McLaren 600LT Spider First Impressions

Author's note: This test drive was done in April 2019, but I have been procrastinating with publishing this post. In any case, enjoy!

I had the opportunity to drive a 2020 McLaren 600LT Spider at McLaren of San Francisco! I never got a chance to test drive a 600LT couple since their debut last year, nor have I gotten a chance to test drive a 570S Spider that I so dear wanted once upon a time. Unfortunately, the test drive happened during mid-day on a weekday, which wasn't the best time to tour back roads.

600LT specific comments:

• No creep! This is important to me because I struggle with chauffeur braking in automatic transmission cars. On that note, I also appreciate that Tesla provides a no-creep option.
• Same great hydraulic steering is considerably heavier than in the 570S and 570GT, especially in "track" handling mode.
• The gunshot/whip crack downshifts are not a lie. They are incredible to experience with the top down.
• No flames were to be seen during mild street driving in daylight :-(
• I feel like the LT cars have stiffer (or just solid) engine mounts. I felt a massage from the seat while sitting at a red light.
• No comment on the upgraded brakes; they were fine for street use. No comment on comparing the upgraded system from the 720S to the normal ceramics on the 570S or to the steel brakes in the 570GT.
• No comment on the lighter weight. Need to hit the back roads or track…
• No comment on downforce from its cute little fixed wing. Definitely need to push a bit on the track for that.
• The normal power seats didn't go as far forward in this 600LT as I thought they would. Speaking of normal power seats…
• This test car didn't have the critically-acclaimed Senna seats! I think that the dealer has a second demo Spider with the Senna seats. I hope I can take that car for a proper spin!

Yes, this is my normal seating position. Marvel at the amount of space behind the seat!

Other:

• I preferred the short metal shift paddles over the extended carbon fibre paddles. Something about the metallic clink when I tap my fingernails on the paddles that's lacking with the carbon paddles…
• Having experienced the 720S Spider roof mechanism, the legacy system in the 600LT Spider feels slow as I put the top down prior to leaving the dealer.
• Sport Series Spider cars: the high shelf provides little rearward visibility regardless of roof position. (but who needs to see what's behind them in a supercar??)
• 2018 and later Sport Series cars: Backup camera is in the instrument cluster screen. To me, it's harder to use in conjunction with the rearview mirror than the postage stamp display in the centre screen in the 2016/2017 cars.
• Chicane Effect is Chicane Grey with orange metallic flakes:

I really want to do a proper test drive in the back roads with little traffic, and in a car with the Senna seats. This will almost certainly need to happen on a Saturday morning shortly after the showroom opens at 9a!

How I would spec this car: pretty barebones. The only "must-haves" I think are the Senna seats, as well as small practical items such as the soft-close doors, front lift, and battery charger. Skip the visual carbon exterior (the standard palladium pieces are actually painted carbon fibre pieces), skip the carbon interior, skip the leather, skip the audio…

• Colour of my choice. These days, I'm feeling MSO Amethyst Black, ever since having seen a Senna in this colour during Car Week last year.
• Standard 10 spoke wheels.
• Soft close doors.
• Standard Alcantara interior. Maybe splurge for the orange "By McLaren" Alcantara interior if I'm feeling lucky…
• Senna seats, regular fit.
• Front lift.
• Battery charger.

Before driving this car, I used to think that the 600LT coupe is the car to get because of the possibility of the roof scoop (for the uninitiated, it makes for an unique soundtrack). However, that's available in any LT coupe, and the uniqueness of the top-firing exhaust in the 600LT cars is most accentuated by a convertible, which was confirmed by this short drive. Therefore the 600LT Spider is now my pick of the two.

[1] Neoprufrok, Roof scoop noises. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rte0WJjJIgU
[2] Vehicle Virgins, 600LT delivery. https://youtu.be/-XqaoHCWuK0?t=936

Codeforces Round #612 (Div. 2) Postmortem

Link to contest here

What went well

• I know how DP works?!

What went wrong

• I failed to read B correctly the first time. The problem is about Set (the game), which I have only played once, over 10 years ago. I thought that all features had to be same or different, instead of each feature being independent of each other.
• I took an hour to debug C because I wasn't confident in my dp transition function. Amusingly, my initial state was wrong, which luckily triggered an assert I left in my code, quickly highlighting an issue.

Where I got lucky

•  Somehow placed in the top 5% with just ABC???!

