86GT (S.Shigeno '12 Ver.)
REVIEW
After the first curve to the command of SS 2012 I realized that this is one of the fastest tuning for road use I've ever experienced. Very stable during braking, can maintain a lot of speed during cornering. However, the corner exit is only perfect if we reach the apex and accelerate the right time, not early nor too late, and we keep the same gear almost to engine limit. During corner approach, it demmands to ballance the car weight to the rear, not for maintaining speed during the process, but to find the right and fastest line to exit at full throttle.
A second consideration about exiting a corner is the car understeering character. After reach the apex, depending if the right ballance was achieved aproaching it, need is tofind the exact moment accelerate out of it. Too soon and you'll get understeer, leaving you no choice but leave the throttle for a milisecond tho regain composure, with the addicional cost of loosing some speed at such crucial moment.
Third, in straights it seems faster to change gear before rev limit. As the rpm reach the rev limit, the engine seems to gain speed at a slower pace.
At Tsukuba, where i first drove it, it seems wonderfull, tho, allowing to accelerate very soon, exiting corners, and retrieving a 1:04,078 sec lap time.
At Serra da Freita, my home course for LotS, showed the understeer character exiting, leaving no choice than ballance the car before, touching the apex with the nose already pointed to the next straight. After 8 laps, the handling was very consistent with first laps, as well as the lap times, showing great composure with tyre wear, althought front tyres were in worst condition. THis makes the S.S. 2012 one of the best 450pp for touge, considering the tyre wear in longer CMSD battles.
A great setup, hat off to Shadow!! Its easy to drive fast even for rookies, but to drive at a winning level, it demands good skills and a good understanding of this setup. For rookies, i dare to reccomend some rear ballast, to get the weight dist. to 51/49. For higher level drivers, if you do the right approach to corners, you will be able to exit at full throttle with total confidence on rear tyres grip and total absence of oversteer!! 👍
Oh, im looking forward to drive this baby with steering wheel, I think it will be even faster and easyer to ballance and exit at full throttle.