What is it about Laguna Seca?

[johof1234]

This maybe a track PD got wrong. Most real life drivers, who have raced there, claim the track has very low grip and that every corner is tough as a result.

Also Laguna Seca is not in a desert. It's in Salinas, CA, just south of San Francisco. It looks like a desert because it's built in a dry lake bed.

 

[MrWednesday]

Fwd sucks.

And one of the potential methods of making it suck less, lift-off oversteer, is not modeled correctly in GT5.

 

[playnthru]

Salinas and San Francisco are 106miles apart by car. Laguna Seca is located in Monterey Ca, here's the address.Address: 1021 Salinas Hwy, Monterey, CA 93940

Salinas Hwy, is the 68. It's runs between Monterey and Salinas.👍

The beach is a short drive away.

 

[NCRthree]

And one of the potential methods of making it suck less, lift-off oversteer, is not modeled correctly in GT5.

Indeed. That's why it sucks. I'll annihilate a Wrong Wheel Drive's front tires trying to get that sucker to turn. They're great if you like watching long clouds of smoke in replays. Hopefully PD will program them better for GT6.

 

[F1 Racer]

I have an idea..............................RACING SOFT.

 

[MistyRainne]

Sorry to go off topic

The original topic of this thread, besides having no clear answer (and not a big deal, just something I was wondering about), has long since been run over by shifter karts rolling down off-camber corners – or something – and, now, by this fight I’ve been wanting to pick for a while (and which Bopop came here and picked too for some reason). No worries.

Deep breath, and here we go:

The reason this is the case is because you’re asking the front wheels to deliver power as well as steer

A RWD’s front wheels share the same burden: when steering, they still have to resist the rear wheels’ power, which is trying to make the car continue going the direction its nose is facing, which is exactly what the front wheels are trying to get the car to stop doing.

A FWD’s power goes in the direction the front wheels are pointing; it helps the turning effort rather than working against it. It still has to split its traction between steering and power, but both are working to add side momentum, so they don’t cancel each other out as much; the traction is used better, wasting less of it.

Here’s a way to visualize it: Imagine a hypothetical car whose front wheels can be steered a full 90° from forward. (No real car can do this, but this is just for illustration.) Touch the accelerator a bit. If it’s FWD, the front of the car will move to the side, and it’ll pivot around its rear wheels. If it’s RWD, the rear wheels’ power will just drag the front wheels along the road, and the car won’t turn at all.

No one’s going to experience it quite like that in a real race, but the same effects are still in play; somewhere near the limits, there’s a sliver of the traction circle that FWD can get to that RWD can’t. You can find it with the same level of experience and careful control that’s needed just to keep RWD steady at all.

Furthermore, FWD cars tend to be front-heavy (they don’t rely on sheer car rotation as much), so they have more front traction available to begin with.

beyond a certain power threshold understeer becomes too overwhelming and downright dangerous

A lighter touch on the pedal should let it work just like a lower-powered car, for when high power would be too much and lead to dangerous understeer.

And yes, that’s true of FWD too.

There’s a limit on how fast anything can go through a turn, and that limit comes from the amount of traction available: you need traction to do anything, after all. RWDs are not exempt from this, so they wouldn’t be “flying by” on their way toward anything but the guardrail.

Taking a corner involves more than simply rotating the car, after all. You also have to overcome momentum; if you don’t, you’ll just slam sideways into the outer wall. RWD is very good at rotating the car! A little too good, sometimes. But if you handle the momentum correctly, the car’s rotation will pretty much take care of itself. That’s how FWD is, anyway; you don’t have to rotate the car before its time in order to aim its power down the turn, you can do that simply by turning the steering wheel. That’s why it doesn’t need to be unstable in order to perform well.

Basically, adding more power won’t change the fact that you still have to get down to the maximum speed that you can carry through your chosen line. You’ll have to start braking sooner, but you can get going afterward faster too, and most of the power will be used on the straights, where it’s easy enough to keep the car in line. (The way to raise the maximum corner speed is to have more traction; then you can add power to take advantage of that.)

While RWD can be seen as "Unstable" the only cause of this is the driver error

Rear-wheel steering would be even more unstable, even more challenging to drive; you’d be J-turning through all the corners! Left-wheel drive would be very awkward and difficult to use at all, let alone master. But suppose someone did master these things. Would that mean that the things are above criticism?

Any track can be mastered, but does that put track design beyond criticism? (Ask people what they think about Hermann Tilke.)
Any drivetrain can be mastered, but does that put drivetrain design beyond criticism?

At some point, you have to draw the line between “bad driver” and “bad design”, where the design makes poor use of the driver’s skill, casts an unnecessary shadow in the driver’s light.

It takes a lot less driver error to make RWD unstable than it does to make FWD unstable. That’s a point RWD and FWD can be compared by; it’s not a comparison of the drivers.

