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What can the Supra beat or keep up with on the road ? Stock

bk5

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I'd also use the Car and Driver lightning lap historical times to also showcase how fast a car is on a track.
The problem with these is lots of manufactures are onto the use of cheater tires. Like Audi makes Trofeo Rs a "dealer installed addon" and Dark Horse comes equipped with some pretty insane tires that Ford won't let reviewers swap.

Plus, reviewers have like 4-5 cars to learn in a weekend, and you know the guy that scores the 911 GT3 is going to focus all of his time on learning that instead of the cheaper cars.

It's a good ballpark, but they have an enthusiast section now where people can run their own cars at VIR and compare their times with historical ones. Both the SS 1LE and Supra claimed much better times with enthusiast owners behind the wheel than C&D drivers. Hell, a V6 Mustang ran a 3:00 in the enthusiast group...a v6 Mustang handily beating a pool of CTRs around VIR.

So yeah, C&D LL times should be taken when a grain of salt.
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johnnyskids

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The problem with these is lots of manufactures are onto the use of cheater tires. Like Audi makes Trofeo Rs a "dealer installed addon" and Dark Horse comes equipped with some pretty insane tires that Ford won't let reviewers swap.

Plus, reviewers have like 4-5 cars to learn in a weekend, and you know the guy that scores the 911 GT3 is going to focus all of his time on learning that instead of the cheaper cars.

It's a good ballpark, but they have an enthusiast section now where people can run their own cars at VIR and compare their times with historical ones. Both the SS 1LE and Supra claimed much better times with enthusiast owners behind the wheel than C&D drivers. Hell, a V6 Mustang ran a 3:00 in the enthusiast group...a v6 Mustang handily beating a pool of CTRs around VIR.

So yeah, C&D LL times should be taken when a grain of salt.
From what I understand, if it's not an option (even dealer installed option) on the manufacturers website, it can not be included in the Lightning Lap. So yes there are some vehicles where you can option higher performance tires on your vehicle and thus they would be able to run them at this test.

Also from my understanding all the cars are driven by the same driver and lapped the same amount of laps (unless there is something that happens and the car isn't capable of completing the total laps, like a previous gen Vette ZR1), thus this takes away some of the driver component. Of course each driver will have different biases, as said driver could own a new Mustang and can get more out of the Mustang that is present at the test, but overall it's not a big difference as you are implying.

Having a bunch of owners take their car out, it takes away a lot of things, is the car stock, the driver might have certain setting different (camber, tire pressure, etc), the drivers skill are all over the map.

The best comparisons happen with the group from that year, as they'd all have the same driver and same weather conditions. Comparing from one year to the other is going to be a bit less accurate, but still a good tool. The other thing is, the older the times you look at the more likely that those cars were on tires that are no longer competitive. So just because a 2024 Civic Type R beats a 2006 Porsche 911 GT3 (don't know if that's the case, just using it as an example) doesn't mean that the old GT3 on equal tires wouldn't completely destroy it.

The only test that I saw that was better was Savage Geese did a review where they put all the cars on the same exact tires, drove them all on the same day, by the same driver, and got them dyno'd at the same place at the same time. But they don't have the resources that Car and Driver does, hence why these tests are typically only 2-3 vehicles.
 
 








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