Plaid vs Taycan Turbo S; this is gonna be fun!

[JeffKeryk]

Plaid vs Taycan Turbo S the Plaid has aftermarket front brakes to help with the horribly underpowered stockers....
Tesla is coming out with an even better brake upgrade, for a measly $20K. Ha!
Unplugged Performance is the Tesla tuner company.

Both these cars are for people with too much money, but the competition will be fun.

 

[Audiman]

Was the Taycan time set by a professional driver or not? I’m not too bothered about the brake upgrade but a driver can make massive difference to a lap time. If both were professional then the 4.5 seconds faster is quite impressive.

 

[Job]

The article does say the Tesla was driven by a professional, and the times were compared to the 2021 car and driver lap time with the stock Porsche. Just to lighten up the rose colored tint a hair. From total blinding rose color to a medium light.

 

[JeffKeryk]

Was the Taycan time set by a professional driver or not? I’m not too bothered about the brake upgrade but a driver can make massive difference to a lap time. If both were professional then the 4.5 seconds faster is quite impressive.

C&D uses professional drivers...
What's amazing to me is these 2 cars place in BMW M5 Competition and Mercedes-AMG E63 S territory. It don't get much better...
Lightning Lap Times

I would like to see a Model 3 Performance on a track like this. They do very well at Nurburgring. I think the Model 3 is about 1,000 pounds lighter than the Taycan but has much less power.

 

[OVERKILL]

Was the Taycan time set by a professional driver or not? I’m not too bothered about the brake upgrade but a driver can make massive difference to a lap time. If both were professional then the 4.5 seconds faster is quite impressive.

No, according to Car and Driver:

To create classes, we grouped the cars into five price segments (LL1 to LL5) that we've adjusted over the years for inflation. To make it fair, we chose to run cars the way a customer can buy them. Occasionally, that includes dealer accessories, but any performance extras you'd need to re-create our times are added into what we call the Lightning Lap base price. That first year, we brought 17 cars and four drivers—all four with racing experience—and achieved quick laps without mangling any machinery. We could've used a pro driver, but then we wouldn't be able to provide first-hand experience and dissection of the cars.

This year we spread 21 cars over five drivers—three of whom were on staff in 2006, though not driving in that first year. As always, if there's a vehicle missing from the group, either we've already tested it or the carmaker couldn't supply a car or didn't want to play. Some carmakers like to play, though, and this year there were at least 20 people from car and tire manufacturers replacing tires and making sure their entries were performing at their best.

So the drivers are all C&D Staff that have some racing experience, but none are professional drivers.

The above is from here:
https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a38955362/lightning-lap-2022/

 

[bullwinkle]

That was a pretty amazing run-would like to see what difference racing tires would have made, the Michelins were howling in pain on EVERY TURN!

 

[JeffKeryk]

That was a pretty amazing run-would like to see what difference racing tires would have made, the Michelins were howling in pain on EVERY TURN!

Both the Plaid and Taycan are amazing. The point of the Lightning Lap is to demonstrate how cars we can buy run.
Well, not sure if "we" can actually buy these cars, but....
Maybe put Michelin Pilot Sports 4S on the Taycan Turbo S instead of the Pirellis and see if it picks up a little time?
Ya never know!

 

[Audiman]

I would be very interested to see both cars run back to back with the same professional driver. Try and get it as even as possible to get an out right winner.

 

[OVERKILL]

I would be very interested to see both cars run back to back with the same professional driver. Try and get it as even as possible to get an out right winner.

Same here.

 

[JeffKeryk]

According to the Taycan article, the Taycan was incredibly consistant between runs. Porsche brought 2 cars, but didn't need the spare.
These cars blast out of the turns

 

[Cujet]

I know I’ve said this before, but man o man, EV’s are fun on the track. It really is silly to exclaim the absense of engine noise as critical.

For those who don't race, know that it takes supercar like performance or a dedicated race car to significantly beat EV lap times.

Now to manage Battery temps.

 

[Spyderman24_7]

I don't have a dog in the fight, but I'd easily choose Porsche design/build quality/performance over pretty much anything made regardless of price, notoriety, etc. For those that can stomach most of Tesla design more power to you.

 

[HemiBenny]

That’s an impressive run. His day almost got ruined at the 1:00 minute mark in the video.