Drivers Republic GT2 v GTR around the Nurburgring

[Wouter Melissen]

Originally Posted by monaroCountry

Nissan fanbois running out of excuses and starting to attack the messenger. Dont worry ive got a tough hide, the main thing is that Nissan's cheating ways gets exposed (yet again).

You are not a messenger. You are propaganda artist of the worst kind. There are no excuses needed. The article you quote praises the Nissan GTR.

[IBrake4Rainbows]

Misquoting is a bannable offence.

I shall do the honours.

[henk4]

I just glanced through a report on the GTR from a Dutch car magazine (Autovisie) and one of the headers was: "It is one of the easiest cars to drive very fast". I may buy it later to get access to the full article. Apparently they are on their way to Maranello to compare the car with a product form that area....

[Guibo]

Originally Posted by monaroCountry

Sounds like your typical understeer.......a common trait with the piggy GTR. Wasnt the GTR susposed to be great in the rain? Wasnt the MPSC tires closer to racing slicks which is renouned to be treacherous in the rain? Wasnt the GT2 a killer in the rain?

Not just regular MPSC's, monaroCountry. Cup+. Wouldn't know what that means, would you? On Sport Auto's wet-handling course, the GT2 on MPSC's is faster than the 997 Turbo...

The GT-R's tires are shite in the wet. You have already been informed of this on other forums. True to troll-like form, you've forgotten. (BTW, the Dunlops are not only faster in the dry than the Bridgestones, they're a bit faster in the wet too.)

[Guibo]

Originally Posted by LeonOfTheDead

since those cars (the super exotics) are usually referred to as the best you can have (money apart), I was refusing more the possibility of the match between the times of the two different kind of cars than the fact that the LOL GT-R was so close to the Beetle GT2 or not.

I think several factors are at play here. First of all, with the exception of the CGT, none of the other mfrs camp out at the 'Ring like Porsche and Nissan do. Ferrari tests there, but it seems they only go for "final assessment" type testing. That kind of development time has got to make some difference. And with a driver (like Suzuki), taking the same car around and round, for thousands of laps (not all at one session of course), you'd start to wonder if he'd remember how to do anything else. For the Evo test, each car got only a few laps.
Secondly, weather conditions. As Chris Harris pointed out, you could have what you think are the same conditions but end up 5 seconds off the pace. Factor in other variables (driver familiarity with a car, a damp place here vs a wet place there), and the margins increase. For the Evo test, it came rather late in the season. Would not be surprised if the wind was blustery in places.
Interesting to note that the car with the poorest hp/wt ratio was fastest (even with a misfiring engine), while the one with the highest was the slowest. Quite often, what the driver says is far more revealing than what the spec sheets say. And watching Basseng wrestle with the Koenigsegg...well, that exlains a ton.

What we should get out of Nissan's and Porsche's times isn't necessarily that they are "cheating" (hard to define as their is no standardized procedure), but rather that other mfrs' cars are underperforming against their true potential. The GT2 and GT-R are at their limit (Nissan even states this specifically), whereas those supercars have already knocked out these faster times with comparitively little preparation, in only a few laps, with a driver who's probably not as proficient with these cars as he could be (with more time). IMO, that's every bit as impressive, if not moreso.

[LeonOfTheDead]

Originally Posted by Guibo

I think several factors are at play here. First of all, with the exception of the CGT, none of the other mfrs camp out at the 'Ring like Porsche and Nissan do. Ferrari tests there, but it seems they only go for "final assessment" type testing. That kind of development time has got to make some difference. And with a driver (like Suzuki), taking the same car around and round, for thousands of laps (not all at one session of course), you'd start to wonder if he'd remember how to do anything else. For the Evo test, each car got only a few laps.
Secondly, weather conditions. As Chris Harris pointed out, you could have what you think are the same conditions but end up 5 seconds off the pace. Factor in other variables (driver familiarity with a car, a damp place here vs a wet place there), and the margins increase. For the Evo test, it came rather late in the season. Would not be surprised if the wind was blustery in places.
Interesting to note that the car with the poorest hp/wt ratio was fastest (even with a misfiring engine), while the one with the highest was the slowest. Quite often, what the driver says is far more revealing than what the spec sheets say. And watching Basseng wrestle with the Koenigsegg...well, that exlains a ton.

