Car and driver magazine

These are times of big performance claims, and what better place to test them than at America's hairiest track? This year, we returned to Virginia International Raceway with 18 cars and a healthy dose of skepticism. It made us believers.

Lightning Lap Extras

onths before our annual pilgrimage to Virginia International Raceway (VIR), every participating editor experiences some variation of the following nightmare: We can’t bring our lap times down; P Zeros and Super Sports won’t grip. Then storm clouds appear from nowhere and a steady rain begins to fall, leaving a layer of water on the track indicating that we’re done, total failure, no lap times to bring back home. Instead of this story, we publish 12 pages of men’s hair-product ads and right before we awaken with a silent scream, our pants vanish and our fourth-grade teacher appears, slapping a torque wrench against her open palm.

Alas, it’s just a dream, but our three waking days at VIR are only slightly less stressful. As yet, though, nobody has lost any pants.

Every year we gather the hottest new performance cars, group them by base price including performance-enhancing options rather than size or power, and then reduce them to lap times. The point, as ever, is to see how much performance integrity these street cars actually offer, how much true dynamic value you get for the dollar. VIR, specifically the Grand West Course, is our crucible of choice. A winding, hilly track engraved into a lush southern Virginia forest, the 4.1-mile configuration offers 24 corners and countless ways to screw up. With debilitating speed limits now in place at the Nürburg­ring, many carmakers, including Dodge, Ford, and GM, have come to VIR as their track of record, too. But we were here first.

This year, four editors divvied up a group of 18 cars. We ran through our assignments, methodically trying to extract the best lap time out of each machine. We check each other’s times, too, and usually find that we’re within a half-second of one another.