The northern lights might make an appearance in 10 states Wednesday night, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which has forecast similar auroral conditions for Thursday.
A northern lights showing in the Netherlands. (Photo by Sjoerd van der Wal/Getty Images)
Getty Images
Key Facts
NOAA forecasts a Kp index of four on Wednesday night, meaning there should be an increase in auroral activity that “can be quite pleasing to look at” for people in the right areas with good viewing conditions.
Much of the northern parts of the Midwest are above the forecasted view line, with chances of seeing the northern lights increasing the further north people are from the line.
Northern lights viewers who don’t catch the natural phenomenon Wednesday night will have another chance Thursday night, as the Kp index is expected to reach four once again.
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Where Will The Northern Lights Be Visible?
States and areas within or north of the viewing line include Alaska, northern Washington, northern Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, northern South Dakota, Minnesota, northern Wisconsin, northern Michigan and northern Maine.
Wednesday’s viewing line.
NOAA
What’s The Best Way To See The Northern Lights?
Try and catch a look at the northern lights between the hours of 10 p.m. and 2 a.m., which usually provide the best light conditions for viewing. If possible, try to observe from vantage points and areas with clear skies and little to no light pollution.
What’s The Best Way To Photograph The Northern Lights?
Wide-angle lenses, low apertures and tripods for those with traditional cameras. Smartphone users looking to snap photos on their mobile devices should use night mode and not use flash. Tripods can also help smartphones capture photos.
Key Background
The northern lights have been particularly active in the last year or so thanks to a solar maximum—a term that describes the peak of the sun’s 11-year cycle characterized by increased solar flares and coronal mass ejections, which contribute to increased auroral activity. Fair to strong northern lights showings will likely continue into next year, according to NASA and NOAA scientists.
Further Reading
Northern Lights Displays Hit A 500-Year Peak In 2024—Here’s Where You Could Catch Aurora Borealis In 2025 (Forbes)
There’s always a reason why universal USB-C ports don’t “just work” like you’d expect. In the early days, it was incompetence or naiveté. Later, manufacturers often cheaped out. But in the case of Nintendo’s Switch 2, it appears to be intentional.
With the Nintendo Switch 2, it should be easy to plug your new, more expensive console into video glasses or TVs when you’re traveling away from home. USB-C makes it so. But Nintendo has intentionally broken the Switch 2’s compatibility with those devices, using a new encryption scheme and some form of dedicated encryption chip, two accessory manufacturers tell The Verge.
I haven’t yet found proof of that encryption chip myself — but when I analyzed the USB-C PD traffic with a Power-Z tester, I could clearly see the new Nintendo Switch not behaving like a good USB citizen should.
A third-party Switch dock, plugged into a USB-C PD tester, about to be plugged into the Switch 2. Please forgive the terrible photo.Photo: Sean Hollister / The Verge
If you’ve been wondering why there are basically no portable Switch 2 docks on the market, this is the reason. Even Jsaux, the company that built its reputation by beating the Steam Deck dock to market, tells us it’s paused its plans to build a Switch 2 dock because of Nintendo’s actions. It’s not simply because the Switch 2 now requires more voltage, as was previously reported; it’s that Nintendo has made things even more difficult this generation.
That “U” in USB isn’t always “universal,” but this is generally true: if you plug any USB-C to HDMI adapter, dock, or hub into a USB-C laptop, tablet or handheld that supports USB-C video output, you can expect to see your screen automatically appear on your TV.
The magic is normally possible because of a simple, standardized set of instructions that any manufacturer can follow to make their docking station or hub “talk” to the computer. In fact, they’re so simple I can mock up a basic version for you right here:
Dock: “Hi, I’m a power supply. Here are the five different kinds of power I can give you!”
Computer: “I’ll take 15 volts at 3 amps, thanks!”
Dock: “Okay, I’m now powering you, you’re no longer powering me, got it?”
Computer: “Yep! So what are you, anyhow?”
Dock: “I’m a USB-C PD dock with extra modes, wanna know more?”
Computer: “Sure.”
Dock: “I support DisplayPort-Alt mode if you want to output video.”
Computer: “Go for it.”
Dock: “Doing it… done!”
