Everything was turned upside down at the dawn of the current decade. When Covid-19 ground everything to a halt, it gave some of us in our otherwise hectic sport a moment for pause. An opportunity to think outside the lines, rather than press on relentlessly, carried by the sweeping tide of the next deadline to hit. Sven Quandt had been doing Dakar rallies for a long time. He’s overseen the Mitsubishi factory effort with the legendary Pajero. With his own X-Raid outfit, he won the Dakar six times as a team manager. But Quandt also knows his portable power: Varta, the German battery manufacturer, was once the family business and he’s had multiple stints on the company’s supervisory board. Batteries on the Dakar, where endurance is key? Surely this was a nonsensical idea. “At the time when everything was down, we had this crazy idea,” Quandt told DirtFish. “Audi really wanted to do it. We joined forces together and I think we made something spectacular.” Crazy, maybe. But Quandt stops short at calling it mad. “It was not mad. It was calculated. But yes, there are always some things that we cannot calculate,” he admits. Years one and two were fraught with technical issues. And then there was the equalization formula: more than once Audi received technical breaks to find more power to match the petrol-powered beasts in T1+. Quandt’s lobbying after the previous edition has clearly done the trick. “I was sure we could win, we had a good EoT and I think the EoT everyone saw was really good because it was fight until more or less the last stage.” Only once all rally could Sainz breathe easy: the final stage, when the last of the chasing pack fell by the wayside. Sébastien Loeb’s Prodrive Hunter was quick but had finally suffered one reliability problem too many. The script had finally flipped; the Audi persevered through reliability at last. “We had some problems in the last two years and now we have an incredible team, incredible bunch of people, one team for everybody; you could see it even on the driver’s side,” said Quandt, referencing another major strength of the Audi squadron. As Sébastien Loeb was left to forge his path alone, without an experienced team-mate to help him in a time of need after Nasser Al-Attiyah packed up and went home early, the other RS Q e-trons of Stéphane Peterhansel and Mattias Ekström forged a protective bubble around Sainz. In the latter phase of the race the remaining crews shepherded Sainz, pulling up to help change any punctures that struck the lead car. Teamwork helped. But so did having the 61-years-young Sainz leading the way, as Quandt admits. “His condition was so incredible that I must say, this at the end made it,” he said, full of praise for the now four-time Dakar winner. “His positive thinking on the first day already, he came here with a smile; he’s always normally moaning and doing this…he was so positive! That was what it was, in the end. I can tell you, his whole attitude is, I’m winning.” Sainz clearly knew how to motivate his troops, to make Audi believe its radical project would get the send-off it so desperately craved. He preserved Audi’s long-term reputation of embarking on a new adventure and succeeding by defying convention, not following it. But, as El Matador admits, he wasn’t entirely assured of the outcome. “Of course, during this road you doubt,” said Sainz. “But at the end, hard work always pays off.”
Archives for April 2024
Blizzard pulls Diablo Season 2 trailer that got almost everything wrong, its fumbled sums stunlocking this streamer with laughter
Diablo 4’s Season of Blood drops tomorrow. In the run-up, the game’s social media accounts have been in overdrive—dropping trailers, explainer videos, memes, all that good stuff. One such video, however, came and went like a vampire in the night.
As spotted by PCGamesN, a video promising to explain “the best quality-of-life changes coming with Season of Blood” was pulled from Diablo 4’s official Twitter account earlier this week after it… didn’t do that. It’s gone now, but the internet’s collective all-seeing eye has immortalised it forever.
“Let’s observe what we have here,” says seasoned Diablo 4 YouTuber and streamer Raxxanterax, barely able to contain his laughter before he gets into the muck of it. First up, the screenshots of the Nightmare Dungeons, headlined with a proud Before and After, were actually in reverse. Comparing it to a wrap-up of a recent developer livestream, the Season of Blood’s dungeon map is actually the one contained under the “Before” tab.
There’s some other nitpicks, like how the horse comparison doesn’t show much of anything in the way of differences (although we do know we’re getting some major horse buffs). The real star of the show here, however, is this screenshot.
There’s, uh, there’s a lot to unpack here. First off, 40% of 1,000 is 400. 1,000 multiplied by 400 is 400,000 experience points, which is probably not the current bonus, unless I’ve missed something. What’s more likely is that it’s 1,000, plus a 40% bonus, which is… still not 1,040. Hm.
Then there’s that bottom equation. Assuming the intention here is (1,000 x 1.2) x 1.2, the result of that is 1,440, not 1,400. That’s because you’re essentially taking 20% of 1,200 (240) and slapping it on top of 1,200. It seems like the napkin maths here assumed it was the same as 1,000 x 1.4, which isn’t the case, or we wouldn’t be here.
So let’s correct things based on what makes sense. The top sum should be 1,000 x 1.4 (which is the same as adding 40% of 1,000). That equals 1,400. The bottom sum should be (1,000 x 1.2) x 1.2, which equals… 1,440. Technically an improvement, but not something to write home to Lorath about.
This mind-prison of multiplication gets Raxxanterax nearly cry-laughing at the end of it all. “Blizzard,” he says in between breaths. “I’m trying to build some hype for your new season, but you’re making it real hard.”
Granted, the scuff itself is understandable—errors get made in first drafts all the time, especially when deadlines and time pressures come into play. What’s more surprising is how this got past the usual approvals processes. I’ve reached out to Blizzard for comment, and I’ll update this article if I get an answer back.
