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@Backstop
I just spoke to my solar scientist friend sat next to me and that wikipedia article sums it. The CME's are massive, as in not photons, so will not travel relativistically and are moderated by the solar wind.
The solar wind moves at speed that takes 4 days to reach the Earth and hence the delay. A CME has a mass around 1000 billion tonnes, to shoot that at the Earth against the suns surface gravity requires massive amounts of energy and that's another reason they come quite 'slowly'.