I was looking through lap times of different production cars, and there are some wildly out of place cars doing ring laptimes, some cars are faster than they seem they should be, while others are slower than they should be. Which got me thinking how some cars truly get tested in showroom condition, and others get the “marketing” treatment to produce a laptime a showroom car would never touch, solely to sell more cars. Then I found this article that talks exactly about just that.
https://www.thedrive.com/porsche/11012/nurburgring-times-dont-matter
I have the same opinion on the Nürburgring like James May. Nürburgring lap times make no sense…
Bomb it!
Cars set up to perform well in one specific test don’t match up when driven on the roads the average driver takes every day?
surprisedpikachuface.png
60-130 is the only one that matters IRL for drag racing. Anything below 60 is up to transmission type and gearing, beyond is where power shows and gearing doesn’t matter as much
Drag racing is highly focused on the balance between power and traction. A car with 1500hp and slicks that can barely hook at 50 may put up a low 3s 60-130, but won’t 60’ for shit. Look at the Model S Plaid. It can run a fantastic time for a street car, but doesn’t have enough weight transfer to run 8s, despite having the power.
As for gearing, look at any 10R80/10L90 car. 1st is useless if you have more than 400hp, regardless of rear gear.
I don’t think you’ve been in a 10R80 1st goes to like 50, more like ZF8 is useless 1st gear I launch 2nd.
But that was my whole thing, most drags are in the street doing rolls, so 60-130 matters a lot more
Brother, I own two of em. First tops out at 42 in my Mustang at 7.5k with a 3.15 with a big tire. My F150 barely kisses 30.
Tell me again how smart you think you are lol
I know better cause my car is actually fast, not some NA Mustang on a drag pack 😂
Roll racing is still drag racing, just a subset of it
You are definitely one of those guys haha. Tell me buddy, how deep in the 9s are you on your downpipe and intake with a tune you had to have someone else make? Or since you apparently don’t know how to launch, how deep in the 3s are you for a 60-130?
Yeah captain slow would say something like that. You’re just afraid of SPEED and POWERRRRR
When the measure becomes the target, it ceases to be a good measure.
That’s what I mean. People in these comments are saying it’s a good way to see how cars would act on real roads, but I don’t think so at all. If you can’t rely on times to be honest and fair for all cars, how could you begin to compare times at all?
yup, came to say the same thing. I was going to post "James May was right about this, the desire manufacturers have to produce faster lap times has ended up giving us worse sports cars. "
“Just another pointless track-oriented racing car”