My First Supercar Driving Experience

[G.Irish]

So right now I'm in Palm Springs for the NSX launch.  As you can imagine, when I found out I would be able to attend, I about had a priapism. However I had never driven any cars in the supercar class.  Not having any points of comparison would make it very difficult to contribute any opinions of substance after driving the NSX.


To fix that, I decided to spend last weekend in Vegas and head on over to Dream Racing to drive a few of the cars that either are either competitors to the NSX, or would provide for useful comparisons.  I ended up choosing the 911 Turbo (7 laps), 911 GT3 (5), Huracan (5), 458 (7), and 488(7).


Orientation
They start the experience out with doing a short presentation explaining what 'the line' is and how to shift the cars (all of them were DCT's).   Then they move on to a room with about 10 iRacing setups with full-on race seats, steering wheels, pedals, and a mock roll cage.  An instructor has you take a lap or two around the track, and he gives feedback on what you're doing.


I thought that was a pretty cool innovation, although the instructor gave me some strange advice about braking.  Basically saying I shouldn't threshold brake, and that I should use only 50% of the braking force so I can spread out the grip over all 4 tires. Then he said something to the effect of, ‘you don’t want the front tires doing all the work’.  I didn't want to argue with him, I figured it was just one of those things they tell people so that they limit their speed, especially since this guy didn’t know I had track experience.



On to the cars
My instructor ended up being an Italian guy named Alessandro, who actually races professional in IMSA on a 488 GT team. He ended up being great in that he had me push the pace a bit towards the end, and he let me go relatively fast throughout. It was a little bit weird for me to be getting turn-by-turn instructions again, especially but my instructor was great.




One of the options with each session is to add 3 orientation laps in a Cayman GTS for $99. I decided to add that to my first session so that I’d be more comfortable once I got into the heavy metal.

The way they count laps is that the in lap and out lap count so with the Cayman I didn’t get much time to really evaluate it, but that wasn’t my goal anyway. I was just trying to get warmed up for the 911 Turbo.


911 Turbo S
I picked the 911 Turbo S because it’s one of the cars that will directly compete against the NSX in that market segment. Similar horsepower, similar price, both with AWD, with the 911 having the weight advantage, and the NSX having the torque advantage.

The Turbo S was easy enough to drive, it was friendly and relatively neutral with smooth power delivery. I would almost call it soft, but that would be relative to the other cars. Didn’t really encounter much understeer and Porsche manages the boost well enough that you don’t get any sledgehammer hits of power.

Unfortunately the car I was driving had these weird button shifters on the steering wheel to operate the PDK transmission, rather than traditional paddles. There was a button on each side, and if pushed it from the front, it would shift up, if you pull it from the back (the same way you would do with a normal DCT) it would shift down. I found myself asking for the wrong gear multiple times to the point that it was a distraction. I haven’t checked the option sheet to see whether it is standard or not, but straight up, I hated it.

Overall the Turbo S perfectly reflects its mission in life as a practical supercar. It’s not a raw or emotional car but it’s got plenty of power and can do the business around a racetrack.

GT3
So the GT3 isn’t really a natural competitor to the NSX but it’s a car I really wanted to drive and I got a little discount if I signed up for the 2 car package with the Huracan. Why not sample what all of the P car hype (and inflated MSRP’s and waitlists) were all about?



Unffffffhhhh. From the moment you turn the key on you know the GT3 is gonna give it to you nasty, just the way you like. Much sharper engine note, weightier steering, great steering feel, and a chassis that is toit like a tiger.

You can feel that it’s down on torque to the Turbo but it feels so much better in the turns and so much more rewarding. It’s the car that you can put where you want, when you want. It almost melts away and lets you focus on your driving rather than focusing on the car. I can see why some of the magazine journos say that this is the car they would pick to pile on the laps at a track day.

I wish I had more laps with this car because I was short shifting it during most of my sessions, forgetting that it’s got 8500 rpm of power band to play with.

Huracan

The Huracan is a car that is a bit too pricey to necessarily be directly cross-shopped against the NSX, but since the R8 V10+ will be using the same engine as the Huracan, and the new R8 isn’t out yet, I thought the Huracan would be a good way to evaluate the heart of the new R8.




In some ways the Huracan was the most emotional car I drove that day. The car sits extremely low, and the door opening is sleek and compact to the point that I had to do a little twisting and turning to get into it. And what a badass cockpit it was. The Huracan easily had the coolest interior of the cars I drove. I feel like Lamb got the memo that the Gallardo’s interior looked too much like an Audi. The Huracan’s interior says fighter bomber more than R8.

The Huracan was probably the best sounding car of the group, which is a good sign for the forthcoming R8. The engine was also the most lively, with all kinds of burbles, belches, and crackles coming from the exhaust while decelerating and with partial throttle.

