
Watch Tesla's Record-Breaking Laguna Seca Lap - innovateee
https://www.engadget.com/2019/09/11/model-s-plaid-laguna-seca/
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londons_explore
It's kinda cheating to use an engineering prototype.

They probably coded it to "turn on the brake cooling pump for corner 1, 4 and
5" or something like that. Hand writing code for a single track doesn't make
it a great car to buy unless you want to drive it on this very specific track.

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dragontamer
> It's kinda cheating to use an engineering prototype.

Not necessarily. You can use engineering prototypes or track-cars, as long as
you compare it against other track cars.

The problem here is: the Tesla S is clearly some kind of modified car (its
unspecified, but it is clearly an engineering prototype), and Tesla is trying
to compare this prototype against production, road-legal cars.

If you're doing prototype vs prototype, then you've opened up a whole can of
high-performance worms, such as TCR series
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCR_Touring_Car](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCR_Touring_Car)),
which easily smash 1:35 on Laguna Seca. And yes, all TCR cars are 4-door
sedans.

Note that TCR Cars are only allowed to have a 2.0 Liter engine with 2-wheel
traction only. So formula TCR isn't exactly "no holds barred", its a strict
formula so that racers can be on equal footing between different makes and
models.

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The CTS-V run from 2016 was a production car on production tires. It was rock-
stock, precisely the same vehicle you could have bought from a dealership.
That's what made the 1:39 score from CTS-V so amazing: it was a production car
that broke the 1:40 barrier. It was fully road-legal: you could drive your
kids to school, then get on Laguna Seca to hit 1:39, and then go home
afterwards.

