One of the big features in Forza 6 is the ability to race at night, which, according to the game, makes your car a bit slower around a race track due to the tires not being up to the optimal temperature. However, I believe that driving at night is actually faster than driving during the day. We have one example of this, as YouTuber FailRace conducted a test where he took V8 Supercars around Yas Marina.
Day Time Laps:
Mercedes: 72.742
Holden: 72.814
Ford: 72.848
Nissan: 72.994
Volvo: 73.026
Night Time Laps:
Holden: 72.068
Ford: 72.152
Volvo: 72.192
Mercedes: 72.479
Nissan: 72.270
It may be that driving at night does make your car slower for a lap or 2, but once the tires get up to a reasonable temperature, it should be faster. This holds true in real life for NASCAR, because the cooler air temperatures increase the power of the engines and allows the tires to grip the track easier. But let me know what you think. Do you find night driving to be faster or day driving?
Laptimes at the top of the leaderboards are 2-4 seconds slower at night than during the daytime from my experience.
The cars handle the same as during the day through the turns but I’m guessing the cooler temperatures mean that you’re not getting as much longitudinal grip, which means you’re slower on the straights.
Every other track except Yas Marina is slower at night. I noticed this faster at night anomaly on at least one of the variations of Yas last week where my daytime best lap was nearly a second slower than my nighttime best lap and I couldn’t beat my time. I didn’t check if it was all of the Yas variations. If it is the same on all of them, maybe it’s because during the day, Yas is insanely hot, the oils in the asphalt might come out, making it slicker?? Or the tires just tend to overheat maybe??
Or it’s just a programming mix-up. That is a possibility.
We are less likely to take risks at night and more likely to settle into a rhythm, which should make lap times more consistent. Whether they are faster or not depends on how lucky we were during the day.
In an endurance event, nighttime would definitely be more productive than day, when everybody is taking risks.
People take more risks in the day in a virtual driving?
I can tell you i drive the tracks nearly identically in the day and at night because either way there is no risk of me actually getting hurt, nor is there a fear factor.
Plus on tracks like yas and most of the layouts of daytona, it is hardly considered night.
You’re right. Our day and night times should be similar… in the short run. However our driving styles change with the time of day, and in the long run this will become apparent.
We will record our fastest lap(s) during the day, but our quickest races happen at night. It is a Tortious and Hare argument.
Maybe in real world - but I’m not sure I would agree on the face value of this argument.
Not saying I dismiss the idea either - but I’m not a “risk taking player” I race fairly conservatively - but go to be more consistent - and my experience is definitely day times are faster (LAP time wise) (except yas)
I will test out your theory if I remember to this weekend and do a 20 lap run on the Daytona Oval in each night and day and see… But I can tell you as I know the my day oval times are faster and I am pretty consistent - pretty sure the daytime is going to end up the fastest but I will be pleasantly surprised if you are correct.
I can also do another circuit - but it doesn’t get more humdrum and consistent then the oval. Even pick a car that has a top speed that is 100% throttle all the time and my money if I were a betting man is the day will be slightly quicker.
There is just something about the grip that messes with the time in my opinion. I don;t think they have factor in the engine performance in the cool air - like real world happy hour that makes the best laptimes at LeMans and I think the grip loss makes for slightly slower laptimes.
I’ve on numerous times within 100’s of second splits (sometimes equal into the 1000s) so consistency should be a factor other then the start.
Our fastest time is a gamble. We bet that we can stay on the brink of disaster for an entire lap, and sometimes that pays off. Most of the time, however, it does not and we end up being slower than we could have been.
At night we are unlikely to bet on a longshot. We tend to play conservatively, falling into a rhythm and doing the same things the same way lap after lap. As a result night driving is more consistent, and consistency is what makes for faster racing… in the long run.
I went to Mid-Ohio in 2011 for Grand-Am and the Daytona Prototypes were setting the fastest ever Grand-Am laps that weekend because the weather was cooler than the previous Grand-Am races there, so the air was more dense which meant more oxygen going into the engines and higher downforce.
I noticed that I have a night racing mod card for more grip. Has anyone recieved one for day racing grip? For me my eyes aren’t what they use to be and I find myself slightly missing my braking points at night.
Grip feels the same to me just not hitting as many apex’s and more often to fast going into the corners at night on the fast tracks like Spa and Sebring.
I’m the same way snail - there’s a difference in the grip (perceived or not) and i struggle on my apexes in the dark areas of Sebring and Spa. I think my problem is I tend to try and look where I want to go and in the dark i’m just to myopic. When I hit my apexes and I’m consistent; i’m usually looking up the road to where I am going to be. Its like learning the track all over at times in some of the dark sections I struggle quite a bit on some dark sections… It’s cool but different.
That’s why I suggest the Oval as a testing ground as it would take that aspect away - 100% throttle no braking - good vision - it all down to grip apple to apples.
at that some token, it would also be much harder to tell if the time differences are down to driver error or track there because the time differences are only down to .0** from lap to lap.
It is easy to tell yas at night is quicker i think the difference in time between day and night is 1 second.