I'm sure the car could put up better times with better tires, but the same can be said of most cars on that list.

 

agreed but just comparing to F cars. Those have wider tire both front and back and stickier tires too. Point here is this car is faster than all normal F cars with all deficiencies and if someone can upgrade tires to match current RCF for example it will be closest thing to track edition. That is the main point.

 

I just watched the full lap. What I find fascinating is two things -
1. There were a lot of mistakes in the lap. I found 2-3 corners where the driver exited the corner with too much throttle and lost a few tenths of a second.
2. They could've run more laps if not for the transmission overheating. So, they had fewer attempts than they should have.

Overall I'd say this just makes the performance more impressive.

 

Where did you find the individual video for the is500

 

https://www.caranddriver.com/feature...lightning-lap/

 

Definitely some sloppy driving, although watching the other cars this seems to apply to a lot of them. I also don't get how the laps are supposed to be truly comparable when they have multiple drivers doing them.

Cool to see how much better the IS500 sounds than almost everything else out there at the moment, though.

 

Another thing I thought about after watching is how the trans cooler and "prototype" pads are a great idea (in theory). BMW is doing this on the M240i, for example. There's a "Cooling and High Performance Tire" package that includes Michelin PS4S tires and an additional oil cooler for the engine. This stuff (plus the trans cooler) seems like it'd be necessary for the IS 500 to even survive a realistic track day without overcooking the transmission or engine. I noticed on TheTopher's lap at Road America in an IS 500, the engine oil temp seemed to be creeping up over time as well.


Maybe an owner can chime in and confirm where the oil temp gauge likes to be when at operating temp.

 

man I had exactly same concern after watching Tropher video..good catch there. From my reading this car can survive 4 laps before oil heating but can only last 1 lap without trans cooler. In current production form this is not even capable of 1 lap unfortunately

 

Lexus has to leave something on the table for the IS F.

Yeah, so it's not a track car. That's fine. It can still overtake 99% of the cars on your daily commute, and that's pretty cool.

 

And unlike a lot of cars on that list, it doesn't punish you on public roads or look like something Dom and Brian built for Race Wars.

 

Can’t seem to find any video of just the IS500 in that link
edit: nm, found it. That thing is all over the track lol. Sounds awesome tho. And that 911 gt3. So sick

 

Not all over the track, that's pretty normal.

My wife who races and instructs at VIR watched the lap with me. Said he's doing a fairly conservative DE (drivers education) line and clearly not hanging it out because he doesn't want to wreck the car. Decent lap, as she watched she was critiquing where he was slow to be on the throttle a few spots and took things a bit too conservative but overall was decent. One little problem getting squirrely on the throttle in the mid-track section off the back straight, he dropped off power and got right back on it. Not a pro racing driver level lap but a consistent and reasonably fast one.

 

I’m actually a little disappointed to hear the trans overheated even with the trans cooler installed.

 

same here other than one thing everything else is what I was expecting form this test. Any theories why would it happen even with cooler? I mean fluid coming out is pretty bad sign.

 

I have no clue. I assume better placement of the cooler could help it handle the track. Since it’s the same engine and transmission as the RC F and I haven't seen any reports of that platform overheating.


It does worry me some as I was expecting this car to pull some weekend track duty maybe once or twice a month.