Reasons for using Sport tires over Racing tires…

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kickin_on

kickin_on

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Hey peoples… Been seeing quite a few tunes/setups on here using Sport tires instead of Racing tires…

I am still expanding my tuning knowledge/abilities and usually use Racing Softs as a lazy default, but am interested to find out people’s various reasons for using Sport tires over Racing ones so I can further my ability to tune cars more to their/my requirements rather than just using blanket-settings on certain parts for every car.

So why Sport over Racing?


Improved or more appropriate handling for particular cars?

Restrictions on particular race requirements?

Improved sense of realism in physics/dynamics?

Basic personal preference of feel?

Any other reasons?



Would be good to get a gauge of, in what particular applications Sport tires may be better than my lazy default of Rsofts :)
 
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For me its about the challenge. Tyres (hard thru soft, comfort thru racing) should be chosen based on the competition for racing, or feel when driving for fun. The comfort and especially sport tyres emphasize the vehicles characteristics.

Thats why I like driving in the rain or snow in real life. The vehicle behaves at its boundaries without the need for speed to bring it there.
 
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I've only posted 1 GT5 tune so far & I used Racing slicks on it. I do tune cars with sports tires most of my tunes start there as my one released tune did. With a car like the Gallardo making 760hp when fully upgraded the limits of sports tires becomes too apparent all too quickly. This car is much more enjoyable on racing slicks.

When it comes to cars like the WRX I do stage tuning. Stage II is set up on Sport Soft tires and usually modified with level 2 parts where applicable. Where Stage III is Maxed out on Racing Slicks.

But it's all about how you want to play the game.
 
Using "worse" tires, because they emphasize he vehicles characteristics, are useful when tuning. A car really shows its weaknesses when using Comfort Hards.
 
You know, I've looked all over for a car that actually comes stock with Comfort Hard but even the worst of the crap in this game comes with at least Comfort Medium.
 
Realism. I think someone here on GTP did testing and concluded that racing softs exceed the performance of any tire known to man. Figure on dropping down two tire levels in order to get a somewhat accurate simulation.
 
I fully support tuners using Sport Tires to do the first 80-90% of the tuning, to ensure they're not hiding flaws with grip. But after that, I think they should use Racing Softs and fine tune from there, around the tires people will actually use.

But that doesn't mean I think every car should be finalized on Racing Softs.
Just the majority of what they can safely assume will be used a maximizing build.
 
For me and my tiny collective, it depends on the type of vehicle. Racing tyres are restricted to racing cars. Anything else we'll only ever run on Sport tyres at most.

Tyres are the first thing I check on published builds. If they're production/non-race cars and they're published with Racing tyres, I'll skip on by. Complete overkill to me. Sport tires show you how good or bad a car really is and provide a proper challenge.

{Cy}
 
CyKosis1973
For me and my tiny collective, it depends on the type of vehicle. Racing tyres are restricted to racing cars. Anything else we'll only ever run on Sport tyres at most.

Tyres are the first thing I check on published builds. If they're production/non-race cars and they're published with Racing tyres, I'll skip on by. Complete overkill to me. Sport tires show you how good or bad a car really is and provide a proper challenge.

{Cy}
Click to expand...

You do realize that you can install any tire you desire... right?
 
Adrenaline
You do realize that you can install any tire you desire... right?
Click to expand...

It's the thought that counts.

I feel the same way as {Cy}, I don't really care to give the people what they want. I tune the cars on lower grade tires to challenge myself and spec them that way and if people want to blow over my garage because I do, so be it, I'm not here to call them customers or clients and do their bidding. They can use the tunes I provide or F' off...

Occasionally, I also find the really aggressive car that handles like crap on Race Soft. I think this has to do with the temperature modeling and the Race Soft has so much friction it heats up much quicker, and the hotter it gets, the less grip it maintains on the surface. The Formula Gran Turismo is case and point, I drive the car much more consistently lap to lap and usually post better lap times as well on just about any track with Race Medium tires installed than if I attempted to do so on Race Soft.
 
i try to use sports tires as often as i can. reason? almost every car will run pretty good on racing tires and its quite boring when i cant tell if im driving a honda civic or a ferrari f430.
when using sports tires you sure can feel the difference
 
These are really interesting points.
I'm not much of a tuner I tend to change a couple of setting to similar levels based on car type not the car. and I always stick Race soft tyres on. But I'm not a great driver so find I can't control a car so well if it's not on race soft.

But after reading this I think I may try and spend some time trying to actually tune a car on Sport soft that suits my driving style.
 
