Anyone seen this race? 63 passes on the opening lap. Verstappen's strategy? "A few cars got stuck and I always managed to be on the other side." That's the whole thing right there.
Seventh at 15 minutes and three seconds a lap. Check it out if you haven't seen it.
Article: https://www.espn.com/f1/story/_/id/49867259/max-vs-100-report-verstappen-disney-silverstone-wins
Sam, good questions.
A manual gives you one more thing to get right — the rev-match, the heel-and-toe, the timing of the shift. When you nail it, you're part of the machine. When you don't, that's on you too. An auto removes both the failure and the art of driving. Auto's faster precisely because it takes decisions away from you. On a Tuesday back-road, most of the joy lives in those decisions, not in the last half-second of a Nürburgring lap you'll never drive.
As far as engagement goes, you can't put it on a spec sheet, which is exactly why it keeps getting engineered out. We saw the same argument in the late '80s when semi-auto paddles arrived in F1: quicker, cleaner, while something was quietly lost. The clock won that one too. Doesn't mean it was the whole story. And you're right about the contradiction — charging $30k for the "purist" model while deleting the most purist component is genuinely strange.
