NSX Lightning Lap

I read the magazine and sure the new Nsx is impressive but from everything I read in the past the Nsx was supposed to have the most superior handling with the new torque vectoring. There were many things that stood out with the original Nsx over the competition. All I see now in this magazine is another 200k car to choose from. Why buy this over anything else? The car was sold out for 2 years yet if you pay a small premium can can have one before actual owners put deposits down? This isn't the Honda motor company I grew up with and loved my whole life.

Blacknot said:

I read the magazine and sure the new Nsx is impressive but from everything I read in the past the Nsx was supposed to have the most superior handling with the new torque vectoring. There were many things that stood out with the original Nsx over the competition. All I see now in this magazine is another 200k car to choose from. Why buy this over anything else? The car was sold out for 2 years yet if you pay a small premium can can have one before actual owners put deposits down? This isn't the Honda motor company I grew up with and loved my whole life.

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Good question. As one who has yet to place an order, I was interested to see if I could be tempted away to something else. The Corvette certainly got my attention, but other than that, I'm pretty sure I'll stay on track for an NXS. The only negative I saw from the review was it's weight. I intend to treat myself to learning to drive on a track, but expect to this be a bit of occasional weekend fun. The positives - it's handling looked unfussed compared to many of it's near rivals - as the reviewer commented, the NSX has precision, 'buttoned-down' handling that makes it relatively easy to drive hard, and that shows during the lightening lap. For an older fella like myself, I'm after a car that will do some of the work for me, but I totally understand others might want a car with more 'seat of the pants' challenge, but I'm really drawn to what the Honda offers as a package.

As for Honda, you are quite right - of course they've had to evolve with changes in market expectation and the creep of mandatory safety standards, to the point that their cars today are quite different in character to the Honda's I grew up with in the 80's. Until a couple of years back, I really thought Honda had lost the plot with designs that seemed to be pitching to an increasingly older demographic and I wondered if they would end up being a maker of mobility scooters and little else. But to give credit, designs like the new NXS, the forthcoming Civic Type-R hatch, the rumored S2000 replacement and possible a 'Baby NSX' have restored some interest and confidence. The only fear I have for Honda is of a major global financial recession - under which car manufacturers typically retrench quickly on R&D and brand development.

Reason to buy NSX: looks awesome, is unique and, mostly (for me) is a preview of the future of performance cars. The first automobiles were slower than the fastest horse-drawn buggies of the time. I want to be an early adopter of the future--- even if all the batteries and electrics still don't make it faster than a Z06, I'm a happy camper.

fastaussie said:

as far as the R8 Plus being 6 seconds down on the NSX when it is usually up? it typically laps as fast or faster than the Huracan, so there's more to that story...

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Same track, same day, same driver...never! R8 Plus is 300+ lbs heavier than Huracan. Show me such a head to head comparison.

Blacknot said:

I read the magazine and sure the new Nsx is impressive but from everything I read in the past the Nsx was supposed to have the most superior handling with the new torque vectoring.

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some of their comments were quite interesting. like you, i would've expected the NSX to be extraordinarily easy to drive based on the way it was hyped from the get go, but it seems to be rather difficult to figure out. it should be an easy car for a driver of any skill level to pilot up to the limit, but it appears not to be the case. i noticed understeer during its lap also, which i also thought the torque vectoring would have eliminated.

one quote, "From the first session on the first day, we suspected that this new hybrid machine would be a difficult onion to peel, and it was. It took all three days, a second or two chipped away each day, to learn its layers and get it down to its ultimate lap time of 2:50.2"...

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nsx#fan said:

Same track, same day, same driver...never! R8 Plus is 300+ lbs heavier than Huracan. Show me such a head to head comparison.

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well i've driven them both, but not on this day.

i watched all the videos of the top 6 or 7 cars. the R8 car and driver (see what i did there?!) was all over the place. not a good showing for either. the driver also had the car in automatic mode, and wasn't even shifting himself...

funny but it seems most nsx vids i see have the drivers in full auto mode..only vid i remember using paddles was PD at xpo...I wonder if an accomplished driver could go faster using them vs the computers.

docjohn said:

funny but it seems most nsx vids i see have the drivers in full auto mode..only vid i remember using paddles was PD at xpo...I wonder if an accomplished driver could go faster using them vs the computers.

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Same conclusion by testers to leave in auto on Porsche's PDK for best track times......(sport plus mode)

any professional driver is still going to manually shift. those aforementioned cars have great transmissions, but they still shift too much and aren't as good as a human (yet)...

fastaussie said:

any professional driver is still going to manually shift. those aforementioned cars have great transmissions, but they still shift too much and aren't as good as a human (yet)...

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I'm not so sure, especially for someone who has limited time to learn the car. The computer can balance so many more variables than a human (battery SOC, for example) that I suspect it might be faster to treat the throttle purely as a way to tell the car how much torque you want at the moment. Of course, until these systems adapt dynamically to the circuit you are on, you could always be *theoretically* faster as a human picking gears (but still with a DCT system)-- since you know the line through the next turn and the computer can't "see" the future....