This conversation, using standardized (known as “structured”) messages over the USB-C PD protocol, takes a tiny fraction of a second.
But as you probably now suspect, the Nintendo Switch 2 doesn’t do it that way. When you plug the Switch 2 into a third-party dock or hub, it may refuse to negotiate power. Other times, it’ll get the power it asks for, but then the conversation will abruptly grind to a halt.
Because that’s when the Nintendo Switch 2 will start talking in code — proprietary messages only Nintendo can decipher.
By now, you might be wondering how I can see any of this, coded or not. But all you need is a middleman to sniff the USB-C Power Delivery traffic passing between a dock and Nintendo’s handheld, like the Power-Z KM003C that I bought for this story. I plug one end of it into the Switch 2 (and other computers to compare), another end of it into the Switch 2’s dock (and other docks to compare), connect its third port to my Windows PC with a long cable, then fire up its app to log the passing data.
How the conversation between the Switch 2 and Switch 2 dock begins.Screenshot: Sean Hollister / The Verge
When I analyze the conversation between the Nintendo Switch 2 and its dock, I can see the two devices begin speaking in Nintendo’s own flavor of “vendor defined” language early in the conversation, before they sign off on any video output. And then, seemingly before the dock confirms that it’s engaged video-out, they send over 30 proprietary “unstructured” messages to one another.
Other USB-C hubs and docks I’ve tested don’t have that same conversation — with one notable exception.
As of today, only one single third-party dock claims to be compatible with the Nintendo Switch 2. And you probably won’t be surprised to hear that when I tested the $36 Antank S3 Max (aka SiWiQU TV Dock Station), I found it speaks Nintendo’s coded language.
Here’s the Antank dock responding to a Nintendo request using Nintendo (0x057E) messaging.Screenshot: Sean Hollister / The Verge
It doesn’t transmit every message in the same exact order as Nintendo’s dock, and it supplies a slightly different amount of electricity, but it sent almost exactly the same coded messages and responses to Nintendo’s requests, including a repeating code that I’m particularly curious about: 33 01 07 DA 06 01 6D 68 33 01 07 DA 06 01 6D 68.
According to Antank, which says it checked with its chip supplier, that hexadecimal string “is indeed the current key being used by Nintendo.” My other sources are less sure.
But just like with the official Nintendo Switch 2 dock, our TV lights up after the Antank sends those coded messages.
But that doesn’t mean any company can just copy Nintendo’s commands and expect their dock to keep on working. “We do expect Nintendo may further limit third-party docks and accessories via system updates to maintain device and system security,” Jsaux spokesperson Winnie Chen tells The Verge.
Antank seems to agree. “Yes — the key should be considered subject to change,” writes an Antank representative who goes by Susie. “However, our product supports firmware updates, and any future changes to the authentication key by Nintendo could theoretically be addressed via software, ensuring continued compatibility.”
So why is any of this a big deal, particularly when the Switch 2 comes with its own dock right in the box? Well, it’s not just big TV docks. Nintendo has also broken compatibility with portable docks that you can take on vacation or to your hotel room, and with video glasses like the Xreal One, which cost as much as or more than a Switch 2 all by themselves.
And to fix that, you’ll apparently need to buy brand-new hardware, Jsaux, Antank, and Xreal have found. While Xreal originally seemed to suggest it was a temporary problem that just required a “technical adjustment,” Xreal now says the fix will need a new gadget called the Xreal Neo. The good news: Xreal spokesperson Ralph Jodice tells The Verge the new device is already working in the lab and will ship “a little later this year.”
Another argument I’ve heard on Reddit: why shouldn’t Nintendo have the ability to protect the Switch 2 from fly-by-night docking stations and power supplies that might damage its new handheld and trigger more calls to Nintendo customer support?
There, I might point out that locking things down isn’t necessarily a fix. When Nintendo released the original Switch in 2017, accessory makers similarly had to figure out how to crack Nintendo’s esoteric docking protocols, and some of them (Nyko) allegedly led to damaged handhelds.
I expect some eagle-eyed Nintendo fans will also point out that the Switch 2, unlike the original Switch, needs active airflow to run properly: Nintendo’s official Switch 2 dock now has a fan inside, and the console has vents on the bottom that might get blocked by third-party docks. (In fact, the Antank dock already does block those vents!)
