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They go faster TO HELL, of course. Once the Orks are splattered all over their wrecked vehicles, they will see how fast they can be.

I definitely prefer the idea that the red ones do go fasta because Orks think they do, but not because of psychic energy but genetic knowledge. Like, along the way some mek figures out that nitrous in the fuel speeds it up and that gets passed along with the DNA but they liked to mark nitrous with red paint which also gets passed on. Later generations have knowledge of how you make fasta vehicles, which is like:

Step 1: Mix nitrous is the fuel
Step 2: Paint the thing red

It also raises the tantalising prospect that Orky paintjobs are indicative of other traits, on a completely subconscious level.

What follows are merely examples. They’re not head canon, or indeed any kind of canon, just examples.

Brown - Used when a vehicle has been built that’ll do particularly well off-road or in rough terrain

Yellow - particularly good guns

Blue - extra armour over vital areas, making it seem lucky, compared to others which lack that strategic plating

Turquoise - amphibious capability (either just quite likely to float, or proper land boat properties)

With the Mek, entirely subconsciously, choosing the right paint for the right vehicle, and the paint, again entirely subconsciously telling prospective buyers how it might perform.

And who paints stuff red? The Mek’s Grots. Which means a trip to the Mek’s workshop. And being an inveterate Greasy Bodger, whilst the Grots are slapping on the paint “I’ll just ‘ave squizz at da enjun, make sure its ded good”, and so making alterations and modifications which ensure it will indeed go at least a bit faster.

Painting your buggy red is just putting your horse after your cart.
It's already the fastest; you paint it red to show off.
Outside observers can't accept defeat at the hands of what they perceive as an inferior enemy so they make up myths like gestalt psychic fields that make red ones go faster.

Eh, IMO the whole ork belief thing is 4chan grade stupid meme nonsense. Orks never work that way, ever.

Example #1, Ciaphas Cain. He has blank powerful enough to turn off demon princes(sess), major chaos champions, hive tyrants and whole GSC cults. Yet funnily enough spends one book looting ork tech and travelling in ork vehicles, yet nothing malfunctions next to Jurgen. Amberley, one of the best informed Imperials when it comes to the orks, also mentions nothing of the sort.

Example #2, Tyranids. They should beat orks every time seeing their Shadow in the Warp outright turns off psychic powers and fields, even ones projected by chaos gods and major demonic incursions, yet funnily enough (again) no ork tech ever malfunctions fighting them and in fact orks seem to win more often than not.

Example #3, Sisters of Silence. We see them fighting orks several times, again, nothing malfunctions. In fact, Emperor, who has really good clue how psychic fields work, fights orks (including the massive Ullanor empire) with zero Sisters of Silence present - and you'd think they would be mandatory if they helped to turn off ork weapons.

Example #4, we see that orks have actually really good tech understanding (even if their access to it seems to be scrambled) that doesn't need any stupid belief fields and in fact directly contradicts them as it's based on sensible hard physics not clapping your hands:

Bozgrat fixed his power shunts. He jiggled switches in the belly of the idol until his pusher beams intersected the precise right way, and pushed so hard a tiny bit of hot stuff collapsed in on itself and the little sun ignited in its reactor. Steam hissed from the trio of magnetic field generators that kept it stable. The grots looked nervous, but it held, and the tiny sun didn’t go anywhere it shouldn’t. That made Bozgat happy, and helped him forget about his sore mouth. He got busy with hooking it up.

‘Higher resistance is to be expected in copper compounds of lower purity…’ said Talker. Somehow, that made sense to Bozgrat, and he reached for better wire. Then he changed his mind, and began to cobble together a cooling system for the main power lines leading from the fusion plant to the secondary systems out of scattered pieces of junk.

---

"Nah", said Ugrimm pointing. "Look one just flew over, right past the secondary effulgence corona of the gravitic attraction wave." he said, using the special mek talk which even the meks didn't really understand.

