Took my R coupe out for a 20 min session on Thunderbolt Raceway, a technical 2.2 mile road course with 14 turns. Obviously, I didn't buy the R coupe to be a track day car but I thought it would be fun to really get a feel for it's performance capabilities.

Steering doesn't have much feel but it is very accurate, this thing goes exactly where you point it. The torque vectoring is awesome, tucks the front end in at corner entry really well, with no hint of the understeer that is so common in today's high end sports cars. The car is really planted. Granted, I kept traction control on, but the chassis is really stable and well sorted.

The ZF tranny is great, but a bit too smooth and lacks precision for track work. The latest automated dual-clutch trannies are better. If Jaguar releases a club sport version as reported, I think that they need to either put a manual or dual-clutch in the car for it to be fully competitive with the best in class.

Overall, I wouldn't say that I would track the car regularly (I doubt many owners would), nor do I think that it was designed to do so. However,it really performs well when you push it. I think that the Chris Harris review put it best... Jaguar hit it right on the head with this car for it's intended purpose, a car that is comfortable, beautiful, but also very fun and capable when you want to drive it hard on a back road or the occasional track day. It really is an amazing GT car.

At the track, the car drew oohs and ahhs from all corners, from the Porsche to the Corvette guys. Everyone seems to really appreciate what Jaguar has accomplished with this car.

 

Nice to hear. You say there isn't any understeer, how about oversteer? Does the tail get happy in the corners? Might be a bit harder with traction control on.

 

The traction control keeps things in check in the corners, you can push it quite hard and it just squats and goes. Of course, if you turn it off you have to be more gentle with the throttle, but those great vids of testers smoking the tires really just demonstrate that you can play with it if you want to, but you really have to intentionally induce the oversteer. If you drive it smooth, it tucks it's nose in and grips great, no drama. I was having no problem keeping up with other cars through the corners, both tight and fast sweepers and I wasn't pushing it. There really is nothing to fault the way it takes corners, the e-diff does a great job w/ the rear.