It seems that changing tire compound has a drastically disproportionate affect on car rating versus just about any other change. I know that tires affect handling the greatest but I can’t see how choosing a racing tire or even a sport tire can immediately put a car out of the class. Am I crazy or just dumb?
You already have your answer.
Except if you are running on a track with mostly straight lines, the tires compound is what who affect your grip/handling the most, so you can accelerate more, so have more speed on corners
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Yeah I understand that but it seems so disproportionate for a sport tire to change rating by +20 (for example) but adding in upgrades to the motor, the handling, adding race braking etc. doesn’t even do that much.
Because the tire positively affects acceleration, braking and cornering. The gain is greater than say an engine or chassis upgrade.
You can always argue that the cost isn’t realistic but I imagine they calculate the gain using some complex equations.
Although, it could just be the toss of a coin and a dart.
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I agree that sometimes (especially on low class) racing brake cost nothing. But for have a fast pace, the most important is your tire compound (and width sometimes).
The power for example give you free speed on straight lines, so it increase your lap time, but for cornering, having too much power can be a disadvantage.
The most important for increase your pace is the tires compound, reduce the weight, find a good tires width, and then you can look at power for win on straight
Edit : as it say above, tires compound also affect many stats
Also, the pi is calculated by an AI who race on a balanced track.
So for brake upgrade for example, the AI don’t use all the potential of the brake because they can’t tune the brake, and i think the AI isn’t optimal on how it use brake too. (That’s just speculation for the last point, but we know if Centrifugual super charger and some engine are so strong, it’s because that AI don’t use the redline, so it don’t use all the power you can use when driving yourself, by pushing on the red zone)
You should expect that because race tyres affect the most important part of a car: the small area where rubber meets the road, the contact patch.
The contact patch is the site of three battles that are crucial in determining where your car will be in the next point in time.
The first battle is traction. Traction is what makes the car move, in the direction you tell it to. It’s the process through which the engine’s power is transmitted to the ground. No traction means you can’t apply power to the ground, which is bad on drive wheels, and worse on direction wheels, because, again, traction is how you make the car move, in the direction you tell it to.
There is a finite amount of power you can apply through that contact patch. If you try to apply more power than the tyre can handle, you get traction loss in the form of wheelspin. To put it simply race tyres have a higher traction potential. This means you can apply more power to the ground, meaning you can exploit more of your engine’s power at all times before wheelspin becomes a problem.
The second battle is traction too. Because of famous lawmaker Isaac Newton, action mandates opposite reaction. So wheelspin has its opposite: wheel locking. If wheelspin is your tyre going too fast over the ground, wheel locking is the ground going too fast over the tyre. Because, from a certain point of view™, braking is really just the ground applying power to your car.
Once again, there’s a finite amount of power you can apply through the contact patch, and when you go beyond that limit you get traction loss, this time in the form of wheel locking. So since race tyres have a higher traction potential, this means you can brake more before locking becomes a problem.
The third and final battle is also traction. More specifically, Centrifugal v. Centripetal. Newton decreed an object in motion stays in motion. That means than when you turn the steering wheel, the car’s mass will continue to move forward. This is centrifugal force. Meanwhile, your wheels, if not spinning or locking, will be applying force in the direction of the turn. This is centripetal force. You want centripetal force to win.
The amount of centrifugal force you have to fight depends largely on speed and mass. The amount of centripetal force you can apply is a matter of friction between the tyres and the road. Race tyres, once again, have a higher friction potential, meaning they can apply more centripetal force, meaning you can combat more centrifugal force, and thus take a corner with more speed.
I can’t tell if the PI cost is realistic in the game. PI is an imperfect measurement anyways.
But it’s perfectly reasonable that tyres have the biggest impact on PI. They are a prime limiting factor in how much engine power you can exploit, how much braking power you can exploit, and how much turning power you can exploit.
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How fast could you run on asphalt barefoot?
How fast could you run on asphalt wearing sandals?
How fast could you run on asphalt wearing running shoes?
The difference is likely substantial.
Same with tire compounds.
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Good comparison though
Simple answer… what’s the only one thing that connects your car to the ground…
If you increase the contact patch or grippyness it’s a performance benefit. Probably the biggest one.
A very important thing to consider - upgrades aren’t a fixed PI for this reason, and thus the combination of upgrades is important. In a lot of cars, putting race tyres on might not improve the PI that much because you’re power-limited - even the grippiest car in the world is still a slug with only 100HP. You could instead do a metric tonne of engine upgrades and the PI still doesn’t increase much, because the car is then traction-limited and all you’re doing is spinning the wheels (rather than improving the virtual lap time). If you do the tyres AND the engine updrades, the PI jumps up by a massive amount because suddenly the car is capable of handling the extra power.
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I really enjoyed your post… one of the most thought filled posts I’ve seen on these fourms.
But you do know that centrifugal force is fictious? It’s not a real force. If you would like an explanation you can watch this cool video.
They do but between the selections of tyre’s on offer the jump to race is laughable, it’s like when whoever was in charge of the “rubber” side of things got a little over happy. We have all been there, like building something outside of the means in a game, but really, how did the race spec tyres get so grippy from a cold start all the way to lap 5 of the Nord then suddenly lose all that unbelievably over the top grip @ 55.5 percent then start sliding all over the joint at any given corner!
Race tyres for Rivals 100% needed as they don’t go off… whenever or however or whatevar, you need them cause the are OP
Race tyres in a Freerace against Unbeatable Level 8, the biggest the baddest and the most unbeatable A.I EVER… yeah just go standard tread, billions of Horse Power to make everything the greatest again cause you will win no matter.
Better yet if it’s hot at your place start the race, walk outside barefoot and see how hot the asphalt is then slowly walk back in and grab the controls then cruise to an easy victory.
Or just play something else
Rather than using words like “real” or “does not exist”, I’d say it’s a model of an observable physical phenomenon. Centrifugal force in a nutshell is the effect of inertia, it’s momentum trying to keep its direction.
It’s not a force in the sense that it doesn’t act on the object’s motion, rather it is the object’s motion. But it is a real, and useful, concept.
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That’s a good analogy and on point!
I don’t agree. It’s a side effect of how we observe the world. It’s observer dependent. How do you explain it mathematically?
What next, you’re gonna tell me that perfectly smooth, spherical cows don’t exist? 
Just kidding around of course
Don’t they? 
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Quite simply as the opposite of centripetal force. It isn’t a mystery, and again it’s a useful abstraction.
I’ve suggested it elsewhere, but tyres should be decoupled from the upgrade and PI system entirely, and instead allocated depending on the event type.
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