Alfa Romeo Giulia Reigns King! Huge Track Car Comparison

Опубликовано 28 мая 2017, 14:00

Driving 17 Cars Around Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca!
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My most enjoyable drive of the day was in the Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio. Of all the cars I drove, it was easily one of the most balanced, inspiring great confidence at nearly any speed. Under the hood is a twin-turbo 2.9 liter 90 degree V6 engine producing 505 horsepower and 443 lb-ft of torque, a potent 175 hp per liter. But it wasn’t the most powerful car here, and it certainly wasn’t the lightest car here; in fact, Alfa doesn’t even list the weight of the car in their press kits, though Motor Trend weighed one in around 3,800 pounds. Even with the weight, it was my fastest lap around the raceway, for which I purely attribute its balance and predictability to provide confidence for even a novice driver such as myself.

In second place we’re in the Mazda MX-5 Miata RF, Mazda’s latest hard top convertible MX-5. This is the club version, with an LSD and manual transmission. The RF adds a little over 100 pounds of additional weight, though dynamically it feels very similar to the soft top. The weight distribution is a perfect 50/50 split without a driver in the seat, with the weight shifted slightly back from the soft top. The car is an absolute joy to drive, with near perfect predictability, and a highly approachable limit. If you decide to push the car too hard, letting off the throttle or brakes and a minor steering correction puts you right back on pace.

3rd & 4th cars, the Subaru BRZ and the Toyota 86 twins. Both have a very similar dynamic feel to the MX-5, very balanced and predictable, easy to push hard, with just a bit more heft to pull around the track. While the tires aren’t particularly graceful on a track - they like to oversteer - it’s an insanely fun car to drive hard as it rewards drivers of all abilities to find the car’s limits. But perhaps the best thing about the 86/BRZ duo is the steering feel. On track, the tight steering ratio rewards those who drive with precision, and prevents your arms from crossing over in tight turns. For a modern vehicle, it provides some of the most valuable feedback through the steering wheel to your arms, and is part of what makes this car so easy and enjoyable to drive hard.

Having driven the Jaguar F-Type SVR on the road, it is absolutely one of the most thrilling vehicles I’ve ever been in. That’s why I was a bit surprised to not have quite the same feeling about it while driving it on the track. It’s not that it’s not fun, it definitely is, but it’s not the most well behaved vehicle on the track, which is part of what I found exciting about it on the road. The balance is a bit twitchy, with the rear end never fully committed to a corner, even with all wheel drive. On top of which, if you’re too quick with your throttle application, the shock load of acceleration bounces up and down the driveline, kinda similar to driving a manual transmission car in first gear at super low speeds, and letting on and off the throttle, just not quite as exaggerated.

The Dodge Challenger T/A 392, on the other hand, was surprisingly impressive. Every time I enter one of these cars, and I’ve driven numerous, I’m always expecting it to behave like a boat, the way the specs make it seem it will. And yet every time I exit the car feeling quite impressed by how well behaved it is. With a 485 horsepower 6.4L V8 engine, six-piston brembos up front and four piston Brembo’s in the rear, a revised suspension geometry and 275 mm wide Pirelli performance tires, the car is actually quite at home lapping around a circuit. It was my third fastest around the track for the day, and had me grinning as I rolled back into the staging area.

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