I will say that the computers in these systems seem to hold revs up higher than most humans would naturally choose to, which can result in extra heat build up in some conditions. Finally, with near instant shifts and flat torque curves, the "penalty" for the the computer choosing the wrong gear is pretty modest-- so I suspect it doesn't matter a great deal either way.

chrisn said:

I'm not so sure, especially for someone who has limited time to learn the car. The computer can balance so many more variables than a human (battery SOC, for example) that I suspect it might be faster to treat the throttle purely as a way to tell the car how much torque you want at the moment. Of course, until these systems adapt dynamically to the circuit you are on, you could always be *theoretically* faster as a human picking gears (but still with a DCT system)-- since you know the line through the next turn and the computer can't "see" the future....

I will say that the computers in these systems seem to hold revs up higher than most humans would naturally choose to, which can result in extra heat build up in some conditions. Finally, with near instant shifts and flat torque curves, the "penalty" for the the computer choosing the wrong gear is pretty modest-- so I suspect it doesn't matter a great deal either way.

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a computer can manage wheel speed, wheel spin, engine speed, slip angle, wheel lock-up and a huge variety of variables. that's how it determines what gear it should be in.

what it can't measure is where it is on the track, which corner it's heading into, whether it's turning in late on a wide line, or tight up the inside. whether using a higher gear to accelerate off corner on the torque curve will yield a better drive than using a lower gear and spinning up the tires on the horsepower at higher rpm, or pushing the front with excessive understeer. it also won't know if it's beneficial to hold a gear a fraction longer to avoid an unnecessary upshift and then a second unnecessary downshift through a particular section (which may not burn much time in a DCT car, but it may upset the balance when changing direction, or delay getting back to the throttle, etc). those are just some simple examples. the computers at the moment are simply no match for a professional driver, who can manage all of these variables much better than the average person can. that's why they're professionals...

p.s. an excerpt from the NSX "Lightning Lap" article.

It is disappointing that you need to go "full off" on the stability control to get fastest laps, but this has nothing to do with whether the driver or computer picks the gears, right?

In any case, since i'm not a professional, I'll be leaving it in Track mode (*NOT* full off) and Auto as I learn the car. Sadly, it did not arrive in time for my event this weekend (although there is a 0.001% change it arrives on Sat and I can retrieve it and track it on Sunday). But I'm already signed up for another track event next weekend. Stay tuned for track impressions (and possible instrumented video if I can get a decent camera mount) from an amateur!

it's all related mate. the reason (a professional) will need to turn all the traction and stability controls off to lap at the maximum pace, is because the computers will intervene when it'd be preferable for them not to. won't make a difference to the average driver, but to a professional it will be significant...

p.s. this was my (and everyone else i know's) major complaint with the GTR. ordinary drivers thought they were true F1 level Gods, and anyone who could drive was massively aggravated by the cars computers fly thinking it knew better, which it didn't. that and the super hefty weight. :biggrin:

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p.s.s. humans are still at the top of the food chain. for now...

You just need to drive the GTR to what the computer does, even if some inputs seem counterintuitive in a normal car.

PDK is good in auto mode but it's still not faster, same for Chevy's Auto box. There's no production stability control trip that's better than a good driver, unless the balance is horrible to begin with. Professional race stability and traction control systems are constantly fine tuned lap by lap to be better than nothing, but no preset program can do that even in pro racing right now.

fastaussie said:

some of their comments were quite interesting. like you, i would've expected the NSX to be extraordinarily easy to drive based on the way it was hyped from the get go, but it seems to be rather difficult to figure out. it should be an easy car for a driver of any skill level to pilot up to the limit, but it appears not to be the case. i noticed understeer during its lap also, which i also thought the torque vectoring would have eliminated.

one quote, "From the first session on the first day, we suspected that this new hybrid machine would be a difficult onion to peel, and it was. It took all three days, a second or two chipped away each day, to learn its layers and get it down to its ultimate lap time of 2:50.2"...

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well i've driven them both, but not on this day.

i watched all the videos of the top 6 or 7 cars. the R8 car and driver (see what i did there?!) was all over the place. not a good showing for either. the driver also had the car in automatic mode, and wasn't even shifting himself...

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OK great. But I thought you were would going to respond to my question on post #48 ?

Valkyrie Pilot said:

OK great. But I thought you were would going to respond to my question on post #48 ?

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Valkyrie Pilot said:

Is it possible that the damp conditions cooled the air and actually benefited the NSX due to increased air density?

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well, cool air is great for turbochargers, but a damp cold track is not so good for street tire grip. so, make of it what you will...

Quite frankly I do not think the time of 2:50 was all that bad. It's new technology which needs to be refined. We all saw that coming. I think the main reason why the Nsx is getting hammered in the reviews is because it is costing people almost 100k over msrp with dumb upgrades as reviewers have mentioned. If the car actually was obtainable for 156k msrp the internet would be in a feeding frenzy. Just my 2 pennies.

spoke to one of the editors at C&D earlier. here's what he said about the Lightning Lap format:

"Three editors split up the cars and each has about 8 or so to drive. More often than not, we check each other’s times and we’re usually within a second or less of each other."

so take that for what it's worth...

