Quote:
Originally Posted by Shamu
More stock than one would think? As you indicated it's a full on 2650 lb race car on race slicks. There isn't much stock anything left on these cars. Seam welded and reinforced chassis, fully gutted and caged, custom suspension arms/bushings, motors no where near stock that spin to 9000 rpm and make over 400 hp (some might be surprised at motor really isn't completely from 370z), high end racing control units over all systems, engine, abs, etc. race tuned LSD,s, custom made race calipers, rotors, etc, Cooling systems for everything. Carbon fiber intakes, custom gearing, crazy light flywheels and race clutch. I wouldn't underestimate the amount of engineering and hundreds of thousands of dollars that go into development these cars. You aren't going to get close to these cars just bolting a few goodies onto your stock Z. So if one is comparing times it's probably important to consider this. And yes professional driver can take a couple seconds off typical track day enthusiasts times.
About the only thing stock on the cars is original chassis. They may look stock but they have
Just as point of reference my 310 WHP Nismo with JRZ coil overs, LSD, and fat r6 Hoosiers ran close to 2 minutes flat on THill. with professional grandam driver at the wheel. I turned a high 2:04 in the same Nismo. He turned high 1:55 in the grandam car. So grand am cars are about 5 to 8 seconds a lap faster than a well prepped street car.
Honestly I thought they would be faster on Laguna. they may have been conserving the cars.
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A couple things to note: The 04 is currently about three hundred pounds heavier than 2650, and at Laguna was close to 3200 with driver. Our base weight for the rules is 2900 sans driver, which we shoot for at the end of the race, with worn pads, next to no fuel, etc.
We also run on a very hard control tire (245F/275R) that is several seconds a lap slower than an R6 Hoosier. In fact, they used to use an R6 in this series, but the compound and durability wasn't suited to our 2.5 hour races. The same goes for the two dampers we are allowed to run, they are good, but they aren't like a set of JRZs, because cost control is a major consideration in CTSCC.
Also, the 04 was in a very early specification at Laguna still, and was updated to the specs of the 05 car for the last race of the year, and the difference was significant. Finally, small differences in lap times are significant at Laguna, the gap between the GS (M3/Camaro/370Z/Mustang) and ST (MX5/GTI/Civic/328) cars is only about 4 seconds there.
I guess the take away here is that while Grant is right, and we do have fully built, meticulously-prepped race cars on slicks, they are built to a very restrictive rules package, and the reality of a control tire is different than the outside observer might think. Grand Am is not interested in Continental cars having lightning fast lap times, they are interested in having great racing. As such, they keep a short leash on us and make sure that the show that 70 cars put on is good, regardless of the outright pace.
Hope that sheds some light on the subject!
Mike