RWD is prone to spinning out, but people will say “learn to drive it”: and indeed, a skilled RWD driver instinctively avoids it and it’s rarely a problem for them, and you don’t hear the chorus singing “RWD sucks” when someone is having trouble with it. FWD is prone to understeer, but a skilled FWD driver instinctively avoids it and it’s rarely a problem for them, but people don’t say “learn to drive it” when someone is having trouble with it, least of all for themselves: they jump right to “FWD sucks”.
Problem with RWD? It can’t possibly be the drivetrain’s fault; blame the driver!
Problem with FWD? It can’t possibly be the driver’s fault; blame the drivetrain!
There’s a double standard at play here, and that’s part of what I mean when I say RWD is privileged.

You simply struggle with the skills required to use them properly
Just because you are not talented and can only drive cars with training wheels

FR Challenge, no aids but AT, all golds, and just good enough at it to have fun doing it. With a DS3, I might add.

But just because I can drive RWD, and even enjoy it, doesn’t mean I think it’s above criticism; it doesn’t mean I’m not willing to point out its weaknesses compared to other drivetrains.

And RWD cars CAN brake without ABS.

I’ve gotten and driven a bunch of different cars, in stock setup, in random Arcade races. (Fun way to pass the time, and I get a lot of practice!) In my experience, RWDs tend to be squirrelly when braking firmly, even in straight lines, more so than FWDs. There are some stable RWDs and unstable FWDs, but mostly it’s the other way around.

Anything can brake cleanly when using a light enough touch on the pedal... or if it’s been tuned out, but the ways of doing so (inward toe, frontward brake balance, etc) tend to downplay RWD’s character (such as trailbraking to break the back end loose so you can get a slide going) in favor of FWD-like characteristics (trailbraking to simply shift the braking zone later).

[RWD is] better than 4wd because it’s lighter

For the same amount of power, sure. But what about power per ton? The weight shouldn’t matter, as long as it can bring enough power to make up for it. Then you have to compare them by how they wield that power: how they make use of their wheels’ traction.

You can only lay down so much power-per-ton before wheels run out of traction. With 4WD, you can lay down twice as much as any 2WD layout before running out of traction, because you have twice as many wheels’ traction to use.

FWD’s acceleration potential is less than RWD’s, so it often gets put down for that, legitimately. But RWD’s acceleration potential, in turn, is less than 4WD’s, and I can put RWD down for that just as legitimately.

(And that weight transfer onto the driven wheels never seems to be enough to keep RWD’s power on the ground when you actually need to get going in a hurry. Some effect!)

Almost every single high level race car is an MR, what does that tell you about it?

MR rather than FR? That tells me that at the extremes of racing, the front wheels running out of traction (understeer) is more tolerable than the rear wheels running out of traction (oversteer). I agree!

MR handles that by moving the engine (and its weight) toward the back, to help the rear wheels be better at carrying out their task and be used better on the straights; while FF handles that by having the front wheels carry out that task instead, where it can be used better when cornering.

Try drag racing a 400hp Civic vs a 400hp Starion, tell us who wins.

How about a 600hp Civic vs the 400hp Starion? The FF layout can support that kind of power (the GT by Citroën has 779hp, even when going in reverse), which was my point.

For that matter, how about a 400hp Starion vs a 400hp Impreza? If 400hp is enough to spin two wheels, the 4WD will win.

And one of the potential methods of making it suck less, lift-off oversteer, is not modeled correctly in GT5.

Try rearward brake balance. Brake into a turn and the back end should swing out, kinda like a RWD powerslide but without relying on the power wheels losing traction, so you can get going again without waiting for it to settle down. I went over this the other day, in a different thread.

 

[MrWednesday]

If it worked right, you could get oversteer just by lifting off the throttle abruptly. You wouldn't need to brake.

 

[iamsupernasty]

Misty, I have decided you are just being intentially obtuse. You cant actually believe these wackjob theories.

If you do, I give up.

You are wrong though.

 

[Bopop4]

Misty, I have decided you are just being intentially obtuse. You cant actually believe these wackjob theories.

If you do, I give up.

You are wrong though.

That sums it up rather nicely.

I'll point out all the mistakes in the morning, 1:30AM, so it's a bit late to be fooling around with this.

Just so changes can't be made.

UrieHusky
Sorry to go off topic
The original topic of this thread, besides having no clear answer (and not a big deal, just something I was wondering about), has long since been run over by shifter karts rolling down off-camber corners – or something – and, now, by this fight I’ve been wanting to pick for a while (and which Bopop came here and picked too for some reason). No worries.

Deep breath, and here we go:

The reason this is the case is because you’re asking the front wheels to deliver power as well as steer
A RWD’s front wheels share the same burden: when steering, they still have to resist the rear wheels’ power, which is trying to make the car continue going the direction its nose is facing, which is exactly what the front wheels are trying to get the car to stop doing.

A FWD’s power goes in the direction the front wheels are pointing; it helps the turning effort rather than working against it. It still has to split its traction between steering and power, but both are working to add side momentum, so they don’t cancel each other out as much; the traction is used better, wasting less of it.

