monaroCountry

Carmagazine tests out the Porsche GT3 and Nissan GTR around the Nurburgring.

http://www.carmagazine.co.uk/C...e-fog/

Its still early days yet but news has emerged that the very experienced Ring and racing driver Andy Gulden has posted a fastest lap of 7:51 in the GTR and 7:49 in the GT3 (yet to be verified).


Andy Gulden
The GT-R's boost is amazing and the four-wheel drive really helps too. But it encourages an aggressive driving style and the the front tyres heat up quickly. I'd say 99 percent of my lines were perfect, but I got it wrong once - I was unfamiliar with the car, and I'm not so used to right-hand drive.

CAR comments
If you're wondering why Andy was so much slower than Nissan's 7:27sec, consider this, our time was over the full lap, not a lap minus the length of the pits; there was a small section of roadworks; he'd never before driven a GT-R and he did just one hot lap; our car came with factory rubber and suspension, not the optional tweaks Nissan offers any owner.

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Forget the Stig. Step forward Andy Gülden

Ultimately it was the Nürburgring people who came up with the solution: 30-year-old Andy Gülden. Gülden started in karts as a six-year-old, competing in German, European and world championships alongside the likes of Nick Heidfeld and Ralf Schumacher. He progressed as far as F3 before losing his sponsor, and then moved to race Vipers in Nürburgring 24-hour endurathons with Zakspeed.

Today he’s a freelance racer/consultant/instructor with over 2000 laps to his name, a man who takes great pleasure in scaring paying punters with a fast lap in his Aston Vantage race car.

JustinStrife

Your link is screwed up

monaroCountry

Just go through the links manually from this link http://www.carmagazine.co.uk/

rideintothesun

funny how no one is able to even come within 15secs of Nissans time...sigh
GTR = hype wagon of the century

crwtrans

I'm not sure if you read the article are not(guessing you didn't), but if you would have taken the time to analyze/dissect what was written, it clearly suggests that he was not accustomed to a rhd vehicle. Furthermore, a 7:51 with only one lap is very respectable considering the limited seat time and track conditions. Knocking off 15-20 seconds is very reasonable.........

stic5

I agree that the GT-R is mostly hype, and I'm not completely impressed with either car's performance considering that a much cheaper C6 Z51 or a CTS-V can both do a lap in less than 8 minutes. Man I sure wish I could get my car on that track...

monaroCountry

Andy is a ring expert and one of Europe's foremost racing car drivers. His lap and lines was 99% perfect when he drove the Nissan GTR, yet he was nowhere near Nissan's time (he achieved a similar time to Walter Rohrl, Chris Harris and Horst Von Saurma). These Zakspeed hired guns are fast, one of their ranks was able to put the Viper ACR to the top of the charts after just 4-5 laps.

As for the warm up lap, the standard GTR would have had trouble finishing two laps. According to Carmagazine the Spec V with its super expensive carbon ceramic brakes cooked its brakes after 3 laps.

Wanderer Z06

Almost pathetic......Do you ever give up trying to discredit the GT-R?

Get a real job will ya.

monaroCountry

This is new news!!!!!!

stic5

Yeah blame the mag if you want, not the poster

crwtrans

If you read right below what you quoted, you will find your answer. He clearly states he was unfamilar with the car being rhd. It doesn't matter what type of experience you have if you have never driven the car or a rhd car before. Secondly, you're forgetting he only had one lap in the car. You honestly feel he wouldn't shave off 20 sec with a few hundred laps under his belt as Suzuki?

Guibo

How did you arrive at the conclusion that that single lap was 99% perfect? Look at what he said:
"I'd say 99 percent of my lines were perfect, but I got it wrong once..."

A driver could have 99% perfect lines, but that doesn't mean he's lapping at 99% of what the car can do. Braking point? Trail braking? When to apply throttle and how much? Take it to redline, or ride the car's torque? Does the line differentiate between understeering or oversteering? A driver could have 100% perfect lines, yet finish in 7 hours if he wanted to.

Let's not forget this:
"If you're wondering why Andy was so much slower than Nissan's 7:27sec, consider this, our time was over the full lap, not a lap minus the length of the pits; there was a small section of roadworks; he'd never before driven a GT-R and he did just one hot lap..."

