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by gweinberg 997 days ago
My thought also. But who races in an automatic?
3 comments

Lots of people, if they weren’t banned from F1 for being too good. The drivers are just shifting gears to keep the audience from getting bored since 1994.
Drag racers. The current trend is very high-horsepower turbo-charged engines with lots of torque and a two-speed "auto" is all they need and there's only one shift in a 1/4 mile run.

I put "auto" in quotes because the automatic function is usually removed and you have to shift it manually.

The torque converter effectively provides an additional extra-low gear right at the launch which is very helpful for acceleration, and there's also no interruption in power during the shifts.
They're usually superior in dirt for FWD (dirt track, rallycross)... the torque converter helps a lot.