A Bit of Top Gear Science: Dream Car Buildoff!

[fndrbndr]

Jeremy: Good evening, and welcome to Top Gear!  Tonight, we're on about tuners.  Usually, tuner cars look something like this.  At one point, this was a nice, practical, respectable Citroen.  Note the carbon fibre, roughly three times the cost of the car, the silly chrome-dipped wheels, and the piece de resistance, an exhaust fashioned from an chrome garbage can. 

Richard:  Right.  Still, there are some good ones.  We've seen custom Minis, BMW's, Hondas, and even a few Fords come out of professional tuning houses much better than they went in.  The formula is pretty predictable: add forced induction, a high-performance computer chip, and a few other goodies.  This can turn a run of the mill car into something pretty special.

Jeremy:  It can, but here at Top Gear, we're not about run of the mill cars.  We're about the really brilliant ones.  We've enlisted some track car garages to see what finds out when they start not with a Honda or Citroen, but with the most famous cars...IN THE WORLD...

(Cut to James on Test Track)

James:  If you grew up when I did, you had one of two cars on your wall.  You might have this, the Lotus Esprit.  Ask a chap to draw you a supercar, and this is what he'll draw.  Then again, you might my favorite, the Lamborghini Countach.  It's as wildly impractical as any Lamborghini, but God help me, I love it.  Anyway, there were a few rules for this challenge.  First off, making a supercar into a race car is not exactly an epic feat.  They were, after all, basically race cars in their time.  No, these cars must stay on the street.  No racing slicks, no yanking out bits of creature comfort.  (DOT compound, Street WR only)  These have to stay real cars.  And now, off to the competitors...

The Challenge
Before starting, every participant should get together with an opponent and decide who is taking which car.  I've started a thread to get the pairings together.  Build out your car and tune it to your liking. 

The Specs
PI 950
No racing slicks (any other compound is legal)
No Sport or Race WR (Street is legal)

The Track
Silverstone National (We don't have the TG test track, so we should at least use a British one)

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Leaderboard:

Driver	Car	Silverstone

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First effort:

Lambo 54.142

Second effort:

Lambo 53.971

I still haven't messed with the transmission, but I'm not sure how much more time there is in this tune.  It could stand to be more consistent, though.  I'm also learning one truth about Silverstone National: even more than other tracks, the exits on the long straights seem to have a huge impact on laptimes.

[Spiny Anteater]

I can't agree more with your comment about the corners at Silverstone National - to me it's almost entirely about the 3 corners which lead onto the main straights (Copse, Becketts and the one out of the complex which I can never remember which one it is).

I started building this one out last night, but then couldn't remember if the Forza aero was allowed or not (looks like they are). One thing I'm already pretty sure of though - it's going to be packing a heck of a lot of bhp just due to the rules

[fndrbndr]

Yeah, those corners ARE the lap. Oh, and as an aside, I stayed with the original engine instead of the AWD swap.  I didn't write that in the original rules, though I guess I should have.  My guess is that a 600 hp AWD swap would REALLY tilt things in favor of the lambo, since the course is basically launches out of three corners.  I don't know if the Lotus even has a meaningful swap for the Esprit.

[Spiny Anteater]

No swap at all - just bigger and bigger turbos.

Still not as bad as the RSX I got off the auction house with race ARBs (not tuned), a race clutch and a race turbo!

[sk15kev]

Without the AWD swap, there doesn't seem a lot of flexability in the Lambo build.  I wouldn't be surprised if everyones comes out nearly the same.

I built up two yesterday:-
Lamb, weight 3205, 734hp and 538tq.  ratings 7.4/7.2/5.7/5.5
Lotus, weight 2916, 686hp and 497tq.  ratings 6.8/7.5/5.7/5.4

both at the moment do nearly exactly the same time, but handle completely differently.

[Spiny Anteater]

Looks like you're packing quite a bit more power than me in the Lotus - mine has 613bhp but I had to work at the tuning to stop it understeering off the track all the time (and no, it wasn't just me going into the corners too hot .

Eventually I got it down to a 53.798s in the tuning section although it was starting to munch the tyres a bit by then. I tried it on free run after that but only got a couple of proper laps in before I was invited into some racing. Hopefully I can improve on that a (little) bit tonight, then I'll pack the car up in it's container and send it over to Florida.

[fndrbndr]

I think I'm pleasantly surprised at how equal the cars are.  If we were spec racing, I'd guess your advantage is a shade over a tenth per minute, and that's about where it's ending up thus far.  Don't send the car to Florida, though.  The twist is coming, but it's not a straight swap.  For now, just keep working.  And feel free to post up discussions and "tours" of your tuning house with one of the Top Gear guys.  I'm hoping to post mine in a little while.

[Spiny Anteater]

OK, I'll keep it back in Britain. It also got a paint job as part of this project too, just not a very in-depth one...

[sk15kev]

Looks like you're packing quite a bit more power than me in the Lotus - mine has 613bhp but I had to work at the tuning to stop it understeering off the track all the time (and no, it wasn't just me going into the corners too hot .

Eventually I got it down to a 53.798s in the tuning section although it was starting to munch the tyres a bit by then. I tried it on free run after that but only got a couple of proper laps in before I was invited into some racing. Hopefully I can improve on that a (little) bit tonight, then I'll pack the car up in it's container and send it over to Florida.

I have the understeer problem with the Lambo.  The Lotus however is feels very light and agile, maybe too so!  Was designer the cars for Silv Nat, but if the may be heading to another track I might reconsider?? 

[Spiny Anteater]

I know my A850 Countach suffered massive understeer too - I think it must be due to the gross mismatch between the front and rear tyre sizes. In the Esprit though, it starts off with the front springs much stiffer than the rears. Mine ended up with rear springs being stiffer by the time I'd finished with it

Back in the challenge, I took the Lotus back out last night and it turned out there wasn't as much in it as I'd hoped - i only gained a tenth to end up 53.702s. Then again, I didn't feel confident enough in my driving to go for anything other than a full grip build (well, as full grip as I could make it).