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Who would win in a race if the Super Bowl teams were cars?

Until the last down is played this Sunday, we will have the annoyance pleasure of listening to analysts bicker between who will win the Super Bowl, not unlike automotive analysts who do the same thing with cars. If I had a dollar for every conversation about what car would win against another on a specific track, I wouldn't be buying the raw avocados this year for my guacamole. Instead I would be purchasing organic avocados and have the guacamole served in a Ferrari-themed bowl. Yes, those exist. Even so, we still watch year after year knowing full well that the pre-game analysis typically adds up to less than what is left over in the chip bowl after the last guest leaves. Let's take a different approach to analysis this year, let's compare these teams to their vehicle equivalent to decide who would win in a fair race. How do you determine a fair race? When I think of a fair race I think of the Nurburgring. A track that is 12.9 miles, has 1,000 feet of elevation change, and is famously nicknamed The Green Hell by famed driver Jackie Stewart. Although your Supra may beat The Flash himself in a straight line, chances are once you push it to the limits on a 12.9-mile track your brakes will smell like a bonfire and your suspension will have gone into cardiac arrest twice. So if we're racing The 'Ring, what are we driving? To best answer that question we must determine what characteristics define these teams. Not being someone who knows more about my fantasy league than my significant other, I can only go off what I have heard from "experts." The Panthers are honestly known for Cam Newton. Cam is a versatile, fast, brash, and fairly young quarterback. He apologizes for nothing and has Ali-like confidence that shows in his choice of Liberace-type attire. Although he looks to be the favorite, he hasn't yet won a Super Bowl and the team's second-half performances are less than climatic. In racing terms, he has won a lot but no one has seen him race in the dark at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The Panthers have a ton of acceleration, a brand new chassis, and a driver who is hungry for that first big win. On the other side of the track are the Broncos. It seems as though the Broncos are known for two things, a nostalgic quarterback and a defense that could strike fear into a Honey Badger. If the Broncos were just one component of a vehicle they would be the brakes, and these brakes are outfitted for a locomotive.

Race Recap: 2016 European GP was a cakewalk for Rosberg

Formula 1 teams had no setup data or tire information for the six-kilometer Baku City Circuit hosting the European Grand Prix, and that's the reason for much of the weekend's excitement. Nico Rosberg snatched pole position after Mercedes-AMG Petronas teammate Lewis Hamilton hit the wall during qualifying. When the lights went out, Rosberg put in a clinical drive way out front to score his second career grand slam: pole position, leading every lap, fastest lap, and victory. Sebastian Vettel put in a similarly lonely drive in his Ferrari to second. The German had little to do on track other than get around his teammate on Lap 28, and that came courtesy of team orders. Sergio Perez started from second on the grid, but a gearbox change after clouting the wall during Free Practice dropped him to seventh. The Mexican cut his way through the field after his sole pit stop on Lap 17 of the 51-lap race, passing Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen for third on the final lap. It's Perez's second podium in three races after finishing third in Monaco. Force India has five podium finishes in its eight-year history, and Perez's name is on four of them. Raikkonen followed in fourth. Stewards hit the Finn with a five-second penalty for crossing the pit-entry line during the race, so even if Perez hadn't passed him on track, Raikkonen would have been classified fourth. Hamilton's up-and-down weekend ended with a burst of radio messages and a whimper. He climbed from tenth on the grid to fifth in the race, then his energy recovery system began harvesting in the wrong places. The snafu cost Hamilton two seconds per lap compared to the leaders. The trouble came from a switch turned to the incorrect position, but the FIA ban on driver assistance meant Hamilton's engineer couldn't tell the driver how to fix the problem. At one point when Hamilton said he was going to reset the whole car, his engineer replied, "Um, we don't advise that, Lewis." Hamilton finally found the proper setting on Lap 43, but turned the engine down again when he realized he couldn't catch the leaders. Mercedes said that Rosberg had the same issue, but Rosberg fixed it on his own. Valtteri Bottas got his Williams across the line four seconds behind Hamilton. Red Bull teammates Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen couldn't get their tires to work, forcing both racers to pit twice before finishing seventh and eighth.

FIA introduces 'Hypercar Concept' for World Endurance Championship

One of the most common jabs at hypercars is the question, "Where can you drive them to their potential?" Imagine the answer being: to the checkered flag in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. We're not there yet, but the FIA World Motor Sport Council took a step closer to the possibility during its second annual meeting in Manila, the Philippines. One of three initiatives the WSMC announced for the 2020 World Endurance Championship was "Freedom of design for brands based on a 'Hypercar' concept." This "Hypercar concept" would replace LMP1 as the premier class in the WEC. The dream, of course, would be seeing racing versions of the AMG Project One, Aston Martin Valkyrie AMR Pro, Bugatti Chiron, Koenigsegg Regera, McLaren Senna GTR, Pagani Huara BC, and the rest of the gang trading paint and carbon fiber through Dunlop in a heinously expensive version of "Buy on Sunday, sell on Monday." The reality is that we don't have all the details yet on the set of regulations called "GTP," but the FIA wants race cars more closely tied to road cars, albeit with the performance level of today's LMP1 cars. Exterior design freedom would shelter internals designed to reduce costs, the FIA planning to mandate less complex hybrid systems and allow the purchase of spec systems. One of the FIA's primary goals is lowering LMP1 budgets to a quarter of their present levels. Audi and Porsche budgets exceeded $200 million, while Toyota - the only factory LMP1 entry this year and next - is assumed to have a budget hovering around $100 million. Reports indicated that Aston Martin, Ferrari, Ford, McLaren, and Toyota sat in on the development of the proposed class. If the FIA can get costs down to around $25 million, that would compare running a top IndyCar team and have to be hugely appealing to the assembled carmakers. The initiative represents another cycle of the roughly once-a-decade reboot of sports car racing to counter power or cost concerns. The FIA shut down Group 5 Special Production Sports Car class in 1982 to halt worrying power hikes, and introduced Group C. In 1993, Group C came to an ignoble end over costs; manufacturers were spending $15 million on a season, back when that was real money and not one-fifth of a Ferrari 250 GTO. Then came the BPR Global GT Series that morphed into the FIA GT Championship, which would see the last not-really-a-road car take overall Le Mans victory in 1998, the Porsche 911 GT1. That era would be most aligned with a future hypercar class.