GT500 vs ZLE

[ZRacerLE]

True laptimes tests are on they way. This one was basically a parody.

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[V00D00]

they get PAID to do it. They could be the worst drivers in the world and never even set food on a piece of prepared tarmac and still be professionals. The one guy does all their unprepared drag starts. Me thinks he's probably pretty good at it since he's done it for all cars ever to be tested - orders of mag more than most racer boys have ever attempted.

pro·fes·sion·al
/prəˈfeSH(ə)n(ə)l
adjective

1. relating to or connected with a profession.
   "young professional people"
2. engaged in a specified activity as one's main paid occupation rather than as a pastime.
   "a professional boxer"

These are paid test drivers for the magazines. These runs aren't done by the writers of the columns.

I'm sure if they wanted, they could export the data from their Vbox and print it onto a narrow slip of paper for you.

That doesn't mean professional drivers that means professional journalists. Their job is not to get the car to perform, but Express their opinion of the car.

If getting paid to review is a pro driver, YouTube has paid a lot of pro drivers.. myself included

 

[shogun32]

I don't think YT's "pay" is anything more than strangers throwing coins at the monkey clashing cymbals on the sidewalk.

Man are we bored or what? How is it that journos can't seem to put useful tests together?

 

[gmd2003]

The big difference in the LL being 3.4 sec slower for the zl1 1le, they were different drivers. That alone could make a huge difference.

Actually the biggest difference was the Cup2R's were on the 3RS for the lightning lap which was the cause for the majority of the delta between it and the 1LE.

 

[bluebeastsrt]

Simply getting paid for something doesn’t make you good at it. These writers are paid for their opinions put to paper. They just happen to have fallen into a job where they get to drive a car in the process. Then offer an opinion. I have to agree with the YouTube statement. Is this bubblehead a professional driver? She’s making money on her opinion about cars.

 

[mavisky]

That doesn't mean professional drivers that means professional journalists. Their job is not to get the car to perform, but Express their opinion of the car.

If getting paid to review is a pro driver, YouTube has paid a lot of pro drivers.. myself included

Wrong again. The performance tests aren't performed by the journalists for the major manufacturers.

Motor Trend for example only currently uses 4 total drivers including Randy Pobst:
https://www.motortrend.com/news/motor-trend-testing/

Who: Instrumented testing is different from road testing. It requires years of track experience, specialized skills, and instinctive muscle memory to extract the best performances from all the different types of vehicles we test: compact cars/hatches, sedans, wagons, crossovers, sport utilities, pickup trucks, and yes, sports cars, supercars, and an occasional hypercar. There are currently three staffers (each with more than 20 years of testing experience) who are qualified to perform Motor Trend's instrumented testing: technical director Frank Markus in Detroit (weather permitting), testing director Kim Reynolds, and road test editor Chris Walton, the latter two both in Southern California. Associate road test editor Erick Ayapana is in the process of training up (and is showing great "feel" and talent) to fill in should any of our regular test drivers be unavailable. For consistency of results when getting lap times at race tracks, we employ champion race driver Randy Pobst.

 

[bluebeastsrt]

This is how the Road & Track "performance car of the year" was chosen. Very scientific. A club racer with no experience. And a complete noob. Picked the performance car of the year. That's a pretty weighty title to be chosen by a noob. The article makes for interesting reading. One profession driver was used out of 7.

When it came to lap times, we enlisted a licensed club racer with no Thunderhill experience: me. We did this for a reason, and it wasn’t to build my ego. Most of our readers are not pro drivers. When you buy a new car, a professional’s lap time at any track is an interesting metric, but it’s rarely reflective of a normal person’s experience. We wanted to stress accessibility and adaptability. How easy is it to get up to speed in a given car? How communicative is the car? Is it hard to learn the quirks? Under the watchful eyes of our testing staff, every PCOTY contender got a quick warm-up session to set tire pressures, then no more than seven timed laps. Just enough to establish a representative lap and suss idiosyncrasies, not enough to set a record.

https://www.roadandtrack.com/new-ca...s/a29640493/2020-performance-car-of-the-year/

 

[mavisky]

This is how the Road & Track "performance car of the year" was chosen. Very scientific. A club racer with no experience. And a complete noob. Picked the performance car of the year. That's a pretty weighty title to be chosen by a noob.

