Remember, I'm talking about street-driven cars here- for racing, obviously,
low end & midrange power is much less important (except in bike racing, but
that's another discussion). Yes, FWD is awful at the dragstrip. But I still
don't agree that FWD is better than RWD for a twisty road or the racetrack.
And, as in my previous rant, don't forget that the driver is WAY more
important than the car. An expert road race driver in a stock Camaro or
Vette will still stomp all over the average Joe (or Dave) in his high-buck,
fully Neuspeed-tricked GLI or GLX or VR6 or whatever. And vice-versa.
This reminds me about a story told by a Porsche enthusiast/autoxer who
decided to take a real driving school course, something like the
the Bondurant or whatever driving school that uses Formula Fords.
Apparently the class was full of experience autoxers/driving events who
consider
themselves pretty decent drivers, even local hotshoes. After the usual
classroom
instructions and some laps, they did a follow-the-leader exercise
w/ the instructor driving his Mitsubishi Montero. At first, he and
his classmates thought it would be a slow exercise; FFs vs SUV,
surely it's not gonna be worthwhile. But, and here is the moral
of the story, he and his fellow Porsche/M3/Vette/etc owners
was amazed that the instructor basically walked away from the field.
I'm sure there are lots of variables that may have diminished the
power/handling advantage of the FFs but you get the idea. Driver's
skill is everything.
On the same note, recently on Speedvision, they were showing
some event in Europe w/ all sorts of drivers from F1/Touring
Cars/etc driving equally prepared little go-carts around a relatively small
and tight course, probably less than 1/4 mile per lap. You'd think it would
be like Monte Carlo; basically no place to pass and everybody's driving
skills far exceed these rather slow go-carts (I don't think they
were shifter carts). Well, in 3 heats, Michael Schumacher
somehow got stuck in the back of the field of about 15 or
so and in like 3 laps, he passed the field, took the lead and won. The
next heat,
he started in 3rd or 4th, with Ferrari test driver Badoer on the
pole, Schumacher promptly passed the other 2 in no time and had a
great duel w/ his teamate and finally passed him to win again. The
3rd heat he started further back as I recall and quickly went thru
the field again and tussled w/ Badoer again and won again.
I guess Schumacher is just that much better eventho they all
had equally very very slow cars. It was just amazing to watch how
he leaned his body the opposite direction, i.e. turning left but
leaning right, and everybody else was leaning the "normal" way.
Whatever, but he sure was quicker around the corners and sometime
he was quicker taking the outside line.
Sorry for the longish post...
Son
90 GLI
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