Here’s a way to visualize it: Imagine a hypothetical car whose front wheels can be steered a full 90° from forward. (No real car can do this, but this is just for illustration.) Touch the accelerator a bit. If it’s FWD, the front of the car will move to the side, and it’ll pivot around its rear wheels. If it’s RWD, the rear wheels’ power will just drag the front wheels along the road, and the car won’t turn at all.

No one’s going to experience it quite like that in a real race, but the same effects are still in play; somewhere near the limits, there’s a sliver of the traction circle that FWD can get to that RWD can’t. You can find it with the same level of experience and careful control that’s needed just to keep RWD steady at all.

Furthermore, FWD cars tend to be front-heavy (they don’t rely on sheer car rotation as much), so they have more front traction available to begin with.

beyond a certain power threshold understeer becomes too overwhelming and downright dangerous
A lighter touch on the pedal should let it work just like a lower-powered car, for when high power would be too much and lead to dangerous understeer.

And yes, that’s true of FWD too.

There’s a limit on how fast anything can go through a turn, and that limit comes from the amount of traction available: you need traction to do anything, after all. RWDs are not exempt from this, so they wouldn’t be “flying by” on their way toward anything but the guardrail.

Taking a corner involves more than simply rotating the car, after all. You also have to overcome momentum; if you don’t, you’ll just slam sideways into the outer wall. RWD is very good at rotating the car! A little too good, sometimes. But if you handle the momentum correctly, the car’s rotation will pretty much take care of itself. That’s how FWD is, anyway; you don’t have to rotate the car before its time in order to aim its power down the turn, you can do that simply by turning the steering wheel. That’s why it doesn’t need to be unstable in order to perform well.

Basically, adding more power won’t change the fact that you still have to get down to the maximum speed that you can carry through your chosen line. You’ll have to start braking sooner, but you can get going afterward faster too, and most of the power will be used on the straights, where it’s easy enough to keep the car in line. (The way to raise the maximum corner speed is to have more traction; then you can add power to take advantage of that.)

While RWD can be seen as "Unstable" the only cause of this is the driver error
Rear-wheel steering would be even more unstable, even more challenging to drive; you’d be J-turning through all the corners! Left-wheel drive would be very awkward and difficult to use at all, let alone master. But suppose someone did master these things. Would that mean that the things are above criticism?

Any track can be mastered, but does that put track design beyond criticism? (Ask people what they think about Hermann Tilke.)
Any drivetrain can be mastered, but does that put drivetrain design beyond criticism?

At some point, you have to draw the line between “bad driver” and “bad design”, where the design makes poor use of the driver’s skill, casts an unnecessary shadow in the driver’s light.

It takes a lot less driver error to make RWD unstable than it does to make FWD unstable. That’s a point RWD and FWD can be compared by; it’s not a comparison of the drivers.

RWD is prone to spinning out, but people will say “learn to drive it”: and indeed, a skilled RWD driver instinctively avoids it and it’s rarely a problem for them, and you don’t hear the chorus singing “RWD sucks” when someone is having trouble with it. FWD is prone to understeer, but a skilled FWD driver instinctively avoids it and it’s rarely a problem for them, but people don’t say “learn to drive it” when someone is having trouble with it, least of all for themselves: they jump right to “FWD sucks”.
Problem with RWD? It can’t possibly be the drivetrain’s fault; blame the driver!
Problem with FWD? It can’t possibly be the driver’s fault; blame the drivetrain!
There’s a double standard at play here, and that’s part of what I mean when I say RWD is privileged.

iamsupernasty
You simply struggle with the skills required to use them properly
Just because you are not talented and can only drive cars with training wheels
FR Challenge, no aids but AT, all golds, and just good enough at it to have fun doing it. With a DS3, I might add.

But just because I can drive RWD, and even enjoy it, doesn’t mean I think it’s above criticism; it doesn’t mean I’m not willing to point out its weaknesses compared to other drivetrains.

And RWD cars CAN brake without ABS.
I’ve gotten and driven a bunch of different cars, in stock setup, in random Arcade races. (Fun way to pass the time, and I get a lot of practice!) In my experience, RWDs tend to be squirrelly when braking firmly, even in straight lines, more so than FWDs. There are some stable RWDs and unstable FWDs, but mostly it’s the other way around.

Anything can brake cleanly when using a light enough touch on the pedal... or if it’s been tuned out, but the ways of doing so (inward toe, frontward brake balance, etc) tend to downplay RWD’s character (such as trailbraking to break the back end loose so you can get a slide going) in favor of FWD-like characteristics (trailbraking to simply shift the braking zone later).

Bopop4
[RWD is] better than 4wd because it’s lighter
For the same amount of power, sure. But what about power per ton? The weight shouldn’t matter, as long as it can bring enough power to make up for it. Then you have to compare them by how they wield that power: how they make use of their wheels’ traction.

