penske/donohue Camaro
 

With technology having moved on form the early Trans Am days, do you think that your average P/T car with it's bigger engines, fuel injection,turbo,aftermarket subframe & suspension etc etc (delete or add as appropriate) would beat Donohue's times set by his championship winning Camaros with its 302 cu in smallblock, stock frame/suspension arms, ...... would a modern P/T car outrun a historic race car? :unibrow:

With the same driver, yes. Just the advances in tire technology alone would make a huge difference, let alone the chassis and suspension development.

Now, we are talking sanctioned racing, correct? Not just parade laps with pre-determined passing zones.

Oh yes sanctioned racing, just as back in the day! :yes: not with Donohue driving the P/T car though but your average owner doing the driving chores ;)

If you don't have the same driver, how can you do and apples to apples comparison?

Well, it's about set ups & skill.If Donohue could outrun a P/T car with old technology & smaller engine, 4 speed etc then it's not the car but driver that's the limiting factor. So does fitting aftermarket subframes, bigger engines, brakes etc make the car faster or is it just driving skills? as was said on another thread, would the average P/T owner know which subframe, brakes etc were under the car? I don't want this to get all negative & start a war I was just curious as to what people thought ie do they think they could outrun a well set up historic road racer because they have the "parts"?. Please don't start a slanging match.
I'm hoping to bring my road legal racer to the US next year & wouldn't mind seeing how it compares to the P/T cars on a road/race track. I'm certainly no Donohue, but can shoe a car ok, could be fun:yes:

Actually, the 69 Penske/Donahue car was setup that way because the rules dictated as such. As you know, in 1969, the displacement was limited to 5 liters. Don't you think they would have run a bigger motor (among all the other things) if they were allowed to?

then the limitations would mostly be Driver rather than car..

I think you answered your own question.
 

There are varying degrees of driver skill and you say average driver. Very hard to compare what you would think average is to a pro driver. I know a couple of people that could play pro baseball or football that did not..are they average because they did not do it for a living?

As far as car technology goes...that is like bringing a knife to a gun fight. The amount of power that is being made now is head and shoulders above back then and as Scott addressed, the tire technology is light years past 1969.

The Trans Am series had limitations on what could be done to the vehicle and if you read about the Penske car, they streched the rules pretty far. They changed the bushings, suspension points, bigger sway bar and used a taller spindle.

So back to your original question...no contest on tire tech alone.

Did anyone here ever see the program where Ned Jarrett and Dale Jarrett got to drive each others cars from when they were driving Cup/Grand National? Ned's 63 Bonneville or Catalina and Dale's modern day Cup Car(I think at Talladega)? Ned got in his old school car and after 20 or so laps was turning times comparable with times he turned back in the day. Dale got in the same car and it flat out scared the Poop out of him(He did not come close to the speeds his OLD man was running). They switched and let Ned drive the Cup car and he had the damn thing up to qualifying speeds on modern races inside of 10 laps. That tells me that the driver is a huge part of this equasion(sp). Made me appreciate the older drivers alot more...they had/have stainless steel balls and big ones at that.

Yeah, I've done a lot of research into the Trans Am cars & have added a lot of their "technology" if it could be called that, into my historic racer, so I understand the limitations placed on them, but that wasn't the point of the question really, more to see how people felt about a comparison between their cars performance & the T/A era cars. It's all hypothetical after all. ;)

The point being could a good driver like Donohue out perform a P/T car with modern technology & an average driver,ie possibly you, thereby raising the question,....... does modern technology help or hinder a driver s ability to progress to being a better driver or does a modern P/T car hide the drivers poor abilities on track.