Good work consolidating these into one concise article.
What can separate a fast car from a really fast car? Power? Driver skill?
How about chassis setup? The way those adjustable bits and pieces are set up and aligned can often make a huge difference in lap times, driver confidence and even tire wear.
Where to start the process? How about with something that can be adjusted on any car: tire pressures.
But how do you determine what’s best–that is, fastest–for you and your car? A few possibilities: Take a wild guess, ask some randos on the internet, or–likely the proper answer–run some tests.
Andy Hollis, who does much of the tire testing found in these pages, uses a skidpad to determine hot tire pressures. Here’s how:
Where else can the chassis be dialed in while requiring little to no new equipment? How about the alignment? How your car’s wheels are pointed in terms of toe, camber and caster greatly impact handling.
This means, yes, possibly more testing.
First, you’ll need a venue, and here you’ll want to add in some transitions–think a small, simple autocross or a figure 8 that allows the car to reach about 60 mph.
Camber: The lean-in or lean-out of a car’s wheels when viewed from the front or rear.
Goal: On most production-based cars, maximum negative camber is the correct answer–and you may have to slot, tweak or replace something to get a little more negative camber than stock. If the outside edges of the tires are getting too hot and thus wearing too much, your alignment likely doesn’t have enough negative camber.
Toe: The relationship of the two wheels on the same axle when viewed from above.
Goal: A bit of toe-out up front can help with turn-in. Too much toe-out, though, can lead to instability, especially under braking.
Caster: The tilt of the steering pivot access from vertical when viewed from the side.
Goal: The stock caster settings are usually pretty good, but if you can, adding a bit more than stock can help with high-speed stability.
Is one end of your car gripping better than the other? If the front wheels are sliding before the rears, then you’re experiencing understeer. The circle track crowd calls this a push.
If the rear wheels are losing traction first, then it’s called oversteer. This is known as being loose in circle track parlance. Here are some ways to fix things:
What’s hot on today’s tire market? This guide should help you narrow the field, and you can dig deeper here.
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