Road & Track PCOTY

Road & Track just did their article on Performance Car of the Year and gave the award to the Hyundai Veloster N. At $30K, it was the least expensive car. Way to go Hyundai.

For the track test they had R&T editor Travis Okulski do the timed laps. He’s a “licensed club racer with no Thunderhill experience”. If you want to compare cars on track, and post numbers like 0.09 seconds difference between this and that, don’t you think it would be a good idea to get someone who knows the track and can post consistent times? There’s no way that 0.09 seconds, or 0.705g is meaningful when those numbers vary by huge margins from run to run.

How do I know the numbers varied from run to run? Because Travis Okulski sucks at Thunderhill West. His best time in a Mazda Miata RF was a blistering 1:34.64. I drive my Yaris faster than that. His best lateral Gs in T3 was in the Veloster N where he recorded an amazing 0.705g. Is that good? No, it’s terrible. Looking at some old data, I managed 0.95g on 195 width RS-3s, and that’s back when T3 had the brutal hump.

You know who could have done the driving? Ross Bentley. He was on the payroll and they had him do what? Drive vans around the track? There’s enough room on track to put multiple people on there at the same time. If you want to give readers an idea of what to expect, time all of the drivers.

Is the article good? I don’t know, I didn’t read the whole thing. I couldn’t get past the infographic showing times and telemetry.