Are racing tires overkill for a B class car?

Or in essence do they help in a slower car? Someone was saying how race tires are overkill for F, and E. And I undertand like top speed ratings and such (those cars not hitting real high top speeds), yet I would still think a better tire would aid in a quicker cornering. Or maybe not.

Or do you think it depends on the car. I’m just curious what you guys think.

depends, yes.

test it for yourself - create, build two (or more?) configurations for your car… heck, you can even auto-generate a setup with the game - save each of the setup files and go race against your ghost with each - do at least three laps with each, drive 'm until you find what gets around the circuit fastest, suits you and your car.

This ^

You won’t want a hyper grip little flea for Le Mans would you :slight_smile: So chop and change until you find the best build for each class and track and then tune it to feel better or perform better or iron out flaws, etc.

Depends very heavily on “what you want to do” whit that car.

If you have… let’s say Mazda MX 5, and you want to run Road America, No you do not want those race tires,
Then again, If you have -73 Pontiac Firebird, and you want to do positano, you definately want those race tires.

If you want to build car that is exceptionally good on 1 track, you might end up with 30 different builds. (I know, I have done that.)
But if you want just “A general car” which is decent on most tracks, but nothing ground braking, you might end up trying only 6-7 builds.
And if you know the car “in general” with earlier testing, you might end up having only 2-4 different builds.

One thing is for sure. The first build is hardly ever the fastest possible build, There is just too many variables.

Are you guys saying the race tires slow you down on a longer, faster track with a slower car? Meaning on a car other than a race car. Or basically a street car, B class. Or something close to that.

I see the point about Positino. But I would think with any car on any course they would help with turns. And they all have turns. But if they slow you down on the straights, that would not be good.

Race tyres certainly don’t slow you down, but on faster tracks your PI points will be better used on power upgrades than handling ones. The extra speed down the straights more than offsets the lesser grip through the corners.

you’re going out to dinner, you have B 500 (PI points) - do you want a really great bottle of wine and a cheese sandwich, perhaps even nothing to eat at all -or- do skimp on the wine, prehaps skip it all together, have an apitizer, a nice main, and perhaps enven some desert? …its’ all down to your mood, eh?

Savoury69, that makes sense. I had been debating that on a car too.

I sort of get you Designingleek. I think you’re basically saying the same thing he is, but as the riddler. ehhehehee. Yeah, the tires are the wine, so you can have some really good whine and not have enough left over for anything else. Gotcha.

my experience is that race tires will often be overkill on most F-Class cars … sure ONCE you get going you’ll stick to the road like glue, but that’s not such a good thing when it comes to trying to carry your speed out of a turn.

However, typically in B-Class, if your PI can take it, it’s never a bad thing… however, if you can manage to control the car well with a slight bit less traction you can spend those PI points on more go fast bits. Some cars have enough power that you can just add race tires and go racing, others have enough handling so that you can add some extra power and call it a day.

I’d like to disagree with this. on part of F class reference. In F and E you gain most of your time by carrying speed trough corners, and therefore the higher speed you can carry trough the corner, the more you save time, as you don’t have any power to get up to actual high speed. Acceleration is next best thing, and that you most often gain with very short ratio gearbox. and weight reduction,which knocks that already high handling (read: grip, as grip and handling are completely different things.) even higher. Of course if you are hitting Road America, LeMans, or any oval or any other LONG track thigs are quite different.

How ever, D/C-class and up it starts to be quite different, as you start having fairly high acceleration, and you start getting on longer tracks in hoppers, Now it starts to be combination of everything, and the best combination is the winner. you need power, and you need grip. and you have to balance it out

When starting to get on S it starts to be again handling that counts. too much power, and you only slip and slide, and opponents will drive circles around you while you are there just smoking tires. speeds start to get so high that it starts to be hard to control, and time is made in corners again.

I’d have to say S class is more acceleration than anything. Just with shorter tracks the little Lotuses have all that grip, and weigh less than a cat so they fly! Not to mention as well - there’s some wacky builds for these cars etc. With medium tracks you can normally take a car that’s reasonably light with reasonable power and put a grip build on it and it’ll perform well. But on longer tracks you’d go for a car that may not have as much handling as the aforementioned couple of types, or you don’t put on all of the handling parts. With that you get good acceleration as well as straight line speed.

I would encourage using aero on these cars too, and turning it up. Anything on S and up, downforce is very critical.

Well true that too, Acceleration is important on all classes.

When I tune my cars I tend to “weight” the stats as Acceleration → Handling → Braking → Speed → Launch., when gong below C/D class the handling pops usually on first place

What that means to each car. It’s always a bit different. Some of them have more power biased tune, some of them have more handling biased tune. no matter what class they are. It all depends on the car.

here’s where the in-game ratings (speed/handling/acceleration/launch/braking,) could maybe really help you guys out -

if it’s a B 500 you’re building - aim for a handling rating of about 5, more or less; a high 4.x, low 5.x If the racing tires are pushing you B 500 into a 6+ handling rating and your speed or whatever is only a 3 make changes accordingly - back down the tires and add some power.

apply that thought across the board too - C 425? aim for a low 4.x - A 600? aim for a low 6.x - S 700? aim for a low 7.x …etc.

as guide, as a rule of thumb if you will - don’t sweat it too much if you can’t always (sometimes you might want an R3800 that cannot hit a low 8 in handling ;^) but shoot for that.

Very good discussion. I’m really liking the tips!

I recall reading something (on these forums, IIRC) that has served me extremely well for tuning my own cars since FM4. No clue as to the exact wording, or the person who said it.

“If you’re not fighting for traction, then your car has too much of it already”