Taycan Turbo S on track by EVO

[JimBob]

Some track POV visuals at 3:10 mark. As discussed many times, the weight is a factor.

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[kempez]

I like Evo, but I feel they often take the whole “driving purist” thing way too far. The Taycan isn’t a car you’d buy to dedicate to track days but to say it’s not fun round a track is ridiculous. It’s loads of fun IMO. “Yeah it’s fast, handles brilliantly, brakes amazingly well and has decent steering feel”. Yeah isn’t that kinda the point? It’s a luxury day to day that can also perform ridiculous feats on a track if you really want it to. Aside from track specials, no EV is gonna be perfect round a track given current tech.

Anyway, enough of whinging from me, the lap time was better than I expected tbh.

 

[minstril]

Yeah, to make the Taycan a better track car, you’d have to make it a lot less attractive as a daily.

Steve gushed about the Taycan GTS in another vid, but still emphasized that it was more at home on the road than a track, which seems obvious.

 

[f1eng]

I am mystified by this.
There is so much difference between track requirements and those of a good road car IMO anybody keen on frequent track days would be better off with something targeted at track use.
If it is just the odd fun day with an average driver like me, a Taycan will be plenty of fun - in fact it was!

 

[TDinDC]

I hear you, but I do think the video nails it. The Taycan is very good at what it does. The Taycan handles great for an EV, and no other car fits the bill for me. On paper, it demolishes my Club Coupe, but the CC is so much easier to drive quickly (around corners -- who cares about straights), and it feels so much better driving quickly that it is way more fun. Around a track, the Taycan would likely have a better time, but that would just be pure speed on straights and slower through corners, whereas the Club Coupe would be far faster through corners but unable to keep up on the straights. I know which one I would prefer on the track . . .

I really, really want one of the new GT3 RSs, but I would never buy one. It would be a miserable car on the road (I would prefer the Taycan) and too expensive IMHO to drive it like it should be driven on a track. I think a dedicated track car or even a Cayman GT4 would be more fun as I would likely be more comfortable driving closer to the limit.

 

[Archimedes]

Love my Taycan, but have zero interest in tracking it. I can tell just by driving it hard in the mountains that I agree with everything he said. It just wouldn't be much fun driving a car on track that required me to spend so much time muscling it around and focused on just trying to manage the excess weight. It's a great car, but makes no sense as a track car IMO.

 

[Cooler]

When considering lap times, EV's are so fast to pick up speed, that they are much faster on straight and out of corners than ICE. In reverse they are much slower in corners.

So, lap time in EV might be good but the "fun" of making it is still shit.

 

[kempez]

When considering lap times, EV's are so fast to pick up speed, that they are much faster on straight and out of corners than ICE. In reverse they are much slower in corners.

So, lap time in EV might be good but the "fun" of making it is still shit.

Have you done the Porsche Experience track day with a Taycan? It’s good fun on a track, despite the weight. And not all about the acceleration, IMO

 

[bsclywilly]

I think there is a common misconception that EVs make up for their weight with straight line acceleration and lose out in the corners. We are forgetting the fact that the lower CG height of EVs can significantly reduce weight transfer in corners. What this means is that your potential lateral grip is increased due to a phenomenon called tire load sensitivity. On a higher CG ICE car, for example, the coefficient of friction goes down with increasing load, so the more weight transfer you have means the laden tire is not gaining a proportional amount of lateral grip.

I ran some calculations with a hypothetical street tire, and the effects are significant. For a 5100lb Taycan with a CG height of 14":

At 1g of cornering, the grip is equal to a 4800lb car with a CGh of 17"​

At 1.5g of cornering, the grip is equal to a 4300lb car...​

At 1.8g of cornering, the grip is equal to a 3600lb car...​

The Taycan is designed with a very low CG, even lower than the GT3 (15") according to Porsche. The higher the grip, the greater advantage it has in reducing the cornering deficit to lighter cars. So throw on grippier tires and it's going to see an even larger performance gain than a typical sports car with a higher CG. Certainly there are other dynamics that weight plays a role in too, but pure cornering, there may not be much of a deficit at all.

I really enjoy taking the Taycan to the track. It's a new experience and there are things to learn both driving and planning. There are many more powerful and lighter cars than my CT4 so I particularly enjoy catching up to them in braking and corners where driving skill is a larger differentiator and passing them in my 5200lb land yacht.

 

[JimBob]

Certainly there are other dynamics that weight plays a role in too, but pure cornering, there may not be much of a deficit at all.

It's the other dynamics that come to dominate. Specifically the centrifugal force which tends to push the car away. That's being that 6 or 8 feet outside of the desired line. This goes up by the square of the angular velocity. So the faster you are going around the corner, the more grip you need to overcome the force.

