I do most of my (stock to stock) grudge matches at Infinion Sport Car Course with N2 tires. I find that the Z06 and the M3 have some good races. I forget if i race the baseline M3 or the CSL but its still a good race.
Are you joking? I cooked the M3 with the 69 Corvette Stingray. And the C5 Z06 is quite a bit faster still.
But then this brings up a point, I think. I race a Corvette in RL. And I'm very intimately familiar with the handling of these cars. So it's not entirely fair to compare.
But that kind of thing is true for everyone. If you're trying to find a good close competition, it will depend as much on the driver as the car. On a level playing field, an M3 is easily outclassed by a C5 Z06. But a driver who really likes the M3 would still get better lap times with the M3 than with the vette.
And that's with cars that aren't very close in performance. So it's really not too surprising why there are so many arguments about whether car A or car B is better in cases where the comparison is very close. If you talk about two machines with very similar abilities, then it's virtually entirely up to which feels better to the driver. And that's personal preference.
These US cars still do not play the game Ferrari or Lambo do. Take the Viper, currently one of the fastest US cars. In a straight it is an unstoppable beast. But the moment those wheels need to turn left or right, you are going off the track.
One of the first things I found out about when I started racing in RL is the rift between 'exoticness' and 'fast'. The image of invincibility built up around exotic supercars is a fabrication of the marketing departments that make those cars. And most of the public falls for it hook line and sinker.
If you ask an average person to put a list of sports cars in order from fastest to slowest, they can do it. They think they know. And the order they put the cars in will be precisely the order of how successful the marketting departments for those manufacturers have been in promoting the prestige of that car.
Unfortunately, the ordering of the list won't be anything like how fast the cars actually are.
Now, I'm not saying that exotic supercars aren't fast. Most of them are awefully fast. But they're not unbeatable. And they're not actually the best.
So which do you suppose is faster? A $450,000 2003 Porsche Carrera GT or a 1996 Corvette Grand Sport? Obviously the Porsche right?
Well, I faced the Porsche on the track in RL. And the Corvette won.
Expensive and exotic does not equal fast.
Again, I'm not saying the Porsche Carrera GT is slow. Gods, it's not! It's wicked fast. I'm just saying that the perceived differences in performance between most of the sports cars out there are just that... perceived.
The difference in performance is often quite small. But people talk about it like one car is just plain broken while the other car is perfect. Like your comment that the Viper will automatically slide off the track because it's incapable of turning. I mean... come on. In the real world, Vipers turn very well. Can they turn as hard as a Ferrari? I haven't driven either one, so I couldn't tell you exactly. But I can tell you without a doubt it would be close. Especially if they're both running the same tire compound.
So really... I guess my message is: There's a lot of cool cars out there. I wouldn't be so quick to discount any of them. Cuz some guy will just show up out of the blue and kick your %*# with something you thought couldn't even touch you. And that's just how it is. The longer I race, the more respect I have for all sorts of sports cars.
- Skant
How about a New M5 then? hehehe
Who knows...we'll have to wait and see!
