Have we reached the pinnacle of performance?

True, forgot about the run flat issue...

The Veyron, while incredible, is a porker, and weight increases stress on everything...

Cheers.

 

While P 4/5 has TC because of our engineering more tire it's a lot less intrusive that on an Enzo and P 4/5 C is actually a lot closer to your 355 in that it has a manual gearbox and TC and ABS are driver controllable and you don't need them except when racing in the rain.


Down force is another matter. It's had to get a handle on what a difference that can make in turns. In medium speed turns we pull 2.8 G's. That said I'm not sure that comes into as much play on the road as there are very few sharp turns on the street that you can legally/safely take at 60mph.

 

By "faster" I was simply referring to lap times. It's difficult to quantify lap times between the 80's and now simply due to the fact that none of the tracks have remained completely the same. But general consensus is that today's Formula 1 cars do lap faster than the higher power cars from the late 80's.

 

Maybe I'll change my tune if you get a G-meter and verify 2.8 G's in P4/5C on a public road.

 

Good points, all.

But I will take issue with the Audi. I was referring to most dominant race car of all-time, and not just at Le Mans. And, to the best of my knowledge, the 917 (and its later iterations) is the only race car in history to so totally dominate a major racing series, Can-Am, that it drove it into extinction. This accomplishment has to be viewed in the context that the 917 competed in the "Unlimited" Group Seven Can-Am class that was truly the Wild West of racing--no limits on displacement, horsepower, aerodynamics, weight, homologation or anything else. Cars just needed to have two seats and enclosed wheels. The Porsche took on all-comers, no holds-barred, and didn't just win, it humiliated every car/team that it raced against. So completely dominant was the 917 that the futility of competing against it chased the competition into hiding and spectators, growing bored at the entirely predictable outcomes, stopped bothering to watch.

And the reason the 917 doesn't have an even greater racing record at Le Mans is that, shortly after the 917 found the magic of down-force and got its handling act together and started dominating races, the FIA promptly regulated it out of Le Mans competition, just as it had the earlier Ford GTs.

Also, if memory serves me correctly, the 917, forty years on, still holds the record as the most powerful race car ever to compete around the track.

 

Gotcha.

I was thinking top speed, not lap speed.

 

917's are great cars for sure.

Cheers