Edit
This does not mean you want a heavier car to get more grip as that also raises the opposing centrifugal force. You would want grippier tires and less weight to go around corners fast.

	=	centrifugal force
	=	mass
	=	angular velocity
	=	distance from the origin

 

[TDinDC]

I think there is a common misconception that EVs make up for their weight with straight line acceleration and lose out in the corners. We are forgetting the fact that the lower CG height of EVs can significantly reduce weight transfer in corners. What this means is that your potential lateral grip is increased due to a phenomenon called tire load sensitivity. On a higher CG ICE car, for example, the coefficient of friction goes down with increasing load, so the more weight transfer you have means the laden tire is not gaining a proportional amount of lateral grip.

I ran some calculations with a hypothetical street tire, and the effects are significant. For a 5100lb Taycan with a CG height of 14":

At 1g of cornering, the grip is equal to a 4800lb car with a CGh of 17"​

At 1.5g of cornering, the grip is equal to a 4300lb car...​

At 1.8g of cornering, the grip is equal to a 3600lb car...​

The Taycan is designed with a very low CG, even lower than the GT3 (15") according to Porsche. The higher the grip, the greater advantage it has in reducing the cornering deficit to lighter cars. So throw on grippier tires and it's going to see an even larger performance gain than a typical sports car with a higher CG. Certainly there are other dynamics that weight plays a role in too, but pure cornering, there may not be much of a deficit at all.

I really enjoy taking the Taycan to the track. It's a new experience and there are things to learn both driving and planning. There are many more powerful and lighter cars than my CT4 so I particularly enjoy catching up to them in braking and corners where driving skill is a larger differentiator and passing them in my 5200lb land yacht.

This is all true and makes sense. The Taycan feels great when going through "stable" corners. The sole place where the Taycan feels way worse than a lighter car IMO is during a corner with a bump or something to unsettle the car: If you are cornering aggressively (e.g., 1G+) and something causes the suspension to unload (even a little), the extra weight that was an advantage then seems to become a disadvantage as the car seems to move more aggressively both unloading (maybe momentum?) and laterally. There is one mid-speed corner (e.g., limit is 25 mph and I take at 55-65 mph) near my home with a bad bump (it is an expansion joint) at mid corner. If I take this corner aggressively in my 911, I feel the bump but perceive it as a temporary blip that doesn't really unsettle the car for more than a moment, and I'm not worried about control. If I take this corner the same way in the Taycan, the bump really unsettles the car and makes me nauseous with all of the movement. I wonder how a Taycan would handle Eau Rouge?

Also, too many chances for car to become unsettled around corners (e.g., bumps, curbs, other drivers) that I personally would never feel as comfortable really driving a heavy car like the Taycan at the limits than I could become in a much lighter car. Most comfortable car to really push I think is a super light mid-engined, because if you go a little too far you'll likely spin like a top nearly where you lost it (rear or front engined -- and particularly heavier cars -- tend to act more like a hammer throw).

I "think" it is likely that the Taycan does an amazing job engineering "around" the massive weight penalty, but that we would still be better off if we had exactly the same platform without the added weight.

I am a little obsessed with the aero of the new GT3 RS, but you would have to drive the car completely differently than the same car without aero (i.e., GT3) in order to take full advantage of aero, and the only place you could really do that is on a track.

And while I have zero doubt that a Taycan would be a whole lot of fun on the track, I would still prefer a GT3 RS (or a GT3, or a 911, or a Cayman or Boxster of any variety, or even a 944 ). Taycan is amazing on the streets, and I would rather have a Taycan on the streets than anything else if forced to choose only one.

P.S. I think it is a good thing that I no longer live in Switzerland: A word of caution about speed...

 

[Mr.Smith]

I can't wait for the 718 BEV (Mission R).
That will be the EV for the track until there is New Battery technology

 

[Archimedes]

The low CG does not fully compensate for the weight of the Taycan. Not even close. Nor will the Taycan be able to match the mid corner speed of something like even a GT4. A Turbo S will kill it coming off the corners and down the straight and then lose it all and more into and through the corners. And it will need all that additional power just to do that. And it will be protesting every step of the way, while the real sportscar will be very composed.

 

[JimBob]

I can't wait for the 718 BEV (Mission R).
That will be the EV for the track until there is New Battery technology

There will come a day when battery technology removes the weight penalty and increases the energy density so every EV will go around corners like an F1 car and down straights like a top fuel dragster.

 

[TDinDC]

There will come a day when battery technology removes the weight penalty and increases the energy density so every EV will go around corners like an F1 car and down straights like a top fuel dragster.

I just hope I'm still alive when we get to that point as I think it is still more on the dream than reality side of the equation . . .

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