NSX on The Grand Tour

Latest episode, if you have Amazon Prime: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M31DCDV

Bummer that it was a downpour when "The American" took it around the test track. On the old Top Gear track they used to say that a very wet track was good for about four seconds of time; unfortunately the NSX's 1:26 time even with the four seconds is still not in the league of the McLaren and Audi R8 they tested.

They also measured a 0-60 time of 3.2s.

Funny how every Japanese sports car, super car on Top Gear and now Grand Tour is always test when it's pouring rain, nsx typeR, LFA, GTR and now NSX 2.0. I wonder if that's done intentionally?

That is strange - I know they get more than their share of rain over there, but do the damned timed lap in the dry and let May putter around in the wet!

It really does rain that much over here.

flaminio said:

On the old Top Gear track they used to say that a very wet track was good for about four seconds of time; unfortunately the NSX's 1:26 time even with the four seconds is still not in the league of the McLaren and Audi R8 they tested.

Click to expand...

what were the times for the R8 and McLaren (570S?)?

The McLaren 650S did a lap in 1:17.9; the Audi R8 V10 Plus did it in 1:19.2.

The full list is on The Grand Tour's wikipedia page here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grand_Tour_(TV_series)

I don't think wet versus dry times are comparable in any helpful sense without a lot of prior data on wet versus dry times for same cars on same tires on the same (Grand Tour) track (in wet versus dry conditions). In other words, if 20 other cars has run the course in both wet and dry conditions on the same tires and were X seconds slower, +/- Y seconds, we could draw some directionally useful but very rough inferences. Otherwise, we can't.

Even dry versus dry times on totally different days (temps, surface conditions, etc.) yield pretty imprecise info for comparison.

well, yes but no. there is a general and specific time for a best lap of a dry and wet track. a lap record for each so to speak. that's your measuring stick and basis for comparison. it may vary by tenths, but not by seconds. i have no idea what that is for this track, however you can obviously only directly compare dry to dry or wet to wet.

looking at the list of other cars, you would assume that the NSX will finish a few seconds (about 2 give or take) behind the 570S and Audi R8, as it has in every test but one when there was something very obviously wrong with the R8. it wouldn't beat the 911 GT3RS, but might finish ahead of the GTR. so factor a lap of about 1:21 for the NSX on a dry track, that'd be my best guestimate, guessing of course...

Lap times can vary over a second on the same day from early morning to the heat of the afternoon. They can also vary over a second from a brand new tire vs or with a few thousand road miles. Maybe in England where it's cold most of the time, the track temps are more consistent throughout the day and maybe they test the cars at a more consistent part of the day based off of the temp, but I would be surprised. Also many magazines in the US do head to head tests with some cars on older, worn tires which greatly influence the outcome when two cars are already within a second of each other.

0.02

correct, with all variables being more-or-less equal (fresh tires, same driver, reasonable weather conditions) the same car should consistently lap well within the same second from one day to the next...

.depends on the magic of the rubber and road......I have had days at wgi that started off in the 40's in the morning and ended in the mid 70's....I have had Ra1's be 1.5 seconds slower on the same day, for reasons that escape me....most everything else was the same on that day....so for me I like to look at many days and various cars lap times for a given track to get a ballpark on what a certain car should be capable of..