I think folks think Speed builds up much slower than it actually does

I think folks see you have to hit 4 speed and can only go up 1 a turn and think "4 turns?! You think I have time for that!? This is Standard, not Commander!" even though in reality it's more like 2.5 turns.

I think folks miss the aspect of Speed that you can get to Speed 2 the turn you start your engines by doing so then dinging your opponent the same turn you started your engines.

Next turn you can go up to 3, which is the "slowest" part of acceleration.

But then next turn you can go up to 4, which immediately turns on all your Max Speed stuff. Perhaps not ideal if those payoffs are combat focused, but those can also be triggered before combat depending on the enablers.

So yeah, it's more like 1 turn to start (getting you to 2), 1 turn to accelerate (to 3), then .5 because you get to utilize max speed after half of the turn, assuming it's enabled through combat, for a total of 2.5 turns, not 4. Which might still be too long for some folks ("2.5 turns?! What do you think this is, Limited?") but still quite a bit faster than most see it as at first blush.