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Yeah, you are right what does the current BTCC Champion know about cars anyway.
In fact they should let his engineer drive the car as he can obviously do it much better.
I still maintain that a FWD chassis is superior to a RWD chassis, this obviously changes when you consider mid mounted engines etc, but then we are only talking BTCC cars here, so a lot of this i know thia you din't know what i know crap is worthless posturing.
Buut hey what do i know i am only an Advanced Driver trained to just below Police Pursuit standards, and strangely you need the extra training to get let loose in the areas cars which are RWD.
RWD was rejected by the LAS for FRU's due to the fact they can be tricky on the limit.
It takes a right tool to really lose it in a FWD vehicle. Ask anybody that drove an Austin A40 then stepped into a Mini.
Though the A40 was more fun, albeit sideways all the time.
Anybody that reckons a rwd car is easier on the limit has probably never driven on the limit.
Why else do.you think the Cossy got ousted from the top tier by a load of FWD repmobiles back in the ninties.
Was it because the RWD chassis was better?
Or was it due to the FWD cars being in frknt when the chequered flag was waved.0 -
Shoshannah - it's not that they're BMWs, it's not that they're RWD, it's that they're built to older regulations, and they're simply not as fast as the turbo cars are allowed to be. If one of the Beemer teams could afford to build a new car to the 'Next Generation Touring Car' spec, I'm sure they would, but they can't just take an engine out of the current car and stick in the turbo one. The BMWs that are there now WILL disappear at some point, and all of the BTCC cars will be NGTC cars in a few years.
I hate to point out the the Chevrolet Cruze of JP is also non turbo.
The regs are inplace to make things more even, but the BMW's have never really been at the front since the first season they arrived, not sure why as i stopped following BTCC for a while and only really started watching it again this year.
Interesting to see the Airwave team go from BMW's to old.shape Focus and suddenly be further up the grid.
Even His Stigness had triuble with the BMW, though admittedly i think that was more down to the gearbox issues putting him at the back, but he still stacked it didn't he?0 -
Yeah, you are right what does the current BTCC Champion know about cars anyway.
Oh !!!!!! who re-ignited this thread? bigjl, all you have said so far is based on opinions, most of which I've proven wrong (e.g. why all modern BTCC cars are FWD). Please, provide the quote where anyone says that FWD are inherently faster? Have you even read the physics I pointed you towards earlier? Thought not.RWD was rejected by the LAS for FRU's due to the fact they can be tricky on the limit.
It takes a right tool to really lose it in a FWD vehicle.
It doesn't matter what is easier to drive on the limit. It's just not relevant to which is ultimately faster, because these are racing drivers. The fact is that RWD cars can accelerate out of a corner faster than FWD, because the front tyres are only doing one thing - steering the car. Applying a longitudinal load (accelerating) reduces the amount of grip available for steering. It's exactly the same reason that a car will understeer if you brake (a negative longitudinal load) while steering - you don't have the 'spare' grip available to do both to their optimum level.Why else do.you think the Cossy got ousted from the top tier by a load of FWD repmobiles back in the ninties.
Because the touring car rules changed from Group A (in the 80s, and part of a multi-class format) to the 2 litre regs (aka Super Touring, in the 90s), and the Cossie was no longer eligible. You ought to do some research before saying "why do you think x, y, z".I hate to point out the the Chevrolet Cruze of JP is also non turbo.
...and it's currently being thrashed in a straight line by the turbo cars. Jason Plato keeps pointing out the turbos' advantage, and they've recently had their boost pressure reduced by another 0.05bar (so down 0.15bar from the start of the season). TOCA have screwed up the equivalency.The regs are inplace to make things more even, but the BMW's have never really been at the front since the first season they arrived, not sure why as i stopped following BTCC for a while and only really started watching it again this year.
Interesting to see the Airwave team go from BMW's to old.shape Focus and suddenly be further up the grid.
