[DeTomaso] Interesting article in November 2010 issue of Road and Track

[boyd casey]

Hi to everyone !
 There is a very interesting article in the November issue of Road and
Track. It compares the street versions of several high performance sports
cars to their race car counter parts.
 The cars covered are  The BMW M3 vs the M3 GT The consumer version of the
M3 sells for $69K and the M3 GT has a whopping cost of $800K!!!
 The other models compared are as follows :



                                Model     Retail price  Race car   cost
                             Corvette ZR1  $117K   vs  C6.R     $600K
                             Ferrari F430 $248K     vs  F430 GTC $650K
                             Jaguar XKR $98K        vs  XKR GT $550K
                           Porsche 911 GT3 $134K vs 911 GT3RSR $430K

The thing I found to be most interesting was that some of the production
cars actually had more horse power then their race counter parts and some
actually had substantially higher tech features (like ABS and ceramic rotors
Vs cast Iron rotors) and some were only a few mph slower in the straights. .
The comparison was done at Miller Motor sports park in Tooele Utah. The
biggest difference was in overall lap time and lateral G's The race cars
seemed to have the street cars by around .5 lateral g's and  the lap times
were around 2 minutes + for the street cars and 1.5 for the race cars.
Considering the difference in cost I was surprised that their wasn't a
bigger difference in performance. Another interesting factor was that the
consumer cars all ran their laps on their street tires and the race cars all
used Full race slicks. I think you would find a big improvement in the lap
times and lateral G's on the street versions if they were equipped with race
tires . Anyway for any of you that spend any time on the track and are
interested in seeing the differences in equipment, horsepower and how the
cars compare I think you will find it a very interesting read.
Boyd