You can't wrap the car in bubble wrap. That takes away the whole point of a sports car. How about the "wanna be" race car drivers get professional instruction at the track before they put themselves, or others at risk on a winding country road? PS I felt the C7 had more understeer then the C8. At least it was more controllable understeer than the C7.

 

The Porsche Cayman GT-4 which is a highly refined track oriented offering, under-steers like a dump truck also. I believe the C8 will be easily corrected by the early track goers, hopefully by the time mine arrives.

 

At VIR Randy Pobst has the C8 Z51 down to a 2:00.9 vs. Jim Mero's best ever C7 Z51 time of 2:02.9. 2 seconds at those lap times is a big deal. I have nearly 20 years experience at VIR and race/TT/instruct with NASA mid-Atlantic.

Trying to infer a car's capability based on tire noise and nanny intrusion from a novice driver is just silly.

 

For the casual driver, understeer is WAY safer than oversteer in a car. Period.

Second, if the C8 understeer it is at 9.5/10ths. No one is doing that on a back country road unless they are asking for trouble. Spirited driving (as anyone would describe it) in a car like this is literally 6/10ths of the car’s capability and there would be no meaningful understeer issue.

 

He's out of position on most turns it seems

 

That has not been OUR experience. My buddy, a 20 year veteran instructor with BMW CCA, ran both Super Sports (came with his car) and PS4S at multiple tracks, and the PS4S is a step up in NVH levels and a HUGE step up in grip levels. And outer edge wear is entirely dependent on camber settings, at least on the BMW it did.

Unless the PS4S they use on the Corvette is a brand new, beholden formulation JUST for the Corvette, this statement doesn't make any sense. The PS4S does not squeal more than the Super Sport, and it would make zero sense for Michelin to provide the GM team with an inferior compound just for the C8.

 

My 2 cents. I can’t compare the Michelin 4s with the super sports, but I have used them as well as Bridgestone re71 on the track over the past 2 seasons. Probably have 20 plus track days on each. The 4s does give nice aural feedback approaching the limit, much more so than the Bridgestones, which are pretty quiet in comparison. The re71 has slightly better grip in my opinion, but the Michelin’s are much better in the rain. As far as outside wear, I didn’t detect a big difference, and I would agree that this is largely camber dependent, but I have read that the Michelins use a composite design that varies across the surface, and I believe the outside is somewhat softer. I don’t think you can do any better in an all around track/street tire than the 4s at this point in time. If you had to pick one do it all tire, that’s what I would go to, so I’m glad to hear it is standard on the Z57.

 

Your $0.02 jive with mine. The RE71-R (I don't think there's an RE-71?) is a fantastic tire. Dry grip that rivals some of the decent R-Comps out there. In fact, the 200 treadwear is only there to qualify it for some time-attack classes. It wears and holds heat like most R-Comps. The PS4S slots just behind it with much better road and wear manners, as the same "buddy" with the BMW that was shod with the Pilot Super Sport, Pilot Sport 4S, also uses the RE71-R for track too.

You are also correct that the last 2 generation of Michelins have dual compounds for the tread, the outer tread designed for dry handling and inner tread designed for wet handling. That's why it's been winning a ton of head to head battles against the best of Extreme Summer tires, in that it sacrifices NONE of the dry handling capabilities while maintains some of the best wet handling characteristics of any tires. The PS4S is suppose to take what the Pilot Super Sport did so well and dial it up to 11.

If I can only have 1 set of tires on my car, ANY car, it would be the PS4S since I live in an area where dropping down to 50 degrees during any time of the day/night would be considered "freezing." Anyone here thinking that the PS4S is just a marginal improvement over the PSS is smoking crack, IMO. It's dry grip levels are closer to Cup 2s than it is to PSSes from what we've seen. And frankly, when I used to work in the tire industry, we benchmarked our best tires against the PSS and even THAT tire blew me away for a street tire. At that time, short of R-comps, the PSS had grip levels in the dry AND wet that few other tires on the market can match.

With 10 year's worth of development the PS4S is more a quantum leap than an evolutionary design off of the PSS if you ask me.

 

The RE71,s really are that good. I’ve had quite a few instructors comment that they thought I was on R compounds. The nice thing about the Bridgestones is they are relatively cheap. I plan to use my C8 primarily on the track, and I would love to use the RE71 on the car, but at present they don’t come in stock sizes.

 

That's the wrong YouTube video y'all are obsessed over in that article, IMO. Take a closer look at the pro laps and the PDR.


Keep an eye on the steering angle display on some of the slower corners. In fact, keep an eye on that gauge on screen as much as you can. Pay attention on how the pro dials in an initial turn-in angle, and then all of a sudden dials in a lot more steering angle on some of the turns.

 

Not sure why your question brought such vitriol...GM has acknowledged the C8 pure skip pad numbers are under the C7 so it makes sense the nannies would kick in quicker.

 

Horrible driving line on the turn he went off. That was driver error.

 

That's certainly more telling, thanks. Were you able to hear the comments made in the car? I couldn't make them out and I'm curious as to whether the understeer was being talked about.

 

having just come back from there, according to them at least, that is not the correct way to take a turn? is that the understeer? ME v FE car? or just those particular turns needing a lot more input to set up the next turn coming? that's not the track we ran on. wish it were so i could compare my pdr vids.

 

from watching the videos they seem to stress breathing the throttle to tighten the turn. Makes sense especially in a car biased to understeer. Ideally, a car in a turn should be at the limit. In that scenario, increasing the steering angle will lead to understeer. On the other hand, breathing the throttle will shift weight forward and give more grip and bite up front. It will unload the rear and provoke some oversteer, and thus briefly rotate the car towards the apex. The rotation can be stopped by gently getting back on throttle to stabilize the rear. In a car, not at the limit, increasing steering angle will work, but the goal is to be at the limit, hence the lift technique. I’m not at all an expert at this, but this makes sense to me from what I have learned about vehicle dynamics. Someone with more experience, please feel free to correct me.

 

Every single car can understeer. Every one. That includes F1 cars designed to do nothing but lap as fast as possible. Yes, set up can minimize it or promote it but you cannot get rid of it because driver input can cause it no matter what the suspension is made of or tuned to. Understeer is a lot easier to control than oversteer. But again, despite this fact, an inexperienced driver can still drive right off the road when understeering. Understeer is not some fatal flaw for the C8. It is a dynamic condition any car can have when overdriven. Uniform early opinion is that the C8 is easier to handle right up to the limit. Over the limit? Less data on that is out there but it may be harder to control oversteer than the C7 due to the ME polar moment. We need to see more on that.

 

I bet the pig ZL1 can beat the C8 on a track and you can pick one of them up new for $60k.
6M or A10, pick your poison.

 

I'd hardly even call that going off track... Either way, I am very novice at road course but look like a pro compared to that guy. He's in the middle of the track when he should be much further to the left/outside, he's pointed straight and with a late turn-in, is too late to get on the brakes and stays on them too late. Classic understeer, panics, and car keeps going straight. I don't think a C7 would have handled that much differently.

 

haha this driver is hot garbage!

 

C8 Hot Laps with Spring Mountain Instructor. Notice the quick flash of 1.5g at about 2:17-18