Porsche Vs. BMW
As promised here is my post talking about the difference in the Porsche to the BMW. In the case of the Daytona weekend where I went from a Street Tuner BMW in the Continental Tire Series to a Rolex spec Porsche GT3 Cup car this is really comparing apples to oranges. They are both so different to each other it isn’t fair to say one is better than the other. Both cars were prepared to the limits the rules of their respective series allow. Both cars performed flawlessly during their time on the track. So what I am going to try to describe is how I went from driving a front engine BMW with about 250 HP to a rear engine Porsche with about 450 HP without pausing. It is important to have a little bit of a background on the cars and the modifications done to each.
First lets talk about the BMW. This is the car that I have pretty much been driving for the last 5 years. It is a E90 328 4-door chassis with all stock bodywork. It does have a carbon fiber hood and trunk but every other body panel on the car is metal. The interior is all stripped out of the car with a CTSCC spec rollcage installed. There is nothing fancy on the inside of the car. It is barebones. The instrument cluster is a Motec data unit. The switches on the dash are very simple and laid out. WIth a glance from the driver’s seat you can find every switch on the panel very easily. WIth the Motec dash we can scroll through different screens to pull up whatever information about the engine or what is going on in the car we want. To do this we have a couple buttons on the steering wheel to accomplish this. Also on the wheel is a pit-speed limiter, so we won’t go over the 45 MPH pit speed limit, and a PushToTalk button so we can communicate with the crew on the radio. The engine, transmission, and drivetrain are all pretty much stock. Some of the parts are modified to meet the rules requirements but they drive pretty much like they are stock. The suspension on the car is all stock parts. We have modified the sway bars, springs and shocks but there is nothing there really tricky. The tires on the car are Continental race tires that have some tread on them but this is all gone when you put them on the track. They are sticky tires but they are a little bit harder than some of the other tires out there. They are made to last the whole 2.5 Hours that we drive. All of this is part of what makes the CTSCC a great endurance series. All of the cars have similar modifications as the BMW. They are pretty much the stock car you drive on the street but with some slight mods to make it more of a race ready car.
The Porsche is a little bit more of the opposite. This is a car that is produced from the factory with racing 100% in mind. It is not a street legal car that has been changed into a racecar. It is a racecar that was made from the factory to race. When you buy this car from Porsche (yes you can buy this car from a dealer) it comes ready to put straight on the track. The car has a similar cage as what Bimmerworld has added to the E90 328. It isn’t anything really special but one that helps to make it more of a racecar. It doesn’t have any of the comfort items added to it. The Porsches dash is a stock looking dash with lots of buttons and a trick looking Motec data system added to it. All of this is similar to the BMW. With this being a factory race car I found it interesting that the layout of the buttons and switches on the dash seemed to random. With all the money that Porsche can put into these cars they have added buttons in places that make it hard for a driver to look at. These buttons are important because they are the ones that control the information the dash displays for us like water temp, oil temp, voltage, lap times etc. Instead of these buttons being located on the steering wheel they are located on the center part of the dash. Then there are fan switches, light switches, fuel pumps, and other stuff needed to to keep the car running. All of these are located around the center part of the dash. The way they are laid out it is not easy to find them. Part of them is hidden by the tall shifter that is placed in the car. I find it wild that a factory race car comes with a crazy layout of switches that make it hard for the driver to find. This coming from a manufacturer that makes their street GT3 cars as easy on the driver as possible. I think it goes to show how well BimmerWorld makes their race cars and actually thinks about how to make it easy for the driver. The rest of the Porsche is like heaven though. You have a nice engine that is modified for race use. It revs to 8700 RPMs, makes over 450 HP and has a sequential transmission that hardly requires the use of a clutch pedal. All of this works seamlessly together. Going up through the gears in the transmission is like driving an automatic. You just pull back on the shift lever and hold the throttle wide open. The engine responds like it is designed to do this with no problems. And it did this for 24 Hours straight without a glitch. Amazing! Then you have the super sticky Pirelli tires. They are a true slick racing tire that is not legal for any kind of street use. It takes about 4-5 laps around Daytona to get them up to the 200 degrees of operating temperature. When they get there they stick like glue. They are made to go fast. Team this up with the modified racing suspension of driver adjustable sway bars (driver adjusts these with the push of a lever inside the car), Moton adjustable shocks, modified suspension geometry, solid bushings everywhere in the suspension, wider wheels all around, and that is just touching what makes the Porsche a race car. This car is was easier to drive the faster you drove it. I was impressed. Once again is was amazing the way it drove on the race track. You could tell that it was meant to drive fast right out of the box from Porsche.
So that leaves me with my next thoughts, how do you go from a BMW that was a street car turned race car to a Porsche that was meant to be a racecar in the same weekend. That will be Post #2 of Porsche Vs. BMW tomorrow. Stay tuned.
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