This is all very interesting although it seems to slightly of become a debate about the philosophical argument of should you overtake a car going 40 at all.
What I will say in regard to this is that I do acknowledge this attitude unfortunately has gained more traction latterly (see what i did there

).Although the reasons for this change in mindset do seem varied, from people seeing an overtaking car as somehow a “queue jumper” to some motorists that view any form of overtaking as immediately reckless or dangerous no matter the circumstance. One person on here suggesting they would be quite happy to sit at 40 and the amount of occasions on the road you come across a tight group of cars all doing 40 with no one prepared to overtake even in good weather with good sight lines being testament to this. It doesn’t matter how much power you’ve got if your number 4 in the train chances are your not going to get past unless there is a half decent straight with no oncoming traffic. Also let’s be honest as someone already has said people don’t buy an amg to do 40 everywhere.
So if an opportunity for a safe and legal overtake is possible. The reason for the question is that I feel it is a safer and better practice to set the car up before committing to overtake by pre selecting the required gear, as you would in a full manual. Automatics are wonderful things but their limitation is they operate in the present and as such they can not anticipate the road conditions ahead, other traffic or what you are about to ask of the car only react to it.
With the power of an amg car or any high performance car for that matter the gear selection is not as clear cut as something that only gives you one choice for effective acceleration at any given speed.
Yes i also accept the throttle is not an on off switch and a certain amount of modulation is required and is part of the skill of driving. Again this is more important in an amg compared to a lower powered cars where you can get away with dropping it down the box and flooring it. With 500bhp this kind of approach can result in traction issues so gear selection and rpm are an an even more important factor to consider.
That being said some gears at certain speeds also just ‘feel’ better and it was this that I was seeking an answer to in relation to my op with the 40mph overtake case in point.