Originally Posted by
Raza
I don’t consider a shut down road a public road any more than I’d consider a track a public road. A public road is one where anyone can drive a car on it at any time. Shutting down a public road creates controlled conditions and limits who can be there to people participating in an event. That’s not what I’m talking about. It’s the same argument that you can take the car to a track and drive the hell out of it (which is where a car like the ZR-1 belongs).
I know I work up to it before I push any car. You have to spend a lot of seat time to learn the limits, how it reacts to your inputs, how the weight shifts under braking and turning, etc.
I’m not confident the drivers of any car, of any power level, know or do this. Considering how many times I’ve seen videos of “mundane” performance cars like base Vettes and Mustang GTs revving at the lights and then skewering off immediately into a tree or street lamp, I really have no confidence that the average driver of a car like this is spending hours learning the car.
Well, yes, you do have a point there. It’s not just age, I never meant it to be simply about age. But again, using professional drivers as a yardstick is not appropriate measure. These are people who have been training and racing likely their whole lives. F1 drivers cart from the time they can walk without that toddler wobble. Age is far less a factor for someone like that, who has been honing the skills required to drive fast at a competitive level their whole lives. It’s the same as me saying a 35 year old can’t pick up and start playing professional soccer and then you saying that Messi’s 37 and he’s still one of the best in the world. Yes, but both those things are true. There’s a fundamental difference between someone who has been racing their whole lives and someone who has been a hedge fund manager or investment banker and splashes out on an expensive car. I’ve been driving hard since I got my license, I’ve done track work, skills workshops, etc., but if you put me, a lifelong car enthusiast and pretty damn good driver if I do say so myself, head to head with a retired F1 driver 20 years older than I am, I would be embarrassed handily. These are people with natural skills and talents that have been honed over a lifetime of competitive racing. It’s not the same. None of us is John Force, nor Damon Hill, nor Randy Pobst. There used to be a show called “Pros vs. Joes” where a bunch of football dads pit themselves against retired professional athletes. I don’t have the statistics, but in the few times I saw that show, the Joes got trounced regularly. It’s a different situation when you’ve been training your whole life to do a thing. And there are always going to be anecdotal outliers, that one tree doesn’t change the forest.
And we both know, that most people who are going to buy a car like this are going to drive it slowly to the country club or to brunch or to brunch at the country club and that’s fine. People have money, they want to show it off, if we’re being honest, I’m in no position to criticize that. Flex away, septuagenarians, enjoy your thousand horsepower performance car. But there’s a reason cars like this have trunks designed around fitting a bag of golf clubs in them. Let’s not kid ourselves. There’s nothing inherently wrong about a 1000+ horsepower car. It’s just boring. And yeah, if someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing tries to use all that power on public roads, it’s dangerous. And I get that half the fun is the danger, so again, I’m not in a position to criticize that either. But if we’re talking real talk, that 1000 could easily be 500 or even 400 and 99% of buyers would never know the difference.
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