What can the lap times tell us about the cars we test? | Articles

If you’ve been around these parts for at least a few years, you may have noticed one of my personal favorite new additions to our editorial mix, that being our track testing of all of our project cars and relevant new cars from the media fleets.

And not just track testing all these machines, but testing them on the same track with the same configuration so we can log both project car progress and also build a leaderboard of cars new and old that appeal to our readers.

[The Grassroots Motorsports ultimate guide to track car lap times]

Having access to a reliable test facility is a huge bonus for us, and we’re lucky to be located close enough to the Florida International Rally & Motorsport Park in Keystone Heights. While we leverage that leaderboard for specific editorial tasks, periodically I’ll find myself taking a little more meta-level glance at it. Here are a few thoughts I had after a recent perusal of our lap log:

1. Not all trips to the track are competitive. Yes, the overarching point of our lap chart is objectively comparing one car with others, but before we even get to lap times, our list reminds us that our trips to the FIRM represent a lot more than pure numbers.

If you’re a competitor, you need to have an automotive “third place” that isn’t your shop and isn’t a race. Testing isn’t just taking extra notes during the race weekend’s practice session or the warmup laps before a time trial, but dedicated time on track to focus on specific information and processes.

Likewise, practice isn’t just driving when the clock isn’t running. Practice is a skill like any other, with its own set of techniques, and having a proper venue for it is something we recommend to everyone looking to improve.

There’s also just the general sense of community around facilities like the FIRM that we love and get to enjoy on non-competition days. Most of the time any of us are around a race track, it’s because there’s some competitive endeavor going on. Yeah, those are fun, in no small part because of the level of intensity. But that intensity doesn’t always lend itself to chill interactions, and having a track environment to just hang and be part of the scene is a huge bonus.

And this vibe is not entirely by accident at the FIRM. “We’re located in a small community,” notes the track’s GM Larina Hintze, “and we serve a relatively small community relative to other sports, so we love that we’re a place where people can just have fun and enjoy their hobby and share it with others.”

The vibe at the FIRM during our testing days is more akin to a community rec center than the Indy 500 as folks take laps at their leisure and spend their downtime in the air-conditioned lounge that was formerly a NASA astronaut transportation crawler. It’s a kitschy and thoroughly enjoyable way to spend a day, laps or no laps. (But we don’t mind the laps.)

2. Cars are getting faster. As we regularly add cars to the list, those times often land near the front than the back. New versions of existing cars like Miatas, BRZs/GR86s, GTIs and more tend to outpace their predecessors, sometimes by considerable margins. For anyone who ever tries to hit you with the “Cars used to be better when…” speech, if lap times are your metric, tell them the arrow on this is just pointing up in general.

3. There are still surprises to be had. While stuff is getting faster in general, and we were mostly unshocked to see the gnarliest Corvette ever produced take the top spot on our board, which it’s now held for over a year, we still do get blindsided from time to time.

I don’t think any of us could have predicted that the automatic Subaru BRZ would have been the fastest variant of the Subaru/Toyota twins until the current BRZ tS made it to the track.

And the newest BMW M2 is just an absolute beast. We knew it would be quick, but we didn’t expect it to outrun the GR Supra by more than a second. To this day, the G87-chassis M2 stands as the third-fastest production car that we’ve ever tested, behind only the C8 Z06 and C8 Z51. That M2 sits more than a second ahead of the rest of the field. It’s a total package with very few faults, and this holistic approach pushes it right near the top of the board.

4. Lap times are not always a measure of fun. Our most recent track test–the ND3 Mazda MX-5 Miata–sits near the bottom of the batting order when ranked by lap times. But this most recent version of Mazda’s roadster is one of the most satisfying cars to drive on track you’ll likely ever experience: telepathic steering, intuitive handling, easy placement, tiny footprint. The current Miata has all the right ingredients to be fun regardless of what the clock says.

Conversely, the non-Performance Package Mustang Dark Horse that we tested recently fell under the 1:20.00 mark, which is rarified air on our lap chart. But despite a top-tier lap time, the car was more of a disappointment than a hit, with the lack of the sticky rubber and bigger wheels from the Performance Package being a notable absence. Furthermore, a clumsy automatic transmission made getting a decent lap time a real chore.

So the next time you’re reading one of our track tests on the site, in the magazine, or watching on YouTube, I invite you to take a few extra moments to look over the whole list and let your mind wander. What other trends can you spot among those numbers?

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