Do you like vintage muscle cars? Are looking for a way to kill time during the week? Now you can help out with testing for the Trans Am spec by participating in an easy hot lap competition.
The Hot Lap competition will be running for the next 4-6 weeks or until the Trans Am series officially starts (whichever comes first).
The eligible cars are any that can meet the Trans Am spec:
Trans Am SpecThe "competition" will be taking place on two tracks:
Watkins Glen Short Alt
Sonoma GP
You can submit times for either track at any time, with any eligible car.
The competition starts now!!
To submit a time click this link:
Hot Lap linkOnce we've got a few entries I'll work on getting a nice leaderboard setup for each track and best combined time for both.
Comments
Started with the Camaro Z28 and a powerful but balanced build.
Ran 10 laps of each track to find my best times.
Each subsequent car was run for six laps to attempt to beat the Camaros times.
Each subsequent car finished within 1 second on each track.
My assessment; the class is balanced so far.
I'm running 1:18s @ Watkins, and 1:46s at Sonoma.
Generally all cars are running full aero tires in the 245-265 range and a build that tries to get them as close to the spec limitations as possible.
All the cars could probably get a little faster with optimized tunes.
Notes:
The Z28, Rebel, Cougar, GTO, Vette seemed the easiest to drive YMMV.
The Boss 302 is just maxed out. It should put up numbers similar to the Z28 but I think the lack of torque is really hurting it.
Looking at the data of the top 5 fastest cars none of them have exceptional stats. About the only generalization you can make is that they have slightly above average handling and braking.
The Charger Daytona has the best stats in three categories but it's times are not very impressive. I think it's because of the weird aero on the car. I might try a non aero build.
Best times:
Watkins Glen Short Alt - 77.125s AMC Rebel "The Machine"
Sonoma GP - 103.784s Chevelle Super Sport 454 (miracle lap?)
Worst Times:
Watkins Glen Short Alt - 78.233s Buick GSX
Sonoma GP - 105.451s Mustang Mach 1
Google docs link to the raw data:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IA7LAuOzveGffacLP87qgDXwn7LFPovxEZjhmamcLRc/pubhtml?gid=284405172&single=true
Times in red are one std deviation too fast and green are one std deviation too slow. Yellow and blue indicate min and max values in a column.
No cars fell outside of the second std deviation on either track.
http://www.racingsportscars.com/results/Watkins_Glen-1971-08-15.html
When looking at an old Watkins Glen map it seemslike the Short Alt course is the same as the course that they ran in the 1971 Trans Am race.
Bud Moore ran 1:18.196 there in 1971. Pretty close to the times we've seen in testing.