RE: Lotus Evora 400 lap time
Friday 1st May 2015
What with the Elise's 20th anniversary, the Exige Roadster Auto and the new Club Racer models, the Evora 400 appeared to have slipped slightly in Lotus's list of priorities. But of course it's still on track (no pun intended) for first deliveries in August and therefore media drives are hopefully not too far away.
Evora gets LSD for the first timeIt's time then for the track sign-off, with the important number from Hethel being 1:32. That is the Evora's time around the 2.2-mile Lotus test circuit with Gavan Kershaw driving, a full six seconds faster than the old Evora S. That sounds like a very significant improvement but of course it's hard to quantify with so few other cars having driven there. For some context though Dale clocked a 1:45 at a wet and greasy Hethel when testing the Elise S Cup...
Lotus Evora 400 lap time
No, not at that German circuit - Evora gets out at Hethel and is much, much quicker than before
Evora gets LSD for the first time
The car seen here is a 'standard road specification prototype', running road tyres and road suspension. You have to wonder sometimes why anyone bothers with adaptive dampers when Lotus does the conventional methods so well but that's a discussion for another time. Looks pretty damn good here, doesn't it? Don't forget the 400 is 22kg less than the Evora S with a standard limited-differential, as well as the additional 55hp.
But then ride and handling isn't an area where the Evora really needed to improve. Let's see how the rest of the car stacks up soon.
Discussion
That puts it a league above the out going Evora.Assuming that GK is more or less as quick as MB, six seconds is a huge amount, and more than I expected from a seventh more horsepower and a bit of shed weight, so that's a great achievement by Lotus and hints at how good the new model is.
Does anyone have a compilation of Hethel times so we can compare Lotuses past and present?
Does anyone have a compilation of Hethel times so we can compare Lotuses past and present?
Edited by RobM77 on Friday 1st May 11:35
kambites said:
Was Hethel track changed during the Bahar era? Or at least resurfaced.
That would make old times a bit meaningless.
Yes - it changed from being a test track for road cars to being an FIA approved track for racing cars. All the fun bits of broken/changing surface were taken away.That would make old times a bit meaningless.
Impasse said:
Still, this car is comparable with the current V6 Exige (1.32.68) around the new circuit, so it's no slouch.
That's extremely impressive. I have a metric for the V6 Exige, since the owner of Blyton Park has one and we talked him into doing a run on a sprint last year. He decimated us all, beating our fastest car - a well-driven Fisher Fury - by half a second, and he didn't look to be pushing that hard. If this Evora can function well as a GT and run at that sort of pace..Then again I've worked with Gavan (albeit briefly) and he's an extremely handy driver. I wonder who set that V6 Exige time?
ETA: For those who've run at Blyton, Richard's time was a standing start from the marshall's post onto the Eastern layout, with the end beams at the braking point for the square right before the pit entry. He did a 75.09, just the one run. My best of four in my E36 328i was an 80.63
Edited by McSam on Friday 1st May 12:21
McSam said:
ETA: For those who've run at Blyton, Richard's time was a standing start from the marshall's post onto the Eastern layout, with the end beams at the braking point for the square right before the pit entry. He did a 75.09, just the one run. My best of four in my E36 328i was an 80.63
For some sort of reference, I did a 76.99s at Blyton Park's Outer Circuit (http://www.blytonpark.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/circuit4.jpg) at a sprint last year in my '99 S1 Elise. It has 135bhp, weighs 730kg and was running Avon ZZR tyres.Edited by McSam on Friday 1st May 12:21
'You have to wonder sometimes why anyone bothers with adaptive dampers when Lotus does the conventional methods so well but that's a discussion for another time.'
Good question.
I understand that delivering good ride and handling without adjustable dampers is a difficult job, but I cannot believe it is so hard that only Lotus and Ford have the staff able to do it.
So I think the answers are 'marketing' & 'profits'. Adjustable damping gives the punter another button to press and the manufacturer another system that may go wrong & need an expensive repair.
Good question.
I understand that delivering good ride and handling without adjustable dampers is a difficult job, but I cannot believe it is so hard that only Lotus and Ford have the staff able to do it.
So I think the answers are 'marketing' & 'profits'. Adjustable damping gives the punter another button to press and the manufacturer another system that may go wrong & need an expensive repair.
TWPC said:
'You have to wonder sometimes why anyone bothers with adaptive dampers when Lotus does the conventional methods so well but that's a discussion for another time.'
Good question.
I understand that delivering good ride and handling without adjustable dampers is a difficult job, but I cannot believe it is so hard that only Lotus and Ford have the staff able to do it.
So I think the answers are 'marketing' & 'profits'. Adjustable damping gives the punter another button to press and the manufacturer another system that may go wrong & need an expensive repair.
I think listing Ford as having good ride and handling is highly subjective! They have scored well in the past, and lots of people on PH repeat that, but around that time Autocar discovered that Ford were fitting different dampers to their press cars, so make of that what you will. I'm by no means an expert on ride and handling, but I have an interest as it's what draws me to cars in the first place (performance doesn't really interest me on a road car) and having driven an awful lot of different cars I don't really see Ford as being any better than the competition. I also know some people who know a lot more than me about ride and handling who've said exactly the same thing - they saw Hammond's glowing review of the Focus on Top Gear, or read Car magazine's glowing review and then drove the car and were totally flummoxed as to what was so great about it. Unless we've just been spoilt by better more expensive cars? I suppose that begs the question of whether you see Ford as good at ride and handling relative to other cheap FWD hatchbacks, or in absolute terms compared to much more expensive cars.Good question.
I understand that delivering good ride and handling without adjustable dampers is a difficult job, but I cannot believe it is so hard that only Lotus and Ford have the staff able to do it.
So I think the answers are 'marketing' & 'profits'. Adjustable damping gives the punter another button to press and the manufacturer another system that may go wrong & need an expensive repair.
That aside though, I agree entirely - I too have often wondered what it is about Lotus that make them so good at ride and handling. I've no doubt that they've had some really top people in their vehicle dynamics departments, which certainly helps; and I'd also suspect that they fit much better quality and more carefully chosen dampers, bushes and tyres to their cars than Ford or Vauxhall do for example. I'd also reckon that they have different compromises when designing the chassis and suspension of their cars to a company such as Ford. Lastly, I'm sure they prioritise ride and handling very highly in their cars, but I'm guessing their actual development budget is so small compared to the likes of Ford that the actual total amount spent by Lotus couldn't exceed that of a car giant like Ford could it? I suspect it's a combination of those factors though: quality of components, talented people working for them, and caring more than most.
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