When it comes to buying/applying upgrades to a car, why would I choose one over the others? Does it depend on how I intend to use the car? If so, can you list it out? For example…
Drag racing means…
Rally means…
Street means you should buy…
If you’re talking about how the parts are named (street tires, sport tires, race tires … for example), those are just labels to differentiate level of performance. Sport has more grip than street, race more grip than sport.
When looking at suspension or transmission, the race version also allows the part to be finely tuned. The game notes that when you scroll over the part.
Which part you want for particular kinds of races depends on where your car starts on the PI scale. Say, for example, that you are going for an S1 class car for road races. Some cars start out with different characteristics so that you can end up with the same level of overall grip with stock tires on one car as with race tires on another car. It just depends.
In general, for road racing at least, opting for the race springs is a good choice. The ability to fine tune the suspension can cut laps times by a lot while only adding 1 or 2 PI points, so it’s almost always a good choice. But since the general answer for most parts is “it depends”, if you want to know how to build a particular car for something, asking for that specific situation will probably get you a more useful answer than just asking about the parts in general.