Rams Eye The Track Guy

Ever since I bought my Mustang, I have been gradually growing loyal to the brand. I’m not sure why. I like a lot of different cars and never felt like picking a camp, but I guess when you buy a car, you start to have to defend its honour (and your decision) whenever someone takes a stab at it. For someone who is so into cars, I think only one of two things can happen: you are either convinced of what “foes” claim and start to regret your decision, or you find more conviction as you defend your decision and love the car even more. Count me among the latter and, needless to say, I was properly excited when I found out about the updates Ford is bringing to the 2018 Mustang.
For starters, the Mustang finally (probably.. hopefully) will get its horsepower mojo back. When Ford unleashed its 5.0 litre Coyotes to prey on the competition circa 2010, it was basically undisputed. The Camaro SS was usually slower in tests. You couldn’t say Challenger R/T in the same breath; you had to go up to t…

Motor Trend basically started the first drive review (2nd paragraph) by saying that the folks at AMG have a sense of humour for naming this car "the Beast from the Green Hell." Maybe I don't get German sense of humour, but the joke is completely lost on me. Of course, that's assuming there is a joke there to begin with.. You see, I highly doubt the response AMG hoped for is a chuckle. And if I'm right, I think they can rest easy, because beasts aren't funny, and those that come from hell are probably less so, whatever colour that hell may be. Now, fierce, brutal, menacing, loud.. those are the things you might expect a beast to be. And if that name alone doesn't conjure any of those beastly characteristics, play the video below and skip to 0:28.




What a NOISE! This will be one of those cars that, should it roll up next to you at a traffic light, you quiet everyone down and roll down the windows to hear it pull away. If you're tired of hearing about h…

In Parts 1 and 2 (Links: +Chevrolet 1LE & Grand Sport - How do they do it? Part 1 & Part 2), I concluded that grip is where Chevys excel and decided to try and figure out how they do that by looking at test data from Car and Driver's Lightning Lap features. The first thing that stood out to me when the 5th generation Camaro 1LE came out was the wider tires compared to the Mustang Track Pack of the time and even the Boss 302. The tires on the ZL1 and Z/28 stood out as much.. only on those, they stood out compared to just about anything that isn't a supercar. So I decided to start looking there; tire sizes.

To evaluate tire sizes, I calculated a weight-to-tire-section ratio for each car. Similar to the idea of power to weight ratio, where the number tells you how much weight each hp is burdened with, this tells you how much weight each mm of tire section is burdened with, so to speak. For example, a BMW M235i weighs 3,490 lb, as tested during the LL feature. It has 225/…

GM, in general, is starting to build a very strong reputation for chassis engineering but Chevrolets, in particular, have very strong performance on track these days, not just good handling feel and fun to drive attitude. In Part 1 (link: Chevrolet 1LE & Grand Sport - How do they do it? Part 1), I looked at different aspects and concluded that Chevys appear to have the advantage in grip. If you are still unsure that grip is where those cars excel, perhaps this number will change your mind: 1.11. That's how much lateral forces, measured in g, the 2017 Camaro SS 1LE generated in Turn 1 of Virginia International Raceway (VIR) during Car and Driver's Lightening Lap 2016 feature. 1.11 g also happens to tie the 2014 Viper TA, the 2014 Ferrari F12 Berlinetta, and even the 2016 Ferrari 488GTB. It gets more interesting too..


CarMax Lat-g2015 Chevy Corvette Z061.202017 Chevy Corvette Grand Sport1.192009 Mosler MT900S1.162015 Chevy Camaro Z/281.162015 Porsche 9181.162015 Nissan GT-R…

While testing a 2016 Focus RS for the comparison test (link: Ford Focus RS vs Subaru WRX STI vs Mitsubishi Evo X MR), I caught up to a 2016 Mustang Shelby GT350R and had a friendly head-to-head battle. Both cars were completely stock. The video doesn't capture just how good that car sounds. We had a chat afterwords and the owner was very cool about it. His rear tires were starting to look old and he told me it felt a little less grippy than he was used to, so they could have been heat cycled out. Our track is also short and technical, so high hp cars don't get much room to stretch their legs, robbing them of some of the advantage they'd have at a power and/or longer track. The Focus had the optional Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tires. Check out the video below for a couple of laps.

All these cars have one common Achilles' heel. The engines sit entirely ahead of the front axles; a great family recipe for understeer. Then tell the front tires - already taxed from trying to keep that front engine sitting outside the wheelbase from going straight - to put some power down and you can only make matters worse. There are ways to mitigate the understeer with suspension tuning, of course, but the toughest part is power-on understeer. I don't want to get much into tires, but the thing to remember is that because tires have a certain "grip budget" - how much total grip they can hold/generate before they let go - when you get on the power in a car that sends power to the front wheels (FWD or AWD), you will rob some of the precious grip you were relying on to turn the car in order to put all or some power down. You'll run out of front lateral grip sooner than you would have otherwise, as a result. Worse yet, because of the unideal engine pla…