It's fast
Registered User
Joined: Jul 2009
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Same feeling. It's not a race car.
Joined: May 2002
Posts: 19,734
Likes: 247
It's more racecar than street car, compared to everything else out there.
Massive aero
Things hanging off the car in all directions
R-compound tires
Spring rates that will rattle your teeth
It doesn't have a cage and it has creature comforts (available) but it's hardly street-friendly. Too rough, too focused, too prone to self destructing its protuberances, etc, etc.
Of course it's still more street car than race car - it's road legal, which automatically means a ton of compromises - but it is far and away the least compromised mass-produced readily available track-focused car in North America right now (by a long shot).
Massive aero
Things hanging off the car in all directions
R-compound tires
Spring rates that will rattle your teeth
It doesn't have a cage and it has creature comforts (available) but it's hardly street-friendly. Too rough, too focused, too prone to self destructing its protuberances, etc, etc.
Of course it's still more street car than race car - it's road legal, which automatically means a ton of compromises - but it is far and away the least compromised mass-produced readily available track-focused car in North America right now (by a long shot).
Community Organizer
Joined: Mar 2011
Posts: 4,057
Likes: 14
Hmm the article says nothing about R compound tires.
http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires....del=Ecsta+V720
this is the tire in question which seems to be a 200tw tire. yes the new street tires performance has closed that gap from R comps. this is quite impressive to say the least.
**EDIT**
http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires....Ecsta+V720+ACR
i guess its not the same? it has its own listing for the ACR. But still dubbed as 200. thats weird indeed.
http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires....del=Ecsta+V720
this is the tire in question which seems to be a 200tw tire. yes the new street tires performance has closed that gap from R comps. this is quite impressive to say the least.
**EDIT**
http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires....Ecsta+V720+ACR
i guess its not the same? it has its own listing for the ACR. But still dubbed as 200. thats weird indeed.
Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 6,281
Likes: 119
Before I can explain my position, it would help for me to establish the meaning of a couple of terms of art that will be bandied about.
When I say "production racecar" I mean honest to God production cars turned racecars. I do NOT consider the following to be production racecars:
No, when I say "production racecar," I'm referring to:
The idea here is that if it just looks like a production car but it's really a tube frame car or whatnot underneath, that's not a production racecar. That's just a racecar that looks like a car that was also produced by a manufacturer. It seems evident to me that the whole idea behind production racecars is that you take a car that was literally a road car and turn into a racecar, roadcar compromises and all. A clean sheet racecar build would never end up with the thousands of compromises that all road cars have baked into them, so the whole idea is that you're building a flawed racecar. It's boxing vs. MMA. Just the same way that boxing is a gentlemen's sport where both parties agree to do battle in a limited way to see who is the best at that specific thing (rather than the broad task of hurting someone by any means necessary), road racing production cars means that you're all starting with similar flaws and agreeing to enhance the production car to a similar degree of modification. You all have probably heard me complain before about the Grand AM RX8s racing against 911 Cup Cars. I'm sorry, but if you need to build a clean-sheet tube frame car in order to be competitive with a modified production car, you're racing in the wrong class.
Again, racing production cars is about taking a car and working around its flaws in order to build a competitive racing package. When production cars get morphed into something that is too far from the original, it raises the question, "Why not just race a formula car or a prototype car?"
In the world of production car racing, there are various degrees to which a car is modified. Granted, there are exceptions to what I'm about to outline, but for the most part, it holds true. You have on one end of the spectrum your entry-level classes, such as GT4. GT4 cars are road going cars that have a cage, race seats, fire suppression and other safety gear, but typically have a production engine that is either stock or with some bolt-ons and the only real modifications are for longevity, no underbody aero system, often some portion of the interior is retained, and the wheels still have lug nuts. The Gt4 class is also typified by amateurish drivers (up a and coming racers and rich guys), but I'm more focused on the spec of the cars. They don't have crazy ducting and big heat extractor hoods, etc. A more or less equivalent class of cars would by 911 Cup Cars, the Grand Am (I forget what they're actually called now) Mustangs like Billy races, and the World Challenge GTS cars. In short, these are not crazy modified cars, though they're still racecars, through and through.
Then you have GT3 cars and the World Challenge GT cars. These cars rely much more on a complete aero package, they are wider than stock, their suspension configurations are stock (usually except for weak sauce homologation cry baby cars), the pickup points may be slightly adjusted, the engines are heavily modified, sequential transmissions, all of the suspension bushings are replaced with spherical bearings, you have huge brakes, extreme roll cages, any part that can be removed from the chassis is replaced with a lighter equivalent, kevlar wheel well liners, center lock wheels, etc. These are extremely modified production cars. They cost a fortune to develop and run.
Then you have GT2 and FIA GTE cars, which are more extreme than GT3 cars. They usually have a similar recipe as above, they're just wider, less suspension travel, more extreme aero, etc. These cars are monumentally expensive.
