0-60 fun

[GTRS Fiero]

For $60, I got to make some 0-60 runs against other cars, at a track.

I made 3 runs against each vehicle.  The results were as follows:
1. Pruis: Fiero 3/3
2. Accord: Fiero 3/3
3. Prius: Fiero 3/3
4. Camry: Fiero 3/3
5. Prius: Fiero 3/3
6. Nissan 240Z: Fiero 3/3
7. Subaru BRZ: Fiero 3/3
8. Civic: Fiero 3/3

There were actually 3 different Prius vehicles.  They were together, but the track people separated their runs.  I think they were different years/models.  My Fiero has issues when shifting into second, so I have to let off a bit, which almost lost me one pass.  I did not brake-torque my Fiero, but most of the other drivers did do some form of that.  Couldn't say about the Prius drivers.  There were other cars, but they would have beat me.  Running passes against other cars was not my plan, but it was fun.

On paper, several of those cars have faster 0-60 times than an '88 Fiero.

[pgackerman]

0-60 mph can vary quite a bit even in "official" sources.  They're more like guidelines than results.

[GTRS Fiero]

Well, I did not spin my tires.  Several of them did.  I had 1 start where I was gathering wool.  I was not the only one.  One of the drivers missed a shift, or something.  I do not shift like that.  Just because there are more RPMs does not mean that they are on the powerband.

The Prius drivers were all certain that they would win, because "electric cars have more torque".  One driver insisted that a second should be subtracted from his time.  That was funny.  I agreed, and the 2 successive runs, spotted him 1 second.  He still lost.  I think the Prius runs 0-60 in about 9 seconds.  I averaged 7.1 seconds.

The 240Z was slower than I expected.  I did not figure to win that one.

0-60 is not the Fiero's forte.

Some time ago, I raced a Lotus Turbo 0-60, and beat him.  The guy just kept going...  Later, I was told that the Lotus is not a stoplight car.

[GTRS Fiero]

0-60 mph can vary quite a bit even in "official" sources.  They're more like guidelines than results.

When I was in the testing program, most of the outlier results were discarded.  This included a lot of my results.  So, I would make a bunch of runs.  If I could make 10 runs within .01 seconds of each other, they would use my results, regardless of what anyone else got or didn't get.

One day, after a particularly spectacular run, one of the officials told me that the run I had done would never be duplicated again, in that vehicle.  He said they were after repeatable runs.  I tried the run again, and he was right.  That vehicle self-destructed.

One of the things that was done, was to rotate the drivers among the cars.  The idea was that they wanted to eliminate the driver and anything unique to a vehicle from the equation.  So, if there are 20 drivers, and 10 Camaros (2009 was my last year in the program, I believe), each of us would drive each Camaro at least once.  Our numbers would be compared to the numbers from the factory drivers.

[pgackerman]

Interesting.  Never thought too hard about how they came up with 0-60 times.  Would have figured multiple runs had to be involved.

[GTRS Fiero]

Yeah, try making 10 runs within .01 seconds of each other.  Not easy.

[pgackerman]

Would have thought all your runs would have been as fast as you could make them.  Then some industry agreed upon algorithm removing the best and worse runs while averaging the rest would be employed.  Or maybe use the average of all the results one sigma from the bell curve (Not sure my vocabulary is right.  I'm trying to average the results under 66%(?) of the bell curve.)

[GTRS Fiero]

Would have thought all your runs would have been as fast as you could make them.

Generally, yes.  If the car doesn't have a failure.  They told me at one point that the car would only make a run at that speed once.  After a while, you can feel that the car is beyond its limit.  So, you run it at its limit.

[GTRS Fiero]

One other thing.  My point was that I should not be able to hit the limit on a sports car.