[turboawdfanatic]

Originally Posted by 10"

irrelevant.

track times are TOTALLY USELESS as a parameter for how enjoyable a car is on the street. Modern car culture has made track times some sort of bulletproof criteria for which people to assess cars; the reality is that it's like walking into a grocery store and buying food based on how much it weighs rather than the taste. Irrelevant and pointless.

The handling and availability/delivery of power is what makes the model 3 performance much more enjoyable on the street...for daily driving imo. The track times just validate how that translates to the track. Long gone are my weekends at the auto-x or hpde. But I’m gonna attend at least one event next season so I can compare how it handles to my 335 and past cars.

[Viffermike]

Originally Posted by turboawdfanatic

The handling and availability/delivery of power is what makes the model 3 performance much more enjoyable on the street...for daily driving imo. The track times just validate how that translates to the track. Long gone are my weekends at the auto-x or hpde. But I’m gonna attend at least one event next season so I can compare how it handles to my 335 and past cars.

As @10" says: The track times validate nothing about the car's street-ability. Nothing.

To prove the point, turn this around: How would a blazing-fast lap time by, say, an F1 car validate that car's street-ability -- which we all can agree is basically zero? It doesn't. At all.

Your point about the Model 3's behavior on the street is well taken, but the car's track time has no empirical relationship to it. Track times are penis sizes. Nothing more.

[turboawdfanatic]

Originally Posted by Viffermike

As @10" says: The track times validate nothing about the car's street-ability. Nothing.

To prove the point, turn this around: How would a blazing-fast lap time by, say, an F1 car validate that car's street-ability -- which we all can agree is basically zero? It doesn't. At all.

Your point about the Model 3's behavior on the street is well taken, but the car's track time has no empirical relationship to it. Track times are penis sizes. Nothing more.

I wasn’t relating a cars track time to its street-ability. BUT a car that is street-able, Can haul a family of 4/5, has the storage for trips to costco AND put up respectable track times....absolutely validates it’s overall ability. How many cars are great for for daily driving, canyon runs and still put down times on the track, both 1/4 and road course? You’d be remissed to just dismiss track times and not take them in correct context.

[GuidoK]

But is the tesla great at canyon runs?
Let's take the ultimate, an alpine pass.
Do the batteries in a tesla have enough stamina to climb a 20km mountain pass in a vigorated driving style?
I'm sure that the descent wont be a problem with all that weight (although regen also really heats up the batteries)

[GORDON.M3]

Telsa has nothing on this.

[Red Bread]

Originally Posted by GORDON.M3

Telsa has nothing on this.

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In the same way a King Air has nothing on a G650.

But yikes, literally any other color scheme would be better.

[Viffermike]

Originally Posted by Red Bread

In the same way a King Air has nothing on a G650.

But yikes, literally any other color scheme would be better.

I dunno about that. It's been worse. WAY worse:

[Red Bread]

Originally Posted by Viffermike

I dunno about that. It's been worse. WAY worse:

I don't know. Both are their own sort of naff, I just strongly dislike two toned interiors. And the Countach is of an era that embraced that sort of thing. The 488 has little excuse.

[Z K]

Originally Posted by N54Yankee

One fast lap with a tesla engineer riding shotgun tweaking the cars brain to prevent it from burning the car to the asphalt while laying down a good time. Not impressive.
The cars batteries drain so quickly at speed that after a short period on the track seconds are added to elapsed time every single lap.
The top dog S model hasn't even been able to get a complete lap at the Ring without running into battery save mode to prevent fire and those times completed have not come close to top tier cars or even middle tier.
They might be the wave of the future but they have a ways to go before being competitive on the track.

The model S is the "top dog" but the model 3 is the true star in their line up. It's smaller, lighter and has a more advanced and cooler running battery system. Not to mention it was tuned on the track as opposed to the commuter/family friendly model S. So far reports show it can last longer on track without overheating unlike the Model S.

The Model 3 is no sports car, but it will be much faster than the Model S around the track.

[GORDON.M3]

Originally Posted by Red Bread

In the same way a King Air has nothing on a G650.

But yikes, literally any other color scheme would be better.

I actually like the navy on white thank you very much

[hon2bmw]

Originally Posted by hellrotm

R&T has a track review of the Model 3 Performance with track mode. Quick summary. One lap of 1.5mile Lime Rock uses about 9 miles of battery life. Full power lasts 3 to 4 laps, before it starts gradually cutting power due to heat. R&T had two Model 3's for test, fully charged prior to test. Both cars depleted the batteries before the morning was up. Looks like the M3 has a number of years ahead at remaining one of the best options for dual purpose weekend track car.

Yes, and they made another important point in that article, a stock M3 won't be producing peak power after 3-4 full power laps either due to the heat produced by driving the car in such a manner.

Moravy told me that, before we arrived at Lime Rock Park, his team had run simulations to see how Track Mode would perform at this particular circuit. The data predicted that, after roughly three full-speed, perfect laps, the car would gradually start pulling power, hitting equilibrium at a pace about two to three seconds off the absolute quickest lap times the car is capable of. To him, that's not a devastating loss of performance. "Two, three seconds, that's equivalent to driver error," he points out.

Our experience matched his predictions. After three or four laps, the hard slap of the Performance Model 3's acceleration slowly began to dissipate. It was always gradual, workable, not a sudden loss or change of performance. A few cooldown laps—or 20 minutes parked in the pits while we ran our backup car—and the thing would bounce right back to full power, no drama involved.

Is this a limitation? Sure. But it's one we've experienced in plenty of internal-combustion cars. At our Performance Car of the Year testing last year in summertime heat, our particular Honda Civic Type R could only hold on for two laps of NCM Motorsports Park before overheating and going into limp-home mode. An Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio that our man Sam Smith tested at Gingerman Raceway fell on its face on its first full-speed lap, multiple times. (Alfa Romeo later explained that the car we tested was missing some crucial software updates.) A new Mustang GT with Performance Package 2 will start to overheat its differential after a handful of laps at a typical circuit. Ford figures if you wanted a track car, you'd have gone with the GT350. And remember the well-documented track day overheating problems of the Corvette Z06?

If there were superchargers at the track, the Tesla could replenish a more than sufficient amount of battery charge for another session in the time it takes for the break between normal group sessions at any SCCA or NASA event, so you are correct, the infrastructure isn't there yet, but I don't discount the abilities of the car for that. Even at 6 miles of range per mile of hard driving you're still looking at over 40-50 miles of track driving before needing a full recharge, even at my local track which is 2.23 miles I'd still get 15-20 laps out of it, I've never been able to make it that many laps in a standard 20 min session on that long of a track.