PC Valkyrie
Headlight Hero
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In the North American magazines, almost all of the instrumented tests deal one of the following: straightline accleration time, 1/4 mile time and trap speed, braking distance, skidpad grip, slalom speed/lane change speed. These tests will measure a specific aspect of performance in isolation.
Like many of you here, I quite like the idea of using a laptime around a roadcourse or track to gauge the OVERALL performance of a car. The most famous track of course is the Nordschleife track (Nurburgring), where we see more and more manufacturers tuning their cars on this track during development of new models.
My question is to those of you who have access to magazines like Sport Auto, Autocar, AMS. Do any of these magazines which test cars on tracks like the Nurburgring ever state what they consider to be a "significant difference" between laptimes?
For example, in Road & Track, it clearly states that a difference of 0.2 seconds or more would be considered a "significant difference" for 0-60mph acceleration times. A difference of less than 0.2 seconds would be mean there is no significant difference between 2 cars for the 0-60mph run (in the hands of Road & Track and their certain testing procedure).
If a simple straightline 0-60mph run (which can take anywhere between 2.5 seconds to 9 seconds) allows for an "error" of 0.2 seconds, then my simple thinking tells me that a lap time of over 1 minute around Hockenheim with many more variables may even have a bigger potential "error" associated with it when comparing different cars. For a 7 or 8 minute lap around the Nurburgring, this may be even bigger.
In this context, can one conclude that a 1, or even a 3 second difference on a 8 minute lap around Nurburgring mean the car is that much superior or inferior? How about on Hockenheim where the times are over 1 minute? Would a 0.5 second difference in a single lap mean a significant difference in performance? Do these Euro mags that do these tests indicate this at all in the small print?
Like many of you here, I quite like the idea of using a laptime around a roadcourse or track to gauge the OVERALL performance of a car. The most famous track of course is the Nordschleife track (Nurburgring), where we see more and more manufacturers tuning their cars on this track during development of new models.
My question is to those of you who have access to magazines like Sport Auto, Autocar, AMS. Do any of these magazines which test cars on tracks like the Nurburgring ever state what they consider to be a "significant difference" between laptimes?
For example, in Road & Track, it clearly states that a difference of 0.2 seconds or more would be considered a "significant difference" for 0-60mph acceleration times. A difference of less than 0.2 seconds would be mean there is no significant difference between 2 cars for the 0-60mph run (in the hands of Road & Track and their certain testing procedure).
If a simple straightline 0-60mph run (which can take anywhere between 2.5 seconds to 9 seconds) allows for an "error" of 0.2 seconds, then my simple thinking tells me that a lap time of over 1 minute around Hockenheim with many more variables may even have a bigger potential "error" associated with it when comparing different cars. For a 7 or 8 minute lap around the Nurburgring, this may be even bigger.
In this context, can one conclude that a 1, or even a 3 second difference on a 8 minute lap around Nurburgring mean the car is that much superior or inferior? How about on Hockenheim where the times are over 1 minute? Would a 0.5 second difference in a single lap mean a significant difference in performance? Do these Euro mags that do these tests indicate this at all in the small print?
