Symphony of Speed

Consider your average racetrack: By itself it’s just a strip of pavement, and not a very attractive strip at that. It will certainly have crumbling edges, linear grooves carved into its back and strokes of melted rubber slathered in crazed zig-zags—usually near the corners. And unlike public roads, it doesn’t even go anywhere. It just sits there, baking in the sun.

Add a couple thousand pounds of steel, several gallons of petrol and a piece of meat behind the wheel, and that lonely and circuitous path takes on a whole new meaning. It has a rhythm, a harmony. Much like with music, it’s not just the instrument; the composer and performer are important, too. Change any one of these elements and a delicate concerto can easily be warped into a bombastic stadium anthem.

This brings me to a day I spent recently at Willow Springs Raceway in Rosamond, California. I flew into LAX on the red eye from Seattle, picked up an Evolution X MR from the press fleet–thanks, Mitsubishi–and made the trek an hour and a half north towards the desert.

This wasn’t my first time with the Evo X. I had already driven it around Laguna Seca for a couple laps earlier this year as part of a massive press day. Back then I even took the Vishu-tuned EVO GSR for a spin. To be honest, that whole day was a haze of petroleum-induced overload. Simply too many cars in one day. I do remember preferring the punkier Vishnu GSR, but that’s about it. Continue reading…

After spending an inordinate amount of time sitting in L.A.’s mess of a freeway, the road opened and I slid into the Antelope Valley at speeds more becoming of a multi-lane system. It was about this time that I decided the EVO X was both slower than I had expected. I also disliked the SST dual-clutch manual-matic transmission. It felt like I was dragging a VW bug chained to my bumper in stop-and-go, as the tranny insisted in keeping the gears engaged, even on deceleration. At speed, I just didn’t feel as much punch as I would have expected from a near $40,000 car sporting carbon-fiber trimmed Recaros. I chalked this up to the weight penalty of such a fancy powertrain. Maybe I’d eventually get used to it, and learn to appreciate it. Then again, probably not. 

As the sun reached its apex, I finally arrived at Willow and prepared to take some laps in the MR. The ambient temperature was about 102-degrees with a stiff wind coming from what I presume was the west. Some of the more interesting cars on the track this day included a pair of Ford GTs, a gaggle of Porsche GT3’s, a BMW M6 with a dealer sticker still in the window, a matte-black R32 Skyline sporting a sound boom for some reason, and a very loud little blue Miata.

This being my first time on Big Willow (so named because it’s the fastest and largest track at the Willow Springs Complex), I took it easy for the first lap. Slowly I ratcheted up the speed until the car started to show its talents. Though no car alone can make someone an honest-to-goodness awesome driver, the Evo does the next best thing: It makes it ridiculously easy for anyone to be able to drive fast. It made me feel like a rock star, but that feeling was hollow, since I knew that I wasn’t really as good as the Evo was making me out to be: it smacked me down when I miss-shifted and corrected itself when I as on the verge of stepping the rear out. 

After giving the Mitsubishi a good workout, and feeling like I just wasn’t connecting with it, I joined up with JC Meynet, a guy who is, in fact, an awesome driver. He drives his own Subaru STI in numerous time attack races around the West coast, and he wins. A lot. I let JC have the next session in the Evo while I took the shotgun seat. After turning a few laps significantly faster than my own, Meynet confessed. “It’s effortless to drive fast. The brakes are really good for a stock car, but I’m not sure about that transmission. It was a little unpredictable.”

JC then changed the subject. “I brought my Spec Miata today. You should take that out next.”
For some reason, visions of Pokémon and Godzilla facing off over Tokyo came to mind. “Pokémon, I choose you!”

As I warmed up to the sparse confines of JC’s purpose-built roadster and my speeds pushed up with every pass of the timing tower, so, too, did the smile on my face. At first I took the same approach as the Evo: hard braking prior to the turn, then full throttle out of the apex. This was, of course, the wrong approach, as the pint-sized racer could hold significantly more Gs through the corners, and had very little horsepower on tap to power out of exits. (This I knew before I started the first lap,but the brain often needs to be reminded.) It was a completely different tune: less Guns and Roses, more Mozart.

Don’t let this analogy throw you: I’m not a classical music snob. But you’d have to be tone deaf to not appreciate that one is far more complex than the other. With delicate intricacies that can be appreciated once discovered and movements that improve with each and every play. GnR is intense and loud. But Slash has never been appreciated for anything other than the raw power of his riffs. The little Miata was loud, rickety and severely underpowered. It will never be driven on a freeway, and can only fit a driver and a single passenger. That said, I have never had so much fun on a road course.  It was the same track, one the same day, but this little car, which cost half as much money when fully kitted out, produced a diametrically opposite experience. It was bliss with a 5-speed.

The Evolution X is a very impressive car, with some issues particular to my own tastes: I much prefer the Audi DSG system over the Mitsubishi SST. The programming and feel of the Audi twin-clutch transmission makes more sense to me. Also, the Evo X MR is too isolated from the action. I couldn’t feel what it was going to do next. That seems to be a common issue I have with cars that use a vast arrays of electronic gizmos to keep ridiculous amounts of power under control. So many sensors, inputs and hoozawhatsits that the resulting action is different than the input. Call me mad, but even if that initial input is wrong, I’d rather learn from my mistakes than be coddled into a false sense of security.

By my measure, the Evolution IX  was the paramount Mitsubishi. It was precise, fast and engaged the driver with an almost brutal level of feedback. It could play a course like Willow with an almost ear bleeding level of volume and never hit a sour note. Unfortunately, cars like that don’t sell in significant number, since most people don’t like to be roughed up by their own rides, especially if they’re just running to the market to pick up some more toilet paper. Hence, the more grown up X. I’m sure I’ll revisit the Evo X MR again; maybe a fresh track will yield yet another opinion. Meanwhile, I’ll get my turbo Miata project wrapped and on the road. Maybe with it I’ll be able to compose a similarly catchy melody as Meynet’s Spec Racer, just with a lot more volume.