so, how do they stand? i know FF gave a good breakdown a couple months ago, but i can't find it (yeah, i searched for taxis, wobbleboxes, stuporcars.......). gist was, they cost similar initially, but a taxi costs megaloads more to run as the whole car is rebuilt each time, and still can't really keep up. anyhoo, it'd be nice to get a semi-definitive consensus on where rollcage-cabs stand compared to UNrestricted exotics. hypothetically speaking of course....
There was some discussion in this thread. Is this what you were after? http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=84466&highlight=V8+Supercar
Every 2nd year when they do the speed challenge at Melb, its great to see a Taxi flatchat look like its standing still when a F1 car drives past
Ive seen that on TV before. Very cool. The F1 car just smokes them,as it should Being trackside would be unreal,as TV does not capture the real speed of any race car
I know it's not F1, but on the Weekend of the 13-16th April at Bathurst for the Motorsport festival, Craig Gore is bringing out his Champ Car to go around bathurst..... now if it's driven in anger Greg Murphy's outright lap record is Gooooooooooooooone....
"Wobblecabs", as FF calls them, are far from the fastest thing in the country. In fact, in terms of performance, they don't do much that's particlularaly good. In terms of straight lap time, they are probably somewhere between FIA GT2 and GT3. An F3 absolutely murders them at any track they go to and a hard driven 360GT would be on the front row of a grid. They have no real aero grip. Driver's complaining of losing downforce because of the car in front are just looking for excuses. The underfloor is non existent and the rear wing as dirty air running over about half of it. They are outbraked by nearly everything. The HP is impressive but so is the weight. The pitch and roll around and generally have shock velocities that rival an offroad buggy or Supertruck. Due to the fact that they have no real aero to worry about, the teams focus on running them as soft as they dare to try and make the tyres live. Also, if you start comparing outright lap records, remember that most of the V8SC records date back a couple of years or worse now. The gulf between V8SC and GT is not so big anymore. There exists a popular conspiracy theory that any category that has shown itself to produce comparable or superior lap times to V8SC has been shown prejudicial favour. I have not seen anything to contradict that sentiment.
Perhaps someone should get Deano (Savage) to post his thoughts on here.... He owns "many" Ferraris, 2x 360C's among others, yet chooses to do this.... http://www.natsoft.com.au/cgi-bin/results.cgi?26/03/2006.ADEL.R9 I don't get it... at all but he did finish ahead of the guy who set the fastest race lap, despite having the slowest race lap himself.... so he can take some satisfaction from that!!!!
Patrick Lap times do not reflect your sentiments. An unrestricted 360GT may best a V8 Supercar at some circuits, but the 360, in either GT2 or GT3 guise is not even close at ANY of the national circuits from what I've seen. Comparing an F3 to a sports sedan or GT is silly. The V8 Supercar may not impress the purist, but for a 1350+kg car with 650hp on 280mm slicks to do lap times, which ARE faster than every other Sports/GT category in the country, is pretty damn impressive. Given the money in the category, this shouldn't be a surprise though.
Ok... at Albert park, the NGT 360 with F1 shift and 430BHP and ~1200kg was about 3 seconds slower than V8...... CURRENT GT2 360GT (none in Oz, but two close to this spec).... with sequential box, ~450+ BHP, 1100kg, and other developments would be faster than a V8 supercar.... Now go to Wakefield Pk/Winton/Oran Park/Mallala/Barbagallo national circuits..... and the V8 won't even see which way a CURRENT GT2 spec 360 goes. Then bring in a 430 GT2......! And an F430 C( GT3) is almost as fast as a 360GT it would seem... so I think V8 is about GT2/3 in terms of lap time....
Didn't he crash at some point? Maybe that gave rise to the slow lap time, dunno? Dean is a mate and we have known each other for 20+ years. His current wife and mine are also long term friends. I have NO idea why he does what he does!