What we should get out of Nissan's and Porsche's times isn't necessarily that they are "cheating" (hard to define as their is no standardized procedure), but rather that other mfrs' cars are underperforming against their true potential. The GT2 and GT-R are at their limit (Nissan even states this specifically), whereas those supercars have already knocked out these faster times with comparitively little preparation, in only a few laps, with a driver who's probably not as proficient with these cars as he could be (with more time). IMO, that's every bit as impressive, if not moreso.

the last part is a good point of view, but the Black Falcon team has a huge experience with the ring, the preparation for it and what it takes to place a fast time. the driver is very experienced too. surely it need more and more laps to improve his ability with each cars, and perhaps they can reach a lower time.
regarding Porsche and Nissan, let's admit the times are correct. both cars, the Bettle and the LOL (I decided to cal them in these ways in any "ring" thread from now on) have been slower than cars like the 430 Scuderia or the Gallardo LP560/4. so I should conclude that the cars can actually r4each those times on the ring just because they were developed almost just for doing that. it's not a good attitude. perhaps they are no longer lying on the times, but about the real performance of the cars (just talking about lap times of course).
still wondering why no one consider as "doubtable" the Plastic ZR1's time.

[digitalcraft]

Holy crap people. Now I like the GT-R, its a great car, but read the article. He's not misquoting. They state that the Porsche is faster.

Sure he doesn't have to insult GT-R fans, but READ THE ARTICLE.

[digitalcraft]

Originally Posted by Matra et Alpine

On what planet speaking which language ?

Not in English it doesn't ... it means what it says .... " do not know "

That makes no sense. He follows with a bunch of reasons he doubts he can. Its common sense to understand the context as 'I don't know of a way it could be true'

Just read the article. They state plain as day that for their runs, the GT2 is faster. Its right there. This isn't selective interpretation.

[Guibo]

Originally Posted by digitalcraft

That makes no sense. He follows with a bunch of reasons he doubts he can. Its common sense to understand the context as 'I don't know of a way it could be true'

Just read the article. They state plain as day that for their runs, the GT2 is faster. Its right there. This isn't selective interpretation.

It doesn't necessarily mean that at all. He could have just come right out and said he doubts it. So why didn't he? He also says the wet conditions brings out the weight penalty of the GT-R that just isn't there (so much) in the dry.

They also state plain as day that the GT-R performs far above what we would expect of this car, that this performance enhances its reputation. Don't recall anyone ever saying the GT-R was unequivocally faster than the GT2. Do you? This test confirms Harris's suspicion: that Porsche's times for these two cars (as much as 25 seconds as configured here) don't make too much sense. Even the anti-GT-R crowd is acknowledging that the 7:54 originally claimed by Porsche for the GT-R is too slow.

[digitalcraft]

He did say that, he used a figure of speech.

"Doctor! Can you save this man?!" "I just don't know".

They state it performs very well. They state that it does not perform as well as the claimed best time. These are not mutually exclusive statements. Again, I like the car! I do, I have no vested interest in this argument one way or another, save for I read the article and this is the correct interpretation.

People are making claims that it says other than it says. And yes people claimed that that guy up there misquoted when he quoted things word for word. That's just silly because he didn't misquote.

[Zytek_Fan]

monaroCountry, could you explain your real reason for hating the GT-R?
Is it because it's an affordable, supercar challenger?

Yes, the reliability has been questionable, but most supercars have TERRIBLE reliability.
The GT-R is a new car, there will be problems, and a lot of problems come from stupid people.

I am partial to European cars, but that won't stop me from getting a really good Asian or *gasp* American car.

[f6fhellcat13]

Originally Posted by Zytek_Fan

monaroCountry, could you explain your real reason for hating the GT-R?
Is it because it's an affordable, supercar challenger?

I've already asked him. He didn't amswer.
He won't answer you anyway, he's banned.

[henk4]

Originally Posted by digitalcraft

Sure he doesn't have to insult GT-R fans, but READ THE ARTICLE.

I did, and it all boils down to a regular Porsche driver who produces a 5 seconds slower lap time in a car to which he tries for three laps. That is what probably made him say: I don't know, because if he had given a definitive answer, people would he said: But you only drove it three laps....

and "misquoting" is also taking out selective, one sided arguments from an article, while the same article also contains other statements that would counter balance the quotes.

And for that matter a car which is 40% cheaper and lapping just over one percent slower in spite of being over 25% heavier and, maybe, having the same bhp, does not deserve the blind hatred that MC has treated it with ever since he came to this forum.

[Guibo]

Originally Posted by digitalcraft

They state it performs very well. They state that it does not perform as well as the claimed best time.

People are making claims that it says other than it says. And yes people claimed that that guy up there misquoted when he quoted things word for word. That's just silly because he didn't misquote.

The GT2 doesn't perform as well as the claimed best time either. Apples vs apples? Nope.