You can only lay down so much power-per-ton before wheels run out of traction. With 4WD, you can lay down twice as much as any 2WD layout before running out of traction, because you have twice as many wheels’ traction to use.

FWD’s acceleration potential is less than RWD’s, so it often gets put down for that, legitimately. But RWD’s acceleration potential, in turn, is less than 4WD’s, and I can put RWD down for that just as legitimately.

(And that weight transfer onto the driven wheels never seems to be enough to keep RWD’s power on the ground when you actually need to get going in a hurry. Some effect!)

Almost every single high level race car is an MR, what does that tell you about it?
MR rather than FR? That tells me that at the extremes of racing, the front wheels running out of traction (understeer) is more tolerable than the rear wheels running out of traction (oversteer). I agree!

MR handles that by moving the engine (and its weight) toward the back, to help the rear wheels be better at carrying out their task and be used better on the straights; while FF handles that by having the front wheels carry out that task instead, where it can be used better when cornering.

Try drag racing a 400hp Civic vs a 400hp Starion, tell us who wins.
How about a 600hp Civic vs the 400hp Starion? The FF layout can support that kind of power (the GT by Citroën has 779hp, even when going in reverse), which was my point.

For that matter, how about a 400hp Starion vs a 400hp Impreza? If 400hp is enough to spin two wheels, the 4WD will win.

MrWednesday
And one of the potential methods of making it suck less, lift-off oversteer, is not modeled correctly in GT5.
Try rearward brake balance. Brake into a turn and the back end should swing out, kinda like a RWD powerslide but without relying on the power wheels losing traction, so you can get going again without waiting for it to settle down. I went over this the other day, in a different thread.

 

[Johnnypenso]

....massive wall of text....

What your entire post boils down to is you like FF's. Most of us don't. There is something inherently appealing in flooring the throttle and not being 100% certain you can completely control the back end, like a horse that's just been tamed and you aren't quite certain whether it's going to knock you off and step on your face. We like oversteer. We live for oversteer. It's thrilling. I remember when I was a kid and had a steerable sled to ride down the hill in snow, risking life and limb swerving around trees and other sledders. That's what an FR is like. An FF is what it's like when your big sister pulls you around on that same sled because you aren't big enough to go on the hill because Mom said so. Not quite the same.

 

[GTP_CargoRatt]

What your entire post boils down to is you like FF's. Most of us don't. There is something inherently appealing in flooring the throttle and not being 100% certain you can completely control the back end, like a horse that's just been tamed and you aren't quite certain whether it's going to knock you off and step on your face. We like oversteer. We live for oversteer. It's thrilling. I remember when I was a kid and had a steerable sled to ride down the hill in snow, risking life and limb swerving around trees and other sledders. That's what an FR is like. An FF is what it's like when your big sister pulls you around on that same sled because you aren't big enough to go on the hill because Mom said so. Not quite the same.

And here I thought I was the only one that engaged in such activities back then.

 

[Aquarelle]

There is something inherently appealing in flooring the throttle and not being 100% certain you can completely control the back end, like a horse that's just been tamed and you aren't quite certain whether it's going to knock you off and step on your face.

I'm going to have to pull you up here, even in GT5 where I have a much more difficult time feeling the grip threshold due to only visual and audio cues I very rarely feel 'uncertain' of the rear end.

In fact the only time I have any degree of uncertainty is when I'm driving cars like the F1 cars (Mostly because F1 cars mess with my brain because I'm trying to battle with two separate laws of physics, IE needing to go quick to have downforce but needing to go slow to not overwhelm the tyres)

However I would have to agree with you, if I had to choose between understeer and oversteer of course I'll choose oversteer. If I make a mistake and go into a corner a touch too hot for whatever reason I can still manage it with throttle and steering inputs, in an FF if you're understeering the most you can really do is play with the throttle and pray while yanking the wheel in the direction you need to go.


@Misty, I'm not even going to START on how mad suggesting that a RWD cars front wheels carry the same burden as an FWD's.

 

[GTP_CargoRatt]

Just for the record, as having done a ton of laps at Laguna Seca as well as every other track in the game, Laguna does seem to have a lower amount of grip than most other tracks....in ALL cars. No matter what I drive or how I set it up, I still struggle there for grip.

And Misty sweety, even though you sound like a very well educated young lady, it does seem as though you have a slight misunderstanding between the traction of a FWD vs. a RWD car. Maybe its because you favor FWD over RWD and your distaste for the latter is getting in the way of you being subjective about it, not sure. You do seem to like to argue and carry on about it and that's fine, but I myself am not going to fall into that trap and go back and forth with you about it. I've said what I wanted to say about it and you may respond if you like of course, but don't expect me to get into a heated, post dissecting debate with you about it. Peace....cupcake. (Just a little light-hearted sarcasm...nothing personal. 👍)

 

[MrWednesday]

in an FF if you're understeering the most you can really do is play with the throttle and pray while yanking the wheel in the direction you need to go.

