FWD v RWD - Page 5 - Saxperience

Ashleyp · 2nd October 2011, 09:44

Wanted to post these vids in relation to quick cars. bloody awesome machines no doubt!

As it happens, neither are FWD.

mangojace · 2nd October 2011, 10:19

love rx7s

titchster · 2nd October 2011, 14:12

Who better than Tsuchiya to set a lap record round Tsukuba? Legend.

Nowhere near as fast, but considerably more dramatic, lol.

Ashleyp · 2nd October 2011, 17:20

Aye that titch. Tsuchiya is an absolute hero in JDM land.

some ridiculously quick Evo's racing over in the US time attack too.

titchster · 3rd October 2011, 00:26

On the flipside to all this, FWDs can be made to be fast, just look at the UK Time Attack, there's a few FWDs that are fast, but, ultimately, the majority of them are still no competition for the RWD/4WD cars.

KamRacing · 3rd October 2011, 12:54

The FWD cars will never compete well in basically a 'no rules' scenario like time attack.

Gabbastard · 3rd October 2011, 18:26

im surprised this is a discussion at all.

hard_corejoeboy · 5th October 2011, 19:44

and Sunday i watched Mr Plato in his FWD non turbo car win at Brands Hatch...

adamskiTNR · 5th October 2011, 20:24

In a performance balanced race series

dannygti · 5th October 2011, 20:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by adamskiTNR

In a performance balanced race series

in all fairness, its as close as fwd and rwd cars get to each other as far as spec, cost, weight etc go..

i appreciate they have to do certain things to the rwd cars but you will NEVER get a true fwd to rwd comparison.
i think touring cars is as close as it will ever be? just my opinion.

adamskiTNR · 5th October 2011, 20:35

Touring cars is probably the only place they can ever really mash the two together. Still not quite as blatant as minis vs camaro's lol

dannygti · 5th October 2011, 20:47

exactly. i do have an opinion on this whole debate but im not sure if most will understand.

if you were to build a race car from ground up, fwd wouldnt be in the equation. hence why there are few proper fwd race cars or even supercars.

however, with new technology fwd cars are allowing normal people to access the potential of the fwd cars performance more so than the performance of a high spec rwd car. for example, a average driver could say fulfill 80% of the potential of a high performance fwd car as opposed to say 70% of high performance rwd cars. this is why on trackdays the normal driver in fwd can catch and pass more exotic spec rwd cars.

however if the performance of the driver was good then it would be a different story.

adamskiTNR · 5th October 2011, 21:09

I can now give a superb example of driver talent making a difference.
Last week we won the porsche club championship at silverstone. We were running two 996 cup cars and a 3.2 carrera (the winner)
The guy in one of the cup cars was racing his first ever race and all through testing was just awful. He was doing 2:40 while my boss in the 3.2 was doing 2:30's. If you can't tell the significance here are the facts;

996 gt3 cup car (2004): 380hp, brand new michelin slicks, rose jointed suspension, sachs dampers, aero. A race car

3.2 Carrera (1978): club car, 240hp, michelin road tyres, ohlins suspension, basically standard

Now watch lol

hard_corejoeboy · 5th October 2011, 21:20

I still think that if you were building a race car from the ground up yes you would make it RWD give the choice unless say the power/weight was capped below a certain level.

Will watch this vid in a bit

Jay_ · 5th October 2011, 22:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by hard_corejoeboy

unless say the power/weight was capped below a certain level.

But WHY?! I don't understand why you say that? RWD is going to be better overall IMO, any weight/power etc.

hard_corejoeboy · 5th October 2011, 23:07

Because its the reason lotus made the elan FWD as there was no benefit to be made in it being RWD

adamskiTNR · 5th October 2011, 23:26

No, it was cheap

titchster · 5th October 2011, 23:35

Just throwing this in there. From the Lotus Elan's Wiki page:

Quote:

The choice of front wheel drive is unusual for a sports car, but according to Lotus sales literature, "for a given vehicle weight, power and tyre size, a front wheel drive car was always faster over a given section of road. There were definite advantages in traction and controllability, and drawbacks such as torque steer, bump steer and steering kickback were not insurmountable."