Somewhere I read “All Porsches are Race Cars” Well I dont know about the new Cayenne but for sure the Porsche 911 has won more circuit races than any other model of car I can think of. How would our’s fair on it’s maiden voyage to BeaverRun?
Since I was instructing I did not bring my cameras for documentation purposes but we’ll be at the track again soon and will be taking stills and video for this blog.
Engine:
Initial impressions were that for an old 3.4L normally aspirated engine this car still has a lot of grunt. At around 4000 RPM the variable cam timing kicks in and it really starts to pull. The motor goes strong to redline with no indication that it was running out of breath. So the engine passes the “new car test” … no leaks, rattles or tapping from the 8 year old flat 6.
Brakes:
“Houston we have a problem.” Not so much the brake system but the pads. Fade started around the 5 lap mark and then got progressively worse until I realized exactly what was happening. The pads on the car had not been changed and evidently they were not a “sport” compound at all. In subsequent sessions I began to “breathe” the brakes by lifting once going into the heavier braking zones. This helped quite a bit and the pads held up for the rest of the day. A good set of Hawks or Carbotechs are definately on the “To Do” list. On a positive note, I have driven many German cars with Bosch ABS. I have never liked any of them, until now. Usually the ABS activates and does not continue to slow the car and does not return braking control to the driver for far too long. This Porsche on the other hand has ABS I can live with. Once activated it would immediately shut off if I released any brake pressure at all, and when I simply stomped on the peddle it did a great job of threshold braking itself, with tires chirping for mercy as the system instantaneously computed the limits of adhesion. Well done Porsche!
Suspension:
In a word, impressive. This was afterall not H&R’s true track suspension and certainly no racing suspension, however the H&R suspension was more than capable of handling most of what I threw at it. Getting to know this new car meant I was no where near the limit and was basically just trying to understand the dynamics and get a good feel for the car’s balance. All in all the supension was quite capable of contolling the car in both the slower chicane, the tight hairpin and showed no signs of wandering or float at speeds over 100mph. There was a bit more understeer than I like but that is to be expected for the stock sway bars and the narrow front tires we had on. (225)
