It is a driver issue. Everyone thinks they are a good driver, including the posters here and including me. So we overestimate our abilities, underestimate the car, fail to drive based on the conditions, ignore the tire temperatures and pressures, refuse to get an alignment, get behind what the car is doing, turn off the nannies, use the throttle as an on-off switch, hit the gas around a corner before the car is pointing straight, drive more aggressively than the situation dictates and in general try to show-off.

In their own mind, everyone is a good driver, until they aren't. Then they blame it on the car, or another driver, or the alignment, or GM, or the gods themselves. Or they come here and give advice when they have no idea what they are talking about (I was one of these). In their head, they are a great driver and everyone else sucks. In reality, we all suck, including me, save a few dedicated souls.

I have been driving stick shifts for 25 years in a wide variety of very fast sports cars. I would have sworn on a bible that I was a great driver. Then I listened to Bill Dearborn and went out on a track. Turns out I suck. I was unpreprared, ill-equipped and lacked the basic skill to navigate the track at speed. I would have bet someone $10,000 that I would have been able to do it, but it turns out I couldn't. Also turns out that my 25 years of driving was probably working against me, as I was over-confident.

So I spent time actually learning how to drive - all over again. Studying vehicle dynamics, such as weight transfer, over and understeer, trail braking, looking ahead, apexing. I studied the physics of it all, using books, watching videos, and listening to practiced veterans like Dearborn and Poorsha. I practiced how to get out of a bad situation, and more importantly how to avoid one to begin with. I spent time in a simulator, on the track and on the road.

I studied my car, the alignment, the tires, the brakes, the suspension, the nannies, the clutch, the cooling and all of the physical systems that represent my car. I also spent time mentally preparing myself to drive. Attempting to recreate situations in my head.

I practiced being smooth. I practiced not looking at reference points, but looking past them. I practiced scanning, keeping my eyes moving, not fixating and being keenly aware of everything - not just a passing awareness. I spent time learning to look where I want to go, not where I don't want to go. I studied my shifting patterns, RPM levels, gearing and brake application. I even spent time learning how to sit properly in my Vette. I drove on bald tires, slicks, summer tires and rain tires, in a wide variety of prepared situations, like skid pads and parking lots, with cones and safety equipment - that I could escape easily and safely, which allowed me to learn the car and it's limits - but most of all learn my limits. Which became immediately obvious and very apparent.

I taught myself how to heel-tow downshift in my C6Z06, and how to properly apex in my C7Z06. I learned what to do if I encounter understeer or oversteer, or what it means if I run out of track after a corner or have too much track left. I started squeezing the throttle, not stabbing it. I studied my vehicles moment of inertia, the traction circle, lateral grip, braking zones, threshold braking and every other thing I could learn about my car and the physics that govern it. And then I practiced, and practiced, and practiced some more. And I did these things again and again and again and again and again. I watched more videos, more simulator time, more actual track time. Over and over and over. Practice doesn't make perfect, but perfect practice might.

I learned to drive all over again, and here I was a 25 year veteran of hotrods with an ego who thought he knew how to drive, but didn't know ****.

So my personal opinion is that all of us, including myself, have a self-inflated opinion of our driving abilities, and some us, as a result wreck our cars. The M7 is less forgiving, and I also think causes something to go wrong with our brains when driving it. We think we are gods, when in reality we are rank amatuers. Fact is, with only a FEW exceptions on these forums, we are vastly unprepared for our vehicles, and the M7, for whatever reason, exacerbates this. We don't have the skill, the understanding, the proper experience or the ultimately humility to drive these cars properly in anger. Thems the facts. Like it or not.