Why is the Ring the be all to end all base lines for performance car measurement when it has no application in real world driving conditions. I would much rather see a test on current performance cars on a closed circuit of a section of rural and urban streets and roads that represents actual driving conditions.
How are closed circuit urban streets a relevant representation of anything? I can't remember the last time I drove in such conditions. And in rush hour traffic a camry will do just as well, and arguably even better, as a vette. Posing, on the other hand, is done most effectively on the high street at low speed and does not require a lap timer. What does that leave us? The race tracks, and what better place to set a baseline that the Ring, perhaps the world's most demanding race track.
Achieving a baseline number on a street course would give a better representation of how a performance car would drive on public streets. Driving a car on a race track has no application to the 99.9% of the owners of performance cars that will never see one.
Not all of us live in the GTA congestion and have many opportunities to test the cars abilities we own to the design specifications.
The Ring respresents a very wide range of driving conditions. It's far from perfect as far as surface as there are smooth sections as well as corrugated rough sections. There are also changes in material from concrete to asphalt. There are painfully slow low speed sections, high speed autobahn-like sections, and every speed in between. There are hills, humps, even jumps if go fast enough. It has blind corners, hairpins, S-curves, on camber and off camber turns. I don't see how you can get much more varied as far as driving situations. About the only thing it doesn't have is traffic lights.
That said, one must take Ring times with a grain of salt. Unless you can test vehicles back to back on the same day and with the same driver, comparing times can be sketchy.
