at the beginning of the year, krazykarim co-drove my car and since we won the first event, we decided to run it this year to see if we could take the class from a driver with 30+ years experience in a lingen felter c4 vette. my car was down at the last event, so we drove different cars still in sm2, and stayed competitve for the points.

today, my car is still down, but should be back up in a few days, so we drove his new s2000. 400 miles on the clock. just got it tuesday night. i wasnt quite sure what to expect, but it was quite a bit of fun. it wasnt quite the handful the is300 i drove last month was, but still requires a lot of attention.

the stock bridgestone re050's suck. the front tires would overheat and lose grip after 4 turns. the back end would come out, but that was with a lot of effort. for the most part, the car communicated very well that it wanted to be handled smoothly. by the end of the day, i was running over the flat spots of the pylons.

for a torqueless wonder, it surprised me with its ability to be able to pull itself out of a slow corner. vtec really didnt feel like a sudden kick in the crotch like its always been decsribed. the car rewards the slow in fast out greatly. its kind of a tough car to get used to with no prior experience, but very predictable.

i had a chance to get in and pilot an 01 s2000 for one run. that was great to be able to see the differences. the early model was a completly different beast. while the ap2 liked slow in fast out, the ap1 rewarded heavy throttle. its tough to find 10/10's, but when you get there you can clearly see the difference. the ap1 has a much stiffer suspension and has a tendency to go from lots of understeer to snap oversteer. nothing like the mr-s, but it does snap. i believe my mr-s experience helped out a lot controlling that. but then, it was still very predictable and easy to correct.

one run, karim forgot to turn off traction control, (06 is the first year to be equipped with such.) and got his best clean run of the day. only 2.8 seconds off the lingen felter vette we're chasing. so i thought, what the hell, it could be interesting to see how the traction control works on this one.

my next run, i abused the car throwing it violently into the first hard right staying hard on the throttle. traction control took out some throttle (06 has fly by wire) and added a minor amount of brakes to help control the slide. the sytem was desinged on the nsx, and its not very intrusive at all. in fact, it showed where you were not being smooth enough and helped you to get back in line. this run ended up being my fastest run of the day.

all in all, it was great to be able to test drive an s2000 in the environment it was designed for. i can see why there is so much hype that follows this car. what i dont see is why all these fan boi's need to rave about the vtec. its not that awesome... just more noise. but i can see why one would consider it. for $30000, its a steal. but its no mr-s. Wink

thanks karim for letting me drive your car!

 

Let's see, knowing Karim:

1) Tire pressure was never checked.

2) The car hasn't been aligned

 

tire pressure was checked, and no alingment... youre only half right! lol

 

If you had more seat time, do you think you could have done better with traction control off?

I'm curious cause I didn't buy an 06 thinking I wouldn't need TC.

 

definetly. my biggest hurdle was getting used to the car. the traction control was quite helpful to see where i could improve. with it off, there is more room to use a little more throttle. traction control is amazing on this car. if i had more seat time, i dont think it would have been so instrumental.

 

fwiw my best time was with the VSA off and it was over 1.5 secs faster than with the VSA on Unfortunatly I tapped a cone that run too

 

Good feedback! I was going to buy an 06 but saved quite a bit buying a used 05...been wondering if I had missed out not buying one with TC.

I notice this difference from my old AP1.