I finally got to put a few miles on my new 2021 F Type R yesterday. So far I am still under 200 miles but will be driving it a lot more over the next few weeks. I live in the mountains at about 6000 feet and the next closest town is about 25 miles away. I put the car in the Dynamic Mode and set the transmission to Sport. I had set up my preferences so that the paddle shifters only operated in Sport mode. I have never owned a car with paddle shifters before and other than my Mazda CX 5, the Jaguar is the only car I have owned with an auto transmission since 1982. But I have to say that I like it.

Heading downhill allowed me to do some engine compression braking to help seat the piston rings and also gradually warm up and break in the brakes. As far as the engine noise, it sounds great. I came out of a corner, accelerated up to about 4000 RPM and let off the gas in anticipation of the next corner and all of a sudden BANG POP CRACKLE. It kind of startled me the first time as the sound seemed to be coming out right under the door. Fun. I learned how to control it a little with the combination of gear selection and throttle position. If this is a reduced effect from the older model exhaust sounds, they must have really been loud. I also found that while accelerating from a dead stop that regardless of which mode was selected, the magic point seemed to be right around 3500 RPM for the engine to really roar. I had to limit the RPM's to 4500 since the engine is still new but am looking forward to hitting the redline after I put a few thousand miles on the clock. Also in the Dynamic mode, the transmission shifts hard.
I'll bet it will chirp the tires upon upshifting if you really floor it.

-Tires: I set the pressure at 38 PSI all around. I know what you guys mean about the Pirellis. I wasn't pushing the car too hard but could hear a slight squeal beginning at speeds that I thought weren't that high. But the car is still very nimble for its weight.

-Engine: This thing is a torque monster. Heading back uphill, it was effortless to keep it in gears 4 & 5 with the RPM's in the 2000-3000 range.

-Other features: I have the Blind Spot Monitoring option. I noticed that the warning icons on the mirrors don't activate until a vehicle in the lane on either side is almost completely in the blind spot. Is there a sensitivity adjustment for this ? My Mazda allows some adjustment so that the icons start to activate when the approaching car is still several car lengths back.

-Infotainment System: Not at all easy to use nor intuitive. The Sirius XM function is easy once you have selected all of your favorite stations and you can adjust the volume and go up or down the stations with the steering wheel controls, but trying to listen to music stored on a USB stick requires a lot of glancing at the screen and touching different icons to find the folders that have the songs by a particular artist that I wanted to listen to.

-Navigation. I probably need to get into the settings and see how to set up the display. It shows the street that you are travelling on, but not the approaching cross street. Again, it is not an intuitive system. One thing I don't want to be doing when travelling on the winding two lane mountain roads is looking at the touchscreen and trying to change the settings or features.

-Driving comfort: The seat is comfortable. A little more road noise than I would like while on the freeway. There is a lot of gravel on the side streets where I live and it sounds like there is not much insulation in the wheel wells. I may think about applying some kind of spray on rubber coating. I have to get used to the blind spots caused by the A pillars. Also I do not like the lighting feature. It does not have a full Off mode for the headlights. You can put them in Auto and they sense the ambient light condition and turn on as needed, but even with the Auto mode off, they turn on every time I pull into my garage. Not necessary as there is plenty of light from the door opener light.

That's about all I can think of at the moment. Any tips or tricks that you guys have figured out will be appreciated. I'm still going through the printed manual page by page but cars have gotten too damn complicated in many respects !

 

Note that there is an engine break-in section in the manual, though not many pay attention to it. I too have the paddles set to only operate in Sport mode, which works well. Some of us found the exhaust seemed to get louder after a few thousand miles.

If you want to wake up the whole county, try hitting the rev limiter in 1st gear (don't ask me how I know.)

 

I set my paddles to operate in both S and D - I may want to use a bit of engine braking when I'm just pootling around,