Colin Turkington won the BTCC in a BMW in 2009. As I mentioned before, that BMW chassis is now ancient in racing terms, about 6 or 7 years since it was introduced to the WTCC, and BMW/Schnitzer stopped developing it a couple of years back. The reason Airwaves are now frontrunners is (again) because of the turbo engine.
almillar is correct - all BTCC cars (and Scandinavian touring cars) will be built to NGTC regs in a couple of years. You could infer that the lack of equivalency is a clever ploy by Alan Gow to force that change through sooner rather than later.0 -
bigjl - I'll say it again as you don't seem to be reading posts. RWD is faster. That's the end of it. FWD was invented to be cheaper and give more cabin space. Not for speed.
You're confusing a regulated motorsport with physics. As I explained above, the BMWs are slow last year because they're heavier than the other cars, which are built to different regulations, and also have less power than the turbos. Jason Plato is driving the Chevrolet, another non-NGTC car, which doesn't have a turbo, is slower on the straights, kinder to the tyres, and better in the corners, same as the BMWs (which have more even tyre wear).
You've also been advised that the RWD cossies were being built to different standards than the FWD cars that came in in the 80s. I've also told you that Audi brought in 4wd A4s in the 90s, wiped the floor with the RWD and FWD competition, got weight added to them, started losing and left.
Those are several examples of why the Beemers look bad in the touring cars. It's not even slightly about RWD vs FWD.
I don't know why you think the disloyal weasel that is the ex-Stig would just walk into the touring cars and win against all these experienced drivers either.0 -
You've also been advised that the RWD cossies were being built to different standards than the FWD cars that came in in the 80s.
And re-reading my previous post I should've made it clearer that the RS500 was never outclassed by FWD repmobiles - if you google "Sierra RS500 BTCC", the top result (after some great videos
) is this. The RS500 was rarely beaten to the chequered flag by anything, and lost the overall BTCC title in '89 only because of the arcane class system in place until 1990. The '79 championship, for instance, was won by a 1275cc Mini, which "beat" a horde of RX-7s and 3-litre Capris!
Another search, for "super touring regulations", gives the top result here, which shows the RS500 was ineligible for the post-1990, 2-litre era on at least two counts - its turbocharged engine and its limited production run.
(I believe the four-door requirement mentioned on that site came slightly later, as both the E30 and E36 BMWs raced in the BTCC in two-door form)
Despite being 75-100kg heavier than FWDs, BMW won the first three titles under the 'repmobile' rules. The first FWD title of that era came in '94, when Alfa Romeo won with legally dubious aerodynamic aids, and Audi won in '96 (BMW's last year as a works entry) with 4WD, so in fact FWDs only took one directly comparable title, in '95.0 -
Strider590 wrote: »FWD has an advantage in the BTCC because yon can get power down out of corner much sooner in a FWD car. They've (touring cars) have always been quite tail happy..... and the way to pull a FWD car out oversteer is to boot it, RWD is the opposite, so theres clearly a point where FWD is going to be pulling away from the RWD boys.
Not only this but we're talking front engined rear wheel drive in cars which aren't exactly small hatchbacks.
The only reason BMW's stay on the road these days is all the fancy trickery/electronics (which isn't allowed in the BTCC afiak).
Put the road going versions head to head on a track and the RWD's would run rings around them, road cars are typically setup to give understeer (safety reasons), which is as far as speed goes is the ultimate killer.
The reason that any modern cars driven by clueless idiots stay on the road is partly because of electronic driver aids
FWD in road cars is hugely safer than RWD in many circumstances as tail slides are harder to deal with than front end slides
What RWD does give is a much purer drive in that the front wheels are for steering and rear wheels for pushing the car along - the trick with any car is to keep that set up going in a straight line for as long as possible ie maximise lateral grip - that has very little to do with RWD or FWD much to do with car weight distribution and tyre technology amongst a million other things0 -
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