Test Drie Tuesday - McLaren MP4-28

Honestly, I had bought this as soon as it came out that it was the TDT car this week! I've been waiting for a modern F1 car for some time on Simraceway (affordably anyway), and I was not at all disappointed with my purchase!

Being an F1 car, there's not much to say about its performance other than it being completely fantastic. Stability, speed, braking are all superb, as you'd probably expect from the pinnacle of motorsport. It does take a while getting used to the sheer pace of the machine, but once you get to grips with it, the pace is fantastic. The only car that comes in comparison is the 1988 McLaren MP4/4 which we did a few weeks back. Despite being 25 years older, the MP4/4 is surprisingly on the pace of the MP4-28, but still the advances show, with the MP4-28 being faster on more of the tracks.

The mechanical perfection of the F1 car makes it very difficult to talk to about. You point it in a given directions and so long as you can keep it bolted down on braking or accelerating - thats where it goes. It all then boils down to just how aggressive you can be without losing control. I tried a 30 minute time trial at Silverstone. The fastest time was 1:32.0 which is roughly on par with pole at the 2013 F1 Silverstone GP. At that race, the 107% time was ~1:37.6 and I managed a time of 1:36 - so I would have made the grid but not well!

I've included the full track day on my youtube channel. That and the hotlap and crashes videos are below too:

Hotlaps Table

There! I've finally come up with a decent way of keeping the lap times updated for the cars I test on the Test Drive Tuesday. I've created a page to table up the lap times, you can get there from the tab at the top of the page - check it out! The videos of the hotlaps are available on my Youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/hibblejaybob.

Simraceway Hotlaps - John Cooper Works - Cooper

So, after deciding to start a lap time leaderboard, I've set out with the first car on the board, the John Cooper Works Mini Cooper. I actually own a Mini One, so I have some real life experience with this (albeit NOT racing) car, and the Simraceway version feels pretty accurate. I didn't have long to do all the tracks, so some of the laps were recorded with mistakes in them and could be improved - I'll leave that to another day though!

The best times is set are below and you can watch the hotlaps in the video below too:
Daytona:             1m01.375
Bristol:                20.57
Martinsville:       27.724
Watkins Glen:     2m23.346
Laguna Seca:      1m49.416
Longstone Pass:  2m28.717