Guys, seriously, don't give this video any weight. When people are not in a position to buy something they will find something, anything right down to the font used on the buttons as a reason to dislike the car, so simply ignore the video. They are not opinion leaders by any stretch and you're elevating the video to some level of importance. It has none.

 

It's actually an interesting look into the transmission logic on the LFA since the videos out there don't show upshifts at low or no throttle, so this is something most people haven't typically gotten a look at. Even though I've experienced low throttle shifts in my LFA, it's still something I didn't even think about until I watched the video in question.

Paddle location will always be something ripe for discussion, especially since the split between car reviewers and race drivers is an interesting dichotomy. Not really something resolvable by "opinion leaders".

Certainly, a couple random people talking about a random video doesn't change how inconsequential it is, just like all the other topics on this forum.

 

It's full of ignorance. For one the guy says he's driven these cars that are such and such, high performance, exotics, yet he asks "what's the 458..." come on now. If you're so informed on supercars you should know what the 458 does.

I just laughed at the video. My brother commented on it on youtube- the poster replies with it wasn't good at all, when he was shifting at 5k rpm haha- funny, thats all i can say about it. I just posted the vid here to see if anyone knew of this event. I posted another video in the LFA vids thread of a hotlap around Palm Beach Raceway.

 

At the end of the video, the son noted that the driver was 80 years old.

I would add that one of the buyers at Infineon with me seemed to know very little about the car (and he was a dealer).

The point being many of the customers have the key characteristic for getting one of these cars, cash but not a thirst for all information automotive. One of the things I will be looking to see as the cars have are delivered, is how many of the owners are really enthusiasts. So far in Chicago we are three for three.

 

you are welcome. seriously that's the best i could do. i honestly don't mind people not knowing how to drive, everyone's capability is different. i am far from pro either. i also don't mind people not knowing enough about the car, after all unless one is really into lfa and read a lot, otherwise it's hard to know too much about this car down to every details.

but when some people start talking out of their asses like they know it all when the fact is they are making themselves look incredibly stupid, that's a totally different story.

back to the shifter, i actually don't think it's a very big deal. as i mentioned, it's more about personal preference. plus the paddles are actually quite long, so even if you are somewhat turning the steering wheel, you can still flip the paddle just fine. if you are turning the wheel so much that the paddles are out of reach, chances are you shouldn't be shifting at all anyway

 

love the video of the hot lap. gengar was that your cam somehow mounted in the back?

 

Yes, an AV production team (Nexus Visuals) was at Infineon doing the telemetry for Lexus and they were happy to mount my GoPro for me for the hot laps. It's mounted on the rear window facing forward, which works here because of the aggressive form of the LFA resulting in a steeply slanted rear window (the one significant weakness of the GoPro mounts is that they cannot easily mount a camera facing 180º away from the mounting surface).

They are currently producing the DVDs of our video vbox telemetry.

 

Sounds like the LFA and the ISF share some shift logic. I've noticed the ISF does not shift aggressively in manual mode unless you are driving aggressively, especially on downshifts. At the track, it's pure magic. On the street, where it is difficult to even properly set up for a turn, the shifting doesn't work nearly as well as it does at the track. Sure, it will downshift and upshift quickly, but not with the same sense of urgency it does when you've got your foot buried in the firewall, or when you're blipping through a couple of gears with the tail wagging as you enter a turn.

There is a whole set of tools used to determine what the car is doing, and I'm pretty confident the shifting profiles are actually looking at yaw, pitch, and roll to see what you really need the gearbox to do for you at the moment you request a gear change.

 

Meant to post this a while ago - here's a section from p.41 of the "brief" version of the Lexus LFA manual explaining exactly what's going on with the shift speeds at varying pedal depression. Cool that we could figure this out based on a video and a few recounts of personal experiences.

It's interesting how a higher shift speed setting actually reduces the amount of pedal depression at which slower shifts will be initiated by the transmission.

 

Very interesting, thanks .

 

awesome info gengar, thanks!

 

Just watched the video of Scott doing one LC run at Infineon. Based on the video playing speed (frames per second), it looked like a 3.6x run at 63F.
I was disappointed that my instructor run was not on the video.
One more thing, my certificate never arrived

 

Did Lexus ever end up sending you the video of your laps??

I guess, based on 3.6 seconds 0-60 mph, most magazines report 0-60 mph with 1 foot roll outs, which is 0.3 seconds quicker on average so that should make 3.3 seconds with 1 foot roll out.

 

Yes, it just got to my place today. Bonus videos were with Scott's run and interview, but it did not have some of the parts of my session that I really wanted to watch again.

 

So do they have the telemetry data super imposed in the video?? Like when Scott Pruett does launch control etc.??