Nintendo official (left) vs. Antank (right), hotspot at top vent
But before you suggest that the vents and fan are strictly necessary, please know that the cooling fan in the Switch 2 dock doesn’t actually cool the Switch 2, and that Antank’s dock doesn’t seem to make a Switch 2 run hotter than the official dock. I ran Cyberpunk 2077 for an hour straight with each dock, then pulled out a thermal camera, and Antank’s actually seems slightly cooler. Perhaps having more airflow across the screen and back of the console offsets the impact of blocked vents. By that logic, perhaps the console could run even cooler if Nintendo let you use a USB-C to HDMI dongle instead of a dock. If only it weren’t locked down!
Nintendo official (left) vs. Antank (right), immediately after removing from dock
Mostly, it’s the principle of the matter. USB-C should just work, here’s a place where it usually does, and yet Nintendo has kept it from doing so.
Nintendo would not confirm or deny that it’s using encryption and authentication chips to lock down the Switch 2’s video output. It offered no comment for this story.
The Switch 2 does not require 20V power; it accepts 15 volts at 2.8 amps, 2.67 amps, and a full 3 amps.
However, accessory manufacturers tell me the Switch 2 will reject a dock that doesn’t offer a 20V power mode. I tested with the Antank; video output appeared for a fraction of a second when I supplied 15V power, then disappeared.
One anonymous accessory manufacturer says that even if 20V power is available and a dock passes authentication, the Switch 2 will test signal quality and drop to a USB-only mode if quality is low. “If the dock skimps on wiring, uses bargain redrivers, or has poor PCB layout, link training fails.”
While the Antank dock works, it’s more difficult to plug and unplug the Switch 2 than with the official dock. My wife is not a fan.
If you buy the Antank, you may need a firmware update.
Antank confirmed that the SiWiQU dock on Amazon is the same product.
Neither Antank nor Xreal would tell The Verge their solutions in detail, citing confidentiality or competitive reasons. Antank would only say that it “selected a fully compatible chip and optimized the firmware to handle Switch 2’s new handshake.” That chip has now been revealed.
GFG style produces one-off reflective supercar peralta S
GFG Style rolls out Peralta S, a reflective supercar with a mirror-polished aluminum frame and a design that takes after the Maserati Boomerang. To debut at the Monterey Motorsports Festival on August 16th, 2025, the vehicle was first shown at the Pastejé Automotive Invitational in Mexico on March 22nd, 2025. It is the first one-off supercar made by the Italian car design company, GFG Style, created for a Mexican car collector named Carlos Peralta and his two sons, Juan Carlos and Nicolas. From the get-go, the body of the reflective supercar Peralta S mimics the surroundings because of the handmade mirror-polished aluminum covering the entire frame.
It gives the vehicle both a gleaming and silver look, as if the windows and the frame were one, turning the supercar into a monolithic ride. The driver steps inside the vehicle by lifting up the entire top part called the dome. The side windows can open separately, moving upwards like gull wings, and from the side, the reflective supercar Peralta S resembles a silver bullet, drawn from the singular-looking silhouette it has from the front to the back. When viewed from above, however, the vehicle features a teardrop shape, still glinting because of its mirror-polished body.
all images courtesy of GFG Style
Glowing lights under the vehicle’s frame
If one is to look for the lights around GFG Style’s reflective supercar Peralta S, they can find them hidden underneath the vehicle, both in the front and the back. When the driver fires up the ride, the rear lights appear within a glowing effect dubbed the shadow light. Then, the rear spoiler also lifts up to allow for better airflow and style, and when the vehicle isn’t used, the spoiler stays hidden. The company says that the only parts of the reflective supercar Peralta S that aren’t made from aluminum are the front spoiler, rear diffuser, and side sills. It is because these are forged from carbon fiber, making them lightweight and helping the vehicle speed away without adding a drag.
