On 'Ring times being fluff--can you name any excellent and fast high end cars that have really bad 'Ring times? It does bear a stake for all of us, because if a car drives well at the 'Ring, it can handle very difficult extremes of weight transfer and vertical load whilst being stable and confident to drive. Then when you're going around Sears Point, you'll say, "wow, my new 2015 NSX handles great even on these crazy off camber hilly corners!" The very best cars are the ones when you dig very deep into their performance, they get better and better. To do that, you have to test at extreme places. A very disappointing thing to read is "The car is excellent up to 80% of the limit. Once you push it, the handling breaks down into an unsorted mess."
If you are developing a car and you don't want to test at the ring, then your company will have to instead make a track like Tochigi Proving Grounds to test at, at great expense.
