Someone wrote:
>I have seen three rollovers, one worker hit and two cars on almost one wheel
--snip--
>Front wheel drive cars are unsafe under hard braking while attempting to
>negotiate a sharp turn, especially on "sticky" tires. There is no place for
>them in Autocross.
>NOW THAT'S AN EXTREME VIEW.
Please tell me this is a joke. If it's already been cleared up, feel free
to ignore my comments below (since I'm on digest mode, I could be very
repetitive).
Assuming it's not a joke, I think there are a couple of problems with the
reasoning here.
1) As best I could tell, you mentioned 6 or fewer incidents (three
rollovers, one worker hit, and two single wheel scenarios). How many front
wheel drive cars have you seen? I agree that any one of these 6 is scary,
and shouldn't happen in Solo 2, but these are rare, rare, rare occurences,
and to generalize from them to all front wheel drive cars and drivers is
unwarranted.
2) All front wheel drive cars are not created equal. Some handle
horribly. Some not so bad. Different models have massively different
braking capabilities, so would be going different speeds into those corners
3) In the two years I autocrossed it, I spun my Shelby three times (twice
on one run on one course). I occasionally didn't make a corner--the
understeer pushed right into a cone--but was any of that the *car's* fault
or the *driver's*? Individual cars have different strengths and
weaknesses--that's why there are different classes. If my car pushes (like
a pig), that is a weakness of that car that I have to work around. From my
perspective, this is no different than other strengths and weaknesses that
we could mention (type & size of brakes, obtainable camber, low-end torque,
etc., etc.).
You can drive a front wheel drive car in a manner that is unsafe and has no
business on an autocross course. You can drive a rear wheel--or four
wheel--drive car in a manner that is unsafe and has no business on an
autocross course. There are almost as many ways to make mistakes as there
are drivers, and some mistakes bite harder in certain cars, but you have
got to be kidding in saying that there is no place for front wheel drive
cars in autocross.
If you think turning sharply under hard breaking is unsafe in a front wheel
drive car, try it in a mid-engine, rear-drive,
mlc
'91 MR2 NA
Mari L. Clements, Ph.D.
442 Moore Building/160 University Support Building 1
The Pennsylvania State University
University Park, PA 16802-3104
(814)863-5664 fax--(814)863-5658 or (814)863-7002
http://www.personal.psu.edu/mlc4
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