jonb- wrote:skinthespin wrote:I think I disagree with most of the things on here! I have a rev3 turbo track car and have been on track with other race NA's and have been much quicker than them, even though my car is 200kg heavier.
The turbo isnt all about straight line speed at all, but its harder to drive fast, which makes it
(IMO) more challenging and therefore more rewarding, if I want somehting easy to drive fast i'll get an imprezza or some hot hatch.
Turbos are not tempremental either, I have done 30+ trackdays in mine and even though its running over 300bhp its NEVER broken, these cars are as tough as NA's easily, the bad thing about them is there easy to modify badly, if that makes sense, so people wind up the boost without thinking about the cooling or fuelling
- then slag them off when they put a hole in a piston, I know other track based turbos that are equally as tough as mine too, so mines not a freak of nature!
I have taken several Mk1 owners out in mine and the general comments that come back are not those concerning straightline speed but the cornering ability, the usual comment being
"I thought MK2's handled badly?"!!!!
I think the Mk2
(while not as good as a Mk1 or Mk3) is an underrated car, especially the turbo because people are plain scared of it.
Unsurprisingly I agree with all of this.
Having owned and tracked both an NA and a tubby i can tell you I enjoy the tubby way more than the NA on a country blast.
The NA doesn't have the power to upset the rear a lot of the time so isn't that exciting to drive imo, where as the tubby you can pretty much do what you want with if you know how to time boost etc.
In short, if you
think you can drive you'll probably have more fun in an NA, if you can actually drive get yourself a tubby and enjoy the extra power.
Both you guys run turbos that have been modified for track use though.
I very much doubt your on stock wheels, suspensions, alignment settings.
Your cars have taken work to get them to behave how you want, to make that power useable and you are very regular experienced track drivers.
n/a's don't stretch the chassis and so are easier to drive as you say, this can easily be argued makes them a
"better" car.
Your quite right a good driver can find a pushed chassis more fun as its more difficult, but the majority of people are not good drivers.
I always say i'm an average driver as I don't really do sliding the car
(my mx5) about except a bit of power oversteer to adjust lines on track, lift off oversteer I always have trouble with, my big let down.
Yet on the last trackday I went on the only car that was lapping at a compariable speed was an R400 Caterham, in fact i was still able to stick to his bumper lap after lap so even he wasn't much quicker.
Only other things that were even close were a pair of Aerial Atoms but I still pulled slowly away from them, I obliterated the EVO's, Scoobys, regular Caterhams, M3's, 205's, 200sx, VX220, Exige, Elises etc.
Why was I so quick?
Answer because the cars a piece of p1$$ to drive on the limit, its a fantastic car and the powerlevel is perfect for the chassis.
If I tuned it up to say 290bhp then i'd spend the whole time partial throttle balancing getting the power, down it'd become a handful.
This would make the car not as good, it'd make it harder to drive.
This is how I think about the n/a and tubby MR2, ones got it about right, the other shows up its problems and unless your a good driver that finds that fun then the n/a is better.
Its a more regular driver friendly car, just look at the number of people on this site that have binned a turbo
(always on ice or diesel of course).