In light of recent comments by Mr. Lapworth, perhaps it would be fun if someone started to keep a list?

Possibly titled, <B> Stupid statements made by David Lapworth.</B> or something similar?


Mike.

 

Mr Lapworth - I'd be happy to swap my MY98 UK for one of your WRC cars...

You'd be saving yourself a fortune....

 

In todays motoring news, David Lapworth of Prodrive said that if you swapped over the tyres from the WRC to the standard car and vice-versa then took the cars round the handling circuit at MIRA, that the standard car would be faster than the WRC ! Now where can I get some of them...

 

Doh! I feel such an idiot - there's me spending all that money on getting 400+ lb ft of torque (still approx 40 less than a Scooby WRC), when all I needed to do was buy a set of tyres to help make it almost as quick...
LOL
Mike

 

You **** taking lot!!!

I have absolutely no doubt that this statement is totally correct.

THE biggest alteration to a cars handling / grip levels are made by tyres. They are the only thing which changes direction of the car or makes it speed up or slow down.

The grip levels in competition tyres comared to road tyres make them chalk and cheese. Road tyres are design to last thousands of miles. Competition tyres as little as 30 miles (or even less).

The handling circuit at MIRA is all about grip. Horses play a part, but 'power is nothing without control'.

I would be staggered if a WRC car with standard road tyres could beat a standard Impreza with competition rubber on.

Anyway, Mr Lapworth is a good part of why Scoobies are so astonishing. Let's not **** him off, he may go to Ford!!

hehe

Simon

 

Simon,
So are you saying that the tens of thousands that the rally teams spend on computer controlled diffs, adjustable anti-roll bars, Proflex rose-jointed suspension and the like is a waste of time then and would not help the car on the handling circuit at MIRA if you swapped the tyres over....?

If they now won't be needing this, can they give it to me please....
LOL
Mike

 

seems like a lot of missing the point. WRC+road tyres = very powerful hopeless no grip or traction. Std road car+comp tyres = astounding grip+good power. Whcih do you think is going to go better on a handling course ?

All the other WRC gizmos are becasuse all the other WRC's are using comp tyres so gizmos = advantage over the next guy.

Is this really so hard to understand ?

Mr Lapworth keep up the hard work, You (and various others) are what makes the SRT

 

I still think the rally car would lap quicker than the road car if the tyres were swapped, as the other suspension, handling upgrades would help compensate (I don't think the difference would be that great mind you), but the fact that the rally car would have instant response out of the corners better front end grip through better geometry and would be easy to control because of this. Sticky tyres on a road car would surely highlight the above deficiences in the standard car...

 

Hi Mike

I know what you are saying, and can easily see why you are saying it, but...

Some of the things I have learned from the thousands of miles I have done at MIRA in a huge variety of cars are:-

a) The standard scooby is so good, that it's ability / competence exceeds that of the majority of road cars, by miles.
b) Tyres are everything.

On the wet handling circuit in my old L reg WRX I could lap the wet circuit in 48 seconds. This was using Yoko A520's (nothing more than a slightly sporty road tyre). I changed them to Venturas (was told that these should be about the same as the A520's - which they weren't, they were slightly less grippy and a bit less progressive on the limit). With these on (not a million miles away from the last tyres) I could only manage 49-50 second laps.

That's over a second difference just based on two similar road tyre types. If subaru found a tyre compound which would give them a second over such a short distance they would be world champions every year!

Imagine the incredible difference if the tyres were engineered at staggering costs to be as grippy as they can possibly be for about 30 miles and then be thrown away. That they don't have to be used for any type of surface / weather condition / temporature / etc other than the exact situation they are being put on the car for.

The standard scooby has enough power to take road rubber to the limit if driven hard enough, but put some soft slick (on dry tarmac), or some competition wets for the wet tarmac and the car would struggle to break traction under power. This effectively means that the car can use every inch of its power and the tyres can take it.

The WRC has a **** load more power, but the tyres an still only take a little less power than the max output of the road car, so any extra power being put down will be lost in wheel spin, etc.

Add to this the bigger differnce of the cornering capabilities and the following happens.

Imagine a straight, hairpin, straight layout.

Both cars barrel in, the WRC would need to get on the brakes earlier even if he was to try to slow to the same speed, but he has actually got to slow down even more, so he's on the brakes long before the road car has come off the gas.

At this point, you must agree that the road car would be ahead...

The road car has huge amounts of grip so can pick a smooth line through the bend at a nice high speed and be squeezing the throttle smoothly to get a nice steady fast exit.

The WRC car has had to slow down do maybe 5 MPH (or even more) slower than the road car, AND he reached there later, he then does pretty much the same thing but all at a lower speed. He needs to be very subtle with the throttle to stop all them horses dissapearing into a cloud of tyre smoke. Get on the gas and exit the corner slower than the road car did (who is already a good way onto the straight and accelerating hard).

The WRC car now comes into it's own and the driver must manage any wheel spin to get maximum acceleration out of the inferior tyres to give chase to the road car. Given a long enough straight, the road car will be passed by the sheer power, once the speeds are high enough that the tyres grip vs the torque being put through them is such that the car can use all it's power.

