I voted Number One... changed my mind halfway through, then re-thought... yeah, 1 is right.
It's an important
indicator, yes. Not
the most important, or
the most descriptive (honestly, the mentioned sector times, possibly top speed down the back straight, and cornering g's on some of the more famous corners would be helpful), but a good indicator of what's
possible with a car.
But I've always looked at track times as suggestive rather than indicative. In other words, they're important, but not absolute measures.
I think a car's performance can be highly tuned through testing on the track (or any track, really) but I think the car's lap time itself is not at all a precise measure of its performance. Especially on a track as large as the Nurburgring. The longer and more complicated the track, the more mistakes the driver is prone to make. One of the best ways to make a lap time truly relevant is to have the same drive pilot all the cars. But that doesn't happen at the Ring.
And even when it does, as in the case of "SportAuto" times, track conditions, weather and tester condition are all different. Interestingly, their "partially wet" GT-R time is 7:50 (not supertest, supposedly just an impressions test), and the 911 Turbo gave them 7:54.
That does indicate that drivers and the manner of driving... and, obviously, testing conditions all play a big role in this. Apparently, the conditions the GT2 was driven in earlier this year weren't ideal. I fully expect it to beat the GT-R time given a better run.
Even with the same driver on the same day, there's some fudge involved. No driver is perfect, and they all have a different style. I'd venture to say that you make, say, Fernando Alonso, Kimi Raikkonen and Lewis Hamilton switch cars and they'd all be significantly slower for the first few laps. Give one tester a dozen cars, some of which require different lines, different driving techniques, and whatnot, and there'll be some cars he can get 110% out of and others he can get 80% out of.
There's no absolutely fair way to compare cars around a course this complicated. You could make a closed indoor course at some huge hanger, map out a set of varied turns, and then have a computer drive the cars via remote, using the exact same line each time (and even then, it's not fair to cars that need to be trail-braked to rotate or cars that
can take a tighter line).
So... no way to make the times consistent, even on a short course. Put it on the Nurb and it all goes to hell.
And therein lies the danger of taking Nurb times
too seriously. Or even Top Gear times. "Fastest" is always nice, but if you're just a few tenths off, or, in the case of the Nurb, just a few seconds off... you're in pretty good shape, anyway.
And when you corroborate it with testing times over a variety of tracks, you get a better picture of
why one car is faster... is it straight-line speed? Is it cornering ability? Does anybody who understands why a puny 200-odd horsepower kit car can thoroughly thrash a 600+ hp supercar on the racetrack actually think that what's faster is a foregone conclusion based on manufacturer numbers like "hp" and "weight" (either of which can be misleading in either direction based on whatever source you get the numbers from)?
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In the end, track times, like 0-60 times or top speed, are bragging points for the manufacturers. They're a good
indicator of what a car
might be capable of, but not the sole basis of comparison between two automobiles.
I mean, I'd like to have a faster car, but I'd much rather have the one that's a few tenths slower to 60, a few seconds slower on the ring', doesn't look like a silly robot cartoon, and that doesn't rattle my teeth out every time I drive to work.
👍