Inside the reflective supercar Peralta S, GFG Style brings back the look and colors of the vehicles from the 1970s. First off, the design team covers the seats and the dashboard in leather, refining them with a metallic chrome effect to continue the mirror-like exterior frame. The bucket seats wrap around the driver and passenger, and the steering wheel comes with built-in car controls, which is a modern touch from the design team. For the center console, there aren’t any frills or advanced technologies that are now common in modern cars. Instead, the design has a back-to-basic approach with the knobs and controls, colored in silver to mimic the mirror-polished aluminum body.
GFG Style rolls out Peralta S, a reflective supercar with a mirror-polished aluminum frame
Design influences from the 1972 Maserati Boomerang
The reflective supercar Peralta S by GFG Style has strong ties to the Maserati Boomerang in the 1970s. The designer of the 1972 vehicle is the renowned Italian automotive designer Giorgetto Giugiaro, and his son, Fabrizio Giugiaro, designed the Peralta S, drawing the design influences of his automobile from his father’s work. The Maserati Boomerang had a wedge shape, a series of sharp angles, and a futuristic look, three design elements that the reflective supercar Peralta S shares. The Maserati model, however, was just a concept car, unlike the Peralta S. During its time, the Giorgetto Giugiaro-designed vehicle was ahead of its time in terms of design. Most of the cars then had rounder and softer bodies, but the Maserati Boomerang owned its semi-rectangular frame.
It also embodied flat surfaces, straight lines, and a pointed front, which only came out over the years. Inside the Maserati model, the steering wheel and the dashboard were combined into a single unit, and the gauges and controls were placed inside the steering wheel. Then, the wheel itself turned around the instruments, which was found novel at the time. The vehicle also had a low roofline, and Giorgetto Giugiaro designed the body to look like a triangle from the side. Another feature that the reflective supercar Peralta S shares with the Maserati Boomerang is the two doors and the seating for two people. Then, under the body of the Fabrizio Giugiaro-designed vehicle is the Maserati MC20 platform, which means that the engine, including the twin-turbo V6, wheels, and other parts are the same as those in the MC20. So far, the reflective supercar Peralta S is a one-off vehicle from GFG Style.
Joseph Kosinski‘s racing drama “F1: The Movie” has been justly celebrated for its high-octane racing sequences, which incorporate cutting-edge filmmaking technology to convey a visceral sense of what it’s like to drive a Formula One car. However, those set pieces would not work if the entire film were a constant blur of speeding cars. The film’s quieter moments — focusing on actors Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Kerry Condon, and Javier Bardem — also needed to have the same level of tension, beauty, and artistry, even when a starting grid was nowhere in sight.
For this, Kosinski turned to his longtime collaborator Claudio Miranda, the cinematographer who has shot all of the director’s films going back to “Tron: Legacy” in 2010. When it came to those character beats, the filmmakers were guided by the same principles as the racing scenes: Make them as grounded as possible. “There weren’t many sets on this movie,” Miranda told IndieWire. “The locations were our sets.”
And so, in a big way, were the cars. Although Miranda admired John Frankenheimer’s 1966 film “Grand Prix,” he felt that many of the other racing films he looked at were lacking when it came to capturing the actual speed and intensity of the sport. “ One of the things we really wanted to improve on was speed,” Miranda said. “A lot of movies use process cars or biscuit rigs, and those things only go maybe 60 miles an hour. And knowing that these cars go 200 miles an hour, that’s just way too slow.”
Miranda and Kosinski resisted suggestions to shoot scenes with a car on a platform. “That’s not our movie,” Miranda said. “We watched movies that were done in that style, and they do tricks like speeding it up or putting the vehicle on a gimbal or in the volume… but that seems a little bit sad. I think the audience can recognize that stuff, and they just feel when it’s AI or the volume, and it’s not real. The excitement level probably drops because of it.”
With that in mind, Miranda collaborated with Sony, Formula One, Mercedes, and other companies to create a system for filming the actors as they drove their cars at 200 miles per hour – no easy task given that even the slightest amount of extra weight slowed down the vehicles. “The smallest cameras that existed at the time were just way too big,” Miranda said, noting that this created a challenge he didn’t have to face on “Top Gun: Maverick,” where the planes he was mounting cameras on could handle hundreds of extra pounds — and didn’t require the same kind of visibility for the pilot.
