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
James May has always insisted cars made for fast nurburgring times are inherently bad cars for anything else.
Don’t know the specifics of what he’s insisted, but it’s kind of a bad take, the curves/undulations/cambered or off camber turns of Nurburgring are what make it special, closer to a real life mountain road type surface instead of a flat track. Wouldn’t that make cars better for real world performance?
Theoretically maybe, but there are so few ‘normal’ roads where you can actually drive anywhere near as fast as the ring that it’s pointless.
It’s like testing your car at 200mph on the Autobahn. Yes it will lead to a better experience for brave Germans in clear weather. But the compromises you made will make it a worse car for every other buyer round the planet.
May’s argument is if you’re going to make a track car, make a track car. If you’re going to make a road car, make a road car.
Don’t make a road car intended to be driven at track speeds. The Nurburgring is special because its unique, should be a use case for car design.
Absolutely,
Track cars are generally miserable to drive as a daily driver. Road cars are always fun.