When it came to lap times, we enlisted a licensed club racer with no Thunderhill experience: me. We did this for a reason, and it wasn’t to build my ego. Most of our readers are not pro drivers. When you buy a new car, a professional’s lap time at any track is an interesting metric, but it’s rarely reflective of a normal person’s experience. We wanted to stress accessibility and adaptability. How easy is it to get up to speed in a given car? How communicative is the car? Is it hard to learn the quirks? Under the watchful eyes of our testing staff, every PCOTY contender got a quick warm-up session to set tire pressures, then no more than seven timed laps. Just enough to establish a representative lap and suss idiosyncrasies, not enough to set a record.

https://www.roadandtrack.com/new-ca...s/a29640493/2020-performance-car-of-the-year/

Motortrend does this for their large comparisons, card and driver does the same with their lightning lap comparisons, and obviously road and track does this for PCOTY.

These are all anomalies from how they do their standard instrumented testing of their cars and their tests. Motortrend even admits as much in the same link I just posted.
https://www.motortrend.com/news/motor-trend-testing/

Special tests: For special events such as our Best Driver's Car tests, we concoct a variety of ingenious tests that focus in tight on different aspects of dynamic handling. Among them: pitch and roll angles using ride-height sensors, chassis slip angle from a yaw gyro, and steering wheel angle using a rotary potentiometer. We used to run slalom or lane change tests during the course of a special handling events, but as a rule these tests tend to be highly reliant on driver skill and unduly influenced by factors like wheelbase, overhangs, vehicle width, etc.

On the comparison of editors to pros:

Many Motor Trend editors are above-average drivers and can certainly approach a car's limit on a track in relative safety, but we don't imperil ourselves or the often-pricey hardware to find or even exceed limits. As a result, we never claim our laps as those of record, unlike some other enthusiast publications. (We've seen 4-second lap time deltas between pro drivers and those auto scribes in the same car on Virginia International Raceway, for instance.) For our lap times, we employ a professional development and race car driver, Randy Pobst, to wring every last hundredth of a second from cars on a track to find their true limits.

I fully conced that the road test editors are there to convey the "feel" and "sense" of driving the car. The narrow list of pros are there to deliver absolute facts about the capabilities of the car. If you want to benchrace, it's important to understand where that data has come from.

 

[bluebeastsrt]

Caption below from the same 2020 performance car of the year article. When you have to make excuses for your poor test procedures right in the magazine article . After reading this I’m going right out and buying a Volester! I want the performance car of the year. A magazine says it’s true. So these professional drivers must be right!


Of course, no method is perfect. Ambient temperature during our lapping day started at around 85 degrees Fahrenheit and eventually hit 107. That kind of heat doesn’t help lap speed, and it ensured that late runners needed shorter stints, as times immediately dropped off. While I made every attempt to, as one of our contributors once said, “underserve all the cars equally,” most amateur drivers will get faster over the course of a day at a track they had never before seen, learning the pavement’s nuances, and I am no exception. With those caveats in mind, it’s best to view the lap times as bellwether, not absolute. A loose guide to judge the spectacular machinery on these pages.

 

[mavisky]

Welcome to magazine bench racing. Variables like that play into almost every single test they run and the same goes for the dragstrip with precious time slips. Unless you're willing to stay there all day and run at the perfect time, there will always be the potential for better numbers.

 

[Alain]

Looking forward to all the rock chips from those stickies :(

They do fling a lot of debris !!
I PPF my car as soon as I got it. Then swapped out the tires.

I don’t even own my OEM tires anymore, I sold them.

I purposely tried to get the car to slide after getting them hot and they would not give !!! They are amazing when it comes to traction but not very practical in the real world.

 

[millhouse]

For those that hate Doug...



Cliff notes.

Tiny trunk. Terrible visibility. Kiddding...kind of.

Seriously though, much prefers the GT350.

 

[V00D00]

they get PAID to do it. They could be the worst drivers in the world and never even set food on a piece of prepared tarmac and still be professionals. The one guy does all their unprepared drag starts. Me thinks he's probably pretty good at it since he's done it for all cars ever to be tested - orders of mag more than most racer boys have ever attempted.

pro journalists, i agree, pro drivers, not. they even state it

Motortrend does this for their large comparisons, card and driver does the same with their lightning lap comparisons, and obviously road and track does this for PCOTY.

