RE: Ringside Seat: Ring testing shifts up a gear

[TurboSam]

EDLT said:

Excellent, more cars unable to cope with bumps without snapping the driver in half.

Most of the work done out there is actually reliability and durability testing.

[BelfastBoy]

Liking the styling of what I'm assuming is the next generation 911 Turbo?

[Caractacus]

EDLT said:

Excellent, more cars unable to cope with bumps without snapping the driver in half.

Are you James May?

[steve_n]

Does anyone else think that's the new 911 Turbo?

Looks about right styling wise and it's following a 997, presumably for benchmarking.

[Ipelm]

How wonderfully ironic, manufacturers developing faster more technologically advanced cars whose performance cant be used on modern roads (unless you are prepared to spend a great deal of money on fines and have many licences) booking all the available time at the principle venue where their unfortunate customers could actually have used the performance envelope of their machinery.

Hey ho, here we go on the road to nowhere.

[ArosaMike]

Ipelm said:

How wonderfully ironic, manufacturers developing faster more technologically advanced cars whose performance cant be used on modern roads (unless you are prepared to spend a great deal of money on fines and have many licences) booking all the available time at the principle venue where their unfortunate customers could actually have used the performance envelope of their machinery.

Hey ho, here we go on the road to nowhere.

As Turbo Sam said, despite what Top Gear would have you believe, it's not really chassis setup which is tuned at the 'Ring. There is some done I believe, but the majority of work is durability and fault finding. I read an article a good few years back questioning one of BMWs engineers about their presance there, and I seem to remember him saying that the 'Ring is the only place in the world where they can reach maximum transmission temperatures.

So despite all the media frenzy about the place, just because your next hot hatch or sports saloon has a 'Ring laptime quoted against it, it doesn't actually mean it's going to have had all it's chassis setup done there.