Originally published at: Auto racing and the Unfair Advantage | Boing Boing
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Auto racing might be unique among sports in that cheating is generally a strategy for coping with corruption. F1 is famously corrupt and certain teams will always get a pass in rules bending or accident fault determination whereas other teams won’t. Red Bull famously pushes really hard against the rules, knowing they won’t ever get a break from officials because their cars aren’t red. Mercedes solved the problem by hiring the most gifted and hard working driver in the history of wheeled conveyance, but there’s only one Lewis Hamilton (FSM bless him). You don’t have to cheat when an angel from heaven is driving.
This is at every level, too. Even in 24 Hours Of LeMons, where the stakes could not possibly be lower, there’s still a fair bit of nepotism, favouritism, etc with judges and officials with regard to who gets away with what in their cars and on track. Everyone jokes around about it because we’re all friends at the end of the day, but sour words are traded about it here and there as well.
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Toto was truly blessed with Hamilton, and that George is working out so well even though their chariots are not the typical perfection we’ve grown accustomed to.
There’s always an inside track when it comes to racing, just as sure as “rubbing, son, is racing”.
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I always find LeMans interesting because it dates to a time when getting a car to run 24 hours WAS an engineering challenge in itself. To a real degree, it was evidence that a car was durable enough to be worth buying and driving.
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LeMans (not to be confused with LeMons, which I mentioned above) is my favourite race, bar none. I love endurance racing in general because it’s still a very pure form of motorsport. They’re fixing cars on the side of the track, driving with broken parts, driving through a haze of exhaustion, adapting to dozens of track conditions as weather and lighting change… all the things motorsport is supposed to be about. It’s so much for interesting to me than fighting for tenths on the same perfect line everyone is fighting over in identical cars.
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Auto Racing and the Unfair Advantage
my new band name
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I missed the “o” The only thing I know of the LeMons is the saga of the “Angry Hampster” because I’ve always thought that the z600 was a very cute car, scuba mask and all
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That is impressive application of duct tape, but does it provide the same thrill as passing a car blasting the taco cat song?
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