Shelby Can-am test

​You get thinking drivers and you get track zombies...

Track Zombies are the brain-dead ones - the guys who circulate a track endlessly and learn absolutely nothing.

The kind who’ll do a hundred laps without once asking why the car did what it did.

They climb out exactly as stupid as they climbed in, just more tired.

If you’ve got even a passing fantasy about climbing into something like a Shelby Can-Am, you’d better not be one of those zombies.

This thing doesn’t forgive ignorance. It doesn’t warn you gently. It just waits for the moment your brain switches off, then it tries to remove your head from your shoulders.

To be consistently quick in one of these things you need to be awake - properly awake - and you need to think at speed. Skill matters, but awareness matters more. Hesitation will cost you time. Overconfidence will cost you panels, dignity, or worse.

I’ve watched the sharp end of the Shelby Can-Am field from trackside and from behind the wheel of my comparatively lethargic Porsche 928 when these cars are let loose in the feature races of the local GT Challenge series.

From there it became obvious very quickly who actually understood slip angle and who was just hanging on. The good ones weren’t wrestling the car – they were balancing it, deliberately nudging it fractionally beyond the edge of adhesion and holding it there like it owed them money.

Getting into that zone - where car control becomes instinctive at a pace that lives just past the limit of traction - requires a few things to line up. You need seat time. Lots of it. You need to understand the car you’re in, the tyres under it, and the strip of tar you’re pointing it at. And you need to know when you’re out of your depth.

So when I was asked to test a Shelby Can-Am for this article, I was excited - obviously - but I wasn’t delusional. I knew full well I was short on some of the attributes required to drive one of these things properly. That awareness probably saved me from doing something heroic and expensive.

I don’t treat track tests as joy rides. That attitude is for idiots and assholes. Every test is a responsibility. The car belongs to someone else, and my job is to bring it back in one piece while still driving it hard enough to understand it. Lap records are irrelevant. But loafing around teaches you nothing either. You need to get close enough to the edge to smell it - without stepping over and ruining someone’s day.

​​Right. Homework time.

I’ve learned over the years that it’s a good thing – a necessity – to familiarise myself with a car’s dynamics, suspension geometry and setup, tyres, engine specs and characteristics, gear and diff ratios and so forth - prior to getting into the car to drive.

​If you don’t have a well-informed idea of that a car is all about, how will you know what to expect from the car? – No room for track zombies here! 

​​On this occasion the Shelby Can-Am website provided the raw numbers.

Stuart Mack from Revolution Racing filled in the real-world gaps for me.

What you’re dealing with here is an 850 kg space-frame car packing 330 hp and 410 Nm, backed by a four-speed crash box and a locked diff, double wishbones, adjustable anti-roll bars, locally built SAX dampers, Wilwood four-pots on ventilated discs, and cross-ply slicks - 13 inches wide at the rear, 10”s up front.

Do the maths. This thing should behave like an oversized kart with a bad attitude.
Armed with that knowledge, I rolled into Zwartkops early on a Wednesday afternoon to find the car sitting there, ready. This example belonged to Craig Shorter of Execuline Underwriters - main sponsors of Shelby Can-Am Racing at the time.

This car was no shed refugee. It won the September Phakisa round with Wesleigh Orr at the wheel and had just been raced again at Zwartkops the weekend before by Donavan Roscoe.

Peter Jacquet of DAW Racing had it turned out immaculately. - Clean race cars matter. Sloppy preparation usually reflects sloppy thinking, and sloppy performance.

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​First challenge – Fitting into the thing.

The seating position is classic single-seater - you’re on your back, strapped in low, eyes barely level with the top of the front fenders.

Pedals are tight together. If you have big feet, you will find it difficult driving this car.

The gear lever is a stubby little thing on the right. Very short throw, A mere wrist movement.

Small removable wheel, AIM dash, minimal switches and a brake bias knob to the left.
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The cockpit is slightly wider than other single seaters I’ve driven - still snug, still no room for indecision.​

​Strapped in, belts tight, quick glance skywards - “Please don’t let me cock this up” - and I fired it into life, rolled down pit lane and out onto the track.

First impression? The engine note is offensively loud. Not the good kind of loud either - not a deep, mechanical bark - but a high-pitched scream that drills straight through your eardrums into your skull. I like engine noise, but this was just painful. Earplugs would’ve been sensible.

The car immediately felt honest. I spent the first couple of laps calculating the controls. The crash box shifts clutch-less both ways, but it demands commitment - half-hearted inputs are punished. Straight-cut gears whining away like they mean it.

Brakes came in quickly and felt solid. I defaulted to left-foot braking without thinking about it. No need to heel-and-toe - just brake, blip, and shove the lever home.

Time to stop pretending...

Time to pay attention and take control of the car - Short shift to third for Turn One. The fast guys take it flat, but bravery without familiarity is just stupidity with a stopwatch. I lifted slightly, fed the power back in at the apex and let the car settle.

Turn Two requires kart logic - brake hard, then get back on the throttle immediately to unload the inside rear or it’ll understeer like a supermarket trolley with bad front wheel bearings - thanks to the locked diff. Get it right and it rotates cleanly.

Out of the hairpin and through turn 3 the thing pulls hard and clean, easy to keep your right foot planted all the way to the outside curb onto the back straight.

At Zwartkops these cars run long gearing. First is good for over 100 km/h, which sounds wrong, but it works. The motor pulls well but revving past 6500rpm in the lower gears is pointless. The ratios felt too tall for this circuit - no way around that. You can hook fourth down the back straight and let the torque do the work - or stay in third and let it sing. I chose the latter.

Turn Four took a few laps to earn my trust. Staying on the gas later, letting the rear step out just enough to tighten the line, then feeding it back in without shocking the chassis. Slip-Angle-City!

The climb to the Tabletop felt laboured - something I didn’t like - but the car made up for it in Turns Five and Six. Again, kart mentality: off the brakes early, progressive on the throttle, rotate the rear deliberately. First gear works surprisingly well here, carrying all the way through the change of direction before grabbing second on the exit of T6.

Final corner: back to first gear on entry, second onto the straight, short shift to third and do it all again.
It’s not an easy car. It doesn’t flatter you. And if you’re not fit, it’ll grind you down over a race distance. But it rewards commitment and punishes laziness - which is exactly how it should be.

​Roscoe managed 1:04s here on fresh tyres the previous weekend. I ran low 1:07s and dipped into the 1:06s on shagged tyres during my first outing - not because I’m a hero, but because the car is fundamentally that good. Jacquet’s setup is neutral, predictable, and steerable on the throttle. It talks to you. You just pay attention.

My complaints are few...

The noise is brutal, and the gearing isn’t ideal for Zwartkops - but the rules dictate that, and cost control matters. I’ve no doubt it comes alive on longer tracks.

To sum it up - Shelby Can-Am cars don’t care who you think you are. They don’t flatter, they don’t forgive, and they certainly won’t tolerate track zombies.

​They demand attention, honesty, and respect - every lap, every corner. Drive one properly and it will teach you things about weight transfer, throttle control, and yourself that softer machinery never will.

Drive one badly and it won’t lecture you.

It’ll simply wait for you to make a mistake and then punish it without apology.
That’s the deal.
 
And in a world full of padded cockpits and artificial confidence,
​that kind of truth is rare and worth every bruised ego it leaves behind.​

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Craig Shorter
1967 – 2018

Thanks to Craig Shorter and Alan Eustice from Execuline for trusting me with their car.

And Peter Jacquet for the prep - and for answering questions that probably sounded stupid but mattered a lot.

- Pierre Martins 

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