Cornering test on 1997 Mclaren F1 GT at Maple Valley Raceway (short circuit)

Описание: This video shows a cornering handling test on Mclaren F1 GT, with max Corner entry speed is 120 mph.

A car handling characteristics commonly consist of Instability, Response, Understeer and Oversteer.

• The Instability refers to Straight line driving instability under 4 aspects: general, under hard acceleration, over bumps, and under brakes.
• The Response usually means a car feels generally heavy and unresponsive or sloppy and too slow to take a set in corners or rolls a lot or feels responds too quickly with little feel and slides.
• The Understeer usually refers to a case of Corner entry understeering such as: car would not point in and gets progressively worse or initially point in and then washes out or point in but then wave and dart.
• The Oversteer usually refers to a case of Corner exit oversteering such as: progressively gets worse or suddenly oversteering and then breaks loose or spin off.

There may be thousands of things can affect a car's handling characteristics. Most of people are very subjective on judging cars' handling. There is no single objective measure to rank the handling characteristics. However, Forza did collect all manufactures' data and benchmark performance statistical data to model those cars. They do offer a rank of handling for each car from their simulation results. I picked 6 production supercars, ranked by Forza (stock without any upgrade and tuning):

1996 Ferrari F50 GT, handling: 7.8

2004 Saleen S7, handling: 7.5

1998 Porsche 911 GT1 Strassenversion, handling: 7.0

1997 Mclaren F1 GT, handling: 6.5

1998 Nissan R390, handling: 6.1

2009 Bugatti Veyron 16.4, handling: 5.9

When I drive those cars in Forza, I do feel how good or bad handling in comparing among them. However, I just could not objectively measure overall combination of each car's Instability, Response, Understeer and Oversteer hence to rank them. So my challenge is to find if there is a single measure on testing which is strongly correlated with the Forza handling rank. I have been testing drive many cars and found a measuring of Corner entry understeering actually is strongly correlated to the overall handling. The better Corner entry handling, the better overall handing or vise verse. To verify my assumption I need to set up a systematic test on those 6 cars. Objectively define for all 6 cars and test driving them on same day and with no bias against any of them:

Track: I picked up the Maple Valley Raceway (short circuit), and test on the larger curvature turn;

Corner entry point: I turned ON the red suggestion line for brake on the track, so when a car approaches a corner entry point the red suggestion line will be shown. The beginning point of red line is considered as a Corner entry point;

Corner entry speed: a speed of car at a Corner entry point;

Test Method: I gradually increase speed on the track. Until reach to the Corner entry point then I shift to neutral without gas and brake, then start to turn the car. I record the Corner entry speed each time and will increase the entry speed to repeat same test. Until I find a max Corner entry speed, when a car can no longer stay in the track and start to oversteer and then washes out from the track right after the Corner entry point. This test is trying to verify my assumption that the higher max Corner entry speed, the higher handling rank.

This video shows a test on Mclaren F1 GT, with max Corner entry speed is 120 mph.

The complete results of tests on all 6 cars are (see videos too):

1996 Ferrari F50 GT, max Corner entry speed: 130 mph    • Cornering test on 1996 Ferrari F50 GT at M...  

2004 Saleen S7, max Corner entry speed: 115 mph    • Cornering test on 2004 Saleen S7 at Maple ...  

1998 Porsche 911 GT1 Strassenversion, max Corner entry speed: 120 mph    • Cornering test on 1998 Porsche 911 GT1 Str...  

1997 Mclaren F1 GT, max Corner entry speed: 120 mph    • Cornering test on 1997 Mclaren F1 GT at Ma...  

1998 Nissan R390, max Corner entry speed: 115 mph    • Cornering test on 1998 Nissan R390 at Mapl...  

2009 Bugatti Veyron 16.4, max Corner entry speed: 110 mph    • Cornering test on 2009 Bugatti Veryron 16....  

My test results are pretty much in agreement with Forza ranks, except for the Saleen S7.

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