If PD had proper lift-off oversteer in GT5, you could partly control understeer on power out of a corner by lifting off the throttle to get the back end to come around. It might not be the fastest way to get around a corner, but it would be better than what there is now.

 

[MistyRainne]

Looks like no one wants to listen, so I’ll wrap this up.

So, Comfort Hard tires, right? Compared to normal tires, they don’t limit your top speed or straightaway performance so much; their limitation is felt mainly in cornering, braking, accelerating: stuff where traction is the limiting factor.

So I got to thinking about one of the things I responded to in my last post: running normal tires, but with higher horsepower, is pretty much the same thing as running weaker tires with normal horsepower, just faster.

The FF layout runs well enough on Comfort Hard tires, it’s about as off-putting for FF as for any other layout, and I think it can hold its own against other layouts at the same PP rating on the same tires.

FF should run well enough at high horsepower, in the same way. QED.

What your entire post boils down to is you like FF's. Most of us don't.

Fair enough. But you don’t have to worry that you’ll still be allowed to write with the same hand from the humble Sunday Cup all the way up to the 24 Hours Nürburgring without hitting a glass ceiling along the way; an unnecessary one, at that. That you’ll be allowed to be true to yourself the whole way. That the kind of car you like will be taken as seriously as it deserves, and so will you if you dare defend its name in public.

You have that luxury. I don’t.

There is something inherently appealing in flooring the throttle and not being 100% certain you can completely control the back end, like a horse that's just been tamed and you aren't quite certain whether it's going to knock you off and step on your face. We like oversteer. We live for oversteer. It's thrilling.

There is something inherently appealing in knowing that my car expresses my will rather than its own. It is an instrument that plays my song, a forum that posts my words, a horse that goes where I want to go. If I do well, it’s not because I dodged a bullet, it’s because I did well, and that reflects well on me. If I don’t do well, I have nothing to resent that’s out of my control: no one to blame but myself.

We are a team that works together rather than second-guessing each other. I don’t have to doubt that the car can reliably reach its potential, and it does not doubt that I am the driver. I don’t have to prove myself to the car, because it already accepts me. I have to prove myself to myself.

An FF is what it's like when your big sister pulls you around on that same sled because you aren't big enough to go on the hill because Mom said so. Not quite the same.

Being pulled by a girl? What an indignity!

A RWD is like dealing with a teenager. They’re more interested in what’s cool and popular rather than in what’s best. They’re quick to anger and overreact to everything. You can get good at dealing with them, but that doesn’t change what you’re dealing with.

After driving them for a while, getting back into my Integra is like speaking to an adult again.

So, I’m going to give her Racing Hard tires and go driving in the rain, because I have something to say!

 

[Aquarelle]

Misty, I'd like to drive with you in a lounge when you have time.

I want to explain my point of view to you in 'person' and I'd like to hear yours in a less.. hostile manner, so we can debate like adults.

I may disagree with you but that doesn't mean I don't want to understand your opinion, driving with you may help me achieve that.

 

[MrWednesday]

Certainly at lower power levels, FF can stick with FR. I see it in real life racing (ChumpCar and LeMons), where cars with ~100 to 200 HP run against each other and there are some wickedly fast FF cars just as there are some wickedly fast FR cars. But I think what you'll find is, as the power gets higher, the power-on understeer problem overwhelms the FF and they become impractical to drive as quickly as a rear-drive car (be it front- or mid-engined). Hence, the absence of high-power FF cars isn't artificial, it's driven by practical, real-life considerations.

 

[Bopop4]

Looks like no one wants to listen, so I’ll wrap this up.

We listened at first, then it became obvious that you wouldn't listen to logic.

So, Comfort Hard tires, right? Compared to normal tires, they don’t limit your top speed or straightaway performance so much; their limitation is felt mainly in cornering, braking, accelerating: stuff where traction is the limiting factor.

So I got to thinking about one of the things I responded to in my last post: running normal tires, but with higher horsepower, is pretty much the same thing as running weaker tires with normal horsepower, just faster.

The FF layout runs well enough on Comfort Hard tires, it’s about as off-putting for FF as for any other layout, and I think it can hold its own against other layouts at the same PP rating on the same tires.
FF should run well enough at high horsepower, in the same way. QED.

Cool, this has nothing to do with FWD vs RWD.

Fair enough. But you don’t have to worry that you’ll still be allowed to write with the same hand from the humble Sunday Cup all the way up to the 24 Hours Nürburgring without hitting a glass ceiling along the way; an unnecessary one, at that. That you’ll be allowed to be true to yourself the whole way. That the kind of car you like will be taken as seriously as it deserves, and so will you if you dare defend its name in public.

You have that luxury. I don’t.

This barely makes any sense, but from what I can see, you're just holding on too tight to a drivetrain that is designed for a Yaris, not a Ferrari.

There is something inherently appealing in knowing that my car expresses my will rather than its own. It is an instrument that plays my song, a forum that posts my words, a horse that goes where I want to go. If I do well, it’s not because I dodged a bullet, it’s because I did well, and that reflects well on me. If I don’t do well, I have nothing to resent that’s out of my control: no one to blame but myself.

