Hot Lap! 2011 Porsche Cayman R

Every car in the 2011 Motor Trend Best Drivers Car competition was lapped around Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca by hot shoe Randy Pobst. Our next competitor, the Porsche Cayman R.


Read more from Randy Pobst, and stay tuned for more videos leading up to the Sept. 12 launch of Best Driver's Car by clicking below:
http://www.motortrend.com/features/performance/1108_porsche_cayman_r_2011_bes...

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Shot by: Jim Gleason, Gordon Green, Duane Sempson, Corey Denomy
Edited by: Duane Sempson

Category:

Autos & Vehicles

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• porsche
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• best drivers car
• laguna
• seca
• hot
• lap
• randy
• pobst
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[marshknute]

Why MotorTrend? Why do you test cars with flappy paddles. A Driver's Car has a manual transmission, no exceptions.

The car in this video is a disgrace: Porsche ruined the best car they ever built by fitting it with a God damned PDK transmission.

How dare they call the 458 and GTR driver's cars? What's the purpose of the driver if the car does all the work for him? Row your own damn gears.

[t7e4x8a4s]

@ Alexthesportsfanatic actually the boss 302 mustang did it in 1.41.06 which is faster than the cayman r , I like Porsche but you should check your facts before you look like a fool

[LeontariF1]

@raceboy1971 You can learn how to do it in half a day but doing it competitively takes a long longer. When I took the Formula 200 class I was able learn how to do it in half a day as well but I wasn't anywhere close to the pace of the professional instructors but when I took the AMG Challenge class I was racing behind the instructor flat out at the same pace. Driving road cars with ABS, traction control, stability control and auto gearbox were a lot easier in comparison.

[raceboy1971]

@LeontariF1 Like I said earlier, when I transitioned from karts, which either had just a centrifugal clutch or shifter karts, where the clutch is only used to start and stop, to formula cars (Barber Dodge cars back in the day) the first thing I had to learn was heel/toe. It took me half a day. After that I have never thought about it again, where I think about everything else constantly. Seriously, it's blipping the throttle with the side of your foot, are you really tell me that's hard?

[LeontariF1]

@raceboy1971 Ooooo yeah?!!! Is that's what your extensive experience told you? How about heel-tow downshift to match the revs while trail-braking into the corner? Is that a no-brainer as well?

[raceboy1971]

Yeah, save all the weak manual transmission arguments. I had to hear them from way too many old men in Hawaiian shirts. There's nothing to shifting gears. Calling it "fun" or "connected" is just disingenuous. There's no skill involved unless you are just completely uncoordinated. If you need to ad an arbitrary activity to driving, try knitting, otherwise pushing or pulling a lever for gear selection is on the same level as crank starting a car. It's dead and people should get used to it.

[marshknute]

@raceboy1971 My Miata club often shares a track with the local Porsche club. Over 90% of the cars have manual transmissions, even the new Caymans and 911's. Unlike you, we don't care to shave time off of our laps. We just want to have fun, and a paddle-shift gearbox robs us of the fun. A car isn't a driver's car if the car does all the work for the driver. I fully support paddle-shift gearboxes for racing, since every tenth counts. For having fun, however, it's manual or nothing.

[marshknute]

@raceboy1971 As you are an instructor, I can appreciate why you like paddle-shift gearboxes: they are faster, more precise and allow you to concentrate on squeezing another few tenths of a second out of each lap. A driver's car, however, is about having fun. It's about being one with the machine and enjoying the sensation of rowing through the gears.

[marshknute]

@raceboy1971 You are the ignorant one. MT specifically stated that a driver's car is an emotional car, not the fastest car. Why else do you think the 167 hp Miata finished ahead of the 640 hp Corvette ZR1 in MT's 2009 Driver's Car Competition? I am a 4-time Skip Barber graduate, myself, (Limerock Raceway in CT) and compete in clubspec events with my local Miata club. Manuals are more fun. I'm not alone in thinking that, since my comment is the highest rated comment for over 3 months.

[supra1722]

@Buttnut105 np :)

[Buttnut105]

@supra1722 Thank you.

[raceboy1971]

@marshknute This is such an ignorant comment based purely on emotion and anyone who says "flappy paddle" sounds like a kook who watched an episode of Top Gear and now thinks they are Clarkson.

I've been racing for 25 years starting at 15 at the Jim Hall Kart Racing School where I became an instructor and then moved on to being an instructor at Skip Barber at Laguna. I spent half a day learning how to heel toe and never thought about it again. Manually shifting gears is dead and good riddance.