'vette.
Like I said, for a long time the Corvette was incredible value for money, with no competition in its price bracket for many years.
As for track performance, GM was against racing it, so it never benefited from the development it deserved.
But Corvettes were still raced by Yenko, Gulstrand, Greenwood and Co, and who can forget the Corvette Grand Sport of Zora Duntow?

 

I always had a soft spot for them, from the 60s, with the Corvette 2 with split rear window.

 

Corvette became competitive in GT racing with the L-88 and ZL-1 engine cars of the late 1960s-early 1970s.

 

A 1953 Corvette was $3498 and the XK120 was $3940. That’s less than a 12% difference. The 1961 Corvette cost $3934 and the 1961 E-Type cost $5670. That’s a 31% difference. I’ve seen the E-Type race the Grand Sport at Lime Rock and in Goodwood videos and the Corvette could never hang.

 

Right, so nearly 20 years after its birth. Nevertheless, it’s sort of a blip on the radar.

 

So, that still made it an affordable street car compared to Ferrari, Maserati and Aston Martin of the time.
The production numbers show that it sold far more than the European exotics, apart Porsche perhaps.
Of course it didn't have double overhead camshafts, tubular frame, aluminum body, plenty of leather or other gizmos ...
Like I said, the Corvette was a very good for value for money car for a long time.
I never understood why GM didn't market it in Europe.

 

In my experience the 'Vettes' never felt like a sports car. The Triumphs and MG's of the sixties were less expensive, had better handling and were more fun to drive. Growing up in California in the sixties I would see a lot more English and German sports cars on the street and on the track than Corvettes.

 

The early Corvettes were sloppily built boulevardiers at best--sensational Motorama styling over a pedestrian 6 cylinder Chevy. It became a legitimate sportscar in 1956 and a bona fide racer with the 1957 fuelie. Many of the cars that compete at Goodwood are replicas or highly modified originals which produce power far in excess of that in period(same with Trans Am cars today).
Any of the original Grand Sports would annihilate any E Type. They were radical silhouette race cars comparable to a Cobra Daytona coupe.

FIFY

Sorry to derail this thread.

 

I don't know too many bonafide racers without disc brakes, but my '59 TR3 has them.

Fun story: In the late '60s, my father was driving his friend's '60s Corvette up 684 doing around 100mph. A gust of wind blew in the opposing direction of the car and the front wheels actually lifted off the ground. They both thought that was their time to die. He never had that issue with any of his E-Types, and he used to run them around 140 mph in the deserts of Arizona.

My answer to the Grand Sport is the E-Type "Low-Drag."

 

The only thing I'm disputing is that it was a match for exotics of the same vintage.