On the recently closed thread someone mentions Hockenheimring and how the Mazda loses to the M3.

Let me point out that there are different layouts of this circuit, and the times derived could have easily been utilizing the configuration with long straights. Gee, do you think a car with 100% more torque, 100 more horses and only 400 pounds heavier might post a little quicker time than a mini-beer-keg-engined car? Congratulations are in order....to the car and to Captain Obvious.

 

The RX-8 actually does better on the skidpad (.91g) than the M3, according to Car & Driver and MotorTrend.

There's no reason to dispute the numbers from Top Gear: None.

Ike is the kind of guy who would trumpet the Top Gear results if they cast his fancy Lancer in a good light...

 

The problem with Top Gear is that the vehicles are not being tested necessarily under the same circumstances. They run at different times of the year, different times of the day, different weather, wet tracks, dry tracks, etc... There is no real honest comparison. In order to get a fair comparison between cars, you have to test them on the same track, in the same conditions.

 

Sport Auto test on Hockenheim short, which looks like this...


It's a fairly short track at 1.6 miles and a track that absorbs some of the power differential between cars. 2 seconds over 1.6 miles is a pretty big difference.

 

RotoRocket, you have no idea what you're talking about. I have listed many times the reasons to dispute top gear numbers, and for that matter, any numbers from test done on different days, in different conditions, by different drivers.

Skid pad is about as meanigless of a stat as 0-60 is on a race track. Unless you're racing around in a circle.

 

I believe this is the Top Gear test track layout.

 

Sure buddy. Skidpad numbers are irrelevant.

My next project car is Dodge Dakota bearing a LS7. It will be king of all tracks.

 

no stats mean anythign and no dyno numbers can be compared to each oterh and no lap times can be trusted or compared. so from now on anyone of you in this thread or the last mentions numbers from any source ill close the thread? whats the point of the discussions if no ones figures are accurate?

 

Why don't you explain the significance of a skid pad rating of 0.91g's on a race track then?

 

Repeatable test are reasonably accurate. Controlled tests are reasonably accurate. Two tests which share only location in common (Top Gear), are neither repeatable, nor controlled. If I took the Top Gear tests to my statistics professor from a few years ago and asked him to draw a conclusion, he'd laugh me out of his office. It's ridiculous.

 

You're right. It does show what a car can do in capable hands based on the conditions. I wouldn't deny that. We do have to assume they care enough to do enough laps to get a good one, though. And as you said, we can't compare these times and draw any reasonable conclusion.

As far as the stig, many think there are a variety of stigs, and their schedules determine who is used. No way to really know. I believe the M3 was tested by the black stig though, and the 8 the white stig. So, even if we assume the stig is one person, the cars were still tested by different people.

 

The only racing you've ever done is magazine racing.

 

The Stig was different when the M3 ran and the RX-8 ran.

 

Plus, you must wonder, Who is the Stig?

 

Even if it was the same guy, something as simple as differing ambient temperature will generate havok on a car's performance. If you dont believe me, then dyno your car on a cool dry day, then dyno it again on a hot muggy day. I guarantee you will get different numbers. The same happens when you test drive different cars on different days under different circumstances. How hard is that to understand?

 

Alright boys, get them out of your pants and let's see who is the biggest... = Why do you care = The car is fun = Drive it!

 

Oh, and I agree, unless the test is controlled (OR) you take into account all of the performance errors that could be attributed to the differences (which would be hard) and generate a margin of error from the test, they don't mean a whole lot.

 

Here's some times from the same day. No M3, but the S4 which is usually a little slower around the track than the M3 is present.

 

Where in this article did it say all runs were on the same day?

 

Even when there's a controlled test, let's say 8 different cars with the same driver all done on the same day, would there not be some margin of error?

Take for example spring of '92 Road & Track test with Danny Sullivan as the driver. The RX-7 lambasted every other car out there. But who's to say that if Senna had driven the NSX that instead of losing to the Mazda by 2.3 seconds (or whatever it was) that maybe the NSX would've only lost by 7/10ths of a second. And what if the RX-7 had been faster even still in the hands of oh, Johnny Herbert instead of Sullivan?

At what point do you take the results for what they are and recognize that they are reasonably accurate? White stig, black stig....if the temperatures and humidity are close, even if tests are done weeks or months apart, can you not assume that under pretty much the same conditions the outcomes would be repeatable?

 

The article is almost 20 pages long, you're just going to have to take my word for it...