Video: An In-Depth Track Review of the Garmin Catalyst Driving Performance Optimizer

https://www.youtube.com/embed/lE7yJwozsS4

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Touted as an all-in-one, do-it-all on-track performance analyzer, the Garmin Catalyst Driving Performance Optimizer has set the bar pretty high. To see if it lived up to that hype, we took it to the official test track of Grassroots Motorsports, the Florida International Rally and Motorsports Park.

So did the Catalyst really make us faster …

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Can it be used on an autox temporary course or is it for dedicated permanent road course facilities only?

In reply to slantsix :

It's setup for road racing only.

slantsix said:

Can it be used on an autox temporary course or is it for dedicated permanent road course facilities only?

You can define your own course, but it must be closed-loop, i.e. no separate start/finish lines.

Good to know.

Thanks!

So how much time was dropped using  the Garmi Vs. The best time on the Firms track without it?

Paul B

Donebrokeit said:

So how much time was dropped using  the Garmi Vs. The best time on the Firms track without it?

 

Paul B

I don't think you can really quantify it that way. there's just o way to do an accurate control for an experiment like that.

But I'll say this about that: Given enough time, I would have gone just as fast without the Garmin as with it. But the Catalyst SUBSTANTIALLY sped up the learning cuve. Instead of taking several sessions of trial and error and inner-ear tuning, it condenses that data into instantly-digestible and actionable chunks. Again, hard to have an accurate control for an experiment like this, but I'd say it took approximately 1/3 the number of laps to get to 99% performance than it would without. Basically it turns a single session into what is usually an entire weekend of learning.