Can you use driving aids in a real life races

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live4speed
Daft US laws letting people sue a track for their poor driving, it's almost as bad as that woman who sued a microwave company because when she tried to dry the cat in the microwave, it killed the cat.
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I don’t know about the US, but in Australia you have to sign a form acknowledging that motorsport is dangerous, and waiving your right to sue if you get injured i.e. your life, and medical bill, is in your own hands.
 
TVRs are just pornography, that's not a car, that's a bloody rocket ship with four wheels. :lol:

@Blake, same here, but people still can sue... one of the many problems with the US... you can sue anyone, for just about anything, and probably win. Most tracks will say the same, and the drivers respect that, but you get the occasional nut-job who doesn't know what they are doing and ends up breaking every bone in their body, then tries to lay claim that it is the tracks fault.
 
I think it's faster with driving aids off. Whenever I race my friend/s in GT4, they would leave the driving aids off, I don't like it off in GT4 but some how they are faster with driving aids off. It seems like with driving aids off in real life, the car will perform better. From what I've seen in the BMI.
 
-Cheezman-
What I mean to say, is most tracks require some sort of driving assistance while on their course, it does depend on your skill level, car, so on. If I have a stock Kia on the track, then, I won't need to meet any standards, if I have a supped up Ford GT, then they will probably want to check the car. Here in the states, you can sue any one for anything, in fact, drivers HAVE sued the track due to their own bad skills, so most tracks now try to avoid that by setting high safety levels (which do not take away from the overall driving experience, thankfully) with some sort of electronic or mechanical driving aid.
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Bull. You don't just "install" ABS, TCS, or SCS systems on cars that don't already have them, and a track isn't going to require you to find a way to do so.

Also, as Blake said, waiver forms avoid the whole lawsuit thing, and this applies in the u.s. as well. If anyone has successfully sued a track for crashing, they would have had to make it out there without signing a waiver.

If a track has a safety check, all they do is check to make sure that your car doesn't have any loose bodywork or bits in the interior, or fluid leaks. They also check for fresh tires, brake pads, and healthy suspension components.

America is a backwards place, but not as backwards as you make it out to be.
 
@Cheezman: I've got track experience, do I count as cut-and-paste?

No track requires ABS. Many driving instructors do offer caution to novices who don't have it, but that's about it. Not many people can afford to, or are crazy enough, to have a dedicated track car new enough to actually have ABS.

And ABS isn't always of benefit to the race car driver... brake modulation (and yes, sometimes I do tap my braking foot in real life in a non-ABS vehicle, like in GT) often lets you place the car more accurately. I'm just lucky that my car's ABS is very non-intrusive... it allows me to trail-brake and get the car rotating before it kicks in.

What some tracks do require are helmets and maybe a rollcage. Also that your car pass tech inspection, and is thus not liable to spew or eject bits of itself into track traffic.

Wolfe2x7
That's cool, but Porsche's PASM. And GT4's ASM don't even belong in the same sentence... :lol:
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:lol: 👍 too true.
 
Just to confirm:

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She's a beasty!! As for the silver one - not sure what happened to that, I suspect it got turned into one of the GT cars that ran in the British GT series a few years back, of which got turned back into the car you see above. In the States there are a pair of Cerbera's with Speed 12 engines fitted, but they are not Cerbera Speed 12s, if that makes any sense!! And I bet none of them have any driving aids.

Trackdays: rollcages are not normally required, but are a sensible addition!! But I agree with niky: you can often do better without them.
 
Well, not speed 12 engines but someone may have modified wo AJP6 engines and joined them together, I don't see how they could fit in a Cerbera's engine bay though, there's no where near enough room to fit a second AJP6 let alone places to mount such an engine. That must take some serious modification of the car, do you have any source because I'm intrigued. But no factory TVR has traction control, ABSor airbags, and none ever have.
 
live4speed
Well, not speed 12 engines but someone may have modified wo AJP6 engines and joined them together, I don't see how they could fit in a Cerbera's engine bay though, there's no where near enough room to fit a second AJP6 let alone places to mount such an engine. That must take some serious modification of the car, do you have any source because I'm intrigued. But no factory TVR has traction control, ABSor airbags, and none ever have.
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My good friend has a friend in America who owns one - I hope to find out more when he returns (he's buggered off for the week). I think the car is half-way to a Speed 12, but is more of a Cerbera than the actual one shown above. As for the other one, I don't know, but I have been told there are 2.
 
If I were you I'd take this guy with his Cerbera eing turned into a Speed 12 with a pinch of slat, a rather large pinch of salt at that. To start with, you can't modify a Cerbera into a Cerbera Speed 12 in the first place, it's impossible, they're two completely different cars, the only thing they share is the Cerbera name, not a single part of the Cerbera Speed 12 barring the steering wheel, can be found fitted to any Cerbera. Also you can't make a Cerbera halfway to a Speed 12 because the engine and running gear won't fit into a Cerbera, the suspension might but your not getting hold of any Speed 12 suspension set's. The Cerbera simply isn't big enough to fit two AJP6 engines in it's engine bay, the Speed 12 engine is so big even in the Speed 12 it strretches so far back under the bulkhead that the driver has to sit halfway between the where the driver and the rear seats would be in a Cerbera. The Speed 12 isn't based on a Cerbera chassis, it's not based on any Cerbera what-so-ever barring the stle of the body and even then every panel on the 12 is 100% different to the respective panel on a Cerbera. If this guy actualy IS trying to turn his Cerbera into a Speed 12-a-like, he's got more cash than brains imo.
 
