I’d been driving a Ford Escort ZX2 coupe for 11 years. While this is the sort of statement that tends to make small children laugh and point, they can kiss my grits: I loved that car. It was tiny, it was agile as all get out, it accelerated like a bat out of hell (because it weighed nothing), and it worked without major malfunction for many many years. And all this for $13,000, which even in 1997 was a pretty low price for a car. It’s been paid off for years, which means that every month, instead of spending money on my car payment, I could spend it on video games responsibly put it in my savings account.

Somewhere around the 6th year of the car’s life, I realized that it was sufficiently valueless that I would not really get any money by trading it in. I resolved to drive it until it stranded me, and then buy a new car. It wasn’t until just last week, 5 years later, that it finally died. I probably could have kept it alive through heroic measures, but it was time. So I started the search for a new car.

It turns out that my answer to the question “What car do you want to drive?” changes dramatically when I’m faced with the prospect of actually spending the money. For a while now I had target-fixated on the Mazda Mazdaspeed 3, a rocket sled for men who haven’t figured out that women mostly don’t even notice how much horsepower the car we’re driving has. The Speed 3 is awesome fun, handles like a dream, is a bit spartan inside, and gets 19 mpg.

When I thought about living with the car, and commuting to work in it every day, the bloom sort of faded off the rose. I dismissed the Mini Cooper, after test-driving it, for similar reasons: a complete blast to drive in every way, but I just don’t think I would want to book 40 highway miles a day in it.

I test-drove a Volkswagen Jetta TDI, a turbodiesel with some cachet. And you know what? I liked it. More than liked it: I loved it. The diesel is all low-end torque, the road handling is taut, the interior (while not excessively cushy) is polished, and it gets fabulous gas mileage, not to mention some good tax breaks.

There’s just one problem with it: it’s a Volkswagen. Now, I know there are plenty of people who have owned VWs and had no problems. I’m not one of these people. Every VW or Audi I’ve owned has, after a few years, developed weird electrical problems that can only be fixed (for 6 months) by purchasing very expensive Bavarian German pieces of electronics. Lather, rinse, repeat. The dealers insist that these quality problems have all been fixed. But then, what else would you expect a car dealer to say?

So here is where I was this weekend: I had a good deal available on a car that I love, but which in my heart I feel is unreliable. It’s like contemplating beginning a relationship with that really crazy boy or girl: it’ll be really awesome when he or she says “Let’s take a road trip to Vegas! On mopeds!” but the great stories you accrue will have to be counterbalanced by the number of hours spent in the waiting room of the psych hospital when you have to involuntarily commit them.

In short: even before spending a single penny on the VW, I had already envisioned all the bad things that would happen once I bought it. I would drive off the lot and the door handles would fall off. I’d go back to the dealer and they’d tell me they didn’t have the door handles in stock, but that they would order them from Germany. They’ll arrive in 3 weeks, but aren’t covered under the warranty, and so I’d need to pay $1500. Or I could just leave them off for now and use the sunroof to get in and out. Each and every scenario made me feel worse about buying the car that I hadn’t yet bought. It’s my own personal phenomenon: buyer’s premorse. The regret that comes from having made a purchasing decision, but before you’ve actually completed the purchase.

On a whim, I stopped off at an Acura dealership. This was very, very unplanned, because everything I’d heard about the Acura TSX had been negative. In our search for our respective cars, psu and I have been addicted to various motoring websites, such as The Truth About Cars. According to these sites, the TSX is sluggish, underpowered, has no road feel and you should absolutely buy a BMW 3 series instead. I drove the TSX and found it absolutely charming: responsive, nimble, certainly not a street racer but not slow by any stretch of the imagination. What car were these people reviewing? What gives?

Herein lies the rub about comparing cars: often, people tend to compare cars to other cars that are in completely different classes. An Infiniti G37 or a BMW 328i, configured similarly to the Acura TSX, will drive the pants off of it. And will also cost $10,000 more. As a car wanker this sort of comparison might be useful: most car wankers are boys, and it’s a time honored pastime for us to have long and involved conversations about whose wang is longest. But as a car buyer it’s extremely unhelpful. You can play the “…but this better car is just $4,000 more!” game all the way up to an Aston Martin Vanquish, at which point the bank comes and repossesses your house.

