GM is making some good stuff lately.

[Hunter]

Like Channing said, tires are always viewed as part of the car in these tests, but as enthusiasts, we know the tires have a huge effect on a cars performance and they are changed frequently during the life of a car. How many of us run the stock tires when we're on the track?

My point being, if you are going to treat the comparison as one for car enthusiasts, rent out a track for a weekend, use professional drivers, break lap times broken down by sections, and compare the times to the tenth of a second, why not fix the variable that could make a 5+ second difference in lap times? I'm sure someone would love the free publicity of making their tire the official car and driver test tire.

I just think the car makers design and build the car, not the tire, and I'd love to see tests that reflect that without a hidden tire test built in.


edit: I just noticed they actually aren't professional drivers, which would make me want to develop some kind of driver correction formula that compares times in similar cars, then weights the time obtained by a particular driver in a particular car. Maybe break it down by FWD, RWD, AWD, high power, low power, heavy, light, etc. You could even find a probability of a time being the fastest time that car was capable of that day!

Whoa... I blacked out... the nerdy side took over... sorry about that.