I don’t know why, but I can’t seem to half my own laptimes when running the slowest car and then switching over to the fastest car.
For instance I ran a stock Beetle at Long Beach circuit and got about 2:17, while on the Lotus F1 car, i could only manage around 1:12.
I’ve done many other combinations and failed each time.
Can someone try this out and let me know how you fared? Try to pick a real-life circuit track, less than 5 miles long; non-oval; no assists.
I’m not sure how you’ve come to this. Why are you expecting the fastest cars to lap twice as fast as the slowest cars? Where did this formula come from?
There’s a lot that goes into a lap time, and simply having a much faster car doesn’t mean lap times should be dramatically slashed. I recall an episode of Top Gear, for example, wherein they did an indoor drag run with a regular road car and then with a Formula One car, and the F1 car was barely faster because the floor was really slick and it couldn’t translate much power into actual acceleration because it would just spin tires.
Having said that, I haven't actually looked at leaderboards or my own times to see if X-class cars are or aren't twice as fast around circuits as D-class cars. I'm mainly just saying that I don't know how we concluded that they must be and saying that lap times are effected by a lot of things.I haven’t done any calculations to determine whether a much faster car CAN or CANNOT complete a lap in half the time has much slower car. I did not automatically conclude anything. Just wanted to see if it can be done with the cars in the game.
Many of us can all agree that an F1 race car has acceleration and top speed that are multiple times faster than say a VW Beetle and can take turns at a much faster speed than a Beetle. This is why i left room for the POSSIBILTY that it can be done and tried to put it into practice. Just asking some of you if you could do the same just to see the outcome.
The link you gave me does not really pertain to what I am asking as it is indoors with limited space under a non-ideal surface. A full size race track however allows room for a fast car to stretch its legs and take advantage of its slicks and superior top speed.
It’s common sense. Cars with a lower PI have slower lap times than one with a higher PI.
I can’t clarify this because on ManteoMax’s spreadsheets, it shows leaderboard times for each individual class, not by PI. If classes were by 100 PI increments (with the Beetle being its own class), instead of the D class making up 300 PI points, this would be easier for me to clarify this. Also, the time difference greatly varies by the length of the track.
OK just tested this out because I find it interesting to see if it can be done. To my surprise it is possible. I just did it on spa.
Here is the break down:
I set this up in free play doing a 1 lap race with only me on the track. I chose spa for a few reasons. 1, it is a super fast track. 2, I’m pretty good on it using the lotus F1 car. 3, it has a lot of elevation which plays a part in this test(fair or not fair is up to you).
OK so you already know the track and the fast car, ie. the lotus F1. the slow car was not the VW. Even though it has the lowest PI I feel that its light weight and size enable it to track the corners much better that some of the other cars. I chose the ford 40 coupe. It has a PI of 120 so it is close but it is much bigger and weights 2 times more than the VW.
So now for the numbers. I did this again on a 1 lap race so it was a standing start. The 40 coupe time was 402.816 the F1 time was 201.6xx. OK so it is not 100% 2 times faster but it is close enough. Of course if I kept doing this over and over I would get better times in both cars just from learning the feel but for this test it was just a quick 1 and done… Sure it is a bit unfair because I have some serious time behind the F1 and never drove the coupe until right now but we all get the idea.
So to make this a little bit longer… The answer to your question is yes it can be done but there are other factors or influences at play that determine the outcome. The only true way to do this is on a drag stripe where it is just the cars at play and not the track or anything associated to it.
This was a fun little test BTW hope this helps others see if they can do the same or figure out other situations for us all to try out
Very interesting. Thanks for trying and reporting back. If there is one track to do it, SPA would be ideal because it is quite a long track; just under 5 miles. I imagine that the longer the track, the easier it becomes to double your time. I’ll have to try it when i get home. I’d like to see if you can do the same on a shorter track though.
Yes, a drag race would make things easier to compare, but it is much more interesting around a track due to different variables. That’s why I find this so interesting. It is like those videos on youtube where you see a slow car go first, and a faster car goes second 15 seconds later, , and then an F1 car starts 30 seconds after and plays catch up to beat the other cars to the finish line. This is sort of a similar thing except your virtually trying to your lap yourself.