The other aspect, of course, is that “better”, according to the car enthusiast, often seems to be defined entirely by “which one goes from 0-60 in the least amount of time.” In the computer world, these are the people who tell you not to buy an iMac because you can’t replace the video card.

With respect to the TSX specifically, the dynamic you see between reviewers and purchasers is especially fascinating. The TSX is, essentially, a luxury version of the European Honda Accord. Car reviewers approach this from the attitude of “Ewwww. It’s just an upmarket European Accord.” But buyers approach this as “Cool! It’s an upmarket European Accord!”

It turns out that I, at least, find an upmarket European Accord to be a pretty compelling value proposition. I got a great deal on the car (thanks, Edmunds!) by sending it out for bid to a bunch of dealers over the Internet. From my perspective, I got a car that drives just as well as the TDI, and paid a small premium for a 4-year instead of a 3-year warranty, and for Honda engineering and service (“Oh, hey, your car has 100,000 miles on it. You might want to change the oil.”) versus Volkswagen engineering and service (“The engine is in perfect mechanical condition, but you can’t close the window or sunroof without shorting out the alternator. We replaced the window switches that were wearing out. They look nice now, but they still don’t work. That will be $679, please.”)

Despite the fact that I would have paid the price premium just for the perceived improved reliability of the Acura, it’s also undeniable that it has a much more well-polished interior. It’s luxurious without being cushy or soft. The car is a bit heavier than the Jetta, so it’s not quite as sprightly, but it has a taut suspension and is still very much a driver’s car. I’m really pleased. If you can afford to spend over $30k on a car, there are probably better alternatives to the TSX. But if you, like me, have an invisible line in the sand that keeps you in the $20s, you should give the TSX serious consideration.

I guess I can have nice things after all.

Auf wiedersehen, liebchen.

I say this without rancor or intent to insult. It’s not inherently negative, it’s just the simple truth, to the point where the Italian government offers tax breaks to men to move out of their mothers’ houses already.

You see the effect of this in many ways, great and small. One of the most obvious is in the Italian attitude towards sport. In Italy, winning by cheating isn’t just considered acceptable, it’s pretty much par for the course. This gives observers with more British notions of fair play conniption fits. To be perfectly clear, let’s zero in on the difference: the British cheat just as much as the Italians, but they pretend to feel bad when they’re caught. That Italian sports figures don’t bother to do this drives the British newspapers completely insane.

But it makes perfect sense if you put it in context: these are men whose entire strategy for dealing with reality is “make Mom deal with it.” In the sports context, that means “convince the ref.” And if someone other than the ref doesn’t like it, too bad.

Just last week, A.C. Milan goalkeeper Dida took an embarassingly transparent dive, for which he was suspended for two games. Milan, shamelessly, has appealed the suspension. Uffa, mamma!.

Today, Kimi Räikkönen won the Formula 1 drivers’ championship. The constructor’s championship was already gifted to Ferrari earlier this season, by an FIA management that follows a “Ferrari wins at any cost” refereeing policy. Two teams were, apparently, playing fast and loose with the rules, but the stewards decided to not penalize them. McLaren is appealing that decision while claiming to accept that they were beaten, but the point is made: What would have happened if the situation had been reversed?

If those cars needed to be disqualified to ensure a Ferrari win, no one anywhere on the entire planet doubts for a moment that they would have been disqualified.

Thanks, mom.

And not just because of this segment.

Well, OK. Mostly because of that segment. But the political commentary about New Orleans is spot on as well.

I’m sure many of my urban liberal friends will think “This is unfair. It’s Alabama.” But the truth is that I can drive 30 minutes outside of Pittsburgh and find towns which would have given the Top Gear boys the exact same reception.

Richard Hammond

I don’t usually do this, but I wanted to take a quick moment to say that Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond who has been seriously injured in a jet-powered car crash, is in our thoughts today. Our hopes go out to him and his family.

