BTW, I do acknowledge that the GT-R is good for Porsche furture owners. The fact that Porsche AG bought a GT-R implies they are well aware of this competitor. There is no doubt in my mind the GT-R will force PAG to make the updated Turbo achieve ring time at least in the mid 7:40's. Otherwise it will be old news before its birth.
Competition is good.

 

I almost repeat after you !! until i found that the article was posted in Oct,2007!!

 

There is argument, and there is reasonable argument . Although there is no proof, it's extremely unlikely for an engineer group, after how many years of development, to find a few tweaks in the final months before production, to improve the ring time by 20 seconds. This includes stiffening springs, unless you make it to the point it's not driveable on the streets.

This is the point of the argument: I don't deny a very good car's spot in the sun (the GT-R), but Nissan should not make this unreasonable claim. And as reasonable sports car fans , we shouldn't continue the myth.

For a near 4000 lbs car with 500 or so hp to achieve that time of 7:29 is unreasonable, in fact defies the law of physics.

 

Oops I meant in the final months before INTRODUCTION. Extremely extremely unlikely, in fact impossible, to make changes that close to introduction of car that results in 20 second ring time improvement.

 

This is great! Remember Mazda's false horsepower claims on the RX8's???

They offered buy backs including the tax!

 

I dont know where did you take 20 seconds... the official times were 7:38 and 7.29, those 7:50s werent official it was just run down the Nuderburg ring with stop watch probably.

Bottom line there's 2 times, 7:38 and 7:29. I belive that this car is capable of doing mid 7:30 with great driver.

 

7:45-7:54 - those are the times I agree with.

 

Nissan today announced that its GT-R supercar achieved a lap time at the infamous Nürburgring in Germany of seven minutes and 29 seconds. Recorded on April 16 and 17, the GT-R used was a base specification car and fitted with the standard Japanese market tyres. Driven by GT-R chief test driver Tochio Suzuki, this latest lap time beats the previous fastest time for the GT-R by nine seconds.

The previous best lap time for GT-R of 7:38, also driven by Suzuki, was one of the fastest laps achieved by a production car despite conditions being slightly damp on two corners.

"At last year's testing, we were frustrated by the conditions at the Nürburgring, always believing that the GT-R could go under seven minutes 30 seconds," said Kazutoshi Mizuno, Chief Vehicle Engineer for GT-R. "Below seven minutes 30 seconds, the GT-R proves it is among the fastest mass-production cars in the world. We set out to build a multi-performance supercar accessible to anyone, anytime and anywhere – I believe the GT-R has delivered that promise."

Deliveries of the all-new GT-R began in Japan in December 2007. Sales in the US and Canada start in July and extend to Europe and other markets over the next 12 months.

anyone have an email of a Suzuki guy? We need to bring him in here to clear things up

 

How about this?

If you do not track on a consistent basis then limit yourselves from the conversation.

I am outta here then

 

well this is what i say....

F*ck the GTR too much BS behind this car guys, Nissan cannot make a performance car like porsche without any BS. Porsche builds a straight forward high class car, while nissan builds a low class piece of crap, makes alot of hype about it, and at the end of it we have no idea whats the truth about it..

 

This is it, this is the answer we've all been waiting for. Mystery and problem solve, we don't even need to have an independent party to actually test the GTR to really know how fast it can go in The Ring. Dude, where have you been all this time, if we've only known that Nissan can't make performance cars like Porsche does we wouldn't have these long discussions and wasted all of our time. Thanks bro, thank you very much.

 

Like i've said before, as unreasonable is the 7:29 claim is, it is just as fairly unreasonable for Porsche's claim of 7:54. That's just ridiculous and absurd. A driver with no experience can probably do better than that, blind folded. J/K, but seriously, 7:54 is a joke as much as the 7:29 is. If Porsche is going to make some bold accusations, at least have some video proof of it or just make one up. IMO, the bottomline is, the GTR is making anywhere around 500hp to 550hp, and the one that did 7:29 in The Ring had better tires, as we all know, and definitely had a better tuned suspension for that particular run. JHMO.

 

All right, this was bugging me, so I've run some more numbers, and I'm now pretty convinced that the Ring GTR record was set with a car with around 490 awhp.

Explanation as follows: The other recent Ring contender is the Viper ACR; ~3490 lbs with driver, ~517 rwhp, tons of downforce but the aero of a barn-door (likely .44 cd and ~1.88 m^2 based on a 192 mph top speed). We have video of that car with a clock in the corner vs the ZR1:

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08nxInpgTGc&feature=related[/media]

The GTR has much better aero, so at some point it will catch and pass the ACR given a long enough straight, however if you run the numbers with the 420 rwhp GTR the GTR should accelerate slower until ~172 mph, a speed which it shouldn't be able to exceed on the bridge to bridge measurement. So the ACR should be faster down that straight by a pretty reasonable amount, as it will always be pulling harder, and much harder at lower speeds.

But it's not. I time the GTR .3 seconds faster than the ACR from bridge to bridge, which works out to roughly 2 mph faster average speed. Since the viper has a much better power to weight ratio it should be much faster at lower speeds, so the GTR would need lots more than stock power to pass it (by a lot) on the straight.

I see two other possible explanations, but I don't buy either of them.

First, if the GTR came off the corner with much more speed it could carry more speed under the first bridge and onto the straight. You can time this in the video too, though- I get 6.6 seconds from the point you can see down the straight until the first bridge for the ACR vs 7.2 seconds for the GTR. Now the view out the windshields is a little different, but not nearly that much- the ACR is clearly much faster off of that last corner and also hits the first bridge with significantly more speed.

The second possible explanation is wind. However the ZR1 and ACR times are pretty much what you'd expect relative to one another, and it seems very unlikely they both had the same head-wind on their best runs. Then there could be a tail wind for the GTR, but if you time the other record GTR run (the 7:38) it's only .1 second slower bridge to bridge. It's also very unlikely they both had the same tail wind...

So the GTR gets to the first bridge at a slower speed, but catches and passes the much more powerful ACR before the 2nd. How much power would it need to do that? If you give the GTR 490 awhp, the cross-over point at which it's faster than the ZR1 moves from ~172 mph down to ~146 mph, meaning the GTR is pulling harder for most of that straight, and can average a couple mph faster despite entering the straight slower. That's the same number I'd come up with to re-create its performance vs the ZR1 assuming no wind.

So waaay too much time spent on this, but I think I've convinced myself that there is almost no way that GTR was putting stock power levels out. My best estimate is ~490 whp or around 600 crank hp.

If anyone wants to shoot holes in the above feel free. The other videos I used are:

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBZ5i15yVU8[/media]
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TMXr2ReNhk[/media]
[media]http://www.garage419.com/episode/419_20080710[/media]

-Pete

 

We have a D.E. Champion on our hands!!

 

It's obvious the GTR had some kind of flash or tune to crank up the boost. That's the only way their 4000 pound car could match the 911 Turbo and deliver those kind of times. Nissan you're BUSTED! Just another in a long line of cars trying to benchmark the 911 Turbo and coming up short. Sadly, the only way they could do it was to cheat, why not just admit the real HP and call it a day.