Here's some handling advice, and guess what? It doesn't cost all that much. The only thing it costs is your time, 5 credits, and 1 day in GT4 (more of each if you must leave and come back). Pick any track of your choice. I use Sears Point *cough* I mean, Infineon
because I am intimately familiar with it. I've gone to all ALMS events there since 2002; photographing most of them, and I have tracked my Rabbit GTi on the sports car course with N.A.S.A. last August. That's N.A.S.A. the competitor to the S.C.C.A., not N.A.S.A. the space administration. The point is, pick a track you are very familiar with so the track is not a variable.
Here is my advice- use the traction management computer (Driving Aids) and shift weight where you want it (Weight Balance). These come with the car and are free. Heck, Sony & P.D. have made it easy for you because I sure as heck didn't know that cars pre-1985 came with traction control; at least my '83 Rabbit and '69 Corvette didn't. Maybe the prior owners missed those option boxes?
Oh well, they are included with the game, use them to your advantage.
With traction control alone I can make a FR car handle any way I like. P.D. & Sony have made it even easier with the ASM system in GT4; it's broken up into "Oversteer"
and "Understeer" settings. A driver can now completely dial in or dial out the computer's intervention for either case. In past versions of Gran Turismo, ASM was one very rude system. We even started calling it the
Anti-
Steering
Mechanism and shut it off. In the past the system kicked on when we didn't want it to and the driver had no way of fine tuning; finally we've gotten that fine tuning. Be thankful.
Think of the three 'new' settings in this regard. TCS is for straightline traction. For example: TCS calms the massive engine torque from turning both 335mm wide tires on the back of a Viper GTS into a smoking pile of rubber dust. For a car like the Autobianchi or some other underpowered kushman cart, set this to the range of 0-2; higher if you have massive power levels.
Both ASM settings kick in when the car is in the action of cornering whether or not the car is settled, braking, or accelerating. If a car is completely settled and in a corner, ASM is not actively doing anything. If and when the nose starts to plow or the tail becomes overly anxious and tries to pass the front however, ASM will take appropriate action and either add power or will actuate the necessary calipers to calm the misbehaving wheel(s). These settings fight what are listed. Ex. ASM (Oversteer) will fight oversteer and will induce understeer. ASM (Understeer) does just the opposite; it induces oversteer.
I find AWD cars to be exceptionally $hitty pavement racers because the front tires are best when they turn and only turn. The rear tires are supposed provide the go power. Whenever a tire is asked to do more than one job, it really screws with the balance between forward movement and steering. FWD is the worst example as the front tires are the lone workers, the rears do nothing but follow. That said however, I would take FWD over AWD because at least it's possible to use tie-bars, swaybars, corner weighting and other suspension tuning tricks to dial out understeer. AWD cars? The answer for me is simple- disconnect the front drive axles and turn that thing into a RWD vehicle. Can't do that in GT4; not until MK comes out with a new garage editor.
Weight Balance. Ah yes, the blasphemous action of adding weight back into a car we've just proudly gutted. Speed World Challenge, amongst other sanctioning bodies, use what they call "Rewards Weight." This is weight added into a winning car as an attempt to make the playing field level. I applaud GT4 for incorporating this feature. Online racing leagues may now also incorporate "Rewards Weight" into their rule books. Something we can do, that competitors cannot however, is place this weight anywhere we want (within 2 dimensions and digital reason). Sanctioning bodies limit the placement because a competitor can use the added weight to corner weight a vehicle better and make the car
more competitive even though the chassis is now heavier.
With adding weight, there are at least two thoughts that are both equal. A lot of weight just barely past centerline can equal a little bit of weight toward the very end. Think of a fat person and a baby on opposite ends of a teeter-totter. If they're both at the very end, the side with the large person drops. As the bigger person slides closer to the fulcrum point (center), the sides start to level off.
Stock for stock, why does a 1969 Corvette outhandle a 1969 Mustang? The 1969 Corvette has a weight bias of 49%F / 51%R. The Mustang is closer to a bias of 60%F / 40%R. Now a modified Mustang can do just as well as a stock Corvette, but the initial platform isn't as good. The front mid-mounted engine of the Corvette helps a lot. The back portion of the engine, the bellhousing and transmission in the 1969 Corvette are very close to being at the exact center of the car. The engine even sits slightly to the passenger side of the car to offset the driver's weight; it sure makes corner weighting a lot easier in that car.
Where am I going with this? Why don't you drive an '86 RUF BTR around Sears Point and find out the best lap time you can achieve? The BTR is an example of a RR platform car. That is, the engine is not only in the back of the car, it sits past the centerline of the rear axle. In driving around a corner, I feel the rear end acting like a pendulum. The rear wants to guide me where to go- Ah ah ah! Remember what I said before about the front steering and the rear providing the forward thrust? I want the front tires to direct me, not the rear. To counter this, I tweaked the suspension, I tweaked the tires, I tweaked both ASM and TCS. The car has a nasty habit of understeer into snap-oversteer. The chassis is so unbalanced it was making me think of shelving the car forever.
How did I finally dial this problem away? I put 27 kilos (59.5 pounds) into the nose (-45 for the game setting) of the car. That's where I started anyway. There is still room for fine tuning. I figured that roughly 60 pounds in the extreme front of the chassis would help to offset the weight of the engine in the back. I was right and my lap times started coming down drastically. I set the car back to stock suspension settings and found that with the weight balance setting alone, I subtracted 4 seconds off my previously best time. I also found that the RUF BTR does very well with a ride height of 100mm front and rear and the springs bumped another 10% in stiffness but that's all. Any lower ride height or any more stiffness in the springs and the car's body bounces too much. In retrospect it was probably riding on the bump stops so the shocks were not doing their prescribed job.
To summarize this. Take what the stock car gives you and work with it. You may find that just tuning the platform to be closer to 50%F / 50%R weight bias will help immensely in the cornering department.
) the cars seems to easily get less satisfactional if tuned, unless you happend to be good with settings (I sure as heck dont know all that much about it lol) though so maybe im not the one to say.. 
. I guess im a stock car junkie to some extent though.