Top Gear might be my favorite show on TV right now. I certainly enjoy their wild stunt segments, many of which Hammond hosts. I’ve always thought that they were stunts that looked more dangerous than they were. Evidently, I was wrong. I think I speak for all the fans of the show when I say that I’d give up those segments forever with no regrets if it means that Hammond’s two daughters, Isabella and Willow, can have their daddy back safe and sound.

If you’re so inclined, donate a few dollars online to Yorkshire Air Ambulance in his name.

Richard Burns

I’d like to take a moment today to mourn the passing of Richard Burns, 2001 WRC Rally Champion. Diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2003, Burns passed away on Friday night. He was just 34 years old.

A section for memorials has been started on his web site. His family asks that in lieu of flowers, they would prefer donations to Cancer Research.

This weekend’s US Grand Prix was the ninth race of the season, the first season of the millennium to not be so boring as to serve as a prescription insomnia cure. All seven teams running Michelin tires did not race, giving Michael Schumacher his first “win” of the season.

The official reason for the withdrawal was that the Michelin tires were not prepared for the Indianapolis track, which is somewhat cobbled out of the oval designed for our “go fast, turn left” style of racing. However, rules changes were offered that would have let the race go on as planned — changes that weren’t accepted. This begs questions about Max and Bernie’s respective grips on (market) reality. Are they mad, power-mad, or just plain desperate for Ferrari to win? Since Bernie and Max have made careers — and billions of pounds — by running F1 (into the ground), we can’t assume they are idiots, but it’s worth looking at the series of events which brought us to this point.

In the mid-nineties, when Ferrari couldn’t win a race if their life depended on it, many people thought that Formula 1′s fortunes were rather tied to Ferrari’s. From all outward appearances, Bernie and Max joined the Ferrari team in an all-out attempt to make sure Ferrari was once again competitive, and by “competitive” we mean “dominant”. This may not actually be what the Formula 1 powers-that-be set out to do, but it sure looks that way from the outside.

At first, Ferrari could use all the help they could get — their car was actually less reliable than Jaguar’s. Yes, they had Michael Schumacher, but while he’s quite good, there’s a reason Wikipedia lists him with the passionless “statistically the most successful F1 driver ever”. He’s no Senna, and he’s certainly no Fangio. Some days he isn’t even a Damon Hill.

But, with Hill retired and the rest of the field relegated to teams who weren’t willing to pour nearly as much money into winning, Schumacher and Ferrari’s dominance was assured. Schumacher had a car he could drive the way he wanted, and Ferrari had a driver who would win races. Sponsorship revenues soared, fans went wild, and vendors started paying attention. And still, the F1 governing authorities seemed to do whatever was necessary to ensure Ferrari owned the field.

Over time, though, the shine faded. Who were the new drivers? Where was the excitement? Who cares? Of my four friends who would obsessively watch F1 at race time in 2000, only one still occasionally catches a race in replay. While he still makes the pilgrimage to a couple races a year, he now comes back with stories about the parties which are far more interesting than the stories about the race.

Still, the Ferrari-favoritism lived on, with no apparent end in sight. Yes, every year they rolled out new rules to make it look like Ferrari was at risk of losing, but every year Ferrari seemed to grow more entrenched.

Until, quite by surprise, this year. Suddenly, we were eight races into the season without a single Ferrari victory. Suddenly, Fernando Alonso was dominating the Drivers’ Championship, and Michael Schumacher was third behind Kimi R‰ikkˆnen. Suddenly, Schumacher was taking home over three million dollars per race he lost.

What went wrong? Fingers point everywhere. A month ago, Ferrari President Luca di Montezemolo blamed Bridgestone for failing to make competitive tires. Yet Ferrari’s tire problems were of their own making — after years of pressuring Bridgestone to pay more attention to Ferrari, Bridgestone wasn’t supplying any top-tier teams with tires. With this year’s more radical rule changes, Bridgestone had no other competitive cars on which to test tires, and Ferrari was suddenly running inadequately tested tires.

