Jeez, and I thought Nürburgring lap times are rigged. No way in the world a Skyline is faster than an F40 let alone a F*CKING F1.
Nissan Skyline GT-R V-Spec lap time at Tsukuba
Track | Tsukuba |
Type | flying start |
Vehicle | Nissan Skyline GT-R V-Spec (R34) |
Power / weight | 280 ps / 1601 kg |
Time | 1:04.569 |
Average speed | 115 kph (72 mph) |
Submitted | 8 years ago by FastestLaps |
Source | Best Motoring tv show (Japan) |
Views | 1.8k |
Reference: Best Motoring - 5/1999
196ss 3y ago
In my opinion, everything is exactly in its place here.
McLaren F1 wasn't designed to be fast on the track, its main purpose was acceleration and speed on the straight. The suspension settings were more comfortable than sporty.
Watch the video carefully:
The F1 nods at the brakes and lurches in the corners like a family minivan. Still, in 1994, it could be faster than most other cars on circuits mostly due to the incredible acceleration (as Gordon Murray himself said, the F40 and XJ220 were faster on the track, but he didn't care about it, since the F40 and XJ220, unlike F1, were absolutely not suitable for long trips).
And for sure, at GP tracks like Hockenheim or Silverstone, F1 would have shown a better time than R34 SpecV. But Tsukuba, it's a little different, it's slow, twisty track where the grip is more important than the speed on the straight. The only straight section is too short for F1 to gain meaningful advantage on it. You also need to understand that R34 is not so simple. Nissan has had perhaps the best all-wheel-drive system ATTESSA for about 30 years (I mean in terms of track performance), and it is undoubtedly faster in cornering and braking than the F1. If we also take into account that the R34 has been tested on Tsukuba thousands of times and its capabilities are well known to the BM testers, and McLaren F1 was probably tested only once, and even then, with a certain caution, since it is a kick-ass what an expensive one, then it does not seem at all surprising that they have nearly identical laptimes.
Moreover, 1:04 gives me a lot of respect for McLaren F1.
Well, that said is all purely my personal opinion, maybe I'm wrong. If someone wants to have an argumented discussion, I would be happy to.
dr. cosimo 3y ago @196ss
that’s why you have this, the lm version
Corvolet3 3y ago @196ss
And even if that's the case and the F1 is inferior on this track, I just can't take it seriously if it is only built for ultra grippy cars. The R34 was an amazing car especially the limited models, but:
What is the point of making a great performance car if you are only going to test it on one single track, simply drive a lap as often until you get a really good or lucky laptime, and never have it other people or magazines test it under different conditions? That kind of defeats the purpose of a performance/track car and makes the country look biased towards their own products if they only test it there but refuse to let others take it for a ride.
GT-R R35 Nismo is the perfect example: it got the track record on Tsukuba and a really good time at the N-ring, but they were called out for cheating afterwards and using street-illegal performance parts. And on other tracks, they're suddenly not as powerful anymore. I will never take Tsukuba laptimes seriously if it gives certain cars an insane advantage and the own vehicles can be tested more often. Still mad respect to the drivers taking everything out of their cars though.
196ss 3y ago @Corvolet3
I probably agree that Tsukuba is not particularly suitable for testing really powerful cars, and it is also possible that sometimes there is some bias at the Best Motoring tests (and not only in favor of Japanese cars).
On the other hand, I suppose it's a good idea to have different format race tracks in the database to be able to compare the abilities of cars on both short tight and long GP circuits.
After all, if the times on some track seem not relevant to you, you can just ignore them)