Comments on: Split Screen Vette Vs Viper at Nurburgring

By: Gary Faules

Gary Faules — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 15:29:33 +0000

Gary, the real humor is in reading “intellegent” (?) comments made by guys like Jason whom are obvioulsy uninformed.

Jason,

What’s the matter… get up on the wrong side of the bed? You vette guys are all alike. Cry babys. Well if the shoe fits, wear it. First of all you apparently don’t know much about cars. If you did you wouldn’t say things like “Viper is gutted”, “splitter isn’t street legal” and the best one of all “knocked a FEW seconds off the records.” First of all the ACR is NOT a gutted car by any means. Motor Trend refers to it as “Probably the best weekend racer yet from Detroit.” In fact it’s a stock Viper with some mods to allow weekend racers to take a street legal car to the track on weekends to have some fast fun. The splitter comes factory installed and is perfectly legal to drive on public highways. I almost spit my coffee all over my key board when I read your comment about a “few” seconds. In the world of motor racing records are generally beaten by as little as hundreds of a second. Needless to say, to be beaten by a couple of seconds is really getting spanked. Lets be honest… Since the day the Viper came out it had a lot of karma. It was fast as hell, looked very cool, well documented that it was faster than ANY American built car of the day not to mention many foreign cars as well and for a hell of a lot less money and it was the brainchild of Carroll Shelby to boot. Any vette guy with an ego had reason to be deflated. As for your term “hardcore package” what in the hell do you call the factory backed vettes GM used to try to beat team Viper in AMLS? Then for the entire time the Vipers were factory backed they kicked the factory backed vettes butt’s for so long they finally hung it up went home. THEN the vettes began winning. I know it’s hard to swallow if you are vette fan but Vettes are NOT the same car as a Viper and they were not built to compete with them. The vettes just thought they were and they wouldn’t be as fast as they are today had the Viper not come along to turn up the thermostat.

By: Gary Grant

Gary Grant — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 11:47:40 +0000

Jason, you miss the humor in that statement.

By: jason

jason — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 10:04:29 +0000

considering the viper is gutted, had an adjustable front splitter (which isn’t street legal btw), has a huge adjustable rear wing, and isn’t even near as livable day to day as teh ZR-1, i can understand that it knocked a few seconds off the vettes record. here’s to hoping GM releases a ‘hardcore’ ZR-1 along the lines of the ACR “hardcore package”. I’m willing to bet it’d best the viper. as for someone saying the vette cant handle, your obviously an idiot, both these cars have outstanding handling to be able to hold the record for any amount of time around the ring.

By: Gary Faules

Gary Faules — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 01:39:36 +0000

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. Same reasoning works with regards to the Vette’s handling. If a Vette can’t handle then you can’t lead it to a lap record…. LOL.

I’m sorry… Even though I have owned a few beauties I grew up a diehard everything but a Vette guy.

By: Tom Williams

Tom Williams — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 22:36:56 +0000

I’ll switch from WRC to F1. Fernando Alonso was been characterized my many writers as being very abrupt in his steering movements, yet it does not appear to slow his speed or degrade the tires any worse than his teammates.
But like Gunnar, I too was thinking the Vette driver appeared to using way more steering input compared to the Viper driver.

By: Gary Grant

Gary Grant — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 15:32:29 +0000

To emphasize this, look for in car videos of Carlos Sainz and Colin McRae. Carlos flails around on the wheel, while Colin always looked like he was out for a sunday drive. They were both fast, but for all his thrashing, Sainz rarely went off the road, while McRae was often in the weeds.

By: Gary Faules

Gary Faules — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 14:40:27 +0000

As a team owner not to mention a driving instructor I have learned that while I find different driver’s driving style’s interesting they are not actually important. Early on in my career I thought there was something wrong with this simply because I assumed if you didn’t use the same method/style as someone else who was faster that you would never be as fast. That thinking was entirely wrong. I have watched countless hours of in-car video of myself as well as team-mates who drive for me and while one may be as smooth as silk utilizing only minimum body movement another whips the wheel around like he was swatting at a hornets nest in the car all the while sliding too hot into corners and so on. Even more interesting is the end result… Identical lap time!

Putting different (but good) drivers in a race car are like putting on different pairs of shoes. They both get you to the same place at the same speed.

Considering what a respected formula driver the Viper team used it was funny to watch him have such a hard time using the Viper’s gear shift. After all, compared to what he’s used to driving it must have felt like a caveman’s club. I would like to see how well he would do if he were used to the car.

By: Gunnar

Gunnar — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 14:26:11 +0000

Is it just my perception or is the Vette driver doing more corrective steering than the Viper guy?