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Plaid Drag Racing - Not such a great night
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I don't think they're going to do this for any already sold cars and my guess is that any real power upgrades will have some hardware upgrades even if minor.
My guess is they'll introduce Plaid Plus with the track pack factory installed (no option to not have it unless you want the regular plaid), and JUST enough extra power to edge out the current Sapphire. At current pricing, I'm guessing it will be in the $135K to $140K range.
Might also be a small power increase combined with much lighter wheels and other weight reductions.
HighPotential
Member
Sapphire is the real deal. But its only marginally faster. Reflexes are decisive through 1/4 mile. Plaid wins hands down for value but the Sapphire is surely a better car.
HighPotential
Member
I think maybe they can without hardware upgrades. If a Plaid can run duration racing at the track without overheating, it can be over juiced for drag racing lengths of time without damage to the heavy components. Electronics, not sure. Maybe the ESC's will need upgrading. Battery and motors, no.
Supposedly the motors each are capable of around ~310kW give or take if the European website is to be believed. That would theoretically mean 1250 hp is achievable *if* the battery is capable of it.
I could see something along the lines of a mid cycle refresh happening where they make a carbon wrapped variant of the new 4D2 motor in the M3P and also use those 940A inverters instead of the 840A inverters that we currently have. That would allow them to theoretically send ~1k HP to the rear for those scenarios where that's useful, have better torque vectoring etc.
Would like to see some more power on the top end, but that's about it. Traction is an issue up to 70-80, so they don't need anymore on the bottom for street tires.
WilliamG
Hinge Fanatic
Are you being sarcastic? Or are you in a thread about drag racing and honestly don't understand?
WilliamG
Hinge Fanatic
Easy, tiger. If, as you say, the Plaid is traction limited up to 70 or 80mph (I disagree with that assessment, but let's leave that for now), why would the Sapphire be faster on the same PS4S tires to those speeds?
It's not an assumption. Here is one of many completely random videos of my car at the track, you can hear it spinning up until a little before the 330' mark (before it migrates into the typical tread noise), at which point I'm normally somewhere around 80-90mph depending on the tire setup. The reason people don't think these cars are spinning on the street is because there's no smoke and/or there's not much noise. It's not blowing the tires off at 80mph, it's just spinning a little. You can hear it at the track and not on the street is because there's rubber everywhere and it screeches when slip occurs between two hard rubber surfaces. It doesn't make much noise when the drag radials are on because they slip less and the compound is much softer than the track surface.
Cars at the dragstrip are not faster solely because they have more power. No offense meant, because not everyone is into racing, and may not understand basic things about it.
Kind of goes over into the brake discussion as well. I have datalogs on dragy showing how bad the OG OEM pads are compared to PFC pads and then CCBs on high speed stops. I don't post data because the next excuse would be something like "but the air temp was 4 degrees warmer" or " how do we know you weren't on semislicks?" etc.
I personally think it's one of if not the best ever.
It's unimaginably difficult to put 1000whp to the pavement with street tires on any car that exists. Couple that with the near instantaneous levels of torque, and the problem expands exponentially.
It would be nice if we had more accurate control over the system than we currently do, but this isn't marketed as a track car, it's just a fast sedan so I get that part. Having the option to scale up and down based on preprogrammed settings would be fantastic. But that also means we need to be able to pull more data from the system in the first place to see what tweaks need to occur.
Also curiously, despite the EPC showing the same part numbers for S and X (and even model 3 for that matter) for the ABS/Stability control module, the gateway configuration on my Plaid notes cfg_vdctype:"BOSCH_VDC", while the X LR and model 3 performance I have access to note cfg_vdctype:"TESLA_VDC"
Dunno if there was a recent undocumented hardware change, if the S gets a different module / software config, or if it's a Plaid thing.
Dunno if there was a recent undocumented hardware change, if the S gets a different module / software config, or if it's a Plaid thing.
WilliamG
Hinge Fanatic
cptnslo
Member
Brooks made a point that they were at a private rental of the track and that the track had extra prep on it. He showed how much his shoes stuck to the track. That doesn't really help the Plaid since its traction control is preprogrammed for factory tires on asphalt. Track prep helps to some degree to prevent extra tire slip which causes the traction control to severely cut torque, but it doesn't allow more than the preprogrammed torque.
The Sapphire may have more of an active traction control that can take advantage of the extra tack of the extra prep applied to this track. In the video of the Sapphire on the Tesla Racing Channel, it performed badly on its factory tires and normal track prep. So the Plaid just might take the Sapphire at a light.
The Sapphire may have more of an active traction control that can take advantage of the extra tack of the extra prep applied to this track. In the video of the Sapphire on the Tesla Racing Channel, it performed badly on its factory tires and normal track prep. So the Plaid just might take the Sapphire at a light.
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Again solidifying your ignorance about racing by focusing on an irrelevant point.
That was just OEM 19 tires/wheels. But I have runs on those, OEM 21, OEM 21 wheels with pirelli nf0, then na0, then na0 rears and lm1 pirelli, then nf0 goodyears, then aftermarket 21 wheels with OEM PS4S, and na0 pirelli rears with lm1 fronts. Then for radials, nitto rears and pirelli t0 19 on the front.
have tried quite a few setups just to test stuff out because of curiosity.
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