Well, I think it's very clear that you can do some things in GPL that
a) wouldn't work in real-life and b) if they did would have major
impact on tire adn brake wear.
Your definition of trail-braking is perfect, however, to trail-brake
into a fast (>80mph) corner you must have some gas on so as
to keep the rears from going really light, losing traction and
sending the car into oversteer.
I'm not sure I fully understand that. Certainly you are not altering
the brake bias, that is fixed in GPL Most formula cars in real-life
do have***pit brake-bias adjusters however.
What you are doing by providing power to the rear wheels whilst
braking is altering the weight balance under braking. If the weight
of the car stayed as it was at rest with more weight over the
rear tires you would set brake balance more rearward. You may
add a few extra clicks rearward as well as you have a greater
contact patch at the rear.
Howver, under throttle off braking the weight is shifted dramatically
foward, so we need to give the brakes a more forward bias, plus it
is always preferable for fronts to lose traction fractionally before
rears (although we don't want either of course).
This means we are braking much more with our skinny frint-tyres
than the wide rears. By providing power to the rears we shift the
weight balance under braking more rearward, hence we need to move
our brake balance more rearward to compensate.
We in effect get a greater braking force which, although it has
to brake more (as we are still pushing the car forward with
power) does in fact provide overall, a greater degree of
retardation. Theres a whole load of factors that go into this, but
GPL cars would I suspect, by nature of their realtively poor brake
performance and disparity between front and rear tire contact patches,
benefit greatly from this.
I should stress that we are talking partial throttle here, probably no
more than 25% as suggested in another post.
I've used this myself in single seaters, specifically Formual Ford,
Vauxhall Junior and Vauxhall Lotus but more for it's other benefit
of stabilising the car under heavy braking. With very little weight
on the rears any inblance in the car is likely to "wag the tail".
Especially noticable on the FF/FVJ as these where wingless
car (as GPL of course). The FVLs where winged cars and I
probably didn't need to do this, but perhaps did it out of habit
The lower the cars CoG (centre of gravity) the less of a problem
this forward movement of weight is under heavy braking (I'm sure
theres a formula for this) so with aerodynamic, very low sling modern
formula cars I doubt this is an issue.
It has an added benefit in GPL, assuming you left-foot brake
(the above was done using heel & toe) in that it allows you to fine
tune your corner entry speed a little better. If you do brake with
a little gas, if you brake a little late you can come off (the gas)
just before the turn-in point and get a little extra retardation, thus
still make the corner cleanly. If you brake a little early you can
give it a little more gas, keeping you speed a little higher so as
the enter the corner at the optimum speed.
This is MUCH more preferable to coming off the brake earlier
or backing off the brake as a) it's more difficult to do and
b) you'll take weight away from the front which will compromise
front-end grip, which you need for corner entry, so you'll wash-out
Argh! this has turned into another lecture, I knew it was fatal
to start responding.
In Summary, YES gas+brake is used in real life and B) I do
think (but don't know) that the GPL Physics engine is flawed
in the way it responds to very heavy simultaneous use of
gas + brake.
Oops theres more :
See above. Brake fade would be really interesting.
What Cars pez? where?
Maxx