We are a team that works together rather than second-guessing each other. I don’t have to doubt that the car can reliably reach its potential, and it does not doubt that I am the driver. I don’t have to prove myself to the car, because it already accepts me. I have to prove myself to myself.

This feels exactly like something that would be said in Initial D.
Read, it has nothing to do with driving, just to add drama.

Being pulled by a girl? What an indignity!

A RWD is like dealing with a teenager. They’re more interested in what’s cool and popular rather than in what’s best. They’re quick to anger and overreact to everything. You can get good at dealing with them, but that doesn’t change what you’re dealing with.

After driving them for a while, getting back into my Integra is like speaking to an adult again.

So, I’m going to give her Racing Hard tires and go driving in the rain, because I have something to say!

Again, this has nothing to do with FWD vs RWD.
RWD is more interested in what's best, namely how it can actually handle power under acceleration.


Have you actually ever driven a car in real life?

Floor it in a FWD around a corner and tell us what happens, if you stay on the road, then do it again, but floor it earlier.

When you slide off the road, get a comparable RWD car, and dothe same.
Notice how the front tires don't try to melt?

That's because instead of having to carry steering and power, it just has to handle steering.

If you can't understand that, one of the simplest things in car physics, then all hope is lost.

Edit: Whoops, pointed out flaws in the wrong post, the other one is going to take a while though.

Edit:

A RWD’s front wheels share the same burden: when steering, they still have to resist the rear wheels’ power, which is trying to make the car continue going the direction its nose is facing, which is exactly what the front wheels are trying to get the car to stop doing.

Wrong, they don't have to bear nearly the same load as an FF.

A FWD’s power goes in the direction the front wheels are pointing; it helps the turning effort rather than working against it. It still has to split its traction between steering and power, but both are working to add side momentum, so they don’t cancel each other out as much; the traction is used better, wasting less of it.

Side momentum? Cancel each other out?


Just what the hell are you on about? While the FF is going around a corner, all that rear grip is being wasted, it's just sitting there unused.

With RWD you can get the front and rear wheels to their maximum traction capacity.

Here’s a way to visualize it: Imagine a hypothetical car whose front wheels can be steered a full 90° from forward. (No real car can do this, but this is just for illustration.) Touch the accelerator a bit. If it’s FWD, the front of the car will move to the side, and it’ll pivot around its rear wheels. If it’s RWD, the rear wheels’ power will just drag the front wheels along the road, and the car won’t turn at all.

Yeah, what cars have 90 degree steering? None.

At normal steering angles the pulling effect of the FF is canceled out by the overload on the tires.

I don't take it that you've ever heard of washout...

No one’s going to experience it quite like that in a real race, but the same effects are still in play; somewhere near the limits, there’s a sliver of the traction circle that FWD can get to that RWD can’t. You can find it with the same level of experience and careful control that’s needed just to keep RWD steady at all.

Again, wrong.
An FF just overloads the tires under acceleration.
Not only does it have to bear the steering and power, whenever you it the gas it takes weight off of the front wheels. The wheels that just so happen to be doing everything on the car.

Accelerate in a RWD and you get more traction due to the weight transfer to the rear.

Furthermore, FWD cars tend to be front-heavy (they don’t rely on sheer car rotation as much), so they have more front traction available to begin with.

Which then gets removed the second you touch the gas, weight transfer 101.

A lighter touch on the pedal should let it work just like a lower-powered car, for when high power would be too much and lead to dangerous understeer.

All the while the RWD gets more grip and rockets away from you.

There’s a limit on how fast anything can go through a turn, and that limit comes from the amount of traction available: you need traction to do anything, after all. RWDs are not exempt from this, so they wouldn’t be “flying by” on their way toward anything but the guardrail.

Taking a corner involves more than simply rotating the car, after all. You also have to overcome momentum; if you don’t, you’ll just slam sideways into the outer wall. RWD is very good at rotating the car! A little too good, sometimes. But if you handle the momentum correctly, the car’s rotation will pretty much take care of itself. That’s how FWD is, anyway; you don’t have to rotate the car before its time in order to aim its power down the turn, you can do that simply by turning the steering wheel. That’s why it doesn’t need to be unstable in order to perform well.

SMH, FWD's problem isn't getting into the turn, it's getting out of it.

It doesn't matter how quickly you get the thing pointed mid corner, if the weight gets taken off the drive wheels under power, and the same tires have to handle steering as well, you're going to understeer.

Basically, adding more power won’t change the fact that you still have to get down to the maximum speed that you can carry through your chosen line. You’ll have to start braking sooner, but you can get going afterward faster too, and most of the power will be used on the straights, where it’s easy enough to keep the car in line. (The way to raise the maximum corner speed is to have more traction; then you can add power to take advantage of that.)

Speed down the straights is determined by exit speed, most factors being equal. Something that FWD severely lacks.

