has anyone driven the Mazda RX500 '70?
You reminded me that I've been meaning to get and drive this car ever since I first saw it.
Now I have, and I can say, after a dozen laps, it's a ton of fun. Tricky and temperamental, to be sure (it
is an MR, after all) but once you have a feel for what it's telling you, controllable and (mostly) predictable. For example, where the Autozam sometimes tries to bite your hand off with no warning, and the Stratos often wants the whole arm off (or your head o_O
, the RX500 is content with a finger here and there, and can be persuaded to just nibble and not bite.
The tail is a bit lighter than I would like transitioning from mid-corner to exit, and it will come around if you're too heavy with your inputs; delicate steering and a gentle right foot are needed. Once you've got a feel for it, though, it's very fun -- it reminds me of the LCC Rocket, in that slides are actually really easy to catch with a flick of countersteer. Braking could be better; it is very stable going into a corner and down to the apex, but doesn't slow down quite as quickly as one might like.
It's pretty damn quick, too. Once I got a feel for it at Suzuka (expect the first few laps to be nothing but spins, drifts and crashes d(^,^)b ) I took it to Deep Forest where I've been doing a lot of testing. After just three laps ,it was faster on Comfort Softs than most of the Luxury cars we've been running on SMs in makeshift shuffle, with more time to be found.
tl:dr Yes. It's fun; a bit tricky and fast. 👍👍
edit about the Stratos
I just feel like that's cheating though
I understand where you're coming from here, but while the Stratos no longer tries to kill you on every corner when you stagger the tyres front to rear, it still tries to maim you. It still takes effort to extract all the speed from it, and it will still happily spin if you're not careful.
With CMs up front, it feels like most of the other MR cars, only rather twitchier; with CS all round, it feels (and I hesitate to say it) a bit broken.