Not sure where the theory came from or the validity but the your long beach time in F1 is slow! I can easily beat that time in an Indy car, I would think a 1:08.5 is easily possible so that would be half. Top 500 would be in the 106s. easily you should be able to half the time on this track assuming your BUG time isn’t slow too. Ive never run the bug stock on a bunch of tracks and I spent more time in Indy car then f1, but fast drivers do 108s in Indy car- and the top speed of the track isn’t outside what a F1 car can do so the f1 should easily beat the Indy car here. if I used the 4sec rule I would be able to hit 105s on longbeach in F1 (im usually 2-4 seconds off fastest driver times- and on this track I’m usually closer to 2 seconds) so a 104/maybe a 3 might be in the cards for me in an F1
It’s not a theory, its just something to try out to see if it can be done. I’m not saying it can or can’t be done.
The skill level different drivers does not matter because your trying to compare your OWN times with a slow and fast car. You’re not trying to compare against my times or other people’s times.
C class on up Lemans tune vs. a bettle at Lemans. The Lemans tunes go at least 230mph so it shouldn’t be close. Not sure if it’ll be double.
Not sure why doubling a time is important though.
There is NO importance other than the curiosity of knowing if it can be done. Like I said, its just something that I think is fun to try.
http://forzastats.com/Matrix/Circuit
Nuff said; fastest and slowest car-classes (tuned to the best of their class to be said) don’t always make a big dent in the percentage of lap-times. Once a car is rolling or is having a rolling start, you’re already losing soo much seconds here or there.
As others already pointed out; PI is some indication of what a car can do in game but it’s comparing apples and oranges. Even in real life, you can’t go to a garage and say “double up all the statistics on my car” and expect to be at work at twice the speed.
I actually didn’t say anything about performance ratings though.
If the slowest car has to be tuned, then it is no longer the slowest car, unless your are purposely tuning it to be slower than stock. I am assuming all those cars on that chart are tuned to the max of their potential, so that skews the results in terms what I am talking about.
I’m just asking if you guys can actually put it to the test, instead of just theorizing. Basically , all I am doing is putting out a little challenge for you guys to try out for fun. IceMan PJN took my challenge said he was able to do it with SPA, so that is a cool little data point that I can have for my reference.
Depends on the layout of the track first and foremost. On a drag-strip of, let’s say, 10 miles, your precious F1 car will be beaten by a Bugatti Veyron even though they are very different cars and possibly even have different PI in-game. On a very narrow and VERY twisty track, your precious F1 car can be beaten by a highly tuned grippy car; there is absolutely no way Lewis Hamilton will be able to outmaneuver Ken Block in a low-speed, twisty slalom, extreme deviation track.
It all comes down eventually to: distance vs. average speed. And since there is only variable, you need a 100% certain average speed to actually half your times.
I can see how this might sound like a fun idea but the truth is… once you’ve done it you’ll be like ‘wow, that was a waste of time!’ Well I think so anyway but that’s just me.
I can see how you can think that. To make things more interesting, you can do practically the same thing with a friend where your friend has the slow car and you have the fast car. The goal then would be to lap him before he completes the first lap. Assuming you both are similarly skilled, it should be fun to try.
Some time ago, I ran a 1:17 lap on Bermese Alps Festival Circuit in the Lotus E23. Bear in mind that I had a few assists on (ABS on, Normal steering, TCS only, Manual w/o clutch, Rewind, everything else on max) and a mod that gave me +10% power and +6% grip (I’m not an expert driver by any means - only got into racing games recently). The track is 3.63 miles, so that’s about 170 miles per hour average speed. Without mods and assists, I’m pretty sure I could run a 1:27 (that’s 150mph average).
Double this time would be 2:54, or 75mph average speed. This is higher than the MAXIMUM speed of both the VW Type 2 and the 1968 Abarth 595, so I’m almost certain that I could double the lap time of one of these two cars.
As for tuning, I’m using stock tune data for the slow cars. My Lotus E23 only had some very minimal tuning (tweaked the gear ratios a little to make the first few gears further apart and the last few closer together) - this is the tune I use for every track. I’m assuming that tuning a car to make it slower than stock doesn’t count - if it does, then my “Veywrong” would be a contender (max upgrades, but tuned so badly that the fastest way to drive it seems to go straight as best as possible and do non-stop doughnuts).