I came back after a fun night at the track event. Couple big surprises of the night were how some interesting cars performed in 'real' conditions when compared to my car.

1. Corvette C7 Grand Sport. Couldn't walk away from me on a straights, so from 90km/h to 180km/h I could keep up. However, it could out turn me.

2. Hyundai Genesis Coupe R-Spec, I could out-brake, out-turn, and out-accelerate it (but barely).

3. Corvette C7 Z07. What the f... Got my doors blown off. Not even close. That car is a beast. I would need an exotic to stand a chance.

4. Ford Focus RS. Not even close, walked all over that car. Talked with owner, his opinion that 350hp is a sham. Told me bad turbo lag and 2-3K dead zone.

5. Various Mustangs. Meh. About on par after you bolt on tons of mods on Mustang. Unfortunately, there wasn't modern GT350 in the mix.

6. Dedicated track modded Corvette C5 Z06; was faster than me, but just barely.

#1 and #4 were biggest surprises. #1 As a non-Corvette guy, I thought Grand Sport was in the same category as Z06-Z07. It is not. Not even close. #4 Focus RS wasn't a serious contender, new Golf R had better luck keeping up with me than Ford.

Overall: With new Michelin Pilot 4S the car is a lot more under control, it is no longer tail-happy. I can get it to turn in on a dime with just a bit of trail braking. I think with RWD F-type trail braking is extremely effective, I would argue that lighter V6 'brick' at the front more than makes up for less hp from V8 and AWD.

 

Would that exotic be an f type r or SVR?

 

Probably not. A C7 Z06 would beat anything jaguar makes.

 

Project 7 or 8, still short?

 

I don't think SVR could take on it, there is still question of getting all that mass to turn. Sure, SVR has more raw power, but V6 turns better due to better weight distribution. So one step forward, one step back.

If I were to pick a car to take on that C7 Z07 vette, that I would want to drive, it would be Lotus Evora 400. I don't think you could beat vette on straight line acceleration, not without getting into something like Ferrari Superfast, you have to out-corner it with something super light. The genius of C7 is that it is a muscle car that can turn. Plus, it is relatively affordable and readily available comparable to cars that can take on it. Even if I had means to buy Superfast, they wouldn't sell one to me. On other hand I could go to a local dealer and have two C7 ordered any day but Sunday.

 

A lot of it depends on the driver and the track. I ran my V6S at the track on the OEM tires. As crappy as the tires are, I would catch the C7 Z06 in the twisty stuff and get dusted on the straights. However, each time we hit the long straights he was in the same spot so I wasn't loosing a lot of time to him over the entire course.

Now, I do tracking a lot and have a full race car (which is broken which is why I drove the Jaguar). So even with the crappy tires squealing the entire lap, I know I was pushing my car a lot harder than the Vette owner was able to push his car. Granted, the OEM C7 tires suck almost as bad as the OEM F-type tires but I know I would have been faster in the C7 than the owner just because of my experience (so it wasn't car that was slow).

In short, I wouldn't put too much on how much you are able to keep up with cars at a HPDE event given a lot of different things (driver ability, driver desire to push his/her car really hard, etc).