David Molenaar is a Dutch race car driver. He won the DTCC in 1998 and is leading champion in the BRL V6 championship. Below you’ll find the impression from Donald on the GT500 from our customer Douglas van Kleef. He was very curious what the opinion of a professional driver on his car would be, so he had both Donald Molenaar and Tom Coronel behind the wheel of his GT500 prepared by Lek Import Cars.
Impression of Donald Molenaar on GT500
‘On the Intrax racing trackday 2014 the real petrolheads are easy to spot. One of their symptoms is that they are on time or are present way before the event starts. In this occasion even before we had brewed the first cans of fresh coffee. As soon as Douglas arrived he spoke to me and asked if I wanted to test his GT500, afterall he had a Intrax shock/strut set mounted. He only had to wait for his helmet and a set of slicks, so I lended him a helmet and off we went in the first session with the Shelby GT500 convertible.
I placed myself behind the wheel and was ready to go, when the owner said “Don’t you want to know which mods we did to this car?”, sure tell me and off he went and told me the long list with performance mods. The good thing was that it wasn’t just a list with performance mods to get to the extreme 700 rwhp but he also didn’t forget the suspension and everything has been done to handle the extra horsepower.
Once at the track I progressively raised the speed and I was overwhelmed by the awesome power and traction this Mustang has. Full throttle in second gear out of a slower turn, you push the pedal, you feel the tail going down slightly and you are launched, but still without traction control kicking in or other electronic devices to help with traction or stability, very impressive.
Through the fast “Slotemaker” turns, the turn doesn’t give you feeling you in a heavy 1700KG Mustang (First thing the came in mind was “next lap can be faster”), up on the dunes heading for “scheivlak” there are some bumps on the track but rarely have I noticed the bumps so l sightly as I did now and still crisp turn in at “Scheivlak). They weight was only noticeable when come from the straight with 245km/h ( 140mp/h)and I had to brake for the “Tarzan” turn… did I mention I was driving a street car. On regular street legal tires. And being in a convertible!
My overall impression is in fact nothing more than being totally amazed by the raw power and handling. The question is how is it possible that such a heavy car with all that power, still handles that good and can take all turns und not just going flat out on a straight stretch. Hennie Lek from Lek Import Cars did a great job in setting this car up and found a perfect combination on the front and rear suspension and despite the awesome power it makes still easy to drive on the streets as well.’
Donald Molenaar
GoPro impression