Good Bye 2019 Postmortem

Link to contest here

What went well

• I managed to prove that my solution to B is optimal.

What went wrong

• Proving that my B solution is optimal took close to an hour.
• I wasn't sure what to do with C. After expressing the sum as S and the xor as X, I first fell into a trap thinking that I can do it with one number, i.e. S + a = 2*(X ^ a). Nothing really came to mind. Then I thought about using two numbers, i.e. S + a + b = 2*(X ^ a ^ b), where I use a to get rid of S, i.e. make the bits of S be all 0s or all 1s. This led me to think about the lowest power of 2 greater than S, but nothing came to mind. I also never thought about using a to get rid of X, i.e. maybe set a = X, which then leads to a really nice solution S + X + b = 2*b, i.e. b = S + X.

 Where I got lucky

• A is a 3 minute problem!

COLDforces Round #611 (Div. 3) Postmortem

Link to contest here

What went well

• The contest was at 9am local time, so I had a good 2.5 hours to wake up.

What went wrong

• I was ill with a cold (laryngitis?!)
• My solution to E died to a silent index out of bounds!!! Time to switch to vector<T>::at() instead of vector<T>::operator[]?!
• I did not think of a working solution for C during the contest, but did so after the contest (and doing the obvious greedy solution worked and was easy to prove correct…) The junk that I submitted managed to pass system tests, but eventually got exposed by the serial hacker, who hacked over 20 C submissions!

Where I got lucky

• I got my first 1 minute submission!!
• C was such a massacre that I managed to gain elo despite solving only 3 problems! Back to blue again!

Educational COLDforces Round 79 Postmortem

Link to contest here

What went well

• Nothing really…

What went wrong

• I was still ill with a cold (laryngitis?!)
• I took a few passes to understand B; I misread the problem the first couple times. Eventually I got the problem after nearly an hour.
• I didn't realize that I misread C until after the contest. I thought one can remove multiple presents in between popping and pushing back the unused presents.

Where I got lucky

• A was back to a straightforward 3-minute problem.

COLDforces Round #610 (Div. 2) Postmortem

Link to contest here.

What went well

•  I was able to figure out a clean solution for B2.

What went poorly

• I was ill with a cold (laryngitis?!)
• I wasn't sure how to do C because I wasn't able to prove optimality of a solution.

Where I got lucky

• Not today

Educational Codeforces Round 78 (Div. 2) Postmortem

Link to contest.

What went well

• I got A in 3 minutes.

What went poorly

• I wasn't sure how to prove B during the contest. Then I decided to binary search when a linear search would have run in time. However, I had a bug in my binary search because I needed to look at particular residues mod 4, which required extra debugging to get right. All this took…1.5 hours.
• I was completely wrong for C because I didn't realize that not all larger subarrays may work.

Where I got lucky

• Apparently I probably won't lose too much elo.

Codeforces Global Round 6 Postmortem

Link to contest.

What went well

• I solved A, B, C.

What went poorly

• I don't know the properties of natural numbers divisible by 60. My solution is so disgusting that I would happily nominate my solution for this year's Wall of Shame. 
• I misread B and thought that the tower of dice was visible from just the front, instead of both front and back.

Where I got lucky

• I didn't lose much elo for a mediocre showing.

Codeforces Round #607 (Div. 2) Postmortem

Link to contest.

What went well

• I solved A in 2 minutes.

What went wrong

• I was too hasty on B, leading to two wrong submissions, and took a total of over 20 minutes.
• I took over an hour on C because I wasn't clear at all about my recurrences and starting values. 

Where I got lucky

• Everyone else sucks more at math, so a slow C with one penalty got me in the top 400 (top 6%).

Codeforces Round #604 (Div. 2) Postmortem

Link to contest.

What a dumpster fire of a contest.

What went well

• I got B quickly.

What went wrong

• I didn't know how to solve A, so came up with a horribly convoluted solution with lots of cases. This and weak testing resulted in an incorrect submission, but I realized my mistake after the Wrong Answer verdict and patched my solution.
• C was evil because it had ample opportunity for off-by-one errors, one of which killed my solution.
• My attempt at implementing D yielded a giant pile of spaghetti, which was unsurprisingly wrong.
• E is definitely doable in 20min start to finish, but my combinatorics skills isn't strong enough for me to write down the recurrence after reading the problem.

Where I got lucky

• What luck?!