Porsche 911 GT1 vs Mercedes CLK GTR

[jiminwatford]

I've been offered by a friend the choice of the Porsche 911 GT1 or Mercedes CLK GTR

I believe like the pics below

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I am unable to test them before sent so was wondering what people thought. My set is a 1990s analogue so these should work?

To me it looks like one has magnatraction and one doesn't. Is that right?

Do you think these handle and behave similar to one and other?

thanks, James

[Andy P.]

The cars will work fine on any track...

The Mercedes may have a magnet on the inside that is attracted to the track through the plastic.

The Porsche is an "inline" motor configuration and the Mercedes is a "sidewinder" motor configuration.

Many argue sidewinders are better because energy stays in the same plane (the inline turns it 90°). The argument for inliners is that the weight is evenly distributed in the car. Blondes or brunettes in my book...

The Porsche has grooved tires which means there is less rubber on the road. You can sand the groves down (on the rear tires) to remedy this.

I can't see if the Porsche has an interior or not. No interior means less weight.

As far as which is "best" it comes down to whether you will race with magnets or not, how much they weigh in total and where the center of gravity (CoG) is. The higher the center of gravity the more likely the car is to "tip".

As these are likely used there are a myriad of other factors such as how freely the axles turn, what the overal condition of the tires is, whether the motors have similar RPM etc.

They appear to be similar in age so they should be similar but  at the end of the day the only thing you can do is test them out.

The ideal scenario would be with ARC ONE or ARC AIR as they both have lap timing to within a thousands of a second and you can use either to adjust the top speed to match (and on ARC AIR you can even adjust acceleration). As you have an older set you would need to use the C8222 adapter pieces to fit the new powe base in.

Failing that there are APP based lap counters that might work.