These are all anomalies from how they do their standard instrumented testing of their cars and their tests. Motortrend even admits as much in the same link I just posted.
https://www.motortrend.com/news/motor-trend-testing/



On the comparison of editors to pros:



I fully conced that the road test editors are there to convey the "feel" and "sense" of driving the car. The narrow list of pros are there to deliver absolute facts about the capabilities of the car. If you want to benchrace, it's important to understand where that data has come from.

Welcome to magazine bench racing. Variables like that play into almost every single test they run and the same goes for the dragstrip with precious time slips. Unless you're willing to stay there all day and run at the perfect time, there will always be the potential for better numbers.

Special tests: For special events such as our Best Driver's Car tests, we concoct a variety of ingenious tests that focus in tight on different aspects of dynamic handling. Among them: pitch and roll angles using ride-height sensors, chassis slip angle from a yaw gyro, and steering wheel angle using a rotary potentiometer. We used to run slalom or lane change tests during the course of a special handling events, but as a rule these tests tend to be highly reliant on driver skill and unduly influenced by factors like wheelbase, overhangs, vehicle width, etc.

^^^^ THAT IS OK, BUT GOING TO A PREPPED SRAGTSRIP OR THE 1/4 MILE IS NOT!? LOLOLOLOL.. The mental gymnastics you guys do is INSAAAAAAANE!!

On the comparison of editors to pros:

Many Motor Trend editors are above-average drivers and can certainly approach a car's limit on a track in relative safety, but we don't imperil ourselves or the often-pricey hardware to find or even exceed limits. As a result, we never claim our laps as those of record, unlike some other enthusiast publications. (We've seen 4-second lap time deltas between pro drivers and those auto scribes in the same car on Virginia International Raceway, for instance.) For our lap times, we employ a professional development and race car driver, Randy Pobst, to wring every last hundredth of a second from cars on a track to find their true limits.

^^^^ THAT IS OK, BUT GOING TO A PREPPED SRAGTSRIP OR THE 1/4 MILE IS NOT!? LOLOLOLOL.. The mental gymnastics you guys do is INSAAAAAAANE!!

 

[mavisky]

pro journalists, i agree, pro drivers, not. they even state it








Special tests: For special events such as our Best Driver's Car tests, we concoct a variety of ingenious tests that focus in tight on different aspects of dynamic handling. Among them: pitch and roll angles using ride-height sensors, chassis slip angle from a yaw gyro, and steering wheel angle using a rotary potentiometer. We used to run slalom or lane change tests during the course of a special handling events, but as a rule these tests tend to be highly reliant on driver skill and unduly influenced by factors like wheelbase, overhangs, vehicle width, etc.

^^^^ THAT IS OK, BUT GOING TO A PREPPED SRAGTSRIP OR THE 1/4 MILE IS NOT!? LOLOLOLOL.. The mental gymnastics you guys do is INSAAAAAAANE!!

On the comparison of editors to pros:

Many Motor Trend editors are above-average drivers and can certainly approach a car's limit on a track in relative safety, but we don't imperil ourselves or the often-pricey hardware to find or even exceed limits. As a result, we never claim our laps as those of record, unlike some other enthusiast publications. (We've seen 4-second lap time deltas between pro drivers and those auto scribes in the same car on Virginia International Raceway, for instance.) For our lap times, we employ a professional development and race car driver, Randy Pobst, to wring every last hundredth of a second from cars on a track to find their true limits.

^^^^ THAT IS OK, BUT GOING TO A PREPPED SRAGTSRIP OR THE 1/4 MILE IS NOT!? LOLOLOLOL.. The mental gymnastics you guys do is INSAAAAAAANE!!

I'm not saying its ok. I'm providing you with the reasons they have given as to why they use the methods they use. If you want them to start using dragstrips you'll have to start messaging them, I have 0 control over that.

 

[MaskedRacerX]

For those that hate Doug...

Cliff notes.

Tiny trunk. Terrible visibility. Kiddding...kind of.

Seriously though, much prefers the GT350.

Love the Doug ... but holy hell, he needs to cut back on the carbs

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