If you owned or drove a stock Supra on the track..
 

Currently own a base gr86 and considering a manual Supra. Car is 75% track duty.


Does a MkV Supra handle better or worse than a stock GR86, asking purely about entry speed and how much of it can carry through a corner. Not asking about lap times or how hard it can accelerate out of a corner if you did slow entry fast exit.


Lets say GR is on the Pilot4s (mine is on Champiro) and Supra is on whatever it comes with from the factory. It is about 700lb heavier, wider tires...maybe higher quality suspension components.. maybe not. I am not sure if the chassis is better or not either. If anyone knows and has experience with both on track please let me know.

Haven't driven one, but:
1) it's going to be somewhat track, corner, and driver dependent
2) No reason to expect that a stiffer chassis with much better weight distribution (51.5/48.5 for the Supra vs. 55/45 for GR86) and a lot more front camber (-1.75* Supra vs. 0* for GR86) and much wider tires (255/275 Supra vs. 215 GR86) should handle any worse than a GR86 on corner entry despite weighing ~550 lb. (not 700 lb) more.

I have driven a pretty much bone stock supra on track quite a few times.

They are great cars, and I would love to own one, but a few compromises I would say:

- Visibility in one is terrible compared to the 86 and the seating space is a bit tricky. I am 5'5" and I am more torso than legs, to get the proper position to reach the pedals and the steering wheel with my helmet on I nearly hit the sun visor.
I suspect if you are tall you would have the opposite problem, so definitely take your helmet and sit in one before buying.

- The wind buffeting is abysmal. Your first mod should be verus wind deflectors if you go out on track.

- The handling is good but the suspension is a bit softly sprung. I have driven it's sister car (the M2 Comp) stock back to back with the Supra and liked the suspension package on the M2 much better. If I owned a Supra (which I do think is still the better of the two because of the weight/low COG) I would definitely be putting a good set of coil overs on it for track use.

- I don't know how hard you drive, but if you plan to tune and turn up some power and drive it hard on sticky tires, I think the car starts to have some cooling problems and you'll want to upgrade that stuff. If you're just lapping/hpde in a cooler climate you should be OK.

No experience with either on track, but I'd also consider consumables like tires, brake pads, etc.

I'd think the Supra would be much more expensive to run as a track car than a GR86. Not sure about your situation, but it might be something to factor in beyond the performance aspects if costs would lead to less time on track.

A little bit confusing here, grip and handling are not the same thing in my world. A car can be fast and grippy but handle like a dog, and vice versa.

The supra is heavier. Nuff said.

3 radiators engine coolant on the Supra; Safe to say, it doesn't have cooling issues on track, even with huge bumps in power!

Yeah that is what I expected, l was wondering how much do bigger tires and maybe better suspension components alleviate the weight issue if any.

Weight is weight. More tire won't remove the weight.

More tire won't remove the weight, but in this case it should more than make up for it in terms of corner entry and min corner speed (and of course Supra will rocket away on corner exit). On similar tire compounds, 3400 lb. with 51.5/48.5 weight distribution on 255/275 tires shouldn't be at any inherent disadvantage to 2840 lb. with 55/45 weight distribution on 4x 215s as far as corner entry or min. corner speed. Especially stock v stock thanks to godawful front camber at ~zero for the FT86 vs. -1.75 for the Supra. Stock v stock on similar-performance tires, my money's on the Supra...

I am a stickler for weight though, and Supra is too heavy for me. Maybe the 2.0, but it's still 3200 lb., and also unsure about all the "BMWness"...

Supra 295 square A052 has less lateral sustained grip than a BRZ on 245 4S.

Setups for both? My money is still on a stock suspension supra on stock tires vs. a stock suspension FT86 on stock tires!

Both well dialed, both on quality dampers, both with aero.

There's just no way to escape the weight.

Weight is not the only thing affecting corner speed. I've looked at minimum corner speeds from the lowest speed corners my club sees and was surprised to see 3300+ lb. big-power cars not giving up a single mph to well setup 2200 lb cars on similar compound tires, despite having to set up the corner for putting power down on exit. I hate heavy cars and love lightweight cars, but I still put my money on a 3400-lb 51.5F/48.5R Supra with -1.75 front camber on 255/275 for corner speed over a 2800-lb 55/45 FT86 with zero front camber on same/similar 215s...

You might want to look at higher resolution data.

The big tires can generate larger spikes, but not sustain the cornering. It's just physics. Or maybe the lighter cars are being underdriven, or taking a different line to preserve momentum. Tons of confounding variables.


Stock tire size vs stock tire size, the Supra will win, but when both cars are upsized to what reasonably fits in the stock body, the Supra just has zero chance. I have an immense amount of data with this specific comparison to back up the observation. Believe me, I'd love for heavier cars to corner harder!


I spend a lot more time in heavier cars than I may talk about here.

I'm not talking about g's, I'm talking about corner minimum speeds. I was actually trying to make the same argument you are, that "lighter is better". It *is*, but after looking at minimum corner speeds for several of the better-driven well-prepped *fast* Miatas and Corvettes in my club at Turn 3 New Hampshire, I was quite surprised at how close they were. Pretty much equal.

What I been sayin...

All depends on what the "rules" are. Stock vs. stock but allowing 295s on the Supra and 245s on the BRZ, my money's still on the better-balanced and front-cambered Supra. Give the BRZ some front camber and I'd bet they're close but nose-heavy BRZ is still going to somewhat overwork its fronts and underutilize rears a bit.

With downforce all bets are off of course. Same amount of downforce on a lighter-weight BRZ should kill...

There's a car locally with all of the upgraded cooling and whatnot and on R7's in TT trim is still overheats after a few laps from what I've heard about it, but it's probably a lot to do with the climate we're in

The setup and tune has a large influence on the heat generated; if he's pushing the ragged edge of the turbo, then he's gonna have big heat problems!