The only problem is that, the handling circuit at MIRA is a *handling* circuit, and therefore does not have long straights. You can learn little about a car's handling by blatting along in a straight line. The straights are only long enough to enforce braking for the next bend.

If you drove the 2 cars across country in a point-to-point race. Without question, the WRC would win. But the handling circuit is all about cornering. And tyres are what make the biggest difference in cornering.

I think the point he was making is that the tyres are so far removed from road tyres that in these highly specialised conditions, the tyres are what makes the big difference.

Like he said, they spend about as much time testing tyres as they do the rest of the car.

It is possible he may know more about it than us??

Cheers

Simon

[This message has been edited by Simon de Banke (edited 16-03-2000).]

 

Mikey,

stop applying the principles of Ford ownership to that of the superior Scooby

lol

D

 

Simon,
I know what he was trying to say, but I think I would have to see it proven to me to believe. Although I know the standard Scooby has good suspension, I still think that the much superior set up on the WRC car with the computer controlled diffs would make up a considerable amount of ground lost on the tyre side of things (the added traction with these is phenomenal!).

It would be very interesting to see....!

Anyway, can anyone arrange it?!
LOL
Mike

 

I don't think its got anything to do with the tyres - if you look at the release pictures of the 2000 WRC it has no brake callipers so probably wouldn't get past the first bend at MIRA

Paul

 

hehe

That would be nice.

Don't put too much faith in sheer suspension. Whilst it does of course make a difference to the grip levels, it is mostly handling that is effected on smooth surfaces.

The computer controlled diffs and such would without question be very usefull but they can still only put as much power to any tyre as it can take.

On the wet circuit you can easily get an Impreza in a total four wheel slide, completely sideways and with all four wheels spinning. No matter how much clever traction control you have, the tyres can obviously still not take as much torque as is being passed to them by the standard car.

I have seen an Escort Deisel lap quicker than a Porsche 911 before, because the 911 had crap tyres and the Escort had excellent tyres.

Last weekend there was a fantastic scooby at MIRA which had nice gripy tyres on the front and evil tefflon coated tyres on the back. What a blast. The car was without doubt the most tail happy 4WD car I have ever driven.
I love being sideways and have no problem with it at all, but this car would not have lapped quicker that a really good Golf GTI on S-02's. Even a cossie would have been quicker at some points

Nah, maybe not!!!

Actually, I am likely to be the proud owner of a Sierra Cossie Rally Car shortly, so may have to take your side!!!

Cheers

Simon

 

Oi de Sideways nooooo!!!

Slower than a Golf I ask you!

I do have to agree though the back end stepped out at 23mph on the circles where as Don's old M5 (rear drive 270+ horses) went to nearly 30 before understeer. As far as the circuit was concerned a similar spec Scooby was 1/4 of a lap quicker.

Oh yeah only when I was driving not when Simon was at the wheel!

 

hehe

I knew I was risking attack from you when I compared your car to a Golf GTi in non favorable terms!!!

I assure you, I would jump at the chance of doing some more laps in your car, but would take-it or leave-it if offered a go in the Golf!

You must be one of the best drivers on the planet to just keep that thing on the road!!!

 

The only way to ask this question is whether the difference between a standard car and a wrc is smaller than the difference between the tyres.

Personally I think it is, and therefore simon is right.

Also I happen to think that a man with considerably more knowledge and certainly more success in international rallying, thinks so too.

Is there really any argument?

 

Not good just very slow!

 

Simon,

Although I reckon Dave Lapworth is right, I would like to mention that your bit about the WRC driver having to be more careful on the throttle on your example bend doesn't really take the car's traction control system into account.

The car has sophisticated electronic-trickery that would limit maximum wheelslip and allow configuration of the LSDs to improve the braking, cornering and acceleration characteristics of the car. Assuming the car was set up correctly, the driver should, in theory, be able to floor it around and out of the bend, letting the car deal with the tyres versus torque issues for him.

However, I do agree that a car that has no grip issue (awesome grip and lesser torque) will probably do better than one that can "only" get the very best out of a set of lesser rubber.

Moray
(I mentioned the mixed tyre type handling thing to someone recently... now who was it? )

 

Moray

The so called traction control system is not the same thing as most people would assume.

If the driver floors it, on say the hairpin of the wet circuit, I promise you, all four wheel will light up.

This characteristic is necessary to allow full control of the car in a four wheel powerslide. If the system stopped the wheels from spinning, as soon as you got sideways and started a powerslide the trickery would stop the wheels spinning and cause the car to straighten up again or pendulum.

The 'traction control' merely does things like give torque to the tyre with the most grip, but as soon as you exceed the torque that any of the tyres can take, all four wheels will spin.

It IS true that the trickery will imporove the braking, cornering, and mid-bend acceleration of the car (that's the whole reason this isn't a clear cut argument) but we have already said that the standard scooby has enough power to exceed the *tyres* maximum grip levels.

Another example is this. A standard UK scooby with S0-2's will lap (without question) faster than an STi with Yoko A520's. This is definate and I have seen it many many times. As soon as you see a Scooby with S-02's on it at MIRA, you know it is going to wipe the floor with almost anything there.

The difference between the UK scoob and the STi is obviously not as big, but the difference between the road tyres and competition tyres is mountainnous.

We *really* need to borrow a WRC from prodrive.

Do you think they would mind?



Simon