While that sounded fucking cool, I found that sometimes the backfires could slightly upset the car under steady partial throttle in a long turn. Not a huge deal at the pace I was going but could lead to a Code Brown in other situations.

[youtube]9pVUtbb1cPU[/youtube]

F cars to follow…

[ScottyB]

YEEEEAAAAAAAAAAA


super excited to read the next chapters! always wondered how they handle a big event like this with so many people of different experience levels jumping in and out of these supercars. love hearing your candid opinion on this stuff compared back to back to back, because i think it really brings the cars back to reality in terms of expectations instead of just "everything these cars do is amazingggg" :lol:

curious the differences you noted between the 911 turbah and the GT3. for the same chassis developed 2 different ways, its sounds like they're worlds apart. seems Porsche has really identified and targeted very separate classes of ownership to their advantage of course.

[.RJ]

I like!

[Steve85]

So right now I'm in Palm Springs for the NSX launch.  As you can imagine, when I found out I would be able to attend, I about had a priapism. However I had never driven any cars in the supercar class.  Not having any points of comparison would make it very difficult to contribute any opinions of substance after driving the NSX.


To fix that, I decided to spend last weekend in Vegas and head on over to Dream Racing to drive a few of the cars that either are either competitors to the NSX, or would provide for useful comparisons.  I ended up choosing the 911 Turbo (7 laps), 911 GT3 (5), Huracan (5), 458 (7), and 488(7).



I'll go back and read the rest, but right now, I hate you, in a good way.

[CaptainHenreh]

[D_Eclipse9916]

Wow awesome awesome awesome. So very jealous, I have driven exactly 1 of those cars, and only because you barely mentioned the Cayman GTS (which is my current favorite street car to drive on track).

[Senor_Taylor]

Wow. That's one hell of an experience. Looking forward to #2!

Sent from my SM-G900R4 using Tapatalk

[SlimKlim]

Unffffffhhhh. From the moment you turn the key on you know the GT3 is gonna give it to you nasty, just the way you like.

:lol: :lol: Pure gold.

[Jake]

Love it! Can't wait to read about the rest.

[G.Irish]

F is for Fellatio-er...Ferrari

458
This was the icing on the cupcake, the car I was most excited to drive, the creme of the creme bruleé. The 458 was one of the cars that the NSX development purchased as a performance benchmark and as such was probably the most important point of comparison (how important will become clear once the NSX embargo is lifted).



Our brief affair started with some uncomfortable contorting to try get comfortable in a car with seats that didn't recline and had no vertical adjustability. Lord knows why they'd order such seats on car that was going to be driven by hundreds of different people.

Yoga poses out of the way, the first thing memorable thing about the 458 is that beautifully high-pitched, yet sophisticated exhaust note. If there ever was an engine note that could be Italy's national anthem, this would be it. Energetic, eager, but not buzzy.

Getting on the power, the 458 really feels like a two highly-strung inline-4's. The power is mostly up top and you really want to keep the revs up to stay in the power band and because it sounds awesome. It didn't feel as fast as the Huracan (as well it shouldn't) and it definitely had less torque than the 911 Turbo. But like the GT3, it was extremely satisfying to run out to redline. Maybe someone who is used to torquier cars wouldn't like the 458 though.



In the handling category the 458 was a lot like the GT3; lean, light on its feet, neutral. The 458's traction control gives you a gentle calming hand here and there while you're rolling on the throttle to keep you under control but it didn't feel intrusive at all. It felt like it just tidied up a bit here and there rather than spoiling the fun. As a total package, the 458 made it easy to focus and crank up the pace, much like the GT3.

The steering ratio on the 458 was nice and aggressive but I thought it was a little bit overboosted. You get a good amount of feedback from it but it felt just a touch too light. But that's a really, really, minor criticism.

Alessandro had me push my braking points and drive a bit more aggressively in my last 2 laps with the 458 and it felt nothing but rewarding. With the Huracan I feel like pushing harder would've just resulting in tenacious butt pucker but with the 458 pushing harder felt natural. While I don't know that the 458 would be as durable as GT3, I think it's another car that you could delight in slinging it around a racetrack all day.

488
I chose the 488 to see how Ferrari would deal with the challenge of switching from a high-revving naturally-aspirated engine to a twin-turbo while preserving the excitement and engine note of the former. One of the criticism of the NSX from the pre-production drive was the engine note, but my guess is that most of the turbocharged supercars are going to sound somewhat muffled.

Right away the 488's steering felt nice and weighty, yet the engine note was a clear step backwards from the 458. It still had some of that Maranello special sauce but it was significantly quieter. Not unpleasant by any means, but not nearly as exciting.