When I see brake settings of 10 / 10 (or 0 / 0), or LSD settings of 60 / 60 / 60, or "always use ASM set at 10", or "always use Racing Softs", I immediately assume that there is something wrong with the Tune and the indicated settings are necessary to cover up tuning mistakes. Personally, I prefer to use Racing Hards for race cars or exotic cars, and Sports tires on all the others regardless of what the Tuner has indicated.
 
Adrenaline
You do realize that you can install any tire you desire... right?
Click to expand...

Obviously Sir, obviously.

My own preference for production type cars is Sport Softs max. I skip over builds that are of the type I mentioned, and clad in Racing Softs, because as often as not, if I apply the build and stick my preferred tyre type on, they don't drive as well. If I see something has been built using SSs, then it'll usually drive well enough.

Sometimes I'll PM the author and ask if I use their work in a way they hadn't intended, what I should do to compensate. This could be tyre choice or restrictions on weight or power. As we all know, an individual component added or removed can make or break a build. Slapping slicks on a non-race car, without reasoning, smacks as laziness in my eyes. I can throw a set of slicks on a RUF or Clio V6 and post a passable lap time without having doing a single other thing to the car. I'm all ears and I'll pay dues if someone has fought with a beast and produced a decent solution. S'my preference...

{Cy}
 
Other than finishing my B-spec I do all my racing online and there are few lobbies I can see with anything other than no limit tire options and most are so competitive you can't win or even finish halfway up the grid without racing softs. Yeah it would be more of a challenge I suppose to use lower grade tires and if that's your thing that's great. But for me, other than when drifting or forced into it by a Seasonal Event or League limitations, it's racing softs all the way.

I've taken a lot of tunes from online tuners and some work well for me and lots don't. Lately I've started tuning some of my own cars starting from scratch and was thinking of starting some kind of tuning source for PP limited cars as a lot of racing online seems to be PP limited. I figure it would be pretty useful to a lot of online racers and a 600 PP tune on a high performance car for example, would still work if it was set at 575 or 625. Perhaps it's not the purist thing to do but then neither are a lot of things in GT5...lol
 
CyKosis1973
I can throw a set of slicks on a RUF or Clio V6 and post a passable lap time without having doing a single other thing to the car.
Click to expand...

After that I can blow your lap time out of the water with the same car and the same tyres but with a good setup on top of it.

Many people think that Racing Softs are the ultimate tuning tool and override everything else, to an extent in which they're all that's needed to produce a perfectly handling car. Wrong. Very wrong. While the car feels like it has infinite grip to a (let's be honest here) less than mediocre driver when running on Racing Softs it still has to obey the laws of physics. Yes, the limits have been raised by quite a lot but no tyre will grip infinitely and the limits are easily found by driving the car harder. The average gamer will never reach those limits and thus thinks that the tyres are unrealistic. I can say from experience that it doesn't take much to spin a Super GT car with Racing Softs when really pushing it. Then again, the difference between the average gamer and a veteran like me is something like five seconds a lap and that difference comes from finding - and exceeding - the limits. The saying "if everything is under control you aren't going fast enough" is absolutely true.
 
Greycap
After that I can blow your lap time out of the water with the same car and the same tyres but with a good setup on top of it.

Many people think that Racing Softs are the ultimate tuning tool and override everything else, to an extent in which they're all that's needed to produce a perfectly handling car. Wrong. Very wrong. While the car feels like it has infinite grip to a (let's be honest here) less than mediocre driver when running on Racing Softs it still has to obey the laws of physics. Yes, the limits have been raised by quite a lot but no tyre will grip infinitely and the limits are easily found by driving the car harder. The average gamer will never reach those limits and thus thinks that the tyres are unrealistic. I can say from experience that it doesn't take much to spin a Super GT car with Racing Softs when really pushing it. Then again, the difference between the average gamer and a veteran like me is something like five seconds a lap and that difference comes from finding - and exceeding - the limits. The saying "if everything is under control you aren't going fast enough" is absolutely true.
Click to expand...

Good to see you're not shy about blowing your own trumpet. Well done you.

In other news, I'm sure you could also build a car around Sport Soft tyres and have it beat the same car, with only a stock build and Racing Softs.

In context, the rest of your massively self aggrandising post seems irrelevant, but thanks anyway...:cool:

{Cy}
 
budious
It's the thought that counts.

I feel the same way as {Cy}, I don't really care to give the people what they want. I tune the cars on lower grade tires to challenge myself and spec them that way and if people want to blow over my garage because I do, so be it, I'm not here to call them customers or clients and do their bidding. They can use the tunes I provide or F' off...

