I posted this in the other thread so I will quote it here as well:
Quote:
|
I had a semi-lengthy chat with Dave (Whitener?) about the CS/DS move and the future of the ND Miata in CS. It was a little disheartening to see that the ND Miata really is that much faster than a TRD FR-S and from the discussion I had with him it sounds like they're going to leave the Miata right there as a class killer and move the non TRD cars down to DS. I don't think the gap between the TRD and non-TRDs is anywhere near as large as people have been making it out to be though. The ND Miatas were matching/beating AS and BS times which is just crazy and even if I don't run against an ND locally I still run PAX and will have to play with their index. Next year is going to be tough sledding if you run a twin in CS it seems.
|
Now, I'm looking over the results and they're not pretty. They're not pretty at all. Our direct comparison (or at least the best we have) is the East course since everyone in AS, BS, CS, and DS got dry runs on the East (BTW AS, BS, and DS had a more rubbered in course and the same or better conditions). The West course we can't really draw anything but if you want to look at CSL and what % they are off of CS you can see that the times would have likely been very good.
So... East course (1st-5th places):
AS top times - 61.937, 62.464, 62.531, 62.639, 62.692.
BS top times - 63.004, 63.125, 63.364, 63.484, 63.517.
CS top times - 62.469, 62.622, 62.699, 63.024, 63.077 (Ogburn).
DS top times - 64.058, 64.388, 64.698, 64.709, 64.864.
And just so we're open about all the information...
"Non-David-Ogburn" FR-S/BRZ top times - 64.052, 64.069, 64.162, etc. etc. (first BRZ is 64.389 and second is 64.544). Keep in mind though that a lot of the fastest drivers are all in FR-S' since everyone bailed on the BRZ. Ogburn has shown now in back-to-back years that he's a full second ahead of the rest of the crowd in the FR-S.
A couple of things we can conclude here... The ND Miata would have been 1st-3rd in BS just on East Course times. And that's not even the course where they would have excelled the best since the West course was tighter. The ND Miata would have also been 5/1000ths out of 2nd place in AS on the East course. AS ran in heat 3 just 40 minutes after CS so the conditions were about as close to similar as they can get. That's a pretty damn strong showing.
The FR-S/BRZ would have been really strong, and probably taken several of the top spots, in DS. How strong would it be in non-TRD form? Tough to say but since most of the good CS drivers are running TRD the only comparison points are and Steven Berrodin and Brian Priebe.