But, a friend invited me out to the track at Sonoma Raceway to just take it easy for a couple sessions and see what the car feels like. Given the low miles, I decided I could keep it under 5000 rpm and still have a little fun feeling the car out a bit.
My impressions are very favorable... it is an extremely tight, well-balanced, purposeful car that surprises you with its agility. The front tires bite extremely well on turn-in and the existence of understeer is not noticeable at fairly high speeds in tight corners. The steering is light but direct and makes the car feel lighter and tighter than its 3700-lb weight would suggest. Brakes are excellent, although I haven't gotten too hard of them just yet as I'm learning to trust the car. At the track, I'm accustomed to my Cayman S with highly modified track suspension and also my McLaren 12C, both which are mid-engined cars. So getting in the front-engine Shelby GT350R, I expected a bit more body roll as well as understeer. As I mentioned above, understeer was virtually non-existent, and as for body roll, there was some, but it was a Goldilocks "juuuust right" amount. What I felt in the tight corners and s-curves at Sonoma was a small amount of side-to-side weight change, but oddly enough I found that it was perfect for the car. It communicated when the car was set and ready to bite into the corner and told me much about when to roll on more power as I exited a turn. In short, I loved it. I did two sessions of about 10 laps each, so it was a quick introduction, but I already started feeling quite confident in the car, a testament to how well it performs, how consistent its feedback is, and how the car is designed to help the driver really understand what is happening underneath the beast. In fact, my easy-going shake-down cruise had me running lap times with 3-4 seconds of my all-out best times in the Cayman S, which is saying a lot, and I'm sure I'll drop 10 seconds off those times once I get the car broken in and can run it closer to its capabilities.
More to come, but for now, I just leave you with a few images from day-1 at the Sonoma Raceway. If you're a fan of Ford Performance, you'l be happy to see quite a good representation in the paddock building video below!
On one set of runs during another event, I tried Bridgestone RE-71s on some wheels I borrowed for the day from a friend. Pretty good tire, even when compared to teh Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2.