Then you have GT1 (this class doesn't really exist any more since GT2 cars became so hardcore). Crazy power, crazy wide, everything is turned up to 11. Still production cars, but modified to an extreme degree. This class would feature the most extreme versions of Corvettes, but, perhaps more telling, it also features racing versions of the Maserati MC12, Saleen S7s, etc. In other words, the lines were blurred between production car and prototype. This class was extremely expensive. I watched a Discovery channel doc about 10 years ago that spoke briefly of computational fluid dynamics. In this doc, they interviewed a Corvette Racing engineer who said that by switching to CFD rather than using trial and error in the wind tunnel, they shaved two million dollars off of the program for developing the radiator ducting. That's right, the freaking radiator ducting was a multi-million dollar program. Also telling of this class is that Porsche did not race in it. The 911 can be competitive in the 500 hp-ish world, but they simply don't have an engine program that can race at 650 hp.
The point in all of this is that even the lowest spec production racecar class that I can think of (aside from amateur racing) still features cars that are more modified than the Viper ACR. Could the Viper ACR run similar lap times? Maybe, but I don't think it would be remotely competitive over the course of a multi-hour race on track with a field of GT4 cars.
But even more to the point, racing classes are dictated not by performance, per se, rather by the degree to which the vehicle is tuned or modified. So, it can be said that what makes a production a race car is the inclusion of necessary race bits, not just outright performance. For instance, if you take a Porsche 911 GT3 RSR and swap a Honda Civic
If the ACR is a racecar, than so too is the 911 GT3, the Mustang GT350r or any other car that has hardcore suspension, and racecar-like aero bits. I don't think you can argue that just because the Viper is faster that that makes it more of a racecar. By that logic, the Enzo is definitely a racecar compared to, say, a C5 Z06. That does not compute. They're both production cars. One is simply a more extreme and hardcore production car.
But the best argument against the ACR being a race car is that Dodge has actually built numerous Viper racecars. For instance, in the mid 2000s they sold the Viper Competition Coupe. That was a racecar. Then, when they sold the 4th gen ACR, they also built and sold the Viper ACR X. That too was a racecar. The new ACR is a street car with SOME hardcore race parts. But it still has a production car's fuel system, airbags, a full interior, no cage, and aside form the damper mount, it has normal production car bushings.
Now, I don't care if we want to talk hyperbolicly about how it's a racecar for the street. But I take umbrage to the idea that it is somehow not a legitimate track time setter because it's "actually" a racecar. It isn't.
When I say "production racecar" I mean honest to God production cars turned racecars. I do NOT consider the following to be production racecars:
- DTM, NASCAR, Australian Super Cars, the tube frameMazda RX8s that ran in Grand Am a few years ago, or any other silhouette cars that merely bear a passing resemblance to their production counterparts.
- JGTC/Super GT or modern BTTC cars, both of which use just the cab section of the original car's chassis and tube frame replacements of the front and rear bulkheads / suspension assemblies are added.
- "Racey" kit cars and (e.g. the Ariel Atom, Radicals, Caterham 7s).
- Dedicated track cars that can't be driven on the streets or for which there is no street version (e.g. Ginetta G50, the tube frame Panoz Esperantes, Lotus 211).
No, when I say "production racecar," I'm referring to:
- Actual production cars that privateers build into racecars (e.g. Billy's Time Attack NSX, LG Motorsports' ALMS GT2 Corvette, your buddy's Miata that he built into a time trial car).
- Body-in-white racecars that are made from production cars only the manufacturer builds them in-house (e.g. 997 911 GT3 RSR, E46 BMW M3 GT-R) or through a partnership with an outside vendor (e.g. Aston Martin DB9R which was racecar-ified by Prodrive), but they are nevertheless a turnkey racecar that serve as a works program or customers can buy them.
The idea here is that if it just looks like a production car but it's really a tube frame car or whatnot underneath, that's not a production racecar. That's just a racecar that looks like a car that was also produced by a manufacturer. It seems evident to me that the whole idea behind production racecars is that you take a car that was literally a road car and turn into a racecar, roadcar compromises and all. A clean sheet racecar build would never end up with the thousands of compromises that all road cars have baked into them, so the whole idea is that you're building a flawed racecar. It's boxing vs. MMA. Just the same way that boxing is a gentlemen's sport where both parties agree to do battle in a limited way to see who is the best at that specific thing (rather than the broad task of hurting someone by any means necessary), road racing production cars means that you're all starting with similar flaws and agreeing to enhance the production car to a similar degree of modification. You all have probably heard me complain before about the Grand AM RX8s racing against 911 Cup Cars. I'm sorry, but if you need to build a clean-sheet tube frame car in order to be competitive with a modified production car, you're racing in the wrong class.
Again, racing production cars is about taking a car and working around its flaws in order to build a competitive racing package. When production cars get morphed into something that is too far from the original, it raises the question, "Why not just race a formula car or a prototype car?"
