Enlarge (credit: Porsche)

Future production Porsches will use an advanced sensor suite from Mobileye, the two companies announced on Tuesday. Called "SuperVision," it uses a mix of cameras and radar sensors and will enable a range of advanced driver-assistance systems (better known as ADAS) in coming models, including functions like hands-free traffic jam assists.

You may be familiar with Mobileye from its relationship with Tesla; the electric vehicle maker was one of its many customers for vision-based ADAS systems, which Tesla then started tweaking to turn into Autopilot. That relationship ended in a high-profile spat in 2016, with the Israeli technology company accusing Tesla of being cavalier with safety —a reasonable accusation in light of the many open federal safety investigations into Tesla's driver assists.

The following year, Mobileye was bought by Intel and has continued to be the largest player in the ADAS market .

Enlarge / This is the rear of the Red Bull RB19. I can't find a good photo of it with the DRS flap open, but the bit that says Oracle drops down flat, reducing the amount of drag the wing causes and increasing the car's top speed. (credit: Bryn Lennon - Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images)

Formula 1 held its annual street race in Azerbaijan this past weekend. With its very high-speed track, the city of Baku has seen some rather exciting racing. But that was not the case this year, which proved more soporific than Ambien. But at least one other race was truly entertaining this weekend, as the World Endurance Championship visited Belgium. Watching the two makes me think it's time for F1 to drop a couple of the driver assists.

Part 1: The case for banning DRS

F1's problem this year is one it often suffers from. One team has designed a better car than anyone else, and assuming that team—Red Bull Racing—stays reliable, it's almost certain to win both the drivers' and constructors' championships. It's not Red Bull's fault it did a much better job than anyone else this year, but its advantage is magnified by a techno-crutch that was added to the sport some years ago to try to increase overtaking.

It's called DRS (drag reduction system), and it was introduced in 2011 to address the problem of one F1 car not being able to follow another closely enough through a corner that it could then build up the necessary speed to overtake.

Enlarge / How did one of the rarest 911s end up becoming a Transformer? (credit: Stef Schrader)

"I didn't know what car Mirage was going to be at first," said Steven Caple Jr., director of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts . "Where I'm from, in Cleveland, Ohio, I'd never even been in a Porsche before," he continued. "My actual first introduction to Porsche was Bad Boys I , so shout out to Michael Bay—that's all I really had."

Caple admitted in a panel during Austin's South by Southwest festival that the star car of the beloved action film Bad Boys inspired him to make Mirage a classic Porsche in the upcoming film. Mirage is a bit of a rebel himself, and the callback to the classic buddy-cop movie just felt right.

Fortunately, extraterrestrial Autobots won't be tempted to pull over in any sketchy places to debate the merits of in-car snacking , but this does mean they have bigger nemeses that necessitate transforming into giant robots to handle. It can be more complicated than you'd expect to make a cool Porsche into an Autobot film star, though—in fact, Porsche has a whole team that helps Hollywood studios get just the right car on the silver screen. Here's how it all comes together.

Enlarge / A dying breed, but not extinct yet. (credit: Porsche)

Despite car enthusiasts' best efforts, the manual transmission’s days are numbered. Blame it on electrification, future autonomous technologies, or the fact that kids these days just don’t care about driving. Whatever helps you cope with this inevitability, the demise of the stick shift is not an "if," it’s a "when."

That’s not to say the manual’s death will be quick; plenty of companies continue to offer three-pedal setups. But who will be the final holdout, the last bastion of the DIY gearbox? Will it be a sports car or an out-of-left-field contender? Put on your speculation cap as we explore some potential scenarios.

Option 1: Porsche

Arguably no car company is as committed to stick shifts as Porsche. The German automaker offers six- and seven-speed gearboxes in multiple models across its 718 and 911 car lines and continues to do so despite competitors discontinuing their manual options.

Enlarge / Nine GTP race cars from Acura, Cadillac, BMW, and Porsche took part in this year's 24-hour race at Daytona. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

DAYTONA BEACH, FLA.—With just one race on the books, it's probably too soon to declare this the dawn of a new golden era in racing, but that thought was on many minds at last weekend's spectator-packed Rolex 24 at Daytona. The grueling 24-hour race is the season-opening event for the WeatherTech Sportscar Championship, and 2023 saw the introduction of a new class of hybrid prototype race cars called GTP (for Grand Touring Prototype).

The crowds were heavier than ever, buoyed by the debut of the new machines, which put on a good show. And the complicated new energy-based pit stop formula didn't appear to present anyone any trouble.

The same can't be said for the race itself. Twenty-four-hour racing is hard —I speak from some experience—and making it to the end should be, and is, a challenge. A 24-hour race as the first race of the year for all-new cars is even more difficult, despite the thousands of miles each car covered in testing over the past few months. As such, some feared we might be in for a repeat of 2003; that year saw a new prototype class introduced, the best of which finished 24 laps behind the winning car, a racing version of a Porsche 911.

Enlarge / The #6 Porsche Penske 963 and the #10 Konica Minolta Acura ARX-06 run on Daytona's banking during the 2023 Roar Before the 24. With so many miles of testing completed, the Porsches are probably the favorites, but 24 hours is a long time in racing, and a lot can happen. (credit: Jake Galstad/LAT Images)

This past weekend saw the successful conclusion of the International Motor Sports Association's "Roar Before the 24," the series' preseason test ahead of this coming weekend's Rolex 24, a 24-hour race held each January at Daytona International Speedway in Florida. This year, the preseason test was more important than most, as there's a new kind of race car, called the GTP, competing in the Rolex 24 in 2023.

The new hybrid prototype category has attracted more manufacturer interest than we've seen in many years, with brands like Acura and Porsche building new cars to compete and others, like Lamborghini, waiting in the wings to join next year. But the biggest question is whether these new race cars will be able to make it to the end of the race. As in the larger automotive industry, supply shortages mean that spare parts are scarce, so the consequences of a crash are calamitous.

But what makes GTP—originally called LMDh—so attractive to car makers? I asked David Salters, head of Honda Performance Development, which oversees the Japanese OEM's racing activities in North America.