“This wasn’t like ‘Top Gun,’ where I could block up the whole front view and it doesn’t really matter,” Miranda said. “These drivers really needed to see where they were going; that was critical.” Ultimately, Sony designed cameras that Miranda described as “sensors on a stick,” which could capture high-quality footage and relay it across the track to recorders via state-of-the-art radio frequency tech. Miranda was able to capture up to a dozen unique angles at a time on each car, and could pan and tilt rather than being constricted to a fixed camera position.
All of this led to the most kinetic and realistic racing movie ever made, but the methodology didn’t stop on the track. “The thing I love about Joe is that he’ll always try to shoot in a real place, a real environment,” Miranda said. That meant that not only did the racing sequences avoid process shots and green screen, but the more intimate moments did too — even when they theoretically could have been shot on a stage with much less expense and effort. At one point, Pitt’s character opens up about his regrets and failures to Condon on a hotel balcony in Las Vegas in what is the movie’s most emotional scene; it also, thanks to Miranda and Kosinski’s approach, is the most visually beautiful.
“We did that with just one camera — multiple set-ups, but one camera,” Miranda said. He noted that a dialogue scene like the balcony exchange could easily have been done on a set and would have looked convincing, but again, being on location in Vegas created an emotional effect that might otherwise have been elusive. “The city lights come from underneath, and it feels like they’re really lighting that scene. Sometimes, signs will blink and it lifts the whole scene up, but you probably wouldn’t make that choice on a stage where you’re trying to make things more consistent. And the fountains in the background give it a great view.”
The balcony scene is also emblematic of one of Miranda’s greatest and most underrated strengths, his talent for showcasing movie stars. While it’s not necessarily difficult to find a way of shooting Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt in ways that display their charisma, in “Maverick” and “F1” Miranda takes their star power to an extra level through his careful lens selection and lighting. Simple images of Pitt walking toward a long lens take on a mythic grandeur in Miranda’s hands; it’s the kind of pleasing classical style that used to be more common in the glory days of the Hollywood studio system but which has become more and more rare in recent years.
The precision of Miranda’s visuals is all the more impressive given how often he had to grab them on the fly, as the drama was staged in between breaks during real races where Kosinski and his crew were piggybacking on Formula One events to take advantage of their resources and scale. “They don’t give you grace,” Miranda said. “If you’re not done in 10 minutes, you have to get the car off the track. There were scenes we shot that we had one chance to get, and that was nerve-wracking.”
The company’s ability to execute difficult shots in tight windows was thanks largely to careful rehearsal and planning. “We just had to have everything really buttoned up,” Miranda said. “It was a collaboration between many people across different spectrums, not just my grips and the camera department and the art department, but Formula One and Mercedes and more — half the people helping us weren’t even in the film industry.”
The camaraderie between Formula One and the “F1” crew led to some of the movie’s most extraordinary shots, images that Miranda said would have been unachievable otherwise and which spoke to the special nature of the cross-industry collaboration. “One day, there was a red flag moment and they said some of the teams would help us,” Miranda said. “They all did. They all brought their cars out, and they were all out there for real — that’s not a CG shot. I was almost crying, it was such an emotional moment.”
Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google’s AI research organization DeepMind, appeared to suggest Tuesday evening that Veo 3, Google’s latest video-generating model, could potentially be used for video games.
In response to a post on X beseeching Google to “let me play a video game of my veo 3 videos already,” and asking, “playable world models wen?” Hassabis responded, “now wouldn’t that be something.”
On Wednesday morning, Logan Kilpatrick, lead product for Google’s AI Studio and Gemini API, chimed in with a reply: “🤐🤐🤐🤐”
Both posts from the Google executives are little more than playful suggestions, and a Google spokesperson told TechCrunch the company had nothing to share at the moment. But building playable world models isn’t outside the realm of possibilities for the tech giant.
World models are different from video generation models. The former simulates the dynamics of a real-world environment, which lets agents predict how the world will evolve in response to their actions. Video gen models synthesize realistic video sequences.
Google has plans to turn its multimodal foundation model, Gemini 2.5 Pro, into a world model that simulates aspects of the human brain. In December, DeepMind unveiled Genie 2, a model that can generate an “endless” variety of playable worlds. The following month, we reported that Google was forming a new team to work on AI models that can simulate the real world.
