For track testing, we focused on the lateral g readings in Turn Two of Big Willow. During this test, it became really obvious which cars and drivers had spent a lot of time on a race track and which hadn't. Rather than risk stuffing private vehicles, we left it up to the owners to attempt fast and sticky laps and only drove our RX-8 and the C-West S2000 for the test.
The GT-R, S13, and Civic were all set up for the street. Their suspensions were stiff at the front and aligned with toe-in up front as well. This makes for really good handling during panic stops on the street, but quickly overheats the front tires on the track. The GT-R and Civic ran their fastest segment times on their first lap of the test. Sean Holloway of A'PEXi, in the GT-R, actually pulled off a respectable average g reading, beating not only all the street cars, but every supercar except for the slick tire-shod 2200-pound Exige S. The Noble had a quicker time through the segment, but pulled fewer gs. This suggests the GT-R was already slipping off the faster inside line on its first lap.
The Noble was having its own issues, though. In a 2300-pound mid-engined car with almost 400hp, you really need to feel how much grip the front tires have. The power-assisted steering on the Noble gives little feedback at speed. Without being able to feel the front tires dig in, the first indication the thing is going to swap ends is when the back end comes flying around. Driving at the limit of adhesion is a guessing game as to how much traction is left, followed by frantic countersteering in the ensuing moments of terror. I drove a different Noble at the same track a few months earlier and it was anything but confidence-inspiring.
Overly tail-happy, but in a different way was the S2000, still shod in the original A048 Advan tires from when it was shipped over in '05. Since then, the rubber had competed in Super Street's Time Attack and suffered unknown abuse while traveling the country on the Hot Import Nights tour for a year. The TEIN suspension that probably worked well when the tires were sticky was now overloading the spent tires, causing them to break loose on the bumps. Fortunately, the S2000's communicative steering made catching the slides a piece of cake. Telemetry showed this car to be the least stable of all the closed-wheel cars. But still, the lightweight, downforce-producing body panels allowed the car to rocket through Turn Two the fastest of them as well.
In contrast, the Works Evo and Hasport Integra sailed butter-smooth through the segment. Their average gs and peak gs were only off by 0.04 and 0.02, respectively. Bernardo Martinez allowed me to take his Integra out for a few laps after testing. Between the suspension and practical sedan aerodynamic tuning, and the power delivery of the K24 swap, the car was an absolute pleasure to drive. It easily set the fastest lap time of the closed-wheel cars and had even more in it, if needed.
If we had called it a day at this point, we could have claimed that our highly tuned sport compacts were the g masters. But then the formula cars went out and decimated our silly field of 'racers'. Joiner tore through Turn Two, pulling an average of 1.64g in the FW08C. Then Hughes whipped through even faster in the Pro Formula Mazda. Our data acquisition couldn't record the gs from that car, so Chen hacked into their Motec system for an explanation as to how the thing went so fast. That system showed the car running through Turn Two at close to 2g. It also indicated that the car was producing 0.51g of downforce at the end of the front straight.
Our little Superkart, which managed to hop and skip its way though Turn Two, clocked an unconfirmed 2.87g spike. Why unconfirmed? Because the telemetry's accelerometer was in the midst of getting its brains bashed out, buried somewhere underneath the radiator inside the sidepod. Some of our cars had nice aero, but nothing that's going to pull like that.
In the end, we proved that our typical test cars will out-corner pretty much anything you'll find on the street, but to no surprise, they don't come anywhere near a fully race-prepped formula car. We especially have to thank Erich Joiner for bringing out his beautiful Monaco GP-winning race car, even if he was babying it a bit to protect his investment and our egos. To give you some idea of what those cars could do in their day, future world champion Nigel Mansell set the Willow Springs lap record in 1982 while testing his John Player Special Lotus F1. On our day, Hughes ran a fastest time of 1:17.558, maybe a new Pro Formula Mazda record. Twenty-five years earlier, Mansell clocked 1:06.300. Just before stuffing it into the embankment on the outside of Turn Four.