Skidpad
As I ran through the cars, it was apparent that we had a nice batch of competitors. They all performed predictably and consistently, allowing me to back up my numbers and run through them pretty quickly. The surface was fairly good, but there were a couple of dips that would test the versatility of each car's suspension.
The pushers stood out right away. The BMW and Integra both had noticeable understeer. Rocking the throttle, trying to get the front tires to bite, felt better, but resulted in the same sub-0.9g average as just pushing around the circle slowly.
The Z, Supra and Skyline all misbehaved under load. However, they still remained neutral and were able to pull decent numbers. The front of the Supra could only be pushed to a certain limit before it would clunk and hop around. This was fine. The tranny was slipping so badly that giving it more throttle just made scary noises.
The Z was the opposite. It was bottoming out in the rear, but the power delivery and steering felt so good that it was easy to catch when the back end snapped. The Skyline felt balanced but undersprung all the way around. Once the suspension was compressed, the dips would bounce the whole car off line. These cars all had lots of grip, but, still, I was happy not to drive them at speed on the track.
The StopTech crew weren't specific about what was wrong with the Z06, but, with some reservation, they asked me to go ahead and run it around the pad. With no power steering, wheel effort was heavy and the car didn't feel all that fast. Still, it managed to run within 0.01 of the highest lateral g of the competition.
With an APR widebody hiding monstrous 315mm-wide Kumho race rubber, it was unsurprising that the PDX Tuning STI took the skidpad test. The rest of the cars all behaved well, except for the Atom, which would kick from neutral to oversteer over slight surface irregularities none of the other cars seemed to notice. As soon as each car finished going in circles, it was sent over to the opposite side of the speedway, where the drag strip lay.
-Andy Hope