​---

Another of the enemy Stompa’s shells exploded harmlessly absorbed by Fat Mork’s energy shield.
“Oh, that’s pretty, that’s nice! At least that still works, then!” jabbered Talker. “Ah predictable outcome of a polarised muon deflection matrix.” He belched loudly. “Well orky.”

​---

“Reactor’s up to ninety percent of tolerance, boss!” said Bozgat.
“Caution must be taken when interfacing ionic technologies, especially those that originate with alien species whose consciousness wavelengths are incompatible with the psychically motivated etheric generators of the krork,” said Talker.
“Shut your jabber,” said Bozgat aggressively, before tweaking a few knobs and closing a few valves on it anyway. The reactor calmed down.

---

Snikgob: There we go. Got a good view from here. Now, look at that. There are red boys there. They don't look like humies. Look more like tin boys, but they is humies, just with loads of bionics. Then they's humie mek boys. They believe all sorts of weird stuff.

Talker: Cultural collapse of reorientation of belief systems in the aftermath of a renaissance can provoke magical thinking in previously rational beings.

Snikgob: What the zog are you talking about?

Talker: Beats me.

 Mentlegen324 wrote:
That choppa example you give from the War of the Beast series, what happens it by no means conclusive. The weapon evidently functions well enough as the tech priest makes no indication of it being literally impossible or whatever, and it's still on up until the point he removes the Orks arm that's holding it from the Ork - at which point, it quickly malfunctions despite still having power. His speculation is basically maybe the gestalt field was part of what was stopping it from malfunctiong up until then, but he even says himself he's not sure - it could just have been a coincidence.

Or maybe, just maybe, the choppa had the same device SM bolters are supposed to have (even though GW writers forget it 95% of time) namely safety mechanism coded to either palm print or ork dna to ensure no one can loot it - which is pretty in character, too, seeing other orks hate Deathskullz for thieving the owner could just asked mek for lock to say 'frak you' to any potential looter...

Although human belief (Sororitas miracles) also manifests physically seemingly regardless of warp suppressing effects, so who knows if/how a null feild would interact with any orkoid belief-based technology at this point. GW doesn't.

First of all I really appreciate all the quotes and the background from older editions. Thanks all!

I'm still torn if I like the idea of the psychic Ork gestalt acting as a grease for their technology or prefer the incompetent mechanicus adepts ... Maybe even a bit of both? It does enable Ork logistics on a way, as the recent novels all state that such thoughts are beneath the Ork in question.

I’d argue there’s a sliding scale of things.

Orks can’t believe a literal lump of metal in going bang and shooting someone.

However, Orky belief may be able to at least temporarily overcome a malfunction, or ensure a quick bit of percussive maintenance knocks the right thing into the right alignment again.

In sufficient numbers, Ork belief may be able to influence a shell’s trajectory, helping it hit say, an enemy Titan, somewhere extra ‘Urty - but it still can’t make a Slugga shot decapitate a Warlord Titan.

It’s also worth noting that Orks just kind of know how to fight. The Stormboyz Korp does offer drills and that, but your standard fisticuffs is baked into them on an instinctual level. And so, when in a particularly good fight? It’s possible for any Ork to access part of that instinct we might not expect, letting them find the weak spot, or alter the angle of their choppa’s blade just so to inflict a grievous wound where we might normally expect a lighter wound.

I’m reminded of the RAF study of aircraft damage from the Second World War, which analysed bullet marks, and lead to the decision to better armour those areas. Which was the wrong conclusion, because all the planes studied had come back despite their mauling. And it was the areas showing no bullet holes in the study which needed the better armour, as that’s the damage the planes didn’t survive. An Mekboy knows that sort of stuff entirely instinctually, to the point they don’t know they know it. Or unconscious competence if you want to get a bit fancy.

And so for Red Ones? It seems entirely possible every Ork has some instinctual grasp of things like downward forces and aerodynamics, and request whichever trukk, buggy or wagon their instincts tell them is gonna be fast, should be painted red.