Board Thread:Game Discussion/@comment-30447859-20181205210614/@comment-37145414-20181206043608

Montoym wrote: SweetBerryPie wrote: Typically in road tests in the US, the grip is measured at 100 mph. Cars with active aero will have very different curves regarding how many gs at higher speeds. Are you sure about that? Do you have a source to back it up?

Typically, when I've read about the test usually done to measure grip, a common one mentioned is a 200-300ft skidpad. That's essentially a circle with a 200-300ft diameter in which they negotiate the circle a number of times while keeping the car over the centerline of the circle and then they calculate the result. This is most commonly the figure you'll see in magazines and such. It's unlikely most cars are going to be doing a 200-300ft skidpad at 100mph.

Here's an article from MotorTrend magazine describing their testing procedures, in which they mention the skidpad, as well as their own figure 8 testing.

https://www.motortrend.com/news/motor-trend-testing/

Car and Driver also did an article in which they spoke about their skidpad testing and how it's done (along with tables showing some of their best results from the 1970's through 2008, when the article was published):

https://www.caranddriver.com/features/rocket-sleds-the-best-performers-from-50-years-of-car-and-driver-testing-orbitals-page-3 I could easily be mistaken. Everything I know is just my faded memory of car magazines in the 90s and the few TV shows that had test drives and such back then. Probably there was one quote of a car and how many g it got at 100 mph and I logged that in my brain. Your mention of a skidpad feels much more familiar than a specific speed, now that you mention it.

Fortunately the substance of the point still stands: the game reports a static measure of grip and the curve as far as how the grip changes with speed, turn radius, etc. cannot be factored into a single meaningful datum. Hence active aero in particular is going to appear undervalued in the grip metric, and also in PR, but will in the course of the game advantage certain cars.