It's funny that this guy, on only his single hot lap in a RHD with which he is unfamiliar, was already faster than Porsche's best test drivers in a LHD GT-R using (as they claimed) Nissan's test methodology of hundreds of laps and perfect conditions, which most certainly would NOT include a section of road works.

Tom Coronel, Viper ACR
Lap #1: 7:42
Lap #5: 7:22

rideintothesun

7:59 = 156 km/h Nissan Skyline GTR 276 hp, Dirk Schoysman - MANUFACTURER
8:37.10= 145 km/h Nissan Skyline GTR V-Spec 350 hp, Dirk Schoysman - INDEPENDENT


7:59 = 156 km/h Nissan Skyline GTR 276 hp, Dirk Schoysman - MANUFACTURER
8:28.1 = 147 km/h Nissan Skyline GTR standard 276 hp, Stephen Sutcliffe, INDEPENDENT (Autocar)
8:37.10= 145 km/h Nissan Skyline GTR V-Spec 350 hp, Dirk Schoysman, INDEPENDENT (Car)
8:37.10 = 143.42 km/h - Nissan GTR V-sPEC, 350 hp INDEPENDENT (Top Gear magzine)

Can Nissan also explain how everyone else cant seem to achieve a time remotely close to their record 7:59 time (which again mirrors the R35)?

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The reason why the GTR receives so much scrutiny is because of the manufacturers glorified lap times which again parallels with what they did with the R33. If you are going to Glorify and hype a car up so much, you better put out a show room product that is just as competitive as your test model.

I like how there is an excuse every time the GTR under performs.
- "The driver was not as experienced as Suzuki"
- "The track was damp around two corners"
-"The track conditions were not perfect"
- "The GTR was over heating"
- "This was not a super-test"


20+ seconds is way too much of a discrepancy for a car thats supposedly so fast in Nissan's hands! Porsche comes out and says this is bull ****, of course, I mean what does Porsche know right? Apparently the GTR fanbois and the naive minded defending the GTR all own better car companies and have a better racing heritage and knowledge than Porsche does?..LOL!

I hope more independant testers put the GTR to test around the ring.

Guibo

Naive? Only a naive fanboy would think a GT-R is no faster than a 997.2 w/PDK as Porsche claims. This test by Car shows that the GT-R, on the same day with the same driver and with only one lap where the GT3 got two, is as fast as the GT3. Porsche says the GT3 lapped in 7:40 with traffic during industry days test sessions. So why wouldn't the GT-R?
What good was Porsche's racing heritage and knowledge when the Z06 was cleaning up the Turbo in various track tests? Look at Pagani: a company with just about zero racing heritage, yet its Zonda F is faster than any factory stock street legal Porsche, Carrera GT included. All of this "heritage and knowledge" BS reeks of the same kind of elitist snobbery that Porsche fanboys have been shoving down the throats of Corvette enthusiasts for decades; they get the same crap from Ferrari fanboys. And now you guys are doing it with Nissan.

BTW, what was Nissan's time for the R34 Skyline?

monaroCountry

Only a naive fanboy could think that the 3800lbs / 480hp GTR could compete with supercars with mid 600hp power and roughly 3300lbs in weight.

Guibo

...because a track with dozens of turns (some of them blind, bumpy, off-camber, or with apex at the top of a crest) is a test of only two things: power and weight. Riiiight... Still can't explain why a CSL is some 20 seconds faster than an SRT-10 convertible, mC? Or why a Maserati MC12 can outrun a Koenigsegg.

Isn't it funny how a driver with only 1 single hot lap in the GT-R, in RHD configuration with which he is unfamiliar, timed with the pit straight included and with road works present, can already lap a few seconds faster than Porsche's "unnamed engineer" who had hundreds of laps on a closed course in perfect conditions, minus the pit straight? Here we see the GT-R is lapping toe to toe with the revised GT3, a car which Porsche says can lap in 7:40 flat with traffic. Wouldn't 7:35 (at least) be reasonable on a closed course? Why not?
The Viper shaved 20 seconds off its lap time within 5 laps. And that was with a professional Viper racer at the wheel. According to hp/wt theorists, the only way this could have been acheived is by cheating.

And thanks for confirming that the GT2 tested by Rohrl and Sport Auto were "mid 600 hp" cars.

monaroCountry

-This posed a fairly major problem, as simply having a good driver wasn’t enough. We needed somebody who knew intimately every curve, every camber and every compression on this tricky 12-mile circuit, an independent hand who could push both cars to the maximum and extract a representative time, whatever the weather, in the narrow window we had available.

