[Garissimo]

Originally Posted by SoreHead

Now you're just picking out what you want and you know that's not what he said at all. The point was that the guy was able to get a 7:51 in 1 lap with a completely unfamiliar car driving on the wrong side.

Every time the GT-R fails to live up to the hype we get a new laundry list of excuses. This was not some rookie, wet-behind-the-ears driver "Car" used. For some background on who the driver was and how he how he was chosen, click here:

Andy Gülden Bio


Now, I don't have the article itself to look at so I am just going by the ring times quoted by footie. Was the GT3 2 seconds faster? Was the GT3 also given 1 lap to run its 7:49 time, or was it given more laps? Was the driver given more time to familiarize himself with the GT3 than the GT-R?

Originally Posted by SoreHead

That's proof that the car is well able to do much much better with a driver that's experienced.

We know it'll do much better with a $25,000 wheel & tire combination available ONLY in Japan and with special suspension tweaks. I'm of the strong opinion the test drivers used for the laps "Car", "Driver's Republic", "Sport Auto" and Porsche ran were not the limiting factors.

Originally Posted by SoreHead

Do you think Porsche do their hot laps with inexperienced pilots??
On the tyres. Porsche call the GT3 tyre "Road Legal Sports Tyres". I'm not sure what exactly that means but you can be sure it means soft compound, short life tyres. So no difference there then.
On the warranty end of things there is not a single manufacturer that will honour your warranty if you blow a gearbox doing a track day or drag racing your car. Having said that Nissan are taking the cop out to new levels of dickheadness (it's a new word. look it up).
I still say also that there is not a single manufacturer that will go to their stock of cars from the production line and pull a random car off to do their proving on the Ring. They take a car and prep it to within an inch of it's life so it will give them the best possible time. Then they take the best driver with the most experience of that car on the Ring and he does the time.
Put the GT-R driver guy into a GT3 and he won't match Porsches test driver's times. They need to get over it. Nissan made a car that is faster round the ring then the GT3.

How do you conclude this? If the initial times quoted by footie are correct, it would appear that the 997.2 GT3 has the measure of the GT-R around the ring.