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
It’s all so irrelevant simply because most drivers can’t drive a car fast. I don’t think the average sports car owner realizes how different their driving capabilities are from the pro racing drivers pushing those cars around a track.
At the track, with a typical lap time of say 1:30 for a pro an average driver will be doing 1:45 to 1:50 lap times. So what the hell does it matter that one car is 2 or 3 seconds faster than the other when performance is all driver based?
Too many times I’ve seen guys in their new Lambos and Maclarens getting lapped by guys in an old M3. Worse always used to be the Vette drivers refusing to admit that the Miata guys were going faster.
(am a former race car driver and instructor)
The point is, it was supposed to be an accurate measurement of the car’s capabilities. Now it’s just disingenuous marketing.
100%. But I think the marketing/sales aspect of that is in fact driving (no pun intended) the chassis toward a more race-centric feel and so as street cars they suck.