Wolfe2x7
Bull. You don't just "install" ABS, TCS, or SCS systems on cars that don't already have them, and a track isn't going to require you to find a way to do so.
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Since my GS 300 doesn't have Traction Control (it was an option back in 1994), I'm going to find out how much it's going to cost to install a "simple" traction control system to my car. I'll be back with an estimate tomorrow.

Automakers (usually with the aid of an in-house/closely-related electronics firm) develop their own traction control systems. They can't be retrofitted to a car, because you have to install new wheel speed sensors, yaw rate sensors, traction control computers, actuators, sensors, anti-lock braking actuators, an anti-lock braking computer, anti-lock braking sensors and solenoids; as well as a through re-design and re-routing of your car's elctrical wiring harness, re-programming (more likely a complete replacement) of your ECM or ECU; and of course, an engine that will allow itself to change output due to changes in the engine computer.

If you haven't fainted (perhaps feignted would be more correct?) by now, you don't want me to quote labor prices on top of all of that, do you -Cheezman-?

It's a logistical nightmare, so good luck finding anyone who is up to the task, unless their idea of traction control is adding 6000 pounds of ballast to your car and adding an 10 gallons of water in your gas tank.
 
I don't ever remember saying ANYTHING about having to install an expensive TCS system. I just said tracks require some sort of driving aid. That may have been wrong, if it was, oh well, my bad, but trying to put words in my mouth is something totally different.

Also, a GT4 driving aid is not TCS, ASM, ABS, none of that. A real GT4 driving aid is that red number above your current gear that tells you what gear you need to be in for making that turn. That is a real driving aid in the game, that I would considering cheating (I turned that off, and it improved my racing lines by 80%). They don't have anything like that in real life (if they do, Jesus, people are lazy now-a-days), so why use it in a driving sim?

And lastly, the topic was "Can you use driving aids in a real race", the short answer is, Yes. If you can prove to me otherwise on this one, go for it, if not, don't post about it.
 
Yes, but not in every race series, in most GT racing and touring cars and stock cars ect you can't.
 
It mostly depends on personal preference. When I started, I left everything standard where they were, but as I went along, I found that turning ASM and TCS down/off, while making your car "looser", does make it feel more like a car. Corners are a pain with them fully on, and the understeer is just way too much. But for him, it could feel "just right". It all depends on the car and the preference of the driver.
 
-Cheezman-
I don't ever remember saying ANYTHING about having to install an expensive TCS system. I just said tracks require some sort of driving aid. That may have been wrong, if it was, oh well, my bad, but trying to put words in my mouth is something totally different.
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We're not putting words in your mouth. You said that tracks require stability and traction control systems, or at the very least, anti-lock brakes. If this were true, many, many cars that are used for track-days would require the retro-fitting of these systems, and that simply isn't feasible.

-Cheezman-
Also, a GT4 driving aid is not TCS, ASM, ABS, none of that. A real GT4 driving aid is that red number above your current gear that tells you what gear you need to be in for making that turn. That is a real driving aid in the game, that I would considering cheating (I turned that off, and it improved my racing lines by 80%). They don't have anything like that in real life (if they do, Jesus, people are lazy now-a-days), so why use it in a driving sim?
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Well, looking at a world through the constricted view of a flat television screen severely lowers your sense of speed. If you're having trouble judging corners, the brake/gear indicator can help.

-Cheezman-
And lastly, the topic was "Can you use driving aids in a real race", the short answer is, Yes. If you can prove to me otherwise on this one, go for it, if not, don't post about it.
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It depends on the racing league. Formula 1 has (fairly mild) traction control, but no stability control, no ABS, and they recently outlawed launch control systems...WTCC doesn't allow launch control, stability control, ABS, or even traction control...

http://www.formula1.com/insight/technicalinfo/11/462.html
http://www.formula1.com/insight/rulesandregs/14/482.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WTCC

Various other racing leagues have similar restrictions on driver aids.
 
Two subjects here.

The first (and main point of the thread) regarding the use of driver aids in real life racing series, as has already been mentioned depends on the type of racing and who sets the regulations around the series.

As Wolfe pointed out most series do not allow driver aids, and those that do generally limit the type and level of driver aid used. As far as finding out what is or is not permited you would need to check with the governing body for the series. So the FIA for F1, WRC, FIA GT; the ACO for LeMan 24hrs, the LMES and ALMS, etc.

Even then its not always as straight-forward as it seems, for example in the WRC if the production car that is used as the homolgation base for the production car is fitted with ABS then the WRC spec car must keep the ABS system in place. However the FIA regulations do then allow the team to disable the ABS as long as they do not remove it.


In regard to the second subject that has been discussed, that of driver aids being required at track days, etc.

Certainly in Europe (and I have driven at a number of European circuits and proving grounds) driver aids (and strictly speaking we are talking about active safety devices here) are not required.

Cars are checked to ensure that they are safe and normally noise limits are checked as well, but I have never had a car checked to see if certain active safety devices are fitted or not. Nor have I ever come across this requirement on any European circuit, nor even heard about it from other drivers.

Out of interest I had a look around a number of websites for American circuits and organisations that run track days and driving events in the US. Not one of them detailed or even hinted on certain active safety devices being required to drive the circuit or take part in track days or other events.

Nor can I personally see this as being a rule that could be realistically enforced, but I would be interested to see details of any such requirements from a circuit or track-day organiser.

Regards

Scaff
 

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