Fans joked that Montezemolo was blaming Bridgestone for making the season interesting, but suddenly the season was, yes, interesting. Which brings us to another question: is Ferrari still competitive? They clearly know how to dominate, and they know how to keep winning, but have they forgotten how to win in the first place? Is Schumacher past his prime? And can he win again now that people realize he isn’t invincible? It’s worth remembering that Schumacher has won the championship by a close margin in the past, and on some days that margin put somebody else into a tire-wall.

Which brings us, then, to this past weekend.

During qualifying, Ralf Schumacher’s tire blew in Turn 13, and Michelin realized that their tires were not safe for the speeds through that turn. Michelin is familiar with the United States’ reasonably prudent person standard for legal liability, and warned everyone that the tires were not safe.

[queue dramatic music]

Michelin teams wanted a chicane installed right before the turn.

Ferrari didn’t want the chicane.

The Formula 1 governing bodies — who usually seem willing to arbitrarily change the rules “for reasons of safety” whenever and wherever it furthers Ferrari’s chances of winning — engaged in professional hand-wringing.

Eventually it was decreed that drivers running Michelin tires should slow down in turn 13.

Having told professional race car drivers to maybe not drive so fast, the FIA sat on its thumbs and waited.

Every team running Michelin tires withdrew from the race, citing safety reasons.

Ferrari and Jordan engaged in the ritual of “hey, free points”. They were joined by Minardi, whose boss, Paul Stoddart, promptly went on Dutch TV and called the entire race “a farce”, apologized to the fans, expressed sympathy for the Michelin teams, placed the blame squarely on the FIA’s shoulders, and then switched to more colorful language.

Fans – many many of whom paid over $100 per seat, took time off from work, and flew in for the event – walked out.

Indianapolis Motor Speedway owner Tony George refused to wave the checkered flag, took a bath on the proceeds, and may not allow F1 back next year.

Other fans are suing everyone in sight.

And now, facing a backlash, Max Mosley — who apparently learned his management skills from his father — has summoned all Michelin teams to explain why they dared to consider their drivers’ safety and the safety of the fans to be more important than the safety of FIA’s pocketbook.

The unanswered question is: why did the FIA not adjust the race rules so there would be an actual race and not a farce? History and appearances would suggest that Ecclestone and Mosley were desperate for a Ferrari win, any Ferrari win. But, that may not be the case at all, and the decision was so bizarre that it’s almost pointless to pontificate.

Instead we need to ask a different set of questions: why are the teams taking the heat for this? For all of the FIA’s historically tense relationship with the teams, why did Mosley think the solution to this problem was a giant game of safety chicken with 100,000 fans in the middle? Why does Mosley still have a job? Is F1 dead in the US? When will the FIA management relent from the WWF style antics, put fans first and let competitors compete? And will anybody still care by the time it happens?

The clock is ticking.

Additional Resources

• About the United States Grand Prix
• Thanks to Chris for pointing out the history of Ferrari’s relationship with Bridgestone.
• Bonus: Paul Stoddard flips out on television (mp3, not safe for work, contains more vitriol and resignation than this post – thanks to Owen for finding that).
• Update: The list of charges against the Michelin teams.
• Update: Paul Stoddart has issued a press release outlining the behind-the-scenes timeline, placing the blame pretty squarely on Mosley, and has called for Mosley’s resignation.

And, for the most part, it has worked out. I’ve read a lot of books. I’ve played a lot of videogames. I haven’t missed it at all.

Unfortunately, Formula One season starts this weekend. This puts me in a bit of a bind.

I’m getting some pressure to hook the satellite service back up. Some of it comes from my friends, who somehow have decided that I’m the one that has to pay for satellite service so that they can come over at midnight and drink beer and watch the race. But most of it is internal. The pressure comes from a hope, completely unjustified by any actual evidence, that this is the year that things will change. This time, there will be battles for first place, rather than third. This year the championship will be decided in the last race, instead of midway through the season.

I’m Charlie Brown, and Bernie Ecclestone is Lucy, holding that football and beckoning me over. Formula One is the latent sporting event.

