Today I finally got to drive the Cayman GT4 Clubsport at Portimao. It was the second time I drove a Cayman on a race track and at Spa last year Inreally struggled as I'm used to 911 driving dynamics so I was a bit sceptical. As the sudpension is not adjustable for bump and rebound you can only play with camber, toe and ride hight so you have to make do what has bern chosen by Manthey and KW. My benchmark I compared the car with is a 991 with the 350 hp engine raced in VLN in category V6 ( production car with max 3.5 litre displacement, able to lap full VLN Nordschleife variant at 9 min.)
Likes:
- Very neutral handling
- Playfull
- Race PSM very good, almost no interference, very subtle, helping instead of slowing you down
-Relentless brakes
- Good traction
-Stability in fast corners
- Direct steeri g from cup
What I really had to get used to was the non assisted brakes, you really had to hammer them to get the car hauled down, the more direct steering from the Cup also needed more effort so it is quite a physical experience compared to what Imeas used to. I was slso missing the last bit of confidence in the fast corners and to rotate the car in slower corners. I wanted to drive more laps but to get there but car is very popular and we had to share with a couple of drivers.
The only real dissapointment is the engine which sounded fantastic from the outside but ibside the car coarse. The differnce to the 3.5 litre Carrera was minor.
I've added the link to one of my laps, I won't use the book of excuses but I left around 2 seconds on the table at my ability level, fastet lap was 1.57.4 from the Nordschleife lap record holder in V6.
http://youtu.be/W6JG7AuZ3hE