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Caught me off guard - a stock Civic Type R ran a 1:48 at Laguna Seca stock, found it buried in a Grassroots Motorsports forum thread
I always figured you needed coilovers and sticky tires to break 1:50, but that time was on factory rubber. Is it driver skill making the bigger difference or are these new hot hatches just that good out of the box?
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max_hernandez2719d ago
Driver mod is real, those guys just know how to carry speed.
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anna49119d ago
Well I read something similar on a car forum not long ago where a pro driver took a base model Miata around Laguna and beat times people were getting with modified cars. So I do think the factory engineers have gotten really good at dialing in suspension and chassis tuning for these newer hot hatches right from the start. Driver skill still plays a big part, but these cars are genuinely capable off the showroom floor in a way older ones just weren't.
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Friend of mine bought a brand new Type R a couple years back, took it to an autocross event bone stock. He's a decent driver but not a pro by any means. He ended up running faster times than guys in modified WRXs and even a V8 Mustang that had coilovers and race pads. The car just hooked up and rotated so well he didn't have to fight it. @max_hernandez27 is right about driver mod being real, but these newer cars make that mod way easier to pull off. My buddy said the only thing he changed was tire pressure and he was matching times he used to need sticky tires for in his old car. The factory really did the homework on chassis tuning for these things.
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