The F1 analogy is easy to use against this line of argumentation. Today's F1 cars are way faster than their predecessors. They are also safer, more automated, and in large part faster because they are easier to drive. The racing is more boring, and cars are uglier, but those are different topics.

The idea that you can't maintain the runtime performance of C while innately supporting automated reasoning about invariants/safety just doesn't hold up. The idea is to move the whole Pareto front outward - that's what advancements in theory and technology do.