AFAIK none of the 360GT's running in Aust are even close to GT2 let alone GT3 spec. I have the regs next to my bed, sort of like a bible. No sequential, ABS etc allowed and with mandatory cats and air restrictors you're not even going to be close to 450hp, Porsche is seeing just over 400hp. EDIT: Just did some research, at Winton V8 Supercars were a few secs faster than Nations Cup and 6 secs faster than Bowe in 360C, haven't run at Wakefield for 5 years, but in much slower cars were as quick as Bowe in the 360GT. I'm no V8 supercar fan, but the facts seem pretty clear.
Hhhmmmm, their must be two verions of Article 257. Or maybe two interpretations as most of the 360GT's I've had the pleasure of working on have been very close to GT2 spec. No sequential? Not likely. Section 9 states in the first sentance that transmission is free. It then goes on to limit it to no 4X4, electronic diffs and the original location/orientation is the same but it doesn't say you can't use a sequential. It also states in the opening paragraphs that semi-automatic and automatic transmissions are allowed but they must run under the same operating parameters as the road car. Hence the current gearbox gremlins in the paddle shift 360GT's down here that Micchelotto have no answers for. They were never allowed to modify the control units and have never bothered to in the past. ABS, yes it is verbotten. It's been fitted to the cars down here as a tyre saving factor more than anything. Easy enough to rip it off and chuck it under the bench. Get's a bit of weight back inside the wheelbase too. Mandatory cats. Yes, a peculiarly Euro thing but that's a simple fitment, as it was to all the German and French F3 cars and I now for a fact that they were only penalised a couple of HP in 210 or so for using them. Inlet restrictors? Yes, a fact of life in most upper levels of European road racing (and a way of seperating the engine tuners from the boys). 450HP on 29.9's and 1150kg min weight. Well I reckon 430HP would be a reliable bet, 450HP if you didn't want any more than 2,500km from it. How am I so sure? Easy, I already get 217HP out of 2 litres and a 26mm restrictor! If you have a look at the density change due to the vacuum the restrictors cause, you're still ahead of the game as long as you can compensate for the VE loss at high rpm. And for that we have our ways. And I admit that the open wheeler comparison isn't fair (they are real racing cars after all), but the V8's are still not too quick when you consider the manpower and money that goes into them. If half of those resources were spent on GT racing the tables would be turned, even at GT2 level.
errr.... Cats are not mandatory. Scotts #11 and MM's #2010 are very close to current GT2 spec. Teds #2028 has the most current engine evolution. this car is the ultimate.... http://www.joemacari.com/janlm360/cardescription.html Bowe has done a high 1.21 in an F1 shifter at Winton, and Allan did a 1.25 in a 360 challenge car.
This isn't reflected in the Winton lap records. Art.257 5.7.1 Exhaust system must have one or more homologated cats.... 9.1.2 GT2 allows sequential, as long as the body work and chassis do not need to be modified. GT3 has no such allowance.
No doubt about it, as an example, if Porsche was to run the RSR instead of the Cup in Aus, V8 Supercars would no longer be the premier series. I'm not sure why I thought that a sequentuial wasn't allowed under GT2 spec though, as your interpretation is 100% correct.
Unless I am very much mistaken, I understood that Mr Savage had also purchased a shiny new V8Supercar from Paul Morris Motorsports... chassis G for Gidget, unraced by anyone... That old VX Mr Savage currently drives isnt close to front running Supercar specification... the new one should have PMM technical support as well. Presumably it was too big a risk to debut a brand new chassis at this meeting, with all those magnetic walls around...
Lets wait till Carrera Cup starts to go quicker, and the CupCar mob slap a rev limit or air intake diameter change upon them... purely in the interests of keeping costs down of course In terms of the wobbleboxes, the one thing that makes them unable to be compared to the GT class cars is the control tyre the series runs. Its a very hard compound, with a technically old case design.. it has very little outright grip on its own, and many drivers who have driven in other classes (like James Courtney at Bathurst last year) felt they couldnt get any feel from the tyre because it didnt give them any particular confidence in what it was doing I am sure a sticky Michelin or works Pirelli from the mysterious unobtainium catalogs of both manufacturers, with a suitable suspension rework, would see these cars drive a lot quicker, and not be set up like Cadillacs
