Braking
This time, instead of putting Motor Trend's Scott Mortara behind the radar gun and laptop, we threw him into the cars and left the owners and drivers to mill around under the EZ-Up and eat tacos. What a difference the changes made.
Having Mortara (who is intimately familiar with testing at California Speedway) drive each car ruled out several possible cock-ups in the braking test, including nerves, unfamiliarity with the methodology and a crap test surface. All that was left to sort out were the idiosyncrasies of each car. And boy, were there a few of those.
The jaded and cynical among us never guessed Dave Dunn's Integra would have finished in last place. We were fooled, because it looks stock. And experience has taught us that stock cars generally stop pretty well. But, as you know, Dunn's car is nowhere near stock. It's basically an Integra that has been cleanly but forcefully rear-ended by a Prelude. Not only is the engine in the back, but those rear brakes are from a Prelude's front end as well. Dunn also disabled the ABS system and had too much brake bias dialed toward the rear. This made stops more like e-brake drifts. Mortara managed to lock up the brakes on each pass.
Groma Fab's BMW 2002 didn't lock the stoppers and had great brake feel, even though it was equipped with old-school non-ABS brakes. Too bad that, at 226 feet, it had the second-longest stopping distance. Mike Kim told our test crew that his Atom liked a bit of rear lock, but the numbers didn't reflect that: 224 feet put it third from last.
Serious stoppers can go from 80mph to zero in under 200 feet and an unprecedented six out of 10 competitors managed to pull this off. The shock was who came out on top. To our surprise, it wasn't the StopTech car, which only managed to finish in fourth place at 195 feet.
Steve Ruiz's crew had a reasonable explanation, though. A paltry three stops was not enough to get the 'Vette's massive Pilot Sport Cup tires up to temperature. And everyone knows brakes don't stop a car, tires do.
Still, three other cars managed to stop significantly shorter and it was hard to figure out which was most impressive. Both of the heavy, all-wheel-drivers beat the Z06 by over 20 feet, but Mortara gave high points to the Audi, which was in his mind, the most 'stock-like' in terms of feel and performance.
And then there was Ed Reeser's G35, which looked just like the kind of car we elitist snobs at SCC love to make fun of: big front air dam, massive rear wing, tons of stickers. When the competition started, we thought for sure he didn't stand a chance, but it turned out the joke was on us. This rice rocket can stop: from 80mph to standstill in only 168 feet is almost unbelievable.
-Ed Loh
The testing was finished a little before noon and everyone split as quickly as possible. Normally the drive from California Speedway to Willow Springs International Raceway is only about an hour and a half. But as luck would have it, the direct road was closed, extending the drive by a good three-quarters of an hour. Those were 45 highly critical minutes, since we were now in a race to get up to the track and finish the competition with enough light for photography at the end of the day.