The Prius Challenge

A few of our members were there too. Their experiences start in this page. Prius Challenge Looking For Hyper-Milers | Page 3 | PriusChat

 

It was a fun competition. @3PriusMike and I were on a team and finished in the middle of the pack. The toyota team (from Japan) did 86 mpg. We did 71 and thought we did pretty good.

I think the fastest we went was 45 or 50 mph on the back stretch.

It was fun and next year we'll compete against an autonomous car. That should be interesting.

 

Did anyone do a fast lap for fun?

 

In the Prius: no.

In the track ready Lexus : Yes!!!


@3PriusMike can tell you about that.

 

Here's a pic of the Hot lap cars (the track ready Lexus is up front):



I was in a stock Lexus F Sport Coupe. We were able to leave the pits at 65 mph then go around most turns at 70-80 mph, pulling about 1-1.3 G's!!

The track ready Lexus had ~ 60 more hp, so the G Force should have increased.

 

That's a lot of G's! How much of that do you think is due to the tires vs setup?

 

Both contribute . I'm not a modder, so not sure which is more impactful as I have run all the cars I've owned for 20 years stock. I can tell you though that the tires were wide so there was plenty of available surface area .

When we were going around the turns at these speeds, the stock F Sport was glued to the ground and felt like it could go even further. I only had one hot lap in the stock Lexus, so I didn't get a chance to see what all was in it (there were a lot of buttons and gadgets), so not sure if it was on an air to aid in center of gravity lowering or not. Mike went around the track for 2 laps in the Track ready Lexus so he might be able to answer your question better.

Since the RC F sport starts out at $65 k, I would hope it would come with air ride, but at that price it should come with a lot of things though (like a track day pass to put the car through it paces ).

I see your location is San Francisco. TRI said this event will happen next year. @Prius Team made an announcement here about the event. Throw your name in the hat next year. I got to the track at 7 am and left about 5:30 pm and didn't realize where the day went.

If you are into meeting some of the members in the Bay Area, here's a link to a thread that we used for a meetup at the end of March:

Possible Monthly install meets. Bay Area-Fremont

There will probably be another one soon. We had a Gen2, my Gen3 (one of the members who rode to Fremont with me had a Gen3 and a v wagon) and two Gen1 PIPs there. I'd be nice to have a Gen4 participate.

 

It felt more like 120 mph...not that I'd know what that is like.

The (professional) driver, while going around turns at 80+, while the driver ahead was spinning out (I'm not kidding) was just chatting with me like we were driving down a 35 mph road in light traffic.
I was trying to video it with my GoPro -- which turned out very bad...mostly shaky pictures of the dashboard.

Mike