It's made its way across a few car forums (click here, here, and here), and the various viewpoints can be summarized to two polarized camps:
"Baritchi can't drive! The sawing at the wheel invalidates Baritchi's whole test. I could have done better than that!"
"Baritchi put his neck on the line and provided us with an honest, informative test. If you can do a better job, please, by all means..."
What amuses me is how the first camp totally missed the point. Let's analyze the first camp further. The first camp can actually sub-divited into two groups:
The clueless expert(TM). These the folks that will speak authoritatively on any subject whether they are cognitively equipped to or not. I'm mainly referring to those who've never lapped a fast car on racetrack outside a Playstation yet decied to critique my driving and/or test.
The professional. For example, American Le Mans Series professional road racer Lou Gigliotti, who critiqued my driving in the aforementioned Corvetteforum thread. Yet when it all is said and done, Lou's own testing agrees with mine. Hmm...
Some of these responders apparently hyperfocused on critiquing my driving but forgot the basic premise of my test.
To quote Road & Track again: Millen...drifting beautifully onto the main straight each lap. Allow me to spell it out more succinctly. R&T is quoted as saying their hired gun is drifting every lap. Drifting is slow. Drifting is even slower if you've got anti-drifting nannies turned on.
I was re-creating the R&T/Millen testing scenario, occasional slides and all, with one variable added: stability nannies toggled on and off. The goal was exactly what I stated: to see *if* the production Z06 nannies hurt your lap times or not. I successfully proved that they do. Lou himself said there is no such thing as a perfect lap. Since we all agree that every lap will have mistakes, and we also agree that the production car nannies hurt your ability to respond to such mistakes, the aggregate finding is they do slow you down. Q.E.D. Thank you drive through.
Finally, to Lou: nothin but love for ya too bro. If you do 21s in a totally stock Z and I'm at low 23s then I'd love to see what I could learn from you. I'll provide the car, video and timing equipment, if you'd like to join me at the MSR or TWS sometime and give me some pointers in real life. And see the difference in skill between a weekend track warrior like me and an accomplished pro racer. Maybe we could even get some telemetry.
Cheers,
Andi
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