We also have to take into account that adding tyres is a poor upgrade in this game. Even on handling tracks it’s touch and go whether you want tyres over power. The other day on lime rock I went with a bunch of power over tyres, which you wouldn’t expect. This is why on handling tracks it’s the cars that start out in stock trim with a lot of handling running the best times. Basically for most tracks you want power upgrades. It’s pretty dumb but that’s the way of it.
The ratio of power/acceleration tracks to pure grip tracks leans more towards power in Forza Motorsport 6 which means that at B/600 and below, Race Tyres aren’t as effective as they were before. If you’re building a car that’s meant to be competitive across multiple circuits (which you pretty much have to do if you’re Hopper racing) you can get away with Sport Tyres and increased tyre width. A speed tune can use Street Tyres and wider rears and still be effective.
Almost every environment needs a decent amount of acceleration and doesn’t rely on pure grip. The only exceptions that come to mind are Sonoma, and the shorter layouts at Rio and the Alps. Everything else requires varying degrees of balance between grip and power.
B600? I’m talking all the way up in S-class without any tyre upgrades lol. Of course every car needs to be balanced. The balance is more on the side of power than it was in forza 4, that’s what I’m saying. This is not because of the tracks. It’s because per PI it’s favourable to take power over tyres. In forza 4 even on road America the crazy power cars would have a compound upgrade to street or sport: In this game, no chance.
top speed is nothing if you never get there.
I race A class and I focus Handling > Acceleration > Braking >Speed and I can hit top 20 on a lot of tracks , but mind you there are some tracks were speed destroys like Daytona tracks and Le mans. Also though make sure your speed isn’t to low, if you find yourself topping out on most straights this will hurt you as well.
Accel out of corners (lower end) will help the most when hot-lapping a majority of tracks. Some tracks with multiple longer straights will benefit more from high-end acceleration (aka speed), and some tracks with more high-speed sweepers and fewer low-speed corners will benefit more from handling since the emphasis is on maintaining speed rather than building it.
But that’s all hot-lapping (or front-running, or catching up to a leader). When it comes to passing, straight-away speed makes it easy. If you’re behind someone, and they have slightly better handling, but you have better mid-range and higher-end acceleration, all you have to do it hang with them in the corners, and you can pass them very easily in the straights. Then once you’re in front of them, it’ll be hard for them to get around you in the corners (because they’re corners), and if they do you’ll have a good chance to retake the position on the next straight. So, to make it easy to gain positions in a race, you want a little less handling and a little more speed than your opponents.
And of course, driving skill is more important than any of this. A better driver will have better exit speed from the corners and higher speeds down the straights than a less-skilled one, in the same car. It’s very hard to pass someone who’s faster than you in the corners and the straights, and some guys will be faster than you in the corners even with worse handling, and faster than you in the straights even with less accel/speed, because they’re that much better than you. Nothing you can do about that but practice.