[sperry]

I doubt a Prodrive WRC car would be legal in WCGT. The sequential gearbox certainly won't be, as the cars are required to run factory specified gear ratios.

Gary's WC car uses the factory STI AWD 6-speed, with factory diffs, etc. It's the same stuff that comes on the car from Subaru. The motor's a built 2.5L with a GT35R turbo on race gas... so they're probably making 400 to 450 hp at the crank.

The Porsches use the 911 GT3's motor IIRC, which is a 3.6L flat-6 making 380 hp in stock trim... figure the race motors are in the 450-500hp range, plus the Porsches are generally the lightest cars out there. And even then, there are a ton of Porsches in the field and yet the races tend to be all Vette, Viper, and CTS-Vs up front... which makes sense, since those cars all make 400 to 500 hp *stock*... figure they're pushing 550 to 600hp in race trim (though the cars are quite heavy).

Gary's car is simply just under-developed at this point. Similar to the Skyline GT-R that's in the series, no one's tried these AWD cars in this series, so the learning curve is very steep. I think Gary mentioned his STI seems capable of keeping up w/ the others in the corners and under braking... the car is just over-weight and underpowered. If they can drop some weight, they should be able to our-turn and out-brake the competition... and then all they need is enough power to keep up on the straights.

I don't think the STI will ever make the power needed to chase down the V8's in the series, but if they can be close, then they should be able to out-handle the big cars, then get the jump on them out of the corners due to the higher cornering speeds plus the AWD traction. Then it's just making the car as "wide" as possible and running a defensive line. When you can run the inside line, and still turn as fast as your opponents, you become very hard to pass. You just have to hope there are no really long straights where the big horsepower cars can eat you alive.