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silvershadow said:
I will go definitely for the CGT but as RC said the car is unbelievably hard to drive.
I had the opportunity to follow one on the track few months ago and the driver was having a tough time to control it.
After a bunch of laps we stopped into the pits and i asked him: Hey what's wrong? and he simply replied..."I'm out of talent. This car is very demanding. Is incredibly easy to lose the rear and is, like every sportcar, very crispy and darty. I'm scared...." and he was not the last one of the row.....
All this talk about the Carrera GT being "demanding" or "too difficult" to drive fast seems a bit exaggerated to me.
I think that the misconception owes to too little seat time before pronouncing judgement and its causes are three-fold:
1) Most Carrera GT owners have owned previous Porsche cars and are used to the way a 911 handles. Reactive instincts that one may have perfected while driving any high-powered 911 in the past are not especially helpful while driving a CGT. The most obvious problem tendency is planting ones foot hard on the gas at the exit of a queasy corner.
In a fast 911 of yesteryear, stomping on the gas pedal when one felt the rear end misbehaving was the most reliable way to regain confidence of control. The trusted maxim was to "stand on the gas and steer like crazy." This advice was offered by professional racers and weekend drivers alike, and considered "the secret" to the magic of 911 handling dynamics. Even though it was strictly non-intuitive, everybody learned to do it.
In a traditional fast (torquey) 911, the rear suspension geometry changes camber quite a bit with different engine outputs. More throttle squats the rear end which advantageously aligns the tire with the track surface, giving more total grip. In most cases the total grip increase is not entirely used up by the added torque and more cornering grip is then available. The Carrera GT has no such mechanism.
The CGT has real race-car suspension design. The rear suspension has almost no camber change resulting from engine-induced deflections. Therefore, if one tries to correct an imperfectly driven (like most of mine) corner by adding throttle, one does not get more rear grip as a result. More gas causes
less rear grip because the added traction demand uses up more of the available total rear grip to the disadvantage of cornering: causing the rear end to go even wider. What may have been good practice in a 911 is bad for maneuvering a Carrera GT.
2) The other complication in Carrera GT driving is that it is
really fast compared to almost any street-able 911 in memory. Because it is only burdened with 5 pounds for each of its horsepower, it speeds up between corners at a prodigious rate. It's very fast to pick up speed even during the course of a high speed corner. One has to be careful to not use too much throttle and then outrun the available cornering grip towards the exit of turns. The use of the Carrera GT throttle is much more of a mental exercise than in slower cars.
A CGT driver needs to moderate the mid-corner throttle action a lot more carefully than the drivers of less powerful cars. Too much mid-corner gas in a Carrera GT can put one in a position where slowing down before the exit is mandatory for staying on the track. If one gets caught out in this situation, abruptly lifting the throttle may result in the back end going wide because the engine braking will demand some traction reserve that must be deducted from the cornering grip at the rear tires. A sure and steady right foot combined with total mental focus is most beneficial when driving any car with the speed potential of the Carrera GT.
Things happen so much faster and there is impressively less time to think between events in a CGT because of its race-car level acceleration and very high corner exit speeds due to excellent grip.
3) The "darty" steering description is an observation that traditional 911 drivers may initially share. I was warned by Hurley Haywood during my first ever track session in a CGT that the car has "very sensitive steering". He knew to warn me when he heard that the vast majority of my extensive track driving had been in 911 variants like my old 911RS/IROC car.
This steering characteristic is a practical design necessity owing to the longer-than-911 wheelbase of the CGT and the requirement that it be tolerably easy to maneuver on the street. Real race cars can't turn into garage openings as well as street cars. I almost crashed my old 962 into a paddock building at Mid-Ohio while trying to enter my garage space. The 962 had a huge turning circle (and much slower steering ratio) appropriate to its track-only intended use. That sort of "real race-car" steering response would never do in a street car, so the CGT doesn't share it.
Nevertheless, the quick steering of the CGT can be quickly accommodated with a little seat time.
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All in all, the car may be a real handful for some until one becomes acclimated to its potential pace. It's no different than moving up a class or two (or, three) in racing. It's unfair to dismiss the CGT as too demanding without a careful look at the comparison standard. Are the others way slower with much less speed potential and therefore easier to manage with more time to luxuriate between decisions? Are the comparison cars' quirks more familiar to their drivers which makes the CGT seem more alien?
One way to make the Carrera GT seem less intimidating would be to
adjust the rear roll-stiffener to the full soft position. Then, one could more easily man-handle (mismanage?) the throttle without quite as much over-steer as a result
Porsche aimed to create a race-car experience for the street with the CGT and has done a fantastic job. I'm quite certain that a Can-Am race car equipped with some form of street-legal tires would not behave any better or be less "demanding" to drive.
The Carrera GT requires some adaptation to drive well, but I consider that part of its value. I wouldn't enjoy my seat time in it nearly as much if I were convinced I had nothing left to learn from it.
I am refering to the many times I recomended the LSD option. Like atomic80 and others have said it makes the car feel more planted and gives better traction through the turns. IMHO a must have option. Of course if you get the tiptronic you cannot get LSD.
Shame on Ferrari. They are taking advantage of their low volume production to inflate prices and "spitting in the faces" of their buyers with such ugly cars because they can get away with it based on the "Ferrari mystique." Heck, they can make a car that looks like the Pontiac Aztec in low numbers and people will snap it up. A $200k+ convertible shouldn't look this terrible. Look at the Lambo Gallaro Spider, Mercedes 550SL, Bentley GTC, for what a convertible should look like (hint: no cheap roll bars, no weird humps). Shame on Ferrari. 
Consider these styling faults, and yes I've seen one in person:
