Weight Reduction or Horsepower

[SDsnakebutt]

When tuning or upgrading parts for a car thats already close to a specific pp limit (437pp car for a 450pp race) is there a general rule that comes into play as far as buying weight reduction parts or horsepower parts if only enough pp space for one more part?

Like cars above 1700 kg would benefit more from weight reduction than adding more HP? or cars like the lotus elise that are already pretty light, benefit more adding additional HP?

I feel like i run into this a lot and with my noob mentality I'm always thinking the bigger the HP number the better…

Thank you and sorry if question isn't very clear.

 

[iainoflo85]

Question is very clear and is different for different cars.

But I agree that cars that are heavy, like over 1500kg losing a bit of weight can be better because from my experience those cars tend to already have a lot of horsepower due to the high weight for their PP figure.

And lighter cars tend to have lower HP because I think there is a bias towards weight in the PP calculations.

But take a look at Motor City Hami's guide to tuning - he talks about his methods when approaching this question in his garage.

Here's the link:
https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/threads/motor-city-tunes-gt6-miata-roadsters.291066/#post-9003798

 

[claudiorz]

From my experience, weight reduction is generally better until you reach the point where it becomes too expensive in terms of pp, which comes at around 900 kg and every additional pp gives you only 5 kg less or so. The improved handling, braking and acceleration that comes from reducing weight more than makes up for the loss of top speed.

There are exceptions to this, in high speed tracks like La Sarthe or Daytona Road top speed is the most important thing to get fast lap times. Also when tuning RWD cars with poor traction (Shelby GT350 comes to mind) it might be a good idea to keep some extra weight in the rear to help dealing with the power on corner exit.

 

[SDsnakebutt]

iainoflo85 thank you for the link. I have actually used some of Motor City Hami tunes prior to joining GTPlanet and he seems to have immense knowledge of GT tuning and things alike. I will definitely spend some time reading that.

claudiorz Thank you. I agree that once weight reduction is only knocking 5 kg off it may not be the best choice if you have a limited amount of pp space before going over the limited pp for the race you are entering.

Also when tuning RWD cars with poor traction (Shelby GT350 comes to mind) it might be a good idea to keep some extra weight in the rear to help dealing with the power on corner exit.

did not know this . thanks