As mentioned, it's the selective quoting that shows the bias which fits his agenda to a tee. For example, look at the rest of that passage:
"I just don't know. Unlike the Porsche time, we have video evidence of Toshio Suzuki setting a 7:29.03sec lap and he is super-committed. In fact it's a brilliant piece of driving. But I just don't see where another 27 seconds comes from with the car I drove. Ten, perhaps - fifteen with a set of those gummy Dunlops fitted, Suzuki-san driving, using his sublime skills and telephathic knowledge of the car's handling traits."

Harris accepts as much as 15 seconds faster is possible. Harris also says that in what you would think are the same conditions, there can be a 5 second variation in times. What we have here is clearly not the same conditions that Nissan described in its testing. DR test: damp track. Nissan test: "The conditions were perfect," out of the mouth of Suzuki himself. That could mean as much as another 10 seconds faster with Nissan's test conditions. So you take 15 seconds for the tires and Suzuki's driving, add around 10 seconds for conditions, that's 25 seconds. Is anyone (except perhaps monaroCountry) seriously going to quibble over 2 seconds on a 13-mile track?

[SteveDR]

Hi Folks, let me try and answer any questions that you have and where necessary I will invite Chris Harris to provide any further details on the laps.

Just to set the context for this test, we are big fans of both cars and have run features on them this year as well as setting laps around our home Silverstone GP circuit. Lapping Silverstone we found that both would achieve near identical times of 2 min 10 seconds and this led us to conclude that the GT-R was indeed as quick as the fastest production Porsche, but we had a nagging doubt in the backs of our minds especially given the very public spat between Nissan and Porsche, so we wanted to check the story out ourselves - first hand.

We didn't expect to match each maker's claims especially given the time of year, but what we hoped to learn (and did) was 'how' each car behaved over this 14 mile stretch of infamous tarmac and thereby be in a better position to assess the feasibility of each claimed time.

We visited the 'ring on Monday and Tuesday of last week (10th/11th Nov) and unfortunately it was lashing it down with rain. We also brought along Renault's Megane R26.R which has claimed the fastest production hatchback record around the 'ring (more of that next week), so we had a lot to accomplish in very little time. We were very kindly provided an hour or so on the track by organisers RMA, and ran both cars for a total of three laps recording a single fastest flying laptime.

Both cars were well run in; we used the GT2 several times earlier in the year and ran a seperate feature on it, we also drove this same GT-R in our feature comparing it against 997.2 PDK, R8 and Aston V8. So we knew the history of each car, that they were standard and did not favour either manufacturer. It's worth making clear that Porsche did not know about our intended use for the GT2 when we borrowed it - we've borrowed their GT2 5 or 6 times already this year, so it was no big deal.

As we assembled this feature and concluded on the times there were several aspects that struck us; firstly the GT2 found much more traction that we would expect on its cup+ tyres and therefore there was little or no traction advantage conferred by the GT-R's 4wd.

The GT-R was quicker into corners, mostly because of its stability under braking and the confidence this gave the driver. Both cars were near enough identical in terms of apex speeds, so were a match through most corners although the Nissan was on the power earlier in some slower corners.

But the biggest difference was how much faster the GT2 was than the GT-R in terms of power - there was a massive difference. 17mph in the GT2's favour felt even faster and this is where much of the GT2's advantage over the GT-R was attributed.

Chris felt that he got pretty close to the GT-R's potential around the lap, albeit the Dunlop tyres would have provided an extra 5 seconds of pace and a properly dry circuit with warmer temperatures would have helped both cars, so we guess that 7:45 or less would definitely be within the GT-R's reach.

The GT2 was more scary to drive at those speeds with a damp track and good-sense got the better of Chris in being able to eek out the last 10-15 seconds, but he's pretty confident that a 7:30 would be within Walter's grasp. So, Chris did not feel that he got as close to the GT2's limits as he did in the GT-R. And clearly if we'd had the time and money to run the cars all-day, reviewing the telemetry and spotting where extra time could be gained then a faster lap time would obviously have been possible.

So, did Suzuki really do 7:29? Well, he's certainly an awesome driver. We recorded a video with Suzuki back in May, which further shows his ability TV, videos, motorsport events, driving techniques | DR TV | DRIVERS REPUBLIC he certainly has a kamikaze do-or-die approach to driving and that's exactly what you need to set a fast time around the 'ring, so we don't doubt that on a better day he could have set a faster time (probably faster than 7:45), but the main difference between GT2 and GT-R was down to engine power and the fact that the GT-R got anywhere close to the GT2 was a great result.

If it wasn't for the whole debate around Nissan's claimed lap time I suspect everyone would now be patting Nissan on the back, but setting the whole PR issue aside for a moment it really is a tremendous achievement for a 1740kg car to get anywhere near to the times it has set. But the GT2, for the moment, is another step up in terms of performance.