Occasionally, I also find the really aggressive car that handles like crap on Race Soft. I think this has to do with the temperature modeling and the Race Soft has so much friction it heats up much quicker, and the hotter it gets, the less grip it maintains on the surface. The Formula Gran Turismo is case and point, I drive the car much more consistently lap to lap and usually post better lap times as well on just about any track with Race Medium tires installed than if I attempted to do so on Race Soft.
Click to expand...

That bit about heat modeling is quite interesting. The last couple of seasons in F1 the teams with the most agressive cars/drivers were having issues with the soft 'option' tyres from Bridgestone.

Jury's still out on the new Pirellis for 2011, though they have exhibited one very interesting characteristic in that their rubber doesnt deposit neatly on the track...
 
I agree with the guys who prefer Sports Tyres on everything that's not a race car, with some exception. The exception being when there is a car that I can modify to the point where it is practically a race car, without actually having a Race Modification option available for it. In other words, a car that doesn't have just have the rear wing aero mod, but wing and at least front aero allowing for lots of downforce, and is capable of loads of HP.

So, to list my reasons for preferring Sports Tyres:

  1. In the SCCA, and probably many if not most sports car racing organizations around the world, racing slicks are not allowed in sports car events.
  2. Slicks can cover up bad suspension tuning.
  3. Less grip=more fun
 
If you put racing slicks on a production car it is not a production car anymore, but I guess I am a bit of a purist.
 
Schadenfreude13
Less grip=more fun
Click to expand...

Not necessarily even less grip, it's all relative to how well you can utilize it. I think the majority of drivers with a poor taste for Sport Soft are the ones on full weight reductions and lowered rides. Sport Soft tires have considerable grip if they have some body roll and weight transfer put on them (ie. add HP upgrades, not weight reductions and leave at normal ride height).
 
budious
Not necessarily even less grip, it's all relative to how well you can utilize it. I think the majority of drivers with a poor taste for Sport Soft are the ones on full weight reductions and lowered rides. Sport Soft tires have considerable grip if they have some body roll and weight transfer put on them (ie. add HP upgrades, not weight reductions and leave at normal ride height).
Click to expand...

/agree

Just keeping it short and sweet.
 
The discussions of whether or not race tires are appropriate on street cars is pretty much irrelevant.

Some manufacturers build competition tires that meet the regulations for street, but they are really race tires with very high grip and very low durability.

However, I agree with many of the comments about initially setting up a car. I use sports tires (on street cars) because the racing soft tires hide the flaws.

I like setting up cars that are balanced and can achieve consistent lap times on a variety of courses. Consistent to me is within a .10th of a second for 3 or more laps.

If my car is balanced and consistent on sports tires, then it is even better when I put on racing soft tires for competitions that allow them.
 
Sport Softs definitely have a significant amount of grip, alot of drivers become warped by their constant use of RS tyres and think SS or below are just useless when the reality of it is very different.

I've personally always tuned to SS as I prefer to drive SS on road (tuned) cars then RS tyres which become less eventful to drive (IMO), firmly falling into the camp that prefers to keep road cars at road regulations although often at it's most extreme. That includes fully modified Vipers and whatnot running well above 800bhp, they're not really that hard to drive if driven correctly though I tend to sit more around 400-500bhp.

Ultimately it depends on what the car is intended to do, and therein what people what to tune to as well. If a car is meant to be as fast as humanly possible, it will have a set of Racing Softs on it, but if it's meant to be the most entertaining to drive it could have anything on it depending on what the tuner views as most entertaining. I don't think any tuner slaps on RS tyres to 'mask' the cars true traits, I think they put them on because that's how they use the car and they believe it is effective (whether or not it is actually masking traits is another question).
 
I feel that some would agree the beauty of this game is that individuals have to ability to emulate real-life norms as closely or as fantastically as they like, and also to create tunes tailored specifically to their driving styles/preferences.

The purpose of this thread was not for argument for what ‘should’ and ‘should not’ be, – but just to find out individuals’ various reasons.

I was hoping to find reasons/opinions I didn’t realise I already held myself, or that I could have applied already… which, like everyone else on here, involves sifting through info/opinions and taking what you like, and discarding without bitching, what you don’t like.

Personally, I often prefer to enhance a car's abilities by means other than simply increasing power. There have been times where in the tuning process, the addition of racing tires (along with susp tuning) has been the most appropriate next step in tuning, where an increase in power (or other modifications) has resulted in decreased performance on sport tires.

Has anyone else encountered this?


It also seems that there are 2 different schools of thought here…

- One relating to tuning for increased outright vehicle performance

- The other relates to tuning for increased enjoyment or to fulfil personal/set criteria


Either, or any combination of these, is completely justified to me…
 

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