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Originally Posted by lakatu
St-Anger excellent write up on the 911 Carrera. I have a question about the relative performance of the current 996 to prior years 300hp 996 model. Sport Auto's Supertest shows the performance of the new 320 hp model recorded the same lap time on the NS (8'12") and was slower on the Hockenheim (1'17.1" verses 1'15.9"). All this despite all the improvements that you eloquently discussed including 20 more horsepower and larger tires and wheels; offset by 68kg more weight. What do you attribute this too? Could normal production variation account for such a difference?
I was wondering if someone who may have read that article may know if Sport Auto discussed why the newer model didn't demonstrate greater performance on the track? The older car seems to outperform the newer version in the corners while slower on the straights. Obviously the greater weight of the newer 996 hurts it in the corners. Also, I don't know the answer to this but the Pirelli's P Zero's the old 996 rode on may be better than the newer 996's Michelin Pilot Sport.
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hmmm, you´re right, i´ve looked the lap times up myself again, i´ve both articles, but unfortunately not a single word from the editors why it´s, maybe not slower, but also not faster…
BUT, from what I know about both cars, which i´ve already driven, the old Carrera is a bit more gentle to drive, maybe not because of the 68kg, but i´ll try to explain…
first, we should mention that both cars had been equipped with the optional sport suspension, second, and now we´re talking about the latest Carrera only, the 320hp version not the 300 one, the dynamic vehicle behaviour at the limit has been pushed upwards a bit thus it´s now even more narrow than on the mk1 996 C2 and quite compareable with the handling of the 993… while drag throttle, the C2 has a strong tendency to understeer because of the special axle-geometry and the wide rear tyres, the mk2 C2 has 285, the mk1 “only” 265, both with 225 at the front, so to prevent understeering one´ll go off the accelerator to force the car into load-cycle change, and then again at full throttle, BUT this results in a quite undefined vehicle handling, because the car doesn´t really give the driver a notice when it´s near its limit, so one could easily loose it without some experience and practice…
so i think it´s obvious that such a handling characteristic isn´t very helpful for a good lap time at a narrow and kinda slow track like HHR…
hope this helps a bit….