Just spent yesterday at Daytona, putting some ATS-V's and CTS-V's through their paces. The first part of the day was the track broken into three sections, where we would spend about an hour at each section, either in the cars or in a short classroom/info-mercial tent session. I have been driving at Daytona since '96, so while it wasn't all that challenging to me, it allowed me to see things a little differently coming into some of the corners at a slower speed than I normally would. And when you got to the end of the section, you would turn around and come back to the start. Going into 4, then down a short stretch into 3, then 2, then 1 is quite interesting!
They also had an autocross like set-up, but it's really just the kart track near NASCAR turn 3 and 4. Very tight track for the CTS-V and it's 640hp. With the electronic aids we had to run, I had a hard time getting the CTS to do what I wanted there, and spent several seconds out of each tight corner waiting for the TCS to determine if I could have power or not. At the end of the day, my group came back to this with the ATS-V, and I set the fastest time of the day out of almost 90 people. The ATS was FANTASTIC to drive on the autocross. The TCS was MUCH less intrusive, and the nimble-ness compared to the CTS was very evident! I even had a cone someone else hit that was a foot into the track at the apex of the last straight, and still managed to win by two tenths!
To close out the day, they took us on a lead-follow exercise, with three of us behind an instructor. The more in line and orderly we stayed with him, the more they would ramp up the pace. My first session was in the ATS-V, and right away, we caught a slower group and never really got a good run. On the third lap, you can see a car pulled over in the infield coming out of turn 4, so they black flagged us and we were done. I really like the ATS-V, and was looking forward to running it harder around the track, but it wasn't to be. Cadillac had Joao Barbosa and Christian Fittipaldi, who drive the #5 Mustang Sampling Cadillac DPi in IMSA on hand, and they took a few laps around the track in each car. Their best lap times between the cars were less than two-tenths of a second, despite the 200hp difference!
Went back in and switched to the CTS-V for the next lapping session, and this time I lucked out some. The groups were split into 28 people each, but we only had 27 in ours, so it was only me and one other student with our instructor, and we were the last three cars to head out. Plenty of room between us and the other lead-follow groups. The CTS-V is a sledgehammer. Brutal acceleration (after the TCS would allow). Fully treaded tires on the high banks at 150mph is kinda scary. But still a lot of fun. Just wish it had been more laps. But I understand why. Most of the others were drenched in sweat after three laps, and that was WITH the a/c running. Asking them to run more laps at those speeds is probably asking for trouble.
Here is my run in the ATS-V. The instructor is in the car in front of me, and that's his voice you hear over the two-way radio. The in-car data is built by Cosworth, and available on all V series cars. 720p, and with a pretty nice data program available to download from Cosworth that has LOADS and LOADS of data points. Pretty slick unit and operating system!
And the CTS-V laps