But damn, the first time I went wide open throttle with the 488 it was stupid, to the point that I just laughed. That car was way faster than the 458 it replaces. The sheer thrust is just in a different league. It was the only car that I was able to get into 6th gear with on the front straight (although that might be partially a gearing thing).

I was pretty pumped with how fast the car was, but as I completed more laps I realized just how much power the car was pulling back while the wheel was turned. My instructor had put the car in Race mode but even then, the 488 just denies you the power until your steering wheel is all but straight. From the apex it's like, 'No, no, no, no, YESSSSSSSS!" Maybe you can create your own custom traction and stability control settings but from the sounds of it the only place to go from Race mode is 'traction control off'. The instructor said that I probably could've handled it without TC but for the purposes of the experience he couldn't really turn off it. Not sure I would've wanted that with only 7 laps to get comfortable anyway.

One thing that was really cool about my 488 experience was that the onboard video included telemetry. They didn't tell me about this beforehand and it doesn't say so on the website, so it was a really nice surprise. You can see the that the 488 can hold 1.1G in the corners without much drama, and I wasn't really pushing it. I can't imagine how fast it would be in the hands of someone who could hang it out.

Still, overall I think I'd rather have the 458. Maybe if I could've driven the 488 with a less intrusive traction control setting I would feel differently.

Conclusions
This event was pricey, and had I not had the NSX motivation I would not have done it. But all in all it was an extremely fun experience and I was happy I went. I would definitely drive again if I were in Vegas, and I would probably pick the 650S and/or some of the race cars they have. At the same time, I've kind of been thinking that I'd like to save up and do the Radical driving school just an hour outside the city.

Of the 5 supercars the GT3 and 458 were my favorites, and given those two the GT3 is much more attainable and would probably be more reliable and cheaper to maintain so I would lean towards the GT3.

The Press
Driving these cars and going to a few media drives also makes me a bit suspicious of car reviews sometimes. I feel like the 488 probably got better reviews than it should have and judging from a few things I've seen and heard from media events, some of the journos either are not particularly good drivers or they've got some bias they're bringing to the table. Then there's the small matter of companies providing ringers for media tests.

Reliability
I also took a bit of time to chat with some of the folks at Dream Racing. Most of them really liked the GT3. I asked about what cars were the most reliable or unreliable and surprisingly they said the Lambos held up really well (they've got the Huracan, Aventador, Aventador SV, Gallardo Balboni edition, Gallardo Supertrofeo race car, and Huracan Supertrofeo race car). They said the 458 was down once, and they had some early issues with their McLaren. The worst car according to them was the Z06. They had numerous overheating issues and the car was actually not in the fleet on the day I went. He said some of the owners of the C7 Z06 that have come to drive their cars also said they had overheating issues.

[WRXtranceformed]

Awesome, I love reading about your experiences with each. The Z06 feedback is not surprising, I have heard overheating has been a huge issue with the new gens. Really pleasantly surprised to hear the Lambos are considered "durable". I wonder how durable they are when you throw and UR twin turbo kit on them

[JPolen01]

Another one for not surprised about the Z06 camp. The car they sent to Motor Trend for their Car of the Year article couldn't even finish the testing at Leguna Seca. The "master tech" they sent with it couldn't even fix it. Then Chevrolet admitted they sent a car that was not checked over or prepped for the event.

“In our haste, two things were missed,” Tadge says about the work done on the Corvette post-Car and Driver. Those two things were that GM forgot to change the car’s brake pads and they didn’t correctly hook up the car’s intercooler, according to Tadge.

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[G.Irish]

488 Onboard Video with Telemetry

[youtube]V-rf7BCuc4w[/youtube]

[D_Eclipse9916]

Interesting they did it in KM. I almost got fooled and saw the acceleration rate going holy balls (I means its still quick).

[Mike]

488 Onboard Video with Telemetry

hock: :o

[Beej]

Awesome write up, G. Thanks for sharing!

[Goodspeed]

This whole thread

[V1GiLaNtE]

Wow. That acceleration. Was that WOT? It seemed like the engine just wanted to push harder. Love it.

[G.Irish]

Wow. That acceleration. Was that WOT? It seemed like the engine just wanted to push harder. Love it.

Yeah it really flies once the wheels is straight, I can't imagine how good it would feel on a bigger track where you can wind it out more. The redline is much lower than the 458 though, it was the only car where I bumped the rev limiter a few times.

[ScottyB]

thats insane. great driving and love the telemetry. looks like you were pretty comfortable out there!

it was a lot of fun watching your throttle input and then looking for the tach to just wind out as fast as it could as soon as the TC/turbos starting working together. just amazing the thrust of that thing.