Your first comment is what I'm getting at, everything will happen so much faster when you're on good tires. The reaction speed and input speed developed on poor tires will not be adequate. Time spent racing on bad tires won't be a complete "waste", but you'll still need to develop those split second actions/reactions when you move up in grip. Again, track and autocross are very different with regard to the rate of driver inputs. I'd guess there are more inputs in one lap of autocross than several laps of a road course, and those inputs during autocross will at a frantic rate. Actions on a road course seem more measured, thoughtful and smooth. I totally agree with you regarding street tires giving more feedback, but in autox you may never have time to react to it.
I know it's a semantic difference, but I'd like to concentrate on the concept of "frantic" for a second. First, I will stipulate that an average autocross run will have more control inputs than a lap at a "normal" road course (excepting possibly The Nurburgring!). I will also stipulate that because the corner radii involved are tiny in comparison, input
rates, the time spent actually making a specific brake, gas or wheel input, will be higher. What they aren't, or at least shouldn't be, is frantic! Take a look at any of Sam Strano's in-car videos, and you'll see what I mean. Nowhere does he "slam" on the brakes or gas, nor does he "yank" the wheel over frantically. Again, it's a semantic difference, but to me, at least, it's an important distinction, one that I will come back to later.
I'll attempt an analogy, you could practice hitting baseballs thrown at 50 mph all day long until you were an expert at it, hitting home runs every second ball. But when you step up to the plate against a pitcher throwing at 90 mph, you'll strike out everytime. The reaction speeds developed at 50 mph just won't be up to par. When you move up from baragin basement chinese tires to A6s, you'll be under-driving the car for some time until your skills match the tires.
Excellent analogy! If, however, you spent your time in the 50mph batting cage concentrating on perfecting the perfect swing... Not pulling the bat back or wiggling it before starting the actual swing, not dropping your rear shoulder under the swing, finding the right stride length, etc... If you then walk into the 90mph cage, you'll have an adjustment period, but once you find the new rhythm, you WILL be out-driving the people that started there but have poor techniqe. There's a reason that the Skip Barber cars use street rubber and not slicks...
Second point; what I said applies more to someone starting out. I had no clue how aggressive a driver needs to be until I rode along with a good one on grippy tires. Knowing what a car feels like when it's using 100% of it's potential is really helpful when starting out. In the absence of such a ride, it might take a driver awhile to find out it feels like, especially when their lack of grip makes them nervous. When talking about national level drivers who have likely driven extensively on both kinds of tires, the situation changes quite a bit.
That point, however, has no bearing on whether to start on street tires or not. Finding the correct amount of "aggression" is important, but THAT lesson can come on any type of rubber. Once you get the whole concept of "slip angle", it simply becomes a matter of analyzing the tire's behaviour to determine the proper amount to input. Race tires demand a higher slip angle for maximum traction than street tires do, but give none of the audible feedback as you start to approach that point. They tend to simply grip, grip, grip, and then you spin or plow, unless you know the subtleties of how a tire feels as it reaches and then exceeds the proper slip angle.
In the end, I can only offer my own experience driving on both types of tires. I started autocrossing on 235/55/17 stock tires. I improved a bit, but also experienced a lot of frustration having to go slowly in order to say, not experience mind-blogging understeer in a especially tight section.
Given that the S197 chassis, in stock form, DOES tend to plow a bit (understatement!), that type of understeer can also be induced by too rapid a rate of control input from braking and/or steering wheel. This is going to come back to the "slow down to go faster" school of thought. If you were to slow down your rate of wheel input to allow the tires time to bite and start to turn the car, you may be able to get through that section quicker. Neat experiment: Next time it rains (sorry left-coasters, since you have permanent sun, you can't do this!) or snows, take your car out into a large flat parking lot, and get up to a nominal speed, say 25mph or so, and make a 90* wheel movement to the left, maintaining the same throttle input. Do so first with a target of 1/2 second to go from straight to 90*. The car will push a little bit, but will arc around the corner. Now, in the same spot, and at the same speed, make the same turn, but this time target 1/4 second to make the same wheel rotation. I bet the car will plow on dead straight for a bit, bleeding speed, and then snap over into the turn. Now, think about the same concept on an AutoX course. Too quick of a control input rate will cause you to understeer on entry. Too high of a speed will cause you to understeer on entry. In the same parking lot as earlier, I would bet that you can find a rate-of-change-of-control-input (call it "control rate") that will yield the quickest turning rate (smallest radius) for a given speed. The car is still going to push, however, but not as badly as with a "frantic" control rate. Simply changing tire compounds will not change any of the behaviours of the car. If it pushes on street rubber, it will still push on R-comps. If it's loose exiting a corner, it will still be loose on R-comps. All that will change will be the vehicle speed. What that means is that to get maximum exit speed from a given corner, you will still have to brake, turn in, apex, throttle up, and track out right at the adhesion limit of the tire on the car. If the street tire can take a given corner at 30mph, and you can learn to run it at 29.5mph consitently, do you think you are performing better or worse than taking the same corner on R-comps, which can be done at 42mph, but you're taking it at 38mph? On one hand, no, because you're going 12.5mph FASTER on R-comps, but on the other hand yes, because you're using 98% of the tractive capability of the car on street tires, but only 90% of the tractive capability of the R-comp. I will submit that if you can perfect your techniques on the street tire, and
then transition to an R-comp, you will be much faster, more quickly, than trying to do it all at once on R-comps, simply because there is such a steep learning curve to them.
