How Important Is Raw Speed? (A question for discussion)

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jrbabbitt

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Having this question come up in a chat with friends I found myself being the difference of opinion in this, I do not believe that raw speed is important, in my beliefs, it's below the importance of control and handling.
I would like to hear your thoughts in this in relation to GT7.
Thank you.
 
I can only speak for how much I drive my beloved P1 but I care more about handling and control while cornering and taking a turn as fast as possible then top speed.

I guess with the Enzo I care more about top speed since I have it build for it.
 
This reminds me of when I rented a 488 Pista for a track day in Las Vegas. The main question I got from civilians was, "How fast did you get up to?". Whole time Im thinking, thats not even the point. A better question would be, "What was your fastest lap time?"

Personally, I prefer control over speed. 70/30. I guess it would depend on why one plays GT. For me, its to save hundreds of thousands of dollars on track days. If I had my way, I probably wouldn't play at all as I'd be too busy racing in real life. So no wall riding here.
 
Raw speed is important, but so are the handling characteristics.

If you have raw speed exclusively, you may end up with something like the Bugatti Veyron - phenomenal top speed, but handles like a yacht around corners.

Or you could have raw speed and handling in something like a Koenigsegg that does everything well.

Intended use and/or track is also a huge factor. If you're planning to just blast around an oval, raw speed is the most important factor, but if you're planning to do track days on a short, technical track, handling characteristics become more important.

Just look at the Dodge Tomahawk - the fastest car in GT7, but absolutely useless in 99% of races, yet it comes in to its own on Special Stage Route X.
 
The combination of speed and handling is the ultimate combination for me. Though I've never heard of a race driver complaining the car had too much power. :)

I do like great handling cars, but like Mick said: "But first we gotta get speed, demon speed, speed’s what we need, we need greasy fast SPEED!"

 
Probably handling. I've got an ongoing Youtube series where I try to set up the game's fastest and/or stupidest cars for Nurbugring and two major upsets so far have been the Ferrari 812 and Corvette C5, both of which have beaten cars with much, much more power through cornering performance, despite the Nordschleife being a pretty top-speed-heavy circuit.
 
lbpomg95
Probably handling. I've got an ongoing Youtube series where I try to set up the game's fastest and/or stupidest cars for Nurbugring and two major upsets so far have been the Ferrari 812 and Corvette C5, both of which have beaten cars with much, much more power through cornering performance, despite the Nordschleife being a pretty top-speed-heavy circuit.
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Great channel. Your commentary is priceless. Thanks.
 
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Back in the PS2 days you could wrap a rubber band around the PS2 accelerator stick with the Suzuki and win every race. But... I prefer driving a Porsche for the cornering ability.
 
Take the older muscle cars, add a compressor -> nice raw speed for straights/drag races, but they can't take a corner ._.
 
To be fair there are extremes at both ends of pure power and handling.

It depends what you want to do, a dragster is nothing but raw power, a lotus Elise is “just powerful enough”

The key is really about balance and what you want to achieve.

Take the lastest gen of super cars, these have in excess of 5-6-700 horsepower but with finesse and precision as well. So power and handling aren’t mutually exclusive.

In controlled conditions like racing the emphasis shifts from “raw power” to best use of the power, be that in the way it’s delivered or gearing through to braking and chassis setup.

A fun thing I used to do in the early GTs was just upgrade the brakes of the cars, the quicker you can stop the quicker you can be on the power however much of it you have.

It’s a fun topic but how things are now, it’s not really power that’s the main issue, electric cars can deliver maximum torque almost instantly.

Overall I think that things are converging to where both things can co exist in the same platform.
 

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