Quote:
Originally Posted by 3798j
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That's interesting.
Recently I was in a discussion on the Corvette forums about the C7's Nurburgring time, about how the C7 Grand Sport basically matched the previous generation ZR1's lap time, and someone pointed out to me it was ALL due to the tires.
Sure enough, with some digging around, the ZR1 lap time was done on Michelin Pilot Sport 2s, a 4 generation older tire, than the times achieved on the Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2s that were accomplished by the C7 Grand Sport. As I dug deeper, the ZR1 actually was about 10 seconds faster on previous generation Michelin Pilot Cup 1 tires on Nurburgring.
If you look at the data, it would suggest to me, that the new Z4 is likely running on Michelin Pilot Sport 4s, which would account for the 6 second advantage on the ring over what likely was a lap time established on Micheline Pilot Super Sports on the M2.
BMW never published the MZ4 Coupe's official Nurburgring time, but they have shown that the MZ4 Roadster lapped at 8:12. IF you want to extrapolate, you can easily assume that the Michelin Pilot Sports 4s are easily 10-12 seconds per lap faster than the OEM Continental ContiSportContact 2s that came on the MZ4 Coupe (even the original Michelin Pilot Sport 2s were several seconds per lap faster on your average road course, much less the 'Ring). That put the MZ4 Coupe's lap time square in the middle of where the new Z4 M40i's lap time and the M2's lap time range, for extrapolation and comparison purposes.
Which makes the new Z4 M40i's time either very impressive, or somewhat disappointing in that almost ALL the time made up are in tires. The higher HP and torque AND 12 years of suspension advancement made zero to little difference in the lap time. They might as well just rebuild the E85/86 and stuff the new engine in it, and slap on some new Michelin PS4s and be done with it.
You can even see it in the data on the video, he was consistently getting 1.4-1.5G of peak lateral grip in some of the turns. That seems consistent with the latest generation of Michelin PS4 and what they can do (which is INSANE, given that the BEST r-comp tires 5-8 years ago were getting less than that in their peak lateral grip). It's gotten to a point where it's useless to compare 'Ring times between production cars of different periods, because tire technology is evolving so insanely quickly that the lap time difference between 2 subsequent generation tires can have THAT big of a difference.