Others are working on building world models — most notably, AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li. Li came out of stealth last year with World Labs, a startup that has built its own AI system that generates video game-like, 3D scenes from a single image.
Veo 3, which is still in public preview, can create video as well as audio to go along with clips — anything from speech to soundtracks. While Veo 3 creates realistic movements by simulating real-world physics, it isn’t quite a world model yet. Instead, it could be used for cinematic storytelling in games, like cutscenes, trailers, and narrative prototyping
The model is also still a “passive output” generative model, and it (or a future Veo generation) would need to shift to a simulator that’s more active, interactive, and predictive.
But the real challenge with video game production isn’t just impressive visuals; it’s real-time, consistent, and controllable simulation. That’s why it might make sense to see Google take a hybrid approach that leverages Veo and Genie in the future, should it pursue video game or playable world development.
Google could find itself competing with Microsoft, Scenario, Runway, Pika, and, eventually, OpenAI’s video-generating model Sora.
Given Google’s planned moves in the world models space and its reputation for using its deep pockets and distribution muscle to steamroll rivals, competitors in this space would be wise to keep a close watch.
Cisco removed the backdoor account from its Unified Communications Manager
Pierluigi Paganini July 02, 2025
Digital communications technology giant Cisco addressed a static SSH credentials vulnerability in its Unified Communications Manager (Unified CM).
A flaw, tracked as CVE-2025-20309 (CVSS score of 10), in Cisco Unified Communications Manager and its Session Management Edition lets remote attackers log in using hardcoded root credentials set during development. Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) is a call processing system developed by Cisco for enterprise-level voice, video, messaging, and mobility communications.
These static credentials can’t be changed or deleted. If attackers exploit this issue, they can access the system with full root privileges and run any command. No authentication is needed, making this a serious risk for affected devices.
“A vulnerability in Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Unified CM) and Cisco Unified Communications Manager Session Management Edition (Unified CM SME) could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to log in to an affected device using the root account, which has default, static credentials that cannot be changed or deleted.” reads the advisory. “This vulnerability is due to the presence of static user credentials for the root account that are reserved for use during development. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by using the account to log in to an affected system. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to log in to the affected system and execute arbitrary commands as the root user.”
The company addressed the issue by removing the backdoor account from its Unified Communications Manager (Unified CM).
The vulnerability impacts Cisco Unified CM and Unified CM SME Engineering Special releases 15.0.1.13010-1 to 15.0.1.13017-1, regardless of configuration. These ES versions are limited fix releases shared only through Cisco TAC.
There are no workarounds to address the vulnerability.
Admins are recommended to upgrade to an appropriate fixed software release:
Cisco Unified CM and Unified CM SME Release
First Fixed Release
12.5
Not vulnerable
14
Not vulnerable
15.0.1.13010-1 through 15.0.1.13017-11
15SU3 (Jul 2025) or apply patch file: ciscocm.CSCwp27755_D0247-1.cop.sha512
1. Only the listed set of ES releases is vulnerable. No Service Updates (SUs) for any releases are affected.
The good news is that Cisco PSIRT is not aware of any attacks exploiting this vulnerability in the wild.
Cisco provides Indicators of Compromise (IoCs) for detecting devices potentially affected by the recent vulnerability. A key IoC is a successful SSH login by the root user, which appears in the system log (/var/log/active/syslog/secure).
This logging is enabled by default. To check, use the CLI command:
file get activelog syslog/secure.
Look for entries showing both sshd and a root login session.
Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon
You can add Perplexity to the growing list of AI companies offering $200+ per month subscription plans to users who want unlimited access to their most advanced products and tools. As of today, Perplexity Max is available on iOS and the web.
The subscription comes with unlimited monthly usage of Labs, the agentic creation tool Perplexity released this past May. People can use Labs to generate spreadsheets, presentations, web applications and more. Perplexity is also promising early access to new features, including Comet, a new web browser the company claims will be a “powerful thought partner for everything you do on the web.” The company adds Max subscribers will receive priority customer support, as well as access to top frontier models from partners like Anthropic and OpenAI.
