Nizer

http://www.roadandtrack.com/car-cult...your-fast-car/

ProCoach

Good article.

mark kibort

Having raced and driven both types... I tend to have a different perspective than the article, though mostly generating some good thoughts and ideas. I think its MUCH harder to drive a fast car fast than a slow car fast. (For advanced drivers) while , I think its easier to find those limits on slower cars when you are starting out and those skills transfer well to faster cars.

ProCoach

I think that's what he said, Mark.

dizzy8085

I'm running a mx5 and my last car was a corvette, albeit at the HPDE level. I agree with much of what Jack said in the article.

For me, the biggest thing that made it easier to learn/progress in the MX5 is that it is super obvious when you over slow for a corner. If you over slow, and/or get on the gas too late, then it really punishes your lap. Where as, in the corvette I could use the throttle to get the speed back before corner exit.

Obviously, it's still slower to not get it perfect in the corvette. However, not as obvious to me as a newer driver, compared to the mx5.

Reason why I made the switch was cheap tires and brakes. The rest is a bonus, haha.

DTMiller

+1

MaxLTV

The title is slightly misleading but the article is spot on, IMHO. Faster cars are harder to drive to full capacity, which makes it harder to learn in them (and progress slower, especially if the gap between car and driver capacity is big), but they are also more satisfying to ultimately master.

BBMGT3

Yeah good article. It should be added that when you're going faster, you have less time to do everything, so all the fine muscle coordination and reflex has to be 1) more precise and 2) faster

I often have this conversation with very good track day drivers in road cars. If they jump into a Cup or something they are going to be in very big trouble if they try to look for the limits in the first 20 laps.

In the same vein, being 0.5s-1.0s off a pros pace in your 991RS is not going to translate into the same gap in the Porsche Supercup.

I do think though that one of the best ways to get faster is to drive something faster than you're used to and then go back. The slow motion effect is really powerful.

Veloce Raptor

+1

It's interesting that in a truly fast car, even the longest tracks become remarkably busy, with very little "downtime" on the straights...

NYC993

Very good article and thanks for posting!

NYC993

Add to that presence of electronic nannies that make it even harder to understand if you saved the car or the electronics did.

ProCoach

That's another issue, entirely...

Wild Weasel

Reading the Facebook comments about this article made me laugh. Lots of people missed the point entirely and talk about how boring slow cars are and how they wouldn't give up their fast cars. One guy mentioned a Hellcat.

RobertR1

It is and it isn't. You see a lot of new found bravery precisely due to the electronic aid progression in newer cars.

People are buying super fast cars, going quick by leaning on the electronics but not really learning much in the process. In the event those electronics can't keep up with physics they're left puzzled on what happened and often either quit or become gun shy going forward.

In the article example, the guy who came in at 65mph doesn't spin off in the modern car. One of the many computers corrects the course while the oblivious driver continues to turn the wheel and hope to find the mythical apex.

The famous corvette driver video at Fontana is the best recent example of this. There's no going back as the electronics will continue to dominate the cars going forward. Maybe in a decade we'll all be sick of it and want new "purist" cars. We'll see.

LuigiVampa

I'll never regret having my first few years on track in a 944T. I think I learned more because there are no nannies.

Really good article.