Passenger planes have Pilots and co pilots Leon, they do have auto pilot
which assists the pilot on long haul flights and this is extremely useful,
as it can do more or less everything, but it still needs to pilot to input
the correct coordinates and settings, and believe me if you knew how often
problems occurred with these systems you would never fly again, plus there
are many back systems to override the computer in case of failure, plus
every calculation done  by the onboard computer is double checked by the
pilot and co pilot,
The pilot is also monitoring everything manually, and has a analog back up
of almost every single digital instrument.
The aircraft is also monitored by various ground controls all the time it
airborne.
For each hour the plane spends airborne you are probably talking an
investment of upwards of 100 man hours spent, not exactly computer
controlled is it?

A plane is a relatively easy vehicle to control via computer as the 3
dimensional area around which a plane travels is pretty much consistent,
defined by the laws of physics, the amount of variables are mainly weather
and height which affects the density of the air on which the plane rides.
Once a plane has reached its designated cruising altitude if it drifts up,
down, left or right by 10m there is no problem, as long as it knows it has
drifted and makes allowances.
This is far more consistent than the surface a car drives upon which can and
does change considerably, if a car drifts off the track by even 2m someone
is probably dead, obstacles like stalled cars on the start line, oil
spillage from blown turbos, varying amount of rubber left off the racing
line.
A tracks adhesion will change dramatically throughout the course of an hour,
braking points and turn in points will change.

I have heard there was a car that was developed by an American university
that drove across America, which was a fantastic achievement, but it is not
motorsport, if you look at a good racer he is not only processing an
monumental amount of information extremely quickly, he is also pre-empting
the car, the track and the other drivers, he also using emotion.
If you look at Donnington 1993 with Senna, Hill and Prost battling it out,
those guys were driving beyond the limit of the car near on every turn, it
is that emotion and passion, forgetting the cold calculations of physics,
and saying sod this I am going to win, that makes great racing drivers.

In my opinion it will not be in our lifetime that we will see solely
computer driven cars beating human drivers, it is that lack of exactness
that makes senna, Prost Schumacher etc that good, these guys do not drive at
maximum speed, it is a clich? but they drive at 102% not 100%.

I do not measure my MX-5 sport car ability by speed while its on the road, I
care more about how I feel driving it,
On the track I care more about lap times and speed than the overall feel,
although feeling what the car is doing and feeling comfortable with the car
close to its limit are a major thing, I cannot see what is sad about wanting
to get lower lap times Leon, I will enjoy myself if I do a 2 minute lap or a
1.50 lap, but its nice to know you are making advances.

I did not adjust my carbs per intake cycle Leon, that would be crazy, there
is no way you can make adjustments fast enough, or monitor all the connected
components quick enough,
Whoops sorry yes there is its called fuel injection controlled by a ECU.

Just for the record though, the old type carburettors were always a
compromise, the parameters in which a carburettor can run as efficiently as
possible are fairly small,
A carburettor can only be set to run optimally within a certain band of
humidity and temperature, if the ambient is outside these settings then,
ideally the carbonator will need tuning again, in most cases the gains or
losses were comparatively low, so we did not notice, (did you ever notice
how the air filter intake was commonly connected to the exhaust manifold?)
but in a race situation, you get any free of charge power increase you can.
On my 2 stroke race bikes I would do a plug chop and if needed rejet the
bike every time out of the pits.

Cheers Mark.

Right - that's what I thought.  It sure sounded like an
"out of nowhere" incident.  There's not a lot of defensive
driving you can do to avoid something like that...

... and ABS sure didn't come into play :-(