Chrysler’s Crazy 1956 Scissor Windows
Why would Chrysler adopt such a strange door-glass arrangement on its 1956 hardtops? That’s an interesting story, to us anyway.
When both Buick and Oldsmobile (Olds Holiday above) added four-door hardtops to their product lines for 1955, it sent the Detroit carmakers into a tizzy. Turns out that yes, buyers did want the sleek look of a pillarless hardtop and the practicality of a four-door in a single package. Sales of the new body style soared at the two GM divisions. Naturally, the rest of the automakers rushed straight to the drawing board to develop their own four-door hardtops for 1956 so they could cash in as well.
There were a few technical challenges involved, among them getting the side glass to stow completely inside the rear door with the glass fully rolled down—a must to provide the desired wide-open, pillarless look. (Obstacles included the kickup at the rear wheelhouse.) Ford, the Chevrolet and Pontiac divisions, and American Motors all adopted their own creative approaches to the problem, with varying degrees of success (aesthetically and otherwise). But for us, perhaps the most imaginative solution came from the Chrysler Corporation.
The Chrysler engineers were given an additional handicap: They were ordered to use the same roof panels as the four-door pillared sedans. (One-piece roof stampings require large, expensive dies.) Hobbled by that restriction, Chrysler couldn’t modify the roofline or daylight opening to alter the size and shape of the rear side glass to fit inside the door.
So, reaching outside the box for a solution, the engineers divided the glass iinto two sections. The window regulator was then redesigned so the rear section would roll down in tandem with the front section, the rear inside the front, using a scissors-like motion. It may look crazy, but if it works, it’s not so crazy.
Above we see the scissors glass in the rolled-up position—the rear pane looks like a conventional vent window, more or less. For 1957, the Chrysler Corporation’s body shells were completely redesigned with proper accommodations for a four-door hardtop, and the two-piece glass arrangement was no longer necessary. The odd but clever scissor windows proved to be a one-year deal. But we’ve recorded it here for prosperity: Check out the video below, courtesy of historian and author Jeff Stork. Thanks, Jeff!
1956 DeSoto Firedome Hardtop Sedan 
The post Chrysler’s Crazy 1956 Scissor Windows appeared first on Mac’s Motor City Garage.
Balls in Play: MLB/Nike Pants Fiasco Hits Hilarious New Low
The MLB/Nike uniform fiasco reached a new low yesterday as a photo of Giants infielder Casey Schmitt began circulating, giving new meaning to the term “balls in play.” According to this post (which erroneously attributes the uni imbroglio to Fanatics instead of Nike), the photo was taken by beat writer Alex Pavlovic, who posted it to his Instagram story. Pavlovic meant to highlight Schmitt’s mustache, but people quickly noticed, uh, something else. Pavlovic deleted the post, but by then the toothpaste was out of the tube. Naturally, someone quickly turned the viral moment into a T-shirt: In a less prurient but no less hilarious development from yesterday, the Guardians tweeted this photo: I mean, come on! The transparent pants may explain why the Padres wore the old pants (you can tell from the belt loops) for yesterday’s spring training opener: The Dodgers wore a mix — some players had the new pants and some wore the old. But their pants were grey, so the transparency issue presumably wouldn’t be as much of an issue. Players’ union president Tony Clark (whose playing career included a uni-notable chapter) has been making the rounds at various teams’ spring training camps and says the pants are a “universal concern” among the players, so it seems likely that this issue will be addressed before Opening Day. (My thanks to Camryn Brown for the T-shirt link.)
Harrison Ford Has Funny Reaction To Jason Segel At The Critics Choice Awards & Delivers Heartfelt Speech For Career Achievement
Harrison Ford was honored at the Critics Choice Awards with the Career Achievement Award and delivered a heartfelt speech. “I’m really happy to be here tonight [and] to see what our business is turning into,” Ford said, accepting his award after a standing ovation from the crowd. “And all of the talented people who are getting opportunities that probably would not have existed in the early part of my career. I’m really happy about that.” The Star Wars alum said he felt “enormously lucky” for the honor and thanked his “lovely wife,” Calista Flockhart, who was visibly emotional with tears in her eyes. Ford noted that his wife “supports me when I need a lot of support — and I need a lot of support.” “I’m grateful to all the fine actors — I see many of them here tonight — that I’ve worked with and I’m deeply happy to have had the opportunities that I’ve had,” he continued. “Thank you, I won’t take any more of your time.” RELATED: Paul Giamatti Jokes About “Going Viral” For Eating In-N-Out In Acceptance Speech At Critics Choice Awards
Earlier in the broadcast, cameras caught Ford in the funny moment when his Shrinking co-star presented an award. As Jason Segel took the state for his presenting duties, Ford was seen cheering his co-star on and saying his name. RELATED: Ariana DeBose’s Reaction To Being Lumped With “Actors Who Think They Are Singers” Joke At Critics Choice Awards Lights Up Social Media Ford and Segel co-star in the Apple TV+ series co-created by Bill Lawrence, Segel and Brett Goldstein. In the series, Ford plays the role of Dr. Paul Rhoades, a therapist and colleague of Segel’s Jimmy Laird. A second season of the comedy-drama has already been ordered following the first season which premiered on January 2023 and consisted of ten episodes. Watch Ford cheering on Segel at the Critics Choice Awards in the video below. Must Read Stories Subscribe to Deadline Breaking News Alerts and keep your inbox happy.