It certainly is surprising how little difference 50hp let alone 20hp makes on track, exit speed on the apex can make more difference, I use HP to make up for the fact I drive slowly round corners 
This certainly doesnāt detract from the fact your car seem fast, is it heavy?
I would agree with you on the exit and apex speed but these overtakes/sprints were done coming out of a very slow left hander hair pin where we were all in 2nd gear pulling out of the hair pin onto a long straight.
My car is the 2004 PP model and does have the light wheels (-12Kg), light exhaust & cat (-5Kg). The katana kit is stated to increase weight by 15Kg so my car is probably around the 900Kg mark.
Itās also no surprise that some factory Exige S can weigh up to 950Kg. Iām not even sure some of the 2-11ās are as light as Lotus claim.
from a 2nd gear corner weight will make a huge difference and I suspect a well specd S will weigh closer to 1000kg than the 950kg you are suggesting, it doesnāt take much then to be faster even with less HP. i really must take some weight out of my car rather than keep adding it with accusumps and oil coolersā¦
I was also thinking about throttle response as well. Getting on the power earlier probably helps as well. I heard the throttle cable cars are more responsive than the throttle wire cars?
[quote=blacktoy]What exactly is your problem here? I stated FACT of what actually happened. There was no-one more surprised than I was (and the Exige S & Katana CC owner).
Its apparent that the extra 40Kg of weight from the CC and AA intercoolers (and other crap Lotus put in the stock Exige S) play a role in acceleration figures, specifically from what Iāve experienced on track.
Would I like a CC? Yes I would. Would it make a big difference on track going full throttle on the straights? probably not.
You realise that the majority of the supercharged Honda cars have no intercooler or chargecooler?
[/quote]
Not a problem, just playing with you
However the point is the same as Ade just made, you just cannot compare like that. Driver talent, exit speed yada yada makes all the difference, you are probably just a better driver than they are.
I can back up Blacktoyās comments, a friend of mine who was also on the Stowe track day, has just had the Lotus supercharger kit fitted to his Exige, and TBH there wasnāt a massive amount of difference between us down the straight, and heās done over 40,000miles on track so is not slow, it just seemed to mean you didnāt have to change gear as much, where as in the N/A your maxing every gear. But Blacktoy was able to just pull out and out drag me down the straights, Katana seems to be the way to go if you donāt want inter cooling but want maximum power. 
yeah but 250 horses is not enough for some of us
But you are comparing a 190bhp car to a 218bhp car then a 190bhp car to a 245bhpāish car obviously the Katana is going to be faster.
Stevey seems to try to make the point that not having a cooling solution makes his car faster as it does not heat sokeā¦ So on a heavy track session as the charge air is dragged in via his K+N filter and passed into his already hot supercharger which compresses the air and then heats it as it is compressed even further, on a cooled car the air is then passed into the inter/charge cooler and cooled back down before combustion.
The expression heat soked intercooler is meaning the intercooler starts to become less effective as a cooler due to the loads on it and thus the charge air stays the same temp.
So if Stevey has no cooler all his car can do is heat soke is it not?
Boothy
Boothy - Iām pretty sure my car doesnāt heat soak. The water temps remained constant at 84 degrees all day on track and that even included a mammoth 20 lap stint with a Black Katana CC S2 Exige. It was consistently hitting 125mph on the back straight all day on the Stowe circuit so any form of heat soak would see this straight line speed shrink. Iām not expert but I have several theories:
1.) The supercharger is running relatively low boost (7PSI)
2.) The mesh on the side pods is removed so maybe the better airflow into the engine area helps control temps
3.) Twin oil coolers keep the engine temps and oil temps under control.
4.) I donāt have a giant intercooler or charge tank sitting above my engine.
5.) My Exhaust setup is uber efficient and gets rid of all the hot gases from the engine faster
I think the point is that with an A/A intercooler or CC you need to make significantly more than 250 horses for it to negate the penalty of weight and have an advantage over non intercooled supercharged cars with 240/250 horses. Remember the Elise SC runs at 218bhp with a smaller supercharger (than the Exige S/Katana) and has no intercooler either.
With no inter cooler there is nothing to heat soak it is just hot inlet temps all the time, that is why a decently equiped A/W or A/A will make more HP with the same boost, but if either of them get heat soaked the charge temps rise at which point the ECU will back off the timing and drop the HP back to a similar level if the charge temps are comparative
Ok heat soke is probably the wrong word. The harder you work something the more it heats up there for the charge temps have to go up and there is no way of cooling them back down.
So when being worked hard for long periods it must loose power otherwise there would be no need for inter/chargecoolers 
The more boost you run the more you need to control the inlet temperatures otherwise youāll melt the pistons. This is why the Charge Cooled Katanaās can run at 10PSI and generate more power. Like Frank said previously, every 1 PSI of boost is worth ~10bhp.
So if my Katana is running 7PSI of boost and 255 horses (thatās almost 70bhp difference over stock), the Chargecooled Katana are running 280/290 horses which is pretty consistent with the dynoās Iāve seen.
Surely a non intercooled car will plateau at a give temperature no matter how hard it is being driven, and as long as it has been mapped to make maximum power at that temp the power will never be retarded
The katanas have no inlet temp probe so are safe mapped to run very hot charge temps, if you didnāt they would go bang a lot
I cannot see how you could do that? yes I suppose it will reach a maximum temperature but how will you find that temp? you will never re create a hot sunny day with heavy track use on a dyno on a cold day?
PS my interwarmer only weighs 5kgs and it works and I have 270 odd bhpās
Iām with you on the interwarmer, if you donāt want uber power itās a simple light weight option not that 270bhp is down on power anyway
I cannot see how you could do that? yes I suppose it will reach a maximum temperature but how will you find that temp? you will never re create a hot sunny day with heavy track use on a dyno on a cold day?
PS my interwarmer only weighs 5kgs and it works and I have 270 odd bhpās [/quote]
The original Ronin/Katana tune was done here in S. Cali durin the summer with ambient temps 110*fā¦ We tuned for max safe power under harsh dry conditionsā¦ It really was feckin hot ā¦
The ronin/katana runs a max boost of 8.5 psi.
I cannot see how you could do that? yes I suppose it will reach a maximum temperature but how will you find that temp? you will never re create a hot sunny day with heavy track use on a dyno on a cold day?
PS my interwarmer only weighs 5kgs and it works and I have 270 odd bhpās [/quote]
The original Ronin/Katana tune was done here in S. Cali durin the summer with ambient temps 110*fā¦ We tuned for max safe power under harsh dry conditionsā¦ It really was feckin hot ā¦
The ronin/katana runs a max boost of 8.5 psi. [/quote]
Is that the same tune as is used here? I did not think it was.
If the car is not being remaped for aftermarket intake and exhaust it would be the sameā¦ You always want a car tuned for the worst possible conditions not the best.
Mine was remapped for intake & exhaust.
The engineās done 76,000 miles with 26,000 done with the Katana (fitted Sept 2008) . Itās been driven every day and been on track plenty times and hasnāt failed yet. In fact the only time its been in an accident on track was when I handed it over to a respected Elise Trophy driver who managed to crack my front splitter hitting a cone on his 2nd lap!