Last year, I correctly predicted the entire shape of the season. Everyone thought I was joking. I wasn’t:

Wanna-be footballer and six-time world champion Michael Schumacher, Inc, is still the lead driver for Ferrari, and is scheduled to win the championship once again. Don’t look for any surprises here. About once a month throughout the season various F1 online magazines will post articles with headlines asking “Can Anyone Beat Schumi? At the risk of spoiling the season, I can reveal that the answer to that question is “No.” At times, people will propose various theories as to how and why Michael might manage to lose. Perhaps Bridgestone’s tires will fail to be competetive with Michelin. Fernando Alonso will develop further and be able to challenge Schumacher in every race. A meteor will fall from the sky and annihilate the Ferrari paddock. None of these things will happen. Ferrari will dominate again, and despite what many people wish, he’s not about to retire.

I’m republishing this prediction, unchanged, for 2005. Herr Michael Schumacher will, once again, crush the field like a sumo wrestler stepping on a moth. The only drama at each race will be the question of whether he will deploy his “noble and magnanimous” face in the post-race press conferences, or his “snarky and condescending” one.

There are, for the third year running, significant rule changes that the naïve hope will somehow slow down the Ferrari juggernaut as it screams towards victory at 18,500 RPM. Engines must last for 2 races. New chassis regulations should reduce the amount of available aerodynamic downforce. Most significantly, tires have to last for qualifying and the race now — the days of 23-man pit crews are gone. No tire changes during the race, except for dealing with punctures.

Understanding why the rule changes won’t slow down the Ferrari Victory Parade is a simple matter of internalizing this fact: they really are that good. From the tiniest details of pit crew choreography up through the talents of the drivers, the selection of race strategies, and of course car and engine design and implementation, Ferrari’s execution is, for all intents and purposes, flawless. People talk about how much money the team spends, but casually forget to mention that Toyota is spending even more cash on a team that fares much worse.

So that’s my dilemma. The racing fan in me wants to see the races, because maybe something unexpected will happen. The dispassionate analyst in me knows that I will just be paying $40 a month to watch a race where the outcome is predetermined. And that feels dumb. There’s no need to watch a race live if there’s no drama. I might as well just be watching a highlight reel.

Hmm, now there’s an interesting thought. I wonder if anyone will be disseminating the races on the Internet after the fact…

I have great respect for the skill required to be a competitive golfer. It is a subtle game. It requires more stamina and strength than you’d think, if you’ve never tried it. Put on a replay of an amazing putt and I’ll be able to appreciate it, as long as I don’t have to watch for more than about 30 seconds or so. But I can’t understand the point of watching an entire golf match, or even a hole. As a spectator sport, it is composed entirely of interstitial pauses. Watching golf because you “like sports” is like listening to John Cage’s 4’33″ because you “like music.” When a golfer is taking a shot, the game is interesting. At all other times, the sport is of merely academic interest.

Realize, then, the pain it causes me to admit that WRC Rally racing, which I love, is the golf of the motorsports world.

Rally is about timing. Drivers compete only indirectly. Each driver and co-driver attacks the course, and the best time wins. Unless something has gone very wrong, there are effectively no passes in rally, except for simulations created by compositing telemetry data after the fact. If you played the most popular rally videogames, you might not even realize this, since they typically offer an “everyone races the same dirt track at once” experience, a race format that would probably lead to molten flaming death in real life. The game manufacturers do this for an obvious reason: to most people, time trials are more boring than wheel to wheel racing.

There is not an obvious solution to this problem; which is mostly one of presentation and immanence. The networks — for both golf and rally — are increasingly moving towards highlight reels. Take all the action from a single day and compress it into ten minutes, or an hour. Viewed this way, both sports are marvelously dense with thrills and cliffhanger moments.

And yet, as a viewer, this treatment leaves me cold. A highlight reel is not a sporting event. Sports, like news, or a good chilli, is best served hot. As a spectator, I can’t even stand watching a sporting event more than a few minutes lagged on my Tivo. Once the Steeler game is over, I could care less about seeing what happened. I want to watch in the moment. I want to be in the moment.

