In a message dated 7/23/00 3:44:52 PM Central Daylight Time,
Mike B. 99cm wrote:
<< Thats part of what I was trying to say(And obviously didn't do it very
well)
the other part is this. I started driving Autox in CM and quickly found out
that there were lots
of things that could be done to make the car faster even though my experience
in the car was limited. When you talk about stock class cars(as many do on
this list) you have to realize that a Camaro is a Camaro and a Neon is a
Neon. There
is not a lot you can do to make one Neon or Camaro better than another.
In mod cars its much easier(It just costs money) to fix things. All I'm
saying is
an average driver(Insert me here) in a really sorted car will always beat
the
best
driver in a poorly developed car. Thats why I said that its 90% car
preparation
and 10% driver training. >>
You could probably put any driver in Mark Dadio's car and put Mark in a
rental car on race tires and watch him still win. I wonder if he would be up
to try it at Nationals ?? ;-)
It is true that mod cars can be adjusted greatly, and the spec nature of
FFcars makes even a tiny improvement worth something IF the driver can use
it. Sure, if you are two seconds back, and find the toe is way off, and fix
it, it could help, but then put a better driver in the car and he will be
faster still. It all adds up. It is very easy to mess up a car and make it
slower too. Maybe a little more toe out helps in slow corners, but the car
has so little power, it kills you on a straight section where an equal car
pulls more speed. It felt better in the slow corners so the driver thinks he
helped it. Same goes for adding caster, it feels great, but is slower when
you go past a limit. Ask me how I know about that.
Take a below half pack driver's stock car, put a great driver in it for a day
and see how they do. Then let the novice put any stock legal mods on it and
see if they can catch the great driver. The great driver may not run as good
as he does in his own fully set up car (set up how he likes it to feel as
much as anything else), but even setting it up, the novice won't catch him
without a ton of seat time.
Gary M.
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