Any track can be mastered, but does that put track design beyond criticism? (Ask people what they think about Hermann Tilke.)
Any drivetrain can be mastered, but does that put drivetrain design beyond criticism?

No it can't, you can always go faster.

Becoming proficient with a certain drivetrain doesn't mean that it will be good compared to others.

Suppose you become the greatest bolt action rifleman that ever lived.

Will you be able to get shots off as quick as a "good" rifleman with a semi-auto? Of course not, your equipment is holding you back.

RWD is prone to spinning out, but people will say “learn to drive it”: and indeed, a skilled RWD driver instinctively avoids it and it’s rarely a problem for them, and you don’t hear the chorus singing “RWD sucks” when someone is having trouble with it. FWD is prone to understeer, but a skilled FWD driver instinctively avoids it and it’s rarely a problem for them, but people don’t say “learn to drive it” when someone is having trouble with it, least of all for themselves: they jump right to “FWD sucks”.
Problem with RWD? It can’t possibly be the drivetrain’s fault; blame the driver!
Problem with FWD? It can’t possibly be the driver’s fault; blame the drivetrain!
There’s a double standard at play here, and that’s part of what I mean when I say RWD is privileged.

...

YOU. CANNOT. AVOID. UNDERSTEER.
With an FF.

It is quite simply, you can avoid oversteer with RWD, but there is nothing that can be done for the understeer of an FF.

FR Challenge, no aids but AT, all golds, and just good enough at it to have fun doing it. With a DS3, I might add.

Whoopee, you got Gold.

When did completing easy goals become relevant?

FWD’s acceleration potential is less than RWD’s, so it often gets put down for that, legitimately. But RWD’s acceleration potential, in turn, is less than 4WD’s, and I can put RWD down for that just as legitimately.

4WD is too heavy and complex compared to RWD.

And don't give that p/w ratio bull again, an F1 isn't going to have the room for 4wd, you're not going to make a Corvette 4wd either.

(And that weight transfer onto the driven wheels never seems to be enough to keep RWD’s power on the ground when you actually need to get going in a hurry. Some effect!)

You're doing it wrong then, quite easy to have off corner traction with RWD.

MR rather than FR? That tells me that at the extremes of racing, the front wheels running out of traction (understeer) is more tolerable than the rear wheels running out of traction (oversteer). I agree!

I worded this a bit odd, I meant to say RWD instead of MR.
MR exists because of packaging.

But anyways, it isn't tolerable to have the front end go first, it's a lot arder to manage than if the rear goes first.

MR handles that by moving the engine (and its weight) toward the back, to help the rear wheels be better at carrying out their task and be used better on the straights; while FF handles that by having the front wheels carry out that task instead, where it can be used better when cornering.

The straights don't matter, what matters is getting out of the turns effectively. Which is where FF falters, and MR hits its stride.

How about a 600hp Civic vs the 400hp Starion? The FF layout can support that kind of power (the GT by Citroën has 779hp, even when going in reverse), which was my point.

And how is this fair? I even gave the Civic a p/w ratio advantage, and you want more power?

It doesn't even matter that a FWD car can't handle 600hp, let alone 400.

And you never go in reverse, so that point doesn't matter.

The point was to illustrate that under power, FWD is at a disadvantage compared to RWD.

For that matter, how about a 400hp Starion vs a 400hp Impreza? If 400hp is enough to spin two wheels, the 4WD will win.

The Impreza would win, but that has nothing to do with FWD vs RWD.

Try rearward brake balance. Brake into a turn and the back end should swing out, kinda like a RWD powerslide but without relying on the power wheels losing traction, so you can get going again without waiting for it to settle down. I went over this the other day, in a different thread.

And then as soon as you touch the gas it'll understeer again.

 

[Whirled Peas]

In an effort to get this forum back on topic, I'll say that I've never been able to find a good rhythm there in GT or iRacing. I've yet to drive the track in a real car, but it's not too difficult to find the fastest lines on a bike. Strangely enough, the corkscrew isn't where I run into difficulty; most of my problems occur on the way up.

 

[jtqmopar]

I almost never have a problem with any cars on Laguna Seca. maybe I've just done so many laps there I know when to put the power down. That's using sports hard on a road car all the way up to racing hard tires on the xjr-9

 

[killerjimbag]

First off, you cannot gear down with a automatic transmission to set yourself up for a turn,with a manual you can gear down to whatever gear you want, that's how I can engine brake perfectly normal without having to apply my brake as hard .That is a fact,so therein lies part of your problem for starters.FWD cars are not raced in most series because they handle like a bar of soap in a bathtub. RWD can power you through a turn with proper camber/toe, suspension and LSD settings.I really don't understand the problem with Laguna,one of my favourite tracks and no issue's with proper throttle control,or turning using a Standard transmission.Do you see any form of racing using an Automatic?
Lot's of people on here who are far superior drivers to you and I, have tried to explain this.Take their advice,loose the automatic,get a wheel and learn.

