The Gran Turismo 5 ZHP road test

[Hermes]

I apologize in advance for the length of this but it started out a lot smaller about a week ago, then I kinda just kept adding to it…

Since the only road test I know of on the ZHP was the done by Car & Driver back in 2003 (click to read), I thought I'd do my own Gran Turismo road test. I have multiple '04 M3s so I took one and adjusted it to be as close to a ZHP as I could get. Now the problem with this is that it’s not gonna exactly be right no matter what I do so I got it as close to my actual car as I could (239hp/5200rpm, 268lb-ft/4700rpm in the game though it should probably be more like 239/5900 and 230/3500 in real life). I also made the weight right and chose some hard compound sport tires to make it more realistic.

Some of you guys are gonna say to just drive the Nordschleife cause those records are easy to find, well there's a complicated answer to that which some of you may already know. When you see videos like when Clarkson takes a diesel Jag around the ring in 10min it’s not the regular track. They use a weird start/finish because you're not allowed to drive full speed past the entry/exit which happens to be on the final straight. The full track is 20.8km. For the tourist days, the start is 'the bridge' and the end is 'the gantry' so its 19.1km (around 30 sec shorter). I did both the full track and the 'tourist day' track.



There is also the 'supertest' length (what the magazines use) at 20.6km to make things more confusing. I’m not really sure what ~200m are missing there but it's supposed to be about 7 seconds/lap shorter. Here are the known lap times for certain BMWs and what I got on the game:

full 20,832m track
ZHP - 8:31.4
X5 Le Mans (E53) (700 hp V12 from a V12 LMR) - 7:50
Z4 M Roadster (testing car, not final production model) - 8:15

20,600m (add ~7 seconds)
E46 CSL by Loaded (533hp) - 7:22
M3 GTS - 7:48
M3 CSL - 7:50
M3 (E92) - 8:05
Z8 - 8:07
M6 (E63) - 8:09
Alpina B6 S - 8:10
Z4 M Coupe - 8:12
M5 (E60) - 8:13
Alpina B3 Biturbo Coupé - 8:14
1 Series M Coupe - 8:15
M3 (E46) - 8:22
M Coupe (E36/8) - 8:22
335i (E92) - 8:26

19.1km tourist day track
ZHP - 8:04.9

[Hermes]

Now the next question is how does it compare to race cars? Well that becomes difficult to answer due to the difficulty cause the lap times I found were not necessarily made on the same track layout as what’s in the game.

These are the results I got:
Nurburgring (1000 km Nürburgring, 20.8km track length)
ZHP - 8:31.4
‘83 M1 Group B - 7:24.3

Nurburgring (ADAC 24 Hours, 25.3 km track length)
ZHP - 10:43.1
'10 M3 GT2 - 8:32.6
'05 M3 GTR - 8:45.3

Circuit de la Sarthe (24 Hours of Le Mans)
Circuit N°14 – 13.629 km (only version of the track in the game)
ZHP - 5:06.4
'11 M3 GT2 (LMGTE Pro) - 3:57.5
’10 M3 GT2 (LMGT2) - 4:03.2

Circuit N°11 – 13.605 km
’00 V12 LM (LMP) - 3:47.4
’99 V12 LMR (LMP) - 3:33.9
’98 V12 LM (LMP1) 3:38.8
’98 McLaren F1 GTR (GT1) - 3:50.5
’97 McLaren F1 GTR (GT1) - 3:45.4

Circuit N°10 – 13.600 km
’96 McLaren F1 GTR (GT1) - 3:48.2

Circuit N°8 – 13.528 km
’86 M1 (Group B) - 4:08.6

Circuit N°7 – 13.626 km
’85 M1 (Group B) - 3:54.2

Circuit N°6 – 13.640 km
’77 320i (IMSA) - 4:27.9
’77 3.0 CSL (IMSA) - 4:23.7
’76 3.0 CSL (T) - 4:36.5
’76 3.0 CSL Turbo (Group 5) - 3:53.4
’76 3.0 CSL (Group 5) - 4:03.8
’76 3.0 CSL (Group 2) - 4:36.5
’75 3.0 CSL (T) - 4:06.0
’75 2002Ti (T) - 4:47.9
’74 3.0 CSL (TS) - 4:14.2
’73 3.0 CSL (T 5.0) - 4:15.9
’72 2800 CS (T 3.0) - 4:35.3

