[car_fan]

QUOTE: "OK, I'm a Carrera GT owner with dozens of track events @ Putnam Park and Mid-Ohio in this car. I have many thousands of laps of experience at Mid-Ohio in Porsches and BMWs of all sorts. I completely understand the "difficult to master" reputation the CGT gets. I've spun it at both tracks with (fortunately) no ill effects. I made two changes to the as-delivered setup that calmed it way down for me.

1) I moved the rear anti-roll bar setting from "medium" to "soft" by changing the drop link position from the middle hole of the 3 available to the hole at the tip of the rear bar. This reduced the tendency to oversteer in my hands by a significant amount. By exactly how much? I was able to improve my track times by 4 to 5 seconds per lap with only this adjustment, nothing else.

In my non-expert opinion, the CGT seems to have been "optimized" for track quickness in the hands of drivers who don't mind running pretty high rear slip angles. If one observes typical side-force vs. slip-angle curves for modern tires, running a significant rear slip angle might help eek out a higher side force while right at the edge. For a driver used to the rear slip angle, it could be faster. For drivers used to driving 911s, that much greasy feeling at the rear starts alarm bells ringing and is not well tolerated. I didn't much like it. Maybe I'm a wus, but it's my experience in spirited driving that a touch of basic understeer leaves some "design margin" for use by the driver if something unexpected occurs.

I have no idea for what use the "tight" position of the rear bar was created. Drifting competitions?

2) I changed from the OEM Pilot Sport tires to Michelin Super Sports as soon as they were available in the USA. The OEM tires were quite temperature sensitive as street tires go. If they were not "up to temperature", they didn't have prodigious grip. After a few warm up laps at the track, they were pretty sticky when new. Driving to and from the track, they could be quite "interesting" if driven on cold roads.

Apparently, the special sizes of the CGT tires made them unprofitable to manufacture at regular intervals. After the initial production runs in 2004/2005, Michelin appeared not to make any more until 2008/2009 (judging by the sidewall markings). Every time I would buy "new" tires to replace those heat-cycled-at-the-track, they didn't seem to be any better than the degraded tires they replaced. Well, both sets were the same age and the "new" tires had been "pre-heat-cycled" by having been stored for years in a hot warehouse. The older they were, the less grippy they proved to be. "New" or not.

The Michelin Super Sport tire was a huge improvement. It is way less temperature sensitive and much better in the rain for transit legs to and from the track. They seem to be a few seconds faster at the track compared to freshly molded OEM tires. Recently, Porsche put them through their tire testing approval program and they are now available in "N0" certification. Some press accounts maintain that these tires alone have "transformed" the Carrera GT into an all time great handling car.

So, if a CGT hasn't had benefit of the rear bar adjustment and the fitting of Super Sport tires, it might deserve a more harsh description than most 600+ hp cars of its age. But, I love mine the way it is, now. One still must respect the power/weight ratio and its street-tire traction levels, but it is in no way dangerous to drive.

BTW, I had a brake-booster hydraulic pump failure occur in my car. It dribbled brake fluid onto the inside of the front carbon under trays, but it never reached the tires."
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Mike

'05 Carrera GT - Signal Yellow
'08 Tesla Roadster - Thunder Gray
'11 GT3RS 4.0 - White 486/600
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