The gold standard for sure is a known pro driver (like Pobst) driving the comparo cars on the same day-- notwithstanding that even Randy presumably gets a different percentage of full potential out of different cars (prob getting "over 100%" in some cars!).

But, as a consumer, I'd actually put more weight in three random track day enthusiasts or motor journalists, because I am more like them in terms of how I will drive. Many ways to slice a pie, but I would be very curious to see the raw LL data from multiple drivers. The variance among the drivers on a given car, as well as the relative times of different cars driven by a given driver would also yield a lot of helpful real world data to buyers--- although way too much detail for a concise leaderboard chart.

An Australian motorcycle magazine used this type of comparison for their Best Bike of the Year test. They would have a range of riders, from novice to 'pro' ex GP riders, and would publish their respective times on each bike.

It was amazing how short of the 'pro' riders, most often the fastest bike for the rest of the riders were usually the - Honda Fireblade. This is going back about 10 years ago, I don't read those magazines so much anymore. Perhaps fastaussie would remember more?

i've worked for many of them on occasion, so i'm quite familiar with these types of comparisons and their processes and formats.

sadle is correct that the fastest bike for a amateur is not often the fastest for the pro. the fastest bike for an amateur is typically the easiest bike to ride, because it has lower limits that are more easily accessible and it's less intimidating (or frightening). a faster bike may actually be slower in a novice's hands, more often the case than not. the fastest bike usually requires more skill to take it to its higher limit, therefore a more skilled rider. but the fastest machine could also be the quickest across all skill levels on occasion also, especially now with the advent of modern electronic stability and traction control aids.

cars don't normally have the same huge variance due to the limits being more accessible for the average driver compared to the average rider of a top line modern Superbike (400 lbs., 200 horsepower, 2 wheels) which has many more handling variables, such as lean angle and a pivot point - the steering head - in between the front and rear wheels.

based on the myriad of comparison testing and hard numbers so far, the NSX seems to finish more or less in the same spot whether it's being driven by Randy, or a collective group of (not that fast) magazine editors.

the thing i find strangest about the reviews of the new NSX, is it's consistently said that it's not an easy car to get in and acclimate to. i would've figured that Honda with all their talk of torque vectoring and SH-AWD (or maybe that was mostly sadle? :biggrin would have made it an extremely easy car for the average bloke to get into and drive hard right away?

fastaussie said:

...the thing i find strangest about the reviews of the new NSX, is it's consistently said that it's not an easy car to get in and acclimate to.

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Again, another of your sweeping claims - where is it 'consistently said'? The reviews I've read or watched say the opposite. Proof please.

kendallj said:

Again, another of your sweeping claims - where is it 'consistently said'? The reviews I've read or watched say the opposite. Proof please.

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Posted in the "review" thread but here it is again:

FWIW

Motor Trend - November 2016 issue - pp 20, MT CONFIDENTIAL column:

"The NSX has barely hit the showrooms, and already engineers in Ohio are working on upgrades.
New seats are under development to replace the current units. Insiders say the existing
NSX seats were designed to accommodate smaller females and lacked a height adjustment
mechanism for taller folks. New frames will allow a lower H-point, improving both driving
position and chassis feedback for taller drivers."

kendallj said:

Again, another of your sweeping claims - where is it 'consistently said'? The reviews I've read or watched say the opposite. Proof please.

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ha, evidently we don't read the same reviews?

i'm not inclined to find every article i've read concerning the aforementioned AWD system being difficult to acclimate to. so i'll see if i can find one or two, but that's as much effort as i'm putting into your query, a maximum of 5 minutes. and if you think i'm making it up, cool..

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there's one:



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there's another. you're welcome... :wink:



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it's amusing that you think i just make shit up for the hell of it...

I think clearly "most reviews" by count are very positive about the NSX. But, in the only two major multi-car Comparo's, the NSX failed to "wow" the reviewers as being superlative along any particular dimension. So I think you're both right.

If we're being fair, however, we should note, for example, that the 570S that was picked overall best by MT, got this impression from the LL in C&D: "At eight- or even nine-tenths of its capability, this vitality invigorates. At the limit, however, it delivers fear, gratification, and euphoria—in that order—high-speed corner after high-speed corner. We’d lap this car all day in the 2:52 range, but a 2:47.4 feels like a Tinder date with disaster." In other words: in order to drive the 570S faster than the NSX, they had to scare themselves. No thanks.

These things should not be understood as some infallible stack-ranking of objective goodness.

To drive any of these cars at or beyond the limits requires balls and skills that I, regrettably, will never have. So I'm left to consider other criteria in my holistic evaluation....

fastaussie said:

ha, evidently we don't read the same reviews?

it's amusing that you think i just make shit up for the hell of it...

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I think we get your point. You've make it clear over and over that you don't like the car and you are always going to find fault. For you, any so-called 'expert' review that buttresses your own 'expert opinion', then feeds to build the mythical confirmation bias that you claim the majority of reviewers share. That you continue the subtle put-downs, shows you want others here to feel disappointed in the car too, including those who have invested already. It's a bit like continuing to fart in a room full of people and expecting the others to enjoy the smell.