In the end, the stock S197 is still a hippo wearing a tutu, and pushes like a pig! Tight sections of track will always be problematic for ANY car weighing the best part of two tons when compared to a car that may well weigh under a ton. At one event, I paddocked with a pair of Lotus Exige who I overheard discussing a weight variance between them of 100 lbs, at 1750 and 1850lbs. I blurted out that my Mustang weighed more than BOTH of their cars combined...
As things progressed, it became apparent that the tires were holding me back from developing the driver speed&reaction time because I had to drive much slower than my competitors.
I will agree with the premise, but not the reasoning. It's the experience factor. Any idiot can (and sometimes does) bolt on a set of A6s and screams "Look at me, Ma! Top of the world!" That does NOT make them a better driver than somebody who took a methodical approach to developing technique before speed. Bad habits are VERY hard to overcome, once engrained. At first, the driver that comes screaming into a corner with the brakes on fire, snaps the wheel over and lets the car push in towards apex, and then lights up the rears on the way out, fishtailing like an out-take from The Dukes Of Hazard will be the envy of every other guy at the track. Look how fast he is!! Then another guy, with proper technique is going to go through, and nobody is going to give him a second look since the run was so boring. Until the times come up, and he's a second or two (or more!) faster, because he's not wasting any energy. I would personally rather be the second guy, then make the jump to R-comps, than the first guy who's already on them.
I was at the back of the pack with Honda Civics and Focuses that had better tires. Consoling yourself with the knowledge you are ridding yourself of bad habits and learning the right way while the guy who borrowed his moms civic and threw on sticky tires is handling you your ass won't go far, trust me.
True, depending on how you're approaching your sport. If you're out there for kicks, then yes that's frustrating. If you're out there to learn how to drive, then it's a different matter. If you drive with fists of ham, throwing a bunch of transients at the R-comp tires that spike them to the edge of the traction circle, you'll never learn how to trail-brake. If you're mister smooth, and learn how to trail-brake, and see your run times drop a full second or two, you will still be smiling as you cinch 8th place, knowing that after an event or two on R-comps to get them figured out, you will be handing these bozos their asses by a HUGE margin...
Had I continued on that path, I feel I would have become very good at driving with minimal grip, but I would still be slow.
And here, we come to the crux of the matter! I will submit that YOU will not be slow, you car will be, due to the comparatively poor grip and smaller traction circle available to exploit. I think it would be better said: "Had I continued on that path, I feel I would have become very good at driving." Once you become "very good at driving" it becomes simple to make the transition to race rubber, and you will catapult yourself into not the top 20 or 30%, but the top 10%. There will always be an "alien" that is just an idiot savant (Yeah, I'm an excellent driver...) at it, that just has that internal whatever that separates you or me from Micheal Schumaker or Mikka Hakkinen. Driving skill will always win out. I would be willing to bet that if you took your car on race rubber you would be SLOWER than Boris Said in your car on street rubber. He uses 100% (or more!) of the available grip AT ALL TIMES, and I would be willing to bet you (and me, and 99% of the rest of us) use nowhere NEAR that amount. He has none of the bad habits that we do, and will be plain faster as a result. This is not drag racing, where the guy with the most money wins.
Near the end of my first season I bought a set of used R-comps. The first couple events with them I was seriously underdriving, but that was fine and it was great to have the chassis respond to my inputs rather than plowing worse than a sled loaded with presents and St.Nick.
All that means to me is that you weren't loading up the R-comps like you were the street tires. Refer back to my 98% versus 90% argument earlier... A compound change will NOT alter the behavior of the chassis. It will only change the maximum net grip available. Understeer is caused by using too much of the available grip to slow the car, and not enough to turn it. R compounds simply do the same thing, but at a higher speed. If you pushed with street tires, you were overdriving the car. If you then did NOT push with the R-comps, you were underdriving the car. One of the biggest stumbling blocks with learning on R-comp tires is that they are so unforgiving at the limit, and there is little warning of what is to come with them. With a street tire, they're squealing, then squalling, then howling, and (in this case) they push, then push worse, then just skid straight. R comps are silent, then silent, then there's a hint of "grumble" then they go silent again, and they grip, and grip, and grip and then just let go completely. If you learned on street tires, you can equate that line between squalling and howling to the grumble, and you'll know what comes next and how to handle it. If you started on R-comps, you're more likely to under-utilize them to avoid punting cones or flying off the track.
In the end, I think it comes down to the approach to driving. If you want to be the best possible driver, approach your learning in a methodical, logical progression, and move on to the next item ONLY after you have mastered the previous one(s). It's only once you start "feeling" the weight of the car transitioning around when you're just driving to the corner store for a soda that you really understand weight transfer and the impact it has on the chassis. Same thing for judging surface conditions and corner types (concrete vs. asphalt, on-camber/flat/off-camber; increasing/constant/decreasing radius, impact of elevation changes on control inputs, etc.). Once you get a handle on vehicle dynamics, to the point where it's second nature, then you start working on techniques. Braking, throttle, steering, trail-braking, left-foot braking, heel-toe, eliminating coast periods. Once you master those flawlessly, I guarantee that you will be on the podium given even rough parity between the competing cars.
I would go on further, but I'm going to get fired.
Don't do that!! I'm having too much fun arguing with you! Fire back when you get home!
