How often do you pull up to a traffic light on a 4 lane road and the car next to you wants to race? How do you typically respond?

This has happened a few times during my 2+ weeks of ownership and last night I got smoked by a Toyota Venza. I really had no interest in racing and certainly was not interested in burning up my tires to make a point.

I think next time I'll just look over and say "you know what, you will probably smoke me off the line so go for it"

Why bother? I'd simply put any ego in check, keep the car in drive, and move on. At my own pace.*

*Unless Lance was next to me...then I might take that challenge! (Just kidding).

I usually only match the acceleration, to make it look close, but let them win. In most cases that does not require pushing car too hard. I also don't push it into reckless driving territory.

The only time I push the car is on the track or empty country road.

Actually, if you are 'burning up my tires' you are not accelerating in the most efficient way. To get the best acceleration you don't stomp on the pedal, but rather feed it in gradually to keep tires from spinning.

I just smile and wave... I've got much less to prove, and more to lose if something were to go wrong.

Very tough to do with the V8 RWD but can be done with some practice.

I usually try to outpace them till around the speed limit ( roughly speaking), which is usually easy with the amount of torque this thing packs.
Then I let them go.
Granted, I don't have to our get a chance to do this often, since most people in the Silicon Valley are boring.

The only time I was ever tempted was the other day when a 911 pulled up. The driver had dark driving glasses and cute girlfriend by his side and glanced over, tapping his gas pedal. The reason I wanted to smoke him was because I know for a fact he was thinking "I knew I shoulda bought the Jag, for no other reason than my car looks like its 50 years old. If he's faster, I know for certain I made the wrong choice".

God how I wanted to ruin his day.

He popped off when the light turned green and I just went on about my day.

I'm sure his stiff pecker reaffirmed to him that his Porsche was bad *** as he looked at me through his rear view, just to remind him again how beautiful the front end of the F was and why he should have bought one.

Hey Hardwired, this incident happened in Mountain View!

I don't race. I'd love to, but to do it safely would require me to have some level of confidence in the skills of the other drive. I have no confidence in the skills of drivers I don't know.

I had a bike pull up next to me on the highway a few weeks ago - probably a 600 or so. He wanted to play, so play we did until I ran out of room in my lane. By then I was a few car lengths ahead. He sped away by weaving through traffic.

I would have smoked him!
Lol, I guess I should be thankful I don't get the opportunity to put my crazy on display...

Thanks to a notice but lobster claws, I will add the following:
I would have smoked him to the speed limit, as long as there were no cars nearby, or baby strollers, or cats, but pigeons are on their own

This seems like the kind of thread that comes back to really bite someone if they ever end up in a serious civil or criminal case related to their driving. IANAL so I have no real idea what I'm talking about..but..

So far during my time with my R, no one has come up to me to actually race me. However, I've somewhat of a lead foot, and from a traffic light, I'll often surge quickly ahead to about 40-50 mph (just to hear that glorious exhaust) before slowing down. After all, isn't this why we bought a F-Type? Once that exhaust noise starts, I usually see all the other cars backing off.....it's actually pretty amusing to see.

I do sometimes get buzzed by M3's, M4's, and riced-out STi's and Honda Civic Si's. Kids.....

This was a regular street, in regular traffic. I wish I knew how to do a 30 mph smoke. Had I known there was such a thing, considering I'm at 0-60 in 3.4 secs, He woulda felt every millisecond of my 1.7 second wrath. Maybe even less considering I would have never even have had to shift out of 1st gear!

Which brings up a good point, in an F's 0-60 time, is the driver in 2nd or 3rd @ 60mph? Not sure what the top speed is @ redline for each gear.

I pop it into neutral, rev it like crazy to get all the pops and crackles that I can. Then I ask "Did you say something?"

I'm kidding, I'm in a vert. Nobody races a vert. I've had a couple of WRX (non STi at that) buzz me while we're caught up in traffic.

I've had this in my 370z

guy revving up by the side of me, I matched him grinning etc etc

on green I gently turned left (remember I'm in the UK) and off he roared straight on - I would have loved to have seen his face

No body wants to play here either so

I live in a community near Palm Beach Int'l Raceway.... Pretty much everything from a frickin' Prius to SRT Hellcat wants to race me twice a week like a clockwork. Our own streets turn into drag strips after midnight during the summer months when the kids are not in school. On my street, out of 9 houses, there's 1 SRT Hellcat (high school present), two Corvettes, my Jag and a Camaro SS, Then there's couple top fuel cars that tune up at nights.... Yeah, I don't get to race. Oh, during the day we are an Equine community.

What I like doing when an interested party pulls up next to me at a light is to rev the engine hard a few times before the light changes and spin the tires for a few revolutions when the light changes just before shutting it down and launching as per usual. If that succeeds in goading them into a full launch, it makes for a good laugh. Even more so if a gendarme is nearby.

And, Jay...we are clearly a bad influence on each other.

Ah, so that's my problem, the lack of a roof...