In the world of production car racing, there are various degrees to which a car is modified. Granted, there are exceptions to what I'm about to outline, but for the most part, it holds true. You have on one end of the spectrum your entry-level classes, such as GT4. GT4 cars are road going cars that have a cage, race seats, fire suppression and other safety gear, but typically have a production engine that is either stock or with some bolt-ons and the only real modifications are for longevity, no underbody aero system, often some portion of the interior is retained, and the wheels still have lug nuts. The Gt4 class is also typified by amateurish drivers (up a and coming racers and rich guys), but I'm more focused on the spec of the cars. They don't have crazy ducting and big heat extractor hoods, etc. A more or less equivalent class of cars would by 911 Cup Cars, the Grand Am (I forget what they're actually called now) Mustangs like Billy races, and the World Challenge GTS cars. In short, these are not crazy modified cars, though they're still racecars, through and through.
Then you have GT3 cars and the World Challenge GT cars. These cars rely much more on a complete aero package, they are wider than stock, their suspension configurations are stock (usually except for weak sauce homologation cry baby cars), the pickup points may be slightly adjusted, the engines are heavily modified, sequential transmissions, all of the suspension bushings are replaced with spherical bearings, you have huge brakes, extreme roll cages, any part that can be removed from the chassis is replaced with a lighter equivalent, kevlar wheel well liners, center lock wheels, etc. These are extremely modified production cars. They cost a fortune to develop and run.
Then you have GT2 and FIA GTE cars, which are more extreme than GT3 cars. They usually have a similar recipe as above, they're just wider, less suspension travel, more extreme aero, etc. These cars are monumentally expensive.
Then you have GT1 (this class doesn't really exist any more since GT2 cars became so hardcore). Crazy power, crazy wide, everything is turned up to 11. Still production cars, but modified to an extreme degree. This class would feature the most extreme versions of Corvettes, but, perhaps more telling, it also features racing versions of the Maserati MC12, Saleen S7s, etc. In other words, the lines were blurred between production car and prototype. This class was extremely expensive. I watched a Discovery channel doc about 10 years ago that spoke briefly of computational fluid dynamics. In this doc, they interviewed a Corvette Racing engineer who said that by switching to CFD rather than using trial and error in the wind tunnel, they shaved two million dollars off of the program for developing the radiator ducting. That's right, the freaking radiator ducting was a multi-million dollar program. Also telling of this class is that Porsche did not race in it. The 911 can be competitive in the 500 hp-ish world, but they simply don't have an engine program that can race at 650 hp.
The point in all of this is that even the lowest spec production racecar class that I can think of (aside from amateur racing) still features cars that are more modified than the Viper ACR. Could the Viper ACR run similar lap times? Maybe, but I don't think it would be remotely competitive over the course of a multi-hour race on track with a field of GT4 cars.
But even more to the point, racing classes are dictated not by performance, per se, rather by the degree to which the vehicle is tuned or modified. So, it can be said that what makes a production a race car is the inclusion of necessary race bits, not just outright performance. For instance, if you take a Porsche 911 GT3 RSR and swap a Honda Civic
If the ACR is a racecar, than so too is the 911 GT3, the Mustang GT350r or any other car that has hardcore suspension, and racecar-like aero bits. I don't think you can argue that just because the Viper is faster that that makes it more of a racecar. By that logic, the Enzo is definitely a racecar compared to, say, a C5 Z06. That does not compute. They're both production cars. One is simply a more extreme and hardcore production car.
But the best argument against the ACR being a race car is that Dodge has actually built numerous Viper racecars. For instance, in the mid 2000s they sold the Viper Competition Coupe. That was a racecar. Then, when they sold the 4th gen ACR, they also built and sold the Viper ACR X. That too was a racecar. The new ACR is a street car with SOME hardcore race parts. But it still has a production car's fuel system, airbags, a full interior, no cage, and aside form the damper mount, it has normal production car bushings.
Now, I don't care if we want to talk hyperbolicly about how it's a racecar for the street. But I take umbrage to the idea that it is somehow not a legitimate track time setter because it's "actually" a racecar. It isn't.
Joined: May 2002
Posts: 19,734
Likes: 247
I don't think anyone is saying it's a racecar. All we're saying is that it's so far over the top compared to everything else that it's no longer much of a streetcar. See the distinction?
Try driving that car with springs that stiff, with aero that crazy, etc, on the street. You might as well admit that you're trying to destroy your own car if you drive it on anything other than an open parking lot that was just paved.
They did to this car what every amateur road racer does to his racecar: added aero, sticky tires and upgraded brakes while removing (optionally) unnecessary weight. This car, aside from not having a cage, just needs a stripped interior to be "equivalent" to some racecars at the local level.
Try driving that car with springs that stiff, with aero that crazy, etc, on the street. You might as well admit that you're trying to destroy your own car if you drive it on anything other than an open parking lot that was just paved.
They did to this car what every amateur road racer does to his racecar: added aero, sticky tires and upgraded brakes while removing (optionally) unnecessary weight. This car, aside from not having a cage, just needs a stripped interior to be "equivalent" to some racecars at the local level.
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Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 7,485
Likes: 21
Most production street/sports cars don't have aero to this level. Even GT3RS 4.0 and 991 GT3RS don't and those are about the most hardcore mass production sports cars out there that compete with Viper. I bet the lap times are faster in this new car than the previous gen ACR-X race car and certainly the couple gen old Competition coupe. Besides safety items (cage, harness, fire system) you could strip this car and go W2W racing.