Porting should be pretty obvious by the texture of the intake ports or the shape of the exhaust ports, as others have pointed out. However, you should absolutely not take any contest of speed as an indication, unless it was just against the clock. Most people, despite their ego telling them otherwise, really suck at driving...particularly racing heads-up. A few people have a bit more natural ability and pick it up quickly but most require a lot of practice to do even halfway decent. Even then, they suck. A good driver in a bad car beats a bad driver in a good car every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Now, if you match up two relatively close cars (in terms of numbers), you hardly need any discrepancy in talent to make the contest go one way or the other. This is not even counting legitimate maintenance issues that can hinder performance of one car and the other excuses that can come up, like "I didn't know we were racing until you gunned your motor" or "I thought we were going from a rolling start" or whatever. Seriously, maybe the kid had 4-for-$99 Walmart tires (v6 Camaro...odds are pertty good!) or it's an auto transmission and he didn't know how to launch it correctly (also likely). If you want to get useful performance information from racing, take it to a real 1/4 mile track and see what you do against the clock. The first 60 feet are talent, traction and hp/lb while the MPH is all horsepower. If you have a higer MPH than someone, you have more horsepower. If you do better in the first 60 feet (by the clock, not who gets off the line first), then you are getting that power down better or using what little you have more effectively.

If you get the chance, watch that new car show on (I believe) the History Channel, called Full Throttle. It's where two teams get more or less identical cars and have two ten hour days to modify them, then race for the pink slips. These guys are not professionals and have no racing experience...it shows. Thousands of Dollars are spent on modifications and the performance is nowhere near what you would expect. Very realistic!

 

I just wont comment on the racing skill thing

I know the owner of the Mustang. It's a five speed, and he's not the best, but he knows how to shift it well.

You hit the nail on the head (or whatever the saying is) with the Cheapy tires thing. I know tires are important (and I have Pirelli's), but, yeah.

 

well you should beat the mustang like everyone says but if it is streetported and if you have ever driven an rx7 or riden in one thats not you should be able to tell the difference