Cobras, unsafe at any speed

[petek]

I'd guess that 90% of the Cobra replicas out there are not "race cars". Fast cars? Brutal with the acceleration? Yup. Represenative of fast and brutal racecars of the 1960's? Yup!

The only real race car I've ever driven was a Formula Ford. You can do some pretty amazing things in a Formula Ford ... right up until the millisecond that you loose it. And I think that's the difference between a Cobra / a fast Corvette or Porsche / and a racecar.

A racecar is stable right up to the line and then bang it's gone. A fast Corvette or Porsche is stable pretty close to the line and then you start to get some pretty obvious indications that you are about to run out of skill before you are going to run out of car. A Cobra is stable ... sometimes. You can start to run out of skill far before you run out of car in a Cobra. The problem is that you can get from "ok, I've got it" to "oh SH!T" pretty darn fast in a Cobra!

Take a C5 out to a track. Do some quick laps, pushing just as close to the edge as you feel comfortable. Take the same car and put it into the hands of an accomplished racecar driver. Who is going to have the better lap times? How close are the lap times going to be?

Do the same thing in a Cobra.

I think we'll all agree that the best lap times will be posted by the professional racecar driver. I also think that the differences between the lap times will be far greater in the Cobra than in the Corvette.

I'm looking forward to finding out just how far away my skill level and the performance of my Cobra are ... while autocrossing where the only thing I will probably hurt are a few cones and my pride!