Next up for DSC’s Best Car, Worst Car, Dream Car challenge is Renger van der Zande, double winner of the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona and full-time IMSA DPi driver with Konica Minolta Racing.
Best Car
Well, I would say that the fastest car I ever drove was a one-off test at Fuji in a Super Formula car. It was a real lesson in what a car at that level can do.
On my first run, I felt I was on the limit through 100R and came in after the run, looked at the data and I was 20 km/h slower than the Japanese driver who was helping with the test!
So then I started to increase my speed and increase my speed until I was at his speed and it still felt the same. It was just unbelievable the amount of grip that that came out of that car, absolutely phenomenal.
Remember that these cars are at a pace that is somewhere close to the back of the F1 grid, really capable cars.
To get a taste of that capability from a car was amazing, and for sure it gives you the feeling that you’d like more!
Worst Car
The worst is definitely the Riley (LMP2) of 2017. We were two and a half to three seconds too slow.
The car was wearing out. Every race weekend it needed to be completely rebuilt because it was flexing and moving around so much and there was just no chance to be competitive with it. It was unbelievably bad.
That we finished third with that car in its first race at Daytona was just pure, pure luck because I think the longest run we had with that car before going into that 24-hour race was a 12 lap run.
I think luck was on our side because most of the race was wet so the stress was less on the car and it didn’t wear out too much but when we came across the finish the dash was like a Christmas tree with all the alarms from all kinds of sensors all over the car.
So it was pure luck to finish third there and actually the best result that car has had, or ever will have!
Dream Car
When Lewis Hamilton came to Formula One, there was a time when I had my eyes set on trying to do that, it was the big dream.
I look back at that era of Formula One at him doing what he was doing with that McLaren with the Chrome and the Red, finishing second in the Championship in his first year it was exciting and inspiring, the Season was so spectacular I would love to drive that car once.
And in sportscars, we have had the spectacular LMP1 Hybrids too.
You kind of know what it will feel like to drive a slower car than you’ve been driving. But you never really know what to expect when you jump into a faster car than you’ve been driving.
The Toyota, the Porsche, the Audis, you know, when they were on top of the game a few years ago they were amazing.
I raced in LMP1 in the DragonSpeed car and we were supposed to be as quick as the Toyotas, but they had been slowed down to get us there.
When Kobayashi did the Pole Lap at Le Mans that was a special time, those cars were as fast as they had ever been in terms of both speed, and lap time and it was something to see, really special.
McLaren MP4/22 pic: By Eric W from Hougton, MI – IMG_0128, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4991176
