DickRasmussen wrote:
I assume Ford used a professional driver. If so, I'm a little surprised by what appears to be the wrong gear initially exiting turn one. It looks like a downshift to 4th in the braking zone, easy throttle in the turn, full throttle at low revs at the exit, and then a very quick downshift to 2nd when the driver apparently discovered his error.
Agreed. Definitely an error there. Bad enough I'm surprised they posted the video.
Jason Tower wrote:
i wasn't knocked out by the driving either. the above mentioned gear selection, resting his hand on the shifter instead of keeping it on the wheel, blowing south bend, questionable line after stevie wonder, and ugly thru hogpen. lots of second gear too, with that much torque and a six speed box i'd expect third to be better, second is good for sliding the tail and looking dramatic (ditto for smacking the hell out of the curbs) but probably not any faster. a clean lap minus the drama might be a couple of seconds faster.
His gear selection was fine for the speed he was carrying. Problem is he could have been carrying more speed in a couple places (particularly Oak Tree) that I could see (assuming sticky tires...but I'm not sure he was on sticky tires). Not sure if it would have been enough to change which gear he was in (in fact, I doubt it). His "error" in South Bend wasn't one that cost him more than a tenth or two, though. There's terminal velocity and then there's *slightly* above it, which is what he was. Slightly above it gains you a tenth or two, and then you lose a couple tenths not being able to get on the gas *quite* as early. That's it. He didn't touch the dirt, so he didn't lose hardly anything.
I take issue with the "smacking the hell out of the curbs" part, too. He drove the VIR curbing with a car that could CLEARLY handle it just fine. If the curbs don't upset your car at VIR then he drove pretty much exactly where you should drive for clean consistent laps. You can go even faster if you just dirt track VIR, but that becomes much higher on the risk/reward model. Check out Leh Keen wheeling the Cayman at VIR in the GS race for an example of what I mean. He wrung everything you could get out of that car and then some.
If you have the ability to control your springs and shocks and you're *not* able to be faster driving the curbs at VIR just like this driver, well, either your car setup is bad or you need to try harder.
I do agree there appeared to be a couple more seconds in the car, and I'm surprised *this* was the video they showed. This was definitely a professional driver, but it did NOT look like anything but a fairly early lap in his testing.
All MHO, of course.
--Donnie
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