A few years ago, Speed Channel would broadcast a compressed highlight reel each night after the day’s rallying. Last year, they moved to showing a single three-hour show on the day after the rally finished. This year, they are showing a one-hour highlight reel a full week after the rally ended. For that entire week, I creep around the Internet like a cat burgler, hands ready over my eyes, lest I find out that Petter Solberg and Subaru won in Wales, and therefore I won’t want to bother watching the highlight reel. Most Americans have no idea what WRC Rally is. Speed Channel isn’t helping; viewership is down.

Combine this with the fact that WRC Rally is a monstrously expensive sport, and you have a sport in freefall. Citroën and Peugeot — the only two teams to have won the manufacturers title in the past five years — have both announced that they are leaving the sport at the end of 2005. When even the team that is winning the championship is fleeing, how do you make a compelling case to other manufacturers that this is a value proposition they want to be a part of?

WRC Rally is not going to disappear tomorrow, any more than F1 will. But if something isn’t done to improve the ratio between the expenses of running races where it’s more or less expected that half the drivers will drive their cars off a cliff and into a tree, and the returns for participating in the sport, then the participating talent pool will continue to shrink. Colin McRae has already decided that the Paris-Dakar Rally is more worth his time than WRC. Who will be next?

“The power output of an engine [equals] the size of the bangs, times the number of bangs per minute that you can manage to get.”

Keith Duckworth — Cosworth Engineering

The Chariot Makers

Former Benetton mechanic Steve Matchett has written a new book, The Chariot Makers: Assembling the Perfect Formula 1 Car. True to his usual style, it is a breezy, informal, and very readable book. While perhaps too light on detail to satisfy the most hardcore mechanic, it’s aimed at those of us who merely appreciate the engineering that goes into race cars, rather than understand it.

Before his second careers as an author, commentator and announcer for Speedvision, Steve Matchett was perhaps best known for being one of the Benetton mechanics who caught fire at the German Grand Prix in 1994 (you should really watch the video for the full effect — it’s quite stunning that no one was killed.)

In The Chariot Makers, Matchett discusses his final trip to New York to work for Speedvision, around the tragic events of September 11th. Stuck in an Air France executive lounge with some wealthy and quite stereotyped British men (I half-expected to see “Pip! Pip! Cheerio, old boy!” whenever I turned a page), Steve and our public school lads pass the time by trying to build — on paper — the perfect Formula 1 car. In doing this, he takes us on a tour of the great leaps grand prix technology has made over the years (the first monocoque, the first carbon-fibre chassis, and so on) and also explains some of the tradeoffs that go in to building such a beast.

Matchett deliberately eschews the maths behind the mechanics, and goes directly for metaphor and example whenever possible. His written voice is, in fact, very much like the spoken voice he uses when commenting on races:

Blasting around the race track, a Formula 1 car sticks to the ground in exactly the same way that an aircraft doesn’t… When the amount of lift generated by [an aircraft's] wings exceeds the aircraft’s weight it will take-off. In the case of our Formula 1 car, the very last thing we want is for it to take-off. For, although this will certainly focus the driver’s attention, it also has the tendency to sap his confidence.

The Chariot Makers is about on par with Matchett’s earlier book The Mechanic’s Tale, which covered his experiences seeking (and getting) a job as a mechanic for a Grand Prix team. It’s far superior to his initial foray into writing, Life in the Fast Lane, a somewhat breathless and obsequious catalogue of Benetton’s 1994 season. Matchett is at his best when he is focusing on the technology and how it relates to the driver and the team. If he sometimes tries a little too hard to tell a story (“I say, Steve, old lad…”), we can forgive him because it’s so clear that he is completely in love with the subject matter.

My one serious complaint about the book is that it desperately needs a bibliography. I understand — and agree with — Matchett’s decision to not go into to excessive mechanical detail, but for those of us who wanted to delve further into the subject mattter, some pointer to other resources (other than “Get a job with an F1 team”) would have been valuable.

Pip pip, cheerio, Steve.

You can find The Chariot Makers at Amazon.com, or at your local bookstore.