Marc's Blog: ncars - Trying Fast Toys' Pescarolo Race Car at Thunderhill

I have driven some formula cars before, with skip barbers and later the formula 3 cars at Sears Point. I also did a day with the Ariel Atom some years back. None of them have driver's assists, and it was a bit challenging, but I managed and got decent enough times for those cars.
But the Pescarolo was a different ball game. From the start, it was clear it was going to be a handful. It was easy to lock up its tires under braking, so I had to brake earlier to have some margin to recover if I got it slightly wrong, which I did a few times. I also never could really tell how much extra grip I had when going into a momentum turn like 8, where you are committed once you go in (if you went too fast, you're going out, no recovery is really possible).

for unknown reasons, the steering was on the other side, making it tricky to know how close I was to the track edge

good aero

pretty simple inside

My first 2 sessions were pityful, I was quite slow trying to lean how tricky the car was going to be. Because the inboard recording was broken, there sadly isn't video showing how slow I was, or of miatas passing me :)

My 3rd time out, I stock a gopro on my helmet and started going for laps, hoping to go a bit faster (without any idea of how slow I was). It was all nice and good until I went a bit wide coming out of T10. At this point, I honestly have no idea if it was a driver mistake, or something caused the car to be unstable and track out just a bit too much. In a normal car, I would have put a wheel out and that would have been fine. In that car, it's so low to the ground that the fibreglass underside caught the track (despite maybe just a 5cm height differential), and that grabbed the car, spun it, and damaged the underside. Sad news....

In the end, my times were not that fast. On that last session, I was hovering around 2:05, until I got down to 2:00 on my last lap. There was no next lap unfortunately.

oops

This car is definitely a handful, I have no idea if I have enough skills to read it as if you ever go over any limit, odds of recovery, unlike in a GT car, are very low and consequences are high. It was fun to try, but I'm not sure this level of car is for me, it requires superior handling and feedback reading skills that I might be just a bit short, on.

The day was however interesting as it was a test day before 25H of thunderhill, so lots of cars, RVS, and people doing testing:

It was interesting, but an expensive day, not sure how expensive yet...