Being the best doesn't always add up

摘要

It happens every year: the avalanche of emails that follows our annual Best Driver's Car competition demanding we explain why the fastest car around Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca didn't take home the trophy. After all, faster is better, right? Maybe it's a guy thing. We just can't help hashing the numbers. Walk into any bar in America, and after a while the conversation sounds like a mildly detuned version of the Chicago Merc's trading floor in the good old days: RBI. Rushing yards. Rebounds. Kate Upton's cup size. Power and torque and quarter mile times, too. Numbers, numbers, numbers. Numbers are absolute, inviolate, incontestable. Numbers rank facts and win arguments and make the losers buy the next round of beers.