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nberry said:
Correct me if I am wrong but even with Tiptronic which most agree is archaic, the 997TT time is faster than the manual. These test are done by Porsche drivers and I believe it is fair to assume they know had to use a manual.
Also, for sport track times, a PDK type tranny will also be faster. Other than the rather dubious claim that it is more fun to drive a manual there is no reason to own one given the superiority of PDK in performance, convenience and driveability.
This is retreading "old" ground... Factory performance figures... I love those... In real life, at a real drag strip, I've never seen a factory time that I couldn't obliterate by at least 3-4 tenths...
With an auto, there's really no factor for driving-style used for the purposes of benchmarking, you just slam down the gas pedal and go (you know, the "superior" and "convenient" way...
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But with manual, they've got to worry about publishing times that the average customer can expect to realize with their own car... So the factory driver may be a whiz, but he's not there to wring every last shred out of the car, he's there to benchmark a performance stat that will be "indicative" of what the car's reasonably capable of in anybody's hands.
And in most cases, "anybody" is not terribly proficient at rowing a drag race.
I invite ANYBODY on this forum with a tiptronic Carrera S to challenge me to a drag race at any 1/4 mile track... I'll race title-for-title, and won't even sweat a bead... But then I'd have to pay taxes on your car, and would have this tiptronic Porsche I never wanted....
Can we please not confuse a car's potential with a driver's potential??
It seems every time we debate this, it always degrades to "well, I'm a GREAT stick-shift driver (cough cough although I lose 2-tenths every time the clutch goes in cough cough) but I can't POSSIBLY make the car go faster than an auto, therefore autos are faster..."
Lastly, they have the Tip turbo programmed to maintain full boost through shifts, something very very difficult to accomplish manually... So in any boosted car, yes, there are yet some more additional "tech" solutions that help tip the scales... If I'm not mistaken, the Tip Turbo posts slower trap-speeds, which indicates the flip-side of the coin, faster full-boost shifts are at the expense of less h.p. to the wheels...