Originally Posted by
AdrianM
You can setup any sedan to drive anyway you want it to drive. The main decider on what to get is how often you crash and local support.
As far as "driving styles"....there is no such thing. Most cars and tracks have one narrow setup window that will generate the fastest lap times. Usually, a properly setup sedan will have a lot of steering, drive on its nose and the rear rotates to follow the front in a very controlled fashion. A lot of guys do not like that feel and change their cars to be more rear biased. This is almost always slower.
Basically there are fast cars (setups) and guys that can drive them...or not.
I disagree. I believe some cars have inherent qualities that make them suited to different driving styles. Point and Shoot vs smooth turns are 2 drastically different styles, and both can be fast.
There are also many many setups that can work and be fast. Talking to pro drivers, they are usually not running the "fastest" setup, as it requires the car to be on edge, and while they can turn a faster lap, the consistency goes down.
A fast lap at our track in 17.5 TC is 9.9 seconds. The guy who can turn 10.2's every lap is the one who wins though.
Originally Posted by
AdrianM
All sedans run full time 4wd with front spools or front gear diffs set up to barely move so they drive like spools.
No one runs front or center one ways anymore. They do not allow you to drive as deep into turns and brake like you can with spools.
Most of the fastest drivers don't use drag brake in 17.5 or 13.5. They use brakes with the trigger while in a straight line befote a corner and then roll on power through the whole turn.
I disagree with this as well. One of the faster drivers in this area runs a one-way in the front. We also have a mix of people using front diffs (100k to 1mil) and spools. Most of our 17.5 drivers have moved away from drag brake, but others still use it and are faster (more laps in less time) then without it.
Just my opinions. You seem to make a lot of assumptions and generalizations that at least in my experience have not been true.
To the general topic, I do find that different chassis' do handle differently. Driving several TC6.1's, I find them to be a little lazy, but very predictable and confident. I find that they are easier to rescue from bad inputs, and you can get out of a bad situation much easier with one. The Xray's I have driven are usually much more on edge, and feel better when driven harder. Going into a tight chicane, adding more throttle makes the car more stable, especially if you go in unbalanced. On the other hand, my Serpent in the same situation, more throttle would tend to continue unbalancing the car. It seems to like smoother, less jerky inputs, and while it feels good to me, I know some more aggressive drivers on the track do not feel as stable with it. Setup plays a factor in all of this of course, but those features have been pretty consistent to me across several cars owned by different people.