Alez
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| posted on 19/7/04 at 11:21 AM |
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Obviously wrong about what "racing" is
Guys,
Last saturday I experienced a track for the first time, I was at the passenger seat in the Peugeot 205 rallie of a friend of mine during his training
sessions. I was extremely surprised about a couple of things and thought I'd ask for your views.
First thing is I was completely wrong to think that the FWD would be basically an understeerer. The reality was we would lose both our front and back
ends alternatively, normally on each and every bend, and my friend would quickly compensate, during cornering, with throttle, brakes and steering
wheel.
The second thing is I thought that losing front or back end was something you generally would like to avoid (in order to reach maximum speed). I
thought so because F-1 cars rarely do it during competition, they look as if they were on rails.
Other than that, I was extremely impressed with the skills of what I imagine is probably just an average driver (he never told me otherwise). We
cornered fast, the car was doing all sorts of shit, but it just didn't matter and somehow we would exit the bend facing the right direction.
From my own experience, I thought that, when you lose both ends of the car, well it's basically game over and you lose control over the car and
crash. Well, somehow not the case! (Or maybe we were not losing both ends at the same time on the track?).
Oh also I'll never forget seeing a Citroen Saxo 1.4, 2 nutters inside, 100% city car with road tyres (something like 135!) and no rolling bars,
with one back wheel something like 4 inches off the ground during a bend. Couple of crashes, one was an AX, the other one a M3 (you don't want
to crash that expensive thing against a wall, do you? well he did).
I will be posting a couple of pics tomorrow, BTW also I had the opportunity to chat with a British guy who had a really nice single seater, formula
Vauxhall I think (pics to come), he lives in Malaga and had come all the way up to Madrid only to find they wouldn't allow him to train with all
the others (slower and heavier) cars. Still, he seemed quite pleased to be away from Malaga where the temperature now must be 50+ șC!!
Any comments on why things are so different from what I imagined are most welcome as I'm quite puzzled!!
Cheers,
Alex
[Edited on 19/7/04 by Alez]
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garage19
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| posted on 19/7/04 at 11:42 AM |
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The over steer you mentioned is called lift off over steer and is caused in FWD cars by the movement of weight distribution when you lift off the
throttle. 205's are famous for it. Can catch the un-knowing RWD driver by suprise but is usually loads of fun and easily corrected by a touch
more throttle.
Doug.
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gjn200
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| posted on 19/7/04 at 12:36 PM |
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Lifting the rear inside wheel in fwd is normal, a guys racing mini I know runs a lot of toe out on the rear so when it lifts the inside wheel the
other is assisting the steering.( the effects then like four wheel steering)
<- Me!
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sting
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| posted on 19/7/04 at 12:56 PM |
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Agree with above. manufacturers generally build cars (esp hot hatches) to understeer as they believe it to be safer than oversteer. Along comes us
racers an we do everything we can to make them oversteer, ie rear toe (spacers behind back plates) and 700lb springs on the rear and 350lb springs on
the front lift off oversteer gets exaggerated with these kind of mods but all this allows the car to driff which is probably what you were feeling
sitting in the car. Normally when you feel this sliding / drifting the car is going well and is quick. The breaking away is manageable and as you say
easily corrected.
Sounds kinda normal in a race car to me.
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