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Performance confirmation

8883 Views 56 Replies 18 Participants Last post by  AugustWest
i have contacted Mark Kavanagh at the MTC today about our concerns about the test.he kindly emailed me this response after speaking to him at some length,i have reduced it as im not the best at typing.
the car suffered a suspension failure and it was found to be between two sections of hydraulic pipe not torqued correctly and taking in air.this meant that the damping control was not optimal.the loss of roll stiffness and optimal damping therefore allowed the car to roll much more freely in braking/turn in phase causing a balance-change which was triggering a pre-mature ABS intervention.
The car used was PP18 ,This is a pre-production car and although representative of a production car was assembled in the protoype area. We understand that this problem may cause concern amongst our customers but please be assured this specific error cannot occur online with production cars as this build process is done using a digital tool that monitors torque pressures.
With just eighteen hours notice, three cars return to Rockingham later that week (including PP18) and, as witnessed by two journalists from car magazine, set the faster time reffered to at the end of their video. Infact, three laps with three cars set times of between 1:27.5 and 1:28.1. This was all timed and fed back to car magazine who were offered the GPS data for the record.
The cars used were standard cars representative of production cars with configurable corsa tires. We belive that the cars tested by the media should be as can be bought by the customer. Therefore, these cars were in no way set up for track lap times.They were simply the three remaining cars that were from our fleet.
I noticed it was implied int the video that the traction control cannot be disingaged, for the record this is not the case.
Me again,what does this tell us
1,the 12c is up to 1.3 seconds faster than a Gt2 rs around a short circuit,so what will it be on a longer one??
2,As far as im aware these are the first lap times to come from the MTC and if anyone is not sure please email me and i will forward you the original
3,Will anyone who has a 458 be prepared to contact Ferrari and get a personnal response on why their car has suddenly started beating the Gt2rs,when it has been nowhere near in the past,and how they can get their car to do the same(sorry tried not to put that in)
4,KRZYS,dont you dare give up your deposit!!!!!!!!!!
5,will car magazine put any of this in the mag tommorow
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great update and post. Thanks Andy. Surely this issue will not arrise in any other tests?
Ditto, and much more elegantly put than my ranting over the past 24 hours, andy. :)

Agreed that McLaren is learning how to swim in a pool full of sharks (or at least one very big shark) very quickly. At a minimum, I hope that they will tell mag testers how to turn off traction control. I know they said you can actually lap fastest with systems on, but I think that will be heavily driver-dependent. An open-wheel racer like Collins perhaps has a tendency to throw the car around. Not certain about that, but my hunch based on my conversations with race car drivers.
Watch some of the in car videos. Mr. Collins is not what I would call smooth. He seems to take the cars by the horns and beat them around the track. The SLS is the worst, he hammers the gas, gets wheel spin, hammers it again, etc. At least he drives them all the same. Any traction control would go extra nuts with his style of driving and surely cause the car to go slower.
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