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Car and Driving Info
Engines:
There are four types of engine configurations that are possible for
cars. They are:
* Front Engine/Front Wheel Drive
* Front Engine/Rear Wheel Drive
* Mid Engine/Rear Wheel Drive
* Four-Wheel Drive
Front Engine/Front Wheel Drive:
Rear Wheel Drive used to be the most common among
passenger cars, but front wheel drive offers the advantage
of eliminating the drive-train mechanism necessary to transmit
the driving force from the front-mounted engine to the rear
wheels. The drawback of front wheel drive is that all the weight
is concentrated in the front of the car, making the car nose
heavy, and creating an unequal weight distribution.
Front Engine/Rear Wheel Drive:
Although most cars today have front-wheel drive, rear-wheel
drive still offers a big advantage in weight balance. In addition
to having a nearly 50-50 weight distribution between the front
and rear, the rear-whel drive uses the rear wheels for accelerating
and the front wheels for steering. This divides the responsibility
between the front and the rear, putting all four tyres to good use.
This engine configuration also gives a huge advantage in
handling and control. It offers the greatest room for improvement
in driving, and maneuvers such as drifting become possible.
Mid Engine/Rear Wheel Drive:
As ayone would have seen a Formula One race car knows, cars
built for speed have their engines mounted midship. With the front
of the car relatively light, steering becomes very sharp and direct.
Because the engine is near the rear axle, power from the engine
gets transmitted to the road with little wasted energy. Mid engine
cars also have a high resistance to losing control even during hard
braking.
Although mid engine cars offer many advantages, they are
difficult to drive. Mid engine cars demand a mastery of fundamental
driving techniques such as weight transfer. Even though they have
great conrnering characteristics, it's easy to become nervous about
the consequences of making a mistake during cornering.
Four Wheel Drive:
In the old days, a car had either front-wheel brakes or rear-
wheel brakes. Nowadays, cars come equipped with four-wheel brakes.
So why not have cars with all wheel drive? Four wheels are better
than two.
Four-wheel drive is effective for sportcars that run on paved
surfaces or dirt, and it is used almost exclusively in rally racing.
Other places where four-wheel drive is used is circuit racing and
mountain pass racing. The one drawback behind four-wheel drive is
the complicated mechanism necessary to distribute power evenly to
all four wheels and to keep the wheels synchronized during
cornering. This is particularly troublesome in cars that have a
tendency to understeer.
However, recent advances in four-wheel drive technology such
as electronic control have increased handling performance
considerably. This performance coupled with the traction offered
by four-wheel drive creates a powerful combination. On wet
surfaces, four wheel drive clearly out-performs two-wheel drive,
and even offers performance that equal to of mid engine/rear-wheel
drive.
Tyres and Traction:
Tyres are a car's direct link to the road. No matter how
powerful an engine, or how superior a cars suspension may be,
nothing else matters unless the tyres are up to the challenge.
The tyres are said to be the most important part on a sports car.
Whether it is accelerating, braking, or turning, all racing
actions depend on the traction between a car's tires and the road.
This traction has two components, a straight-line component and a
lateral-line component. This is illustrated by the traction/friction
circle.
The vertical line represents the friction associated with
acceleration and deceleration; the horizontal line represents the
friction of turning left or right.
If the forces acting on the car exceed the traction between
the road and the tyres, the car will start slipping. This limit
where slipping begins is represented by the friction circle.
Everything within the circle is less than the cars limit.
When cars start slipping, you'll hear familiar skidding noises
that indicate that the car is right at the limit of the Friction
Circle. Loud skidding noises mean that the car's limits have been
surpassed. To drive the car as fast as possible, you must drive it
right to its friction limit.
To brake in the shortest distance possible, your must use the
tyres gripping ability all the way to point C. Any point within the
circle does not take full advantage of the tyres traction capacity.
Anything outside the circle induces slipping and potential tire
locking, greatly increasing braking distance.
If you exceed the car's turning ability, which is represented
by the horizontal axis in the figure, the car may not respond to the
steering wheel, and thus spin-out.
This gets a little more complicated when discussing the areas
of the friction circle which do not lie on the vertical or
horizontal axis. This is because once you leave either of these axes,
the forces acting on the tires become a combination of both
acceleration/deceleration and turning.
Actions such as braking while turning right or accelerating
while turning left are represented on the friction circle by
areas that do not lie on the horizontal or vertical axes. Our
previous example of applying brakes to 100% of the tyres' traction
capacity took us to point C. If while braking, we were to turn the
car to the right just a little, we would now move from point C to
a point still on the Friction Circle a bit closer to point B. So
our braking ability would reduce slightly, while thurning as
opposed to braking without turning.
If the friction circle represents 100% of our traction capacity
and we use 10% of that traction to turn right, then we would only
have 90% traction availible for braking. If we use 100% for braking,
then we have none left for turning. In other words, we would not be
able to turn at all.
In race car driving, it is most common to accelerate/brake and
turn in combination, thus creating a variety of forces on your tyres.
To drive as fast as possible, you must constantly push your car to
its perofrmance limit.
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