Perplexity will continue to offer its existing Pro plan, which remains $20 per month. Admittedly, the company is courting a small demographic with the new subscription, noting it’s primarily designed for content designers, business strategists and academic research.
OpenAI was the first to open the floodgates of very expensive AI subscriptions when it began offering its ChatGPT Pro plan at the end of last year. Since then, Anthropic, Google have followed suit.
They don’t call Monza the “Temple of Speed” for nothing. Except for three chicanes added over the decades, this is as classic a racing circuit as they used to be—a couple of straights connected by fast right-hand corners. Lewis Hamilton’s 2020 pole lap here was at an average of 164.267 miles per hour. If you want to go faster on a closed circuit, you’ll need an actual oval.
Monza is maybe one of the few race tracks where you can really experience what the new Porsche 911 GT3 RS is capable of. Pirelli laid a GT3 RS on its OEM-fit Trofeo RS tires for us to drive at its media event for the new P Zero family. You can read about the rest of the tires here, but this experience required its own story.
The 992-generation GT3 RS has been out for a few years now, and I’d driven it on track previously, but that didn’t prepare me for what it was like at Monza. This car’s radical aero package generates 900 pounds of downforce at 124 mph and 1,895 pounds at 177 mph. Few road cars can match that downforce figure, and you’ll need a hypercar to beat it. The figures are broadly comparable to what a 911 GT3 R race car would run around a high-speed track like Le Mans… or, for that matter, Monza.
Photo by: Porsche
Photo by: Wikimedia Commons / Will Pittenger
Obviously, downforce creates drag, which reduces top speed. That might sound like a bad thing at a place like Monza, and yes, in a racing environment, you wouldn’t want to run too much wing here. But Monza’s two ultra-fast right-handers, Curva Grande at the top, and the Parabolica at the bottom, let you experience the full effects of the GT3 RS’s downforce. It feels otherworldly.
To better describe this, it’s worth briefly explaining how tire and aero grip work. A tire has a maximum grip level in both lateral and longitudinal acceleration, measured in G-force or simply “G,” which is the force on our body exerted by acceleration in any direction.
You can plot out that force in a 2-D circle on a graph, which is helpful for looking at how combined lateral (turning) and longitudinal (accelerating and braking) forces a tire can take before losing grip. You might be able to corner, accelerate, and brake separately at a maximum of 1 G each, but if you’re accelerating and turning at the same time, you can only have a portion of each direction’s maximum achievable grip.
This friction circle is ever-changing, impacted by the wear level and temperature of the tire, slip angle, the friction coefficient of the road surface, and the vehicle’s weight transfer under acceleration, braking, and turning. If you go to racing school, you dive deep into all of this, but what you need to know here is that on its own, a tire is only capable of taking so much lateral and longitudinal acceleration before losing grip.
Photo by: Pirelli
It is a vast oversimplification to say that, in cornering, pure mechanical grip from the tire alone decreases with speed past a certain point… but that’s basically the case. Aerodynamic grip, created from downforce-generating wings, splitters, diffusers, etc., essentially makes the 2-D traction circle bigger. But what’s especially interesting is that downforce rises with the square of speed: In other words, aero grip increases with speed. Not infinitely, of course, because the tires can only handle so much, but enough that it fundamentally changes your approach to driving.
In practice, it goes like this. Curva Grande is really just a flat-out run from the slow first chicane to the less slow second chicane. Mentally, I couldn’t get myself to keep my foot to the floor.
My experience isn’t uncommon. If you’ve spent your track time in low-grip road cars, or even race cars with high mechanical grip but little to no aero, getting your head around downforce is tricky. Intellectually, you know what the car can do—or at least you have some concept of it—but getting yourself to go against your instincts honed through years of prior driving experience is hard. Especially when you don’t want to ball up someone else’s Porsche GT3 RS.
With another session, ideally after a look at a data comparison between me and someone quicker, I could’ve maybe gotten there. But I had a hell of a time regardless. The feeling of G-force on your body as you accelerate through the corner and downforce rises is like nothing else. I’m thankful this car has bucket seats and six-point harnesses, because if it didn’t, I don’t think I could hold myself up.