Autodromo Nazionale Monza (4 Hours of Monza)
ZHP - 2:20.8
’11 M3 (E92) - 1:57.0
’11 335D (E90) - 2:15.6

Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca (ALMS Monterey Sports Car Championship)
ZHP - 1:44.3
'10 M3 GT2 (E92) - 1:23.3
'09 M3 GT2 (E92) - 1:23.5
'06 M3 GT2 (E46) - 1:24.8
'01 M3 GTR (E46) - 1:26.5

[Hermes]

Lastly, there is the issue of the time Heidfeld drove his F1 car. I'll just quote this from wikipedia cause if you don't know the story it’s hard to explain.

On 28 April 2007, Nick Heidfeld drove a BMW Sauber F1.06 Formula One car around the Nordschleife, on a BMW publicity day in combination with a VLN 4h endurance race. For safety reasons, BMW announced that the car was slowed with hard demonstration tires, maximum ride height, and 275 km/h top speed limited by the transmission. Heidfeld drove three laps on the combined Nordschleife and short GP-track, as used in VLN races, with a track length of 24.433 km (so comparison with older records is difficult).
The official lap time released by BMW Sauber was declared to be 8:34 (thus ca. 30 seconds slower than the fastest Porsche 996 turbo in VLN). The German press duly reported this lap time, yet criticized BMW. In each lap, Heidfeld slowed down once to pose for a slow video truck, at Schwedenkreuz on the first lap 1, Kesselchen in lap 2, and Döttinger Höhe in the last lap. The two time spans in between the three passes of Heidfeld were clocked by some fans around the track, first Wehrseifen to Wehrseifen in about 7:28, then 7:22 from Klostertal to Klostertal, which is over 50 seconds quicker than the fastest current Porsche 997 GT3 RSR in VLN. This translates to an average of about 200 km/h (120 mph), similar to Bellof's record, but considering the slow GP section, Heidfeld probably was faster on the Nordschleife, close to 6 minutes. Fans who respect the official record of the late Stefan Bellof settle for an "estimated 6:12".

Road & Track magazine reported Heidfeld's lap was a 5:57 or 5:58 (for the Nordschleife only), breaking the track's six-minute barrier for the first time in history. However, their times were done by measuring the speed in some corners, and then calculating a lap time, and not timing a full lap. Heidfeld has since expressed his desire to repeat the experience with less restriction.

According to formula one F1 Racing magazine of June 2006, BMW engineers had estimated that a BMW-Sauber F1.06 could lap in under 5:15.8 which equals to an average of 237 km/h (147 mph).

What I got:

Nurburgring (VLN 4 Hours, 24.4 km track length)
ZHP 10:21.2

Since it’s gonna be a little difficult to get one of our cars to the green hell I kinda wondered if anybody has been to an ALMS track(s)? If so, would you post some lap times so we can see what our cars are really like compared to the big boys.

(I’m sorry if you actually read all of this, kinda just got away from me but I didn’t feel like editing it anymore)

[az3579]

I've been to one (I think Lime Rock is one of them, isn't it?), but unfortunately can't post any times because the events I go to strictly forbid lap timing.

[Bishop]

This is relevant to my interests. Can you post the setting changes you made to the car?

[Hermes]

uhh... gimme a little while, i gotta load it up. will edit this later

EDIT: apparently there is a 1192MB update that i have to download. might be a while before i post this

EDIT2: 1:20am and only 69% done, i'm going to bed

[Hermes]

Bishop, I didn't get a chance to look before I left this morning. From what I remember the only thing I did was purchase the 1st weight reduction package since the M3 weighs more than a 330Ci. Then I went to the car settings and added ballast to bring it back up to the correct weight. I of course had to limit the power to 240 from 333 but otherwise I did absolutely nothing. I'll get back to you when I get home later.


EDIT: What I did to the car - stage 1 weight reduction, 55kg of ballast, power limiter at 66.2%, ECU Management, Racing Air Filter, everything else is standard. Your tuning page should look like this: