Comparing the Performance Numbers

By The Numbers
When we first got these three machines together, the story had somehow been envisioned as a full-on death match on tarmac, dirt and in the air. But a drag race wouldn't be enough. So, we added a braking test as well as a U-turn test, to assess each machine in its respective element. The Solstice would drift the width of our test runway, while the rally car would perform a dirt-churning spin-turn.

Things didn't turn out exactly the way we planned, so we had to get creative. Millen decided to sacrifice speed and lateral g for a 150-foot radius drift, which involved getting uncomfortably close to a bunch of motorcycle cops training at the other end of the runway, while Pastrana's gravel extravaganza had to be given up for an all-wheel-drive tarmac slide on dirt tires. The point was, we were going to test how fast these machines could enter a corner, turn around and get back up to speed.

Even with excess power and a lack of grip, the drift Solstice banged out a 12.1-second quarter-mile with slow, easy gear changes (which can be seen on the acceleration graph), to maintain some semblance of grip between shifts and to save the transmission. With little mechanical empathy, like most rally drivers, Pastrana performed the quarter-mile blast with lightning-fast shifts from his dogbox transmission. Unfortunately, one end of our quarter-mile dirt drag strip was turned into a farm vehicle parking lot, so we had the STI do an eighth-mile acceleration run instead, backed up by a full quarter-mile run on tarmac. Unlike anything else we've tested, the MiG's constant thrust gave it a near-linear acceleration curve that took it well past the limits of our radar gun or telemetry set-up.

Both racecars were traction- and bias-limited on the tarmac 80-0mph braking test, posting stopping distances far in excess of their production counterparts. Admittedly, pure stopping distance wasn't the focus of either team, as the rally car needs more rear bias to help rotate the car in the dirt and the drift car needs more front bias to help it modulate drift angles. Bill Reesman decided to save his vintage, made-in-Russia drum brakes, instead of cooking them on landing, as he's had issues with them in the past.

While we didn't experience the MiG's full turning ability, since few people are up to dealing with 6 or even 8g, Reesman tells us the tightest level direction reversal in the 15 would be at 345mph with 6g. That's a turn radius of about a quarter-mile. For the maximum sustained g in level flight, turn in at 460mph, yank on the stick and maintain 8g for about eight seconds. We crunched the numbers and figured out the rest.