Photo by: Pirelli
The feeling of G-force on your body as you accelerate through the corner and downforce rises is like nothing else.
Then there’s the braking. I decided to be a bit conservative, but still brake a little later than I did in the Carrera GTS. Even I knew I could go deeper in this car because of the downforce, but I’m still too early. There’s something a bit demoralizing about arriving at corner entry far slower than you need to be, but for me, that gives way to astonishment at what the car is capable of. It forces you to rethink what’s possible, and the added context of a “normal” sports car like a Carrera GTS just makes what the GT3 RS does that much more astonishing.
The Parabolica might be the best corner on the track, though the surprisingly quick Lesmos runs it close. Despite looking fairly tight on the track map, it’s fast, and you get back to power so early, the car seemingly straining against its limits, until it (and you) can take a breath on the main straight.
I don’t want to say the GT3 RS is a race car for the street, because in some ways, it’s more advanced than a 911 GT3 race car, with its adjustable differential, active aero, and, well, the fact that it’s got a nice leather interior. But not much else with a license plate quite delivers the same race-car experience, and at a place like Monza, that’s especially obvious.
Photo by: Pirelli
For as alien as the car feels to someone of my experience, it’s also very approachable. The car isn’t nervous, it just dares you to up your game to match its capabilities. And a huge credit to Pirelli for making such a friendly tire in the Trofeo RS. The company’s engineers all talk about maintaining a nice plateau of grip once you’re past the tire’s peak, rather than a sudden drop-off. Maybe the peak isn’t quite as high for one fast lap, but realistically, the tire offers more speed for longer.
There are other tracks where you can take full advantage of the GT3 RS’s downforce, but not many are quite so evocative. Even beyond its “Temple of Speed” nickname, there’s something vaguely religious about the place. Maybe it’s Italy, where everything inspires that sort of reverence.
Or maybe it’s the way that the RS’s 9,000-rpm flat-six noise echoes between the grandstands, the trees, the bridge on the way to the variante Ascari, and everywhere else. Maybe it’s knowing you’re at the one of the oldest purpose-built tracks still in operation in the world, second only to Indy.
It’s a place for the indoctrinated to worship, and no points for guessing my beliefs.
Visma–Lease a Bike is testing new carbon-spoked Reserve wheels at the 2025 Tour de France.
The rims are pre-existing – we spotted 34 and 57mm deep front wheels, and a 64mm-deep rear wheel – but all have been reverse-engineered with carbon spokes. The 57/64 combination appears to be a new wheelset designed specifically for the updated S5, which we’ve also seen at this year’s Grand Départ (look out for a gallery on that bike coming soon).
Until now, Reserve hasn’t employed carbon spokes in its wheels.
Carbon spokes are generally considered to be lighter and stiffer than steel spokes. Ashley Quinlan / Our Media
In order to fit the spokes, Cervélo’s sports marketing director Richard Keeskamp said Reserve (a sibling brand of Cervélo) worked with hubset specialists Tune, to develop custom hubs with a lightweight shell and ceramic bearings.
The spokes attach to the rim via alloy nipples, which, in theory, makes them easier to replace.
Reserve has worked with hub specialists Tune. Ashley Quinlan / Our Media
The design is similar in principle to that adopted by Hunt on its 48 Limitless UD Carbon Spoke Disc wheelset (plus others) and the FFWD Raw 44 hoops.
Keeskamp confirmed to BikeRadar that, in this case, the spokes are just as aerodynamic as their steel counterparts due to their bladed design.
Keeskamp said that the spokes were being trialled in deeper wheels because there was no aerodynamic drawback. Ashley Quinlan / Our Media
We weren’t able to weigh the wheels, but Keeskamp confirmed the carbon spokes were chosen for their lighter weight (relative to most steel spokes), as well as the more lively ride sensation they offer.
This tallies with my broad reflections when testing the Hunt and FFWD wheels, while Keeskamp said that the Visma pros who have tried the wheels were enjoying how they handled when climbing and descending.
Expect to see them raced in anger when the Tour hits the mountains, and Jonas Vingegaard and co. try to usurp pre-race favourite Tadej Pogačar.
July 02, 2025