 

[Aquarelle]

Do you see any form of racing using an Automatic?

This would be more true if the automatic transmission in GT5 acted like a real automatic but your point remains having that control over the transmission can give you a massive edge, especially when you learn the torque curve and transmission of your car to use the most of your engines potential on corner exit with well timed upshifts to keep in the power curve.

 

[eDirtyTati]

I don't know if anyone already answered because there are 4 pages of the same information to go through on this thread

But Laguna Seca is a very low grip track in real life. It's not in the dessert (as in hot) but it is very close to the Pacific coast and the landscape around is mostly loose sand. That sand accumulates on the track and can make it very slippery, especially off the line. Not sure if PD could accurately replicate on-line and off-line grip differences (I don't detect the differences they claim on the Nordschleife) but perhaps they made the entire track more slippery in an attempt to simulate the real life conditions?

 

[GTP_CargoRatt]

I don't know if anyone already answered because there are 4 pages of the same information to go through on this thread

But Laguna Seca is a very low grip track in real life. It's not in the dessert (as in hot) but it is very close to the Pacific coast and the landscape around is mostly loose sand. That sand accumulates on the track and can make it very slippery, especially off the line. Not sure if PD could accurately replicate on-line and off-line grip differences (I don't detect the differences they claim on the Nordschleife) but perhaps they made the entire track more slippery in an attempt to simulate the real life conditions?

That is exactly what I have always thought from the very beginning.

 

[EDK]

I have around 15 hours of RL wheel to wheel experience at Laguna. Mainly on sunny days with cool weather (40-60 degrees F).

The track is said to get quite slippery on hotter, sunnier days, but I really have not been in that scenario, as most of my track time there has been between November and March.

Here's some footage of me in an E30 BMW in a Chumpcar race, more footage of me on Laguna on my channel as well.



The 2 main things with Laguna that are likely different from other tracks on the game -

1. Elevation change. It's obvious, but more extreme than the game suggests. The corkscrew is one thing, we all know it's there. But there are some more subtle areas of the track that feature elevation change that impacts grip. Turn 2 (Andretti Hairpin) is one place. And of course the entire climb to the cork, and then the resulting decline.

2. Many of the corners are banked. Turns 5, 6, 8 and 9 in particular. The banking causes variability in grip that is not experienced elsewhere. You can see it in the video I posted. The car I was driving had broken a tie rod earlier in the day, so the alignment was off. But in the banked turns in particular, you can see me fighting the car to keep it in check.

I will say that in my experience, the track does not feel as narrow in real life as it does on the game, and you can push a bit more and get away with it. But it's really not off by much. For the record, the only other PD modeled track I've driven on is Sonoma/Sears Point, and I find the same thing. You can push a bit more and get away with it. But the modeling and feel of individual corners is quite accurate.

 

[GTP_CargoRatt]

Thanks EDK, that is exactly what this thread needed was some insight by someone with real world experience at the track as well as in the game. Very informative post and great video. Thanks for taking the time to come in here and post your insight about the real world track vs. the in-game track. Much appreciated.

 

[iamsupernasty]

To be fair, the same insight was posted on pages 1 and 2

Cool vids EDK. Which Chump team are you? Ever run in LeMons?

 

[EDK]

To be fair, the same insight was posted on pages 1 and 2

Cool vids EDK. Which Chump team are you? Ever run in LeMons?

Yeah, I don't really frequent this area of the site. The thread was pointed out to me, and rather than catch up on the 5 pages, I just decided to make a post with my personal perspective.

Most of my ChumpCar races have been with Clutch on Fire, we run an '87 MR2. We've had some reliability issues of late, but have fielded a competitive car. We won the first Chump race at Laguna, in November of 2011.

The video I posted was a race that I rented a seat with Northloop Motorsports. They field a bunch of E30 BMW's all over the place. They are out of Minneapolis, but keep a car out west for races.

I have not run with Lemons. The field sizes sound pretty insane.

 

[iamsupernasty]

The field size is insane, but only at the California races. Here in the midwest, an average field size is 55-70 cars which I think is about perfect. Any less and I feel like id get bored lol.

I want to try chumps; mostly to try Watkins Glen.... I'm just slightly put off by the rules on contact and aggressive driving though.

Sorry for the off topic tangent, but I figured this thread has already gone in so many directions that it cant hurt

Good luck at your next race!

 

[GTP_CargoRatt]

To be fair, the same insight was posted on pages 1 and 2

Cool vids EDK. Which Chump team are you? Ever run in LeMons?

My apologies as I also overlooked that. I am the one that pointed EDK to this thread for the simple reason that we are time trialing there in the WRS this week and he mentioned in the TT thread that he had real world experience there so I just thought it would be cool to get a person with such experience to comment in this thread. Nothing personal my friend. I went back and found your posts and even watched a few of your vids on your channel. Very cool and informative also and too thanks for your comments and knowledge.

Again sorry I missed your posts. I must have over-looked them due to few walls of text in this thread that seem to dominate my brain at the time.