Occasional Tales

With a semi-slick excursion. A comment in a recent video by Alex “FailRace” Day had me thinking that I ought to see whether off-road race tyres are all they’re cracked up to be in dirt races. I started by doing five trail races on dirt tyres followed by the same five on off-road race tyres to see whether the latter had a significant effect on the times. I used my Fiat Abarth 131. PI S1 820 (dirt tyres) or S1 808 (off-road). 422hp, 915kg, PWR 0.461. Front 56%. Times in […] are my lead over the drivatars at the end of the race – where I remembered to note them. Baja California Dirt: 02:21.817 [+2] Off-road: 02:17.020 [+4] Barranca Dirt: 02:24.321 [+8] Off-road: 02:25.668 [+7; scrappy race somewhat skews this result] Tulum Dirt: 02:55.251 [+6] Off-road: 02:54.474 [+4; not such a great improvement] Cordillera Dirt: 02:54.062 [+4] Off-road: 02:50.844 [+5] Tapalpa Dirt: 02:15.293 [+8] Off-road: 02:15.983 [+8] The results are variable with off-road races tyres sometimes having a clear advanta...

After finding that I wasn’t the only player to find that the drivatars were misbehaving in the Formentor seasonal, I did some testing. For my first building, I added race weight reduction first, and then other upgrades after that. It got me a PWR of 0.303 and the following results for the races: San Juan: 04:09.275 [+0.667]. I was about a second and a half in the lead when the back end slid near the end of the race, and the drivatar closed the gap. Desierto: I forgot to record the time, but I was a goodly distance ahead of the drivatars at the end of the race. But it was a scrappy race at the start with mush sliding sideways from one wall to another. Mulegé Scramble: 03:53.504 [+9]. A much greater gap than I was expecting. My second build was max. engine, but that still left me enough PI to add other components. I also added aero because of awkward shortcomings, but ended up with a PWR of 0.362. San Juan: 04:10.393 [+8]. Not dissimilar to the first result, but the Formentor outpace...