Thoughts on Porsche Experience

[LAP1DOUG]

Today my daughter and I did the Porsche Experience Center with a program that had us both driving a Cayman S, Boxster GTS, and finally a GT-4.

We had a blast, and learned a few things about the new generation cars:

1 - The Cayman S & Boxster GTS understeer strongly with OEM suspension settings (no surprise there). The GT-4 quite a bit less so. The GT-4 has a lot of suspension adjustment available compared to the others, but the instructors didn't really know the settings.

2- Porsche has done a phenomenal job with the nanny software (PSM in the lower cars and ECS whatever that stands for in the GT-4). They have made these cars almost idiot proof when the nannies are turned on. The Porsche software is tuned to still allow some significant sliding while maintaining speed. The DSC software in my old M3 would keep you out of trouble for sure, but at the expense of being very slow in on a race track or autocross. The new Porsche software on the other hand is very fast.

I had noticed that some guys with 2012 and newer cars were doing a pretty good job of keeping up with my lap times, and a couple had told me that they kept their PSM on all the time. Now I understand why - Watson is for real!

3- At the end of our session, the instructor took me on the main course with him driving "to show me what was possible". He was more aggressive than me on a semi-wet course, to the point where he was depending on the GT-4's ECS to kick in and save us, whereas I had generally been trying to keep the ECS from coming on. This is a completely different performance driving style, where the driver simply pushes the car over the edge, and depends on the software to catch it.

I'm not sure I really like this new world. Tomorrow it's back to my old school 986S, with no PSM / ECS, or anything else to save me from myself. Call me a control freak, but I kinda like that.