I'll ignore Mako's anti-Viper whining (don't you guys see? He's just like Red5) and skip right to Janni's comments. Mako, when you actually HAVE a Viper order, then we'll care about your comments. Yeah, I know you claim to have one, but we also know you're a guy that dumped a bunch of change into a Z06 and loves to proclaim the car's superiority. Ain't seen no Z06's pulling 12.0's in the rags. Maybe customers do, but Viper customers pull 11.6's at 120mph. The SRT will pull low 11's at 123-124mph in customers hands... fact....deal with it.
Making a braking system work better is NOT simply a matter of putting bigger rotors and calipers on, with different pads.
Think about it - friction between the tire and road is what causes a car to stop. If the stock system can push the stock tire to maximum friction (i.e. the point right before lockup), then no amount of brake work will make the car stop shorter. The reason people change out their brakes is either for better brake FEEL or for larger heat holding capacity for track use. Can you lock up your stock brakes at 80mph? My Viper certainly could. So, the brakes are NOT the weak link, the amount of available friction is.
How do you get more friction? Either through better (stickier) tires, or by changing the whole vehicle geometry to have more weight pushing down on the front tires during braking (friction is a function of the friction coefficient and weight - you can only increase Cf so much and then you need more weight on the wheels during braking).
The reason cars like the Porsche and Z06 brake so well are because their chassis' are setup correctly to put weight OVER the front wheels rather than simply pushing them from behind. The Viper tends to push the wheels forward rather than putting the weight over the wheels, so a Viper GTS with the BEST BRAKES IN THE WORLD will *NOT* stop the same as an SRT will.
That's been my point all along... you can't add 50hp to a GTS and proclaim you have an SRT. You would need to do *major* driveline improvements and massive suspension improvements to make it handle and brake like an SRT. And for the cost, you now have a hacked up GTS, not an SRT.
Now, as for the performance numbers... I was told that in testing the car was running mid 11's at 123-124mph. Yes, I am disappointed not to see these numbers showing up in the mags, BUT, bear in mind *ALL* of these magazines doing the testing are reporting from an isolated test that took place in California.
Maybe the track sucked? Maybe the conditions weren't so good? I really don't know. Not until we see more tests of the car will we really know. I would like to see true head-to-head test of the Viper SRT against the 911 Turbo and Z06. Don't compare numbers from one test to those from another. We have been whining about that all along, when someone pulls a number from one test and compares it to a number from another. I've seen 12.6 numbers quoted for an ACR. I've seen 115mph. Now I have also seen 12.1 and 119mph. What if we see an article in MT in a couple of months pitting the Viper against the Z06 and they run 11.5@123 in the Viper and 12.5@117 in the Z06. THEN WILL YOU GUYS BE HAPPY? Chill out a little... let's not proclaim the SRT to be a lame duck before we get a larger data set to draw that conclusion from. And before someone says "but all the mags reported disappointing numbers", well, let me say that they all tested the cars at the same place on the same days. Let's wait until we see a more diverse test base with head-to-head tests against competing cars before we $hit on the SRT, mmmmkay?