- he’s a freelance racer/consultant/instructor with over 2000 laps to his name, a man who takes great pleasure in scaring paying punters with a fast lap in his Aston Vantage race car

- With our Nissan and Porsche waiting in the pits, Gülden takes me out for a sighting lap in a VW Passat. An early morning veil of heavy fog envelops the track, but Gülden’s quickly up to speed. Now, I drove to the circuit, unable to see, at about 20mph, and the conditions are no different right now. But we’re regularly seeing 100mph plus, and it becomes immediately, disconcertingly obvious that Gülden is driving more from memory, than sight. More depressingly, he’s barely trying, we’re in a family saloon, yet he’s scaring me absolutely bloody senseless.


That CSL was specifically designed to go up against exotics, it took the owner 3 years to develop and modify the car. It now has a supercharger, a roll cage, a huge wing like the viper and many other race car goodies......

In a word no!!!!!. The driver has admitted that he's lines were 99% perfect which sadly for the GTR is as good as it gets. Your making too many excuses, as yet the GTR tested by many publications around the Nurburgring hasnt been able to get close to Nissan's time, all were within spitting distance of Porsche's time. A difference of 7:50's v 7:20's is just too great to ignore.

The Viper driver wasnt trying to set the fastest time on his first lap. It was only when he asked what they wanted to achieve that he tried his hardest.

Show me a GT2 with a time within the 7:20's bracket. The only stock Porsche able to achieve this has been the Porsche CGT.

Guibo

Haha, that is talking about someone who knows the track. Who here is doubting his knowledge of the track? We are talking about his knowledge and mastery of a car (and the effects of aero/downforce, gearing, tractability of power through sophisticated AWD system, etc). "Narrow window" = hundreds of laps (some of which in perfect conditions) over many months if not years?
Suzuki: hundreds
Gulden: 2
monaroCountry: -1000000


In the bizarro world of monaroCountry, an Aston Vantage race car is the same thing as a GT-R.

Are you being dense on purpose? I'm talking about the STOCK CSL. The one you're talking about laps almost 50 seconds faster than the SRT-10, doesn't it?
Get back to me on the MC12 vs Koenigsegg when you've run out of excuses. Should be interesting!


And how many have tested the same way Nissan has, in the same conditions? How about ZERO. As you're not too familiar with the scientific method, should I presume that you think the earth really is flat?

And how would you know that? They knew their time there was limited. His 2nd lap was 13 seconds slower than his 5th. You're still failing miserably. "Yeah, we're going to fly a couple of ACR's over to Germany and pull you from your busy racing schedule so that you can go try some hypermiling. Take your time, fella!"


I'll post this for at least the 3rd time now:
"I did my fast lap at 7m29s, the fastest lap a standard car has ever done, and I passed 11 cars. There was an Audi A3, and he was not watching his mirrors, and I passed him at 310 kph* on Tiergarten, and he went sideways. It was so close! After that I told Porsche: It's finished with these fast cars, you cannot do this any more. Either you have a closed road or forget it, it's too dangerous now."
--Walter Rohrl
http://www.rennteam.com/forum/thread...GT2/page1.html

There, I showed you a GT2 time in the 7:20's bracket. And how do you know he couldn't set a low 7:20's without traffic? By your logic, that would be a ~700 hp GT2, right?
*That is 20 kph faster than Nissan's telemetry showed for its 7:29 car. The difference in speed between DR's press GT2 and the customer GT-R on Doettinger Hohe was 20.7 kph.

Again with your stubborn "99% perfect lines" BS. A driver could have 100% perfect lines and still take 7 days to complete a lap. And 99% is not "as good as it gets" for the GT-R.
"I don't think the car could go faster. The lap was optimum."
--Toshio Suzuki on his 7:29 lap
Sure sounds like 100% perfect lines AND perfect throttle/steering/brake control to me.

Guibo

If someone came within 9 seconds, would that still mean Nissan cheated/lied? Nissan has said that every other one of its test drivers laps in the 7:40's-7:50's. Where is the deception here?

crwtrans

So much for your Sports Auto theory lol:

http://www.gtr.co.uk/forum/118276-i-...-7-38-gtr.html

http://www.rennteam.com/forum/thread...GTR/index.html

http://www.rs6.com/forum/showpost.ph...0&postcount=43