Evo this month

[Superman]

Whenever motoring journalists focus too much on understeer/oversteer, it does make me wonder... A lot of the time much of this can be attributed to either geo being 'out of spec' (these do tend to be abused press cars after all, and in a modern sports car it is relatively easy to dial up/down with different geo settings) or just driver style being particularly matched/mis-matched to specific setups (and they hardly ever seem to be able to identify in meaningful detail where in the cornering cycle the understeer/oversteer is happening - again something that can be impacted hugely by driving style).

I just find reviews that take a 'linear' view on this a bit... meh!

 

[Porter]

Jethro was guilty of some more brattish behaviour in a recent edition of EVO. He was given a guest drive in an M4 at the Nurburgring 24hrs. Clearly out of his depth, It went badly and he crashed the car. The mechanics managed to repair it and get it back on track, only for one of his co-drivers to bin it a few hours later. His closing comment about the race: "Good riddance". What a way to finish the article. I thought it showed a total lack of gratitude and respect to the the team who had bust a gut on his behalf, and you would think the editor would have pointed this out to him.

I honestly suspect the issue with Jethro is probably that he's just an entitled jerk. He claims to be from this humble origin, referring to his dad "working as a mechanic" but nothing about his speech, his attitude, or his name would lead me to believe that he wasn't raised in a pretty privileged class situation.

 

[Porter]

Whenever motoring journalists focus too much on understeer/oversteer, it does make me wonder... A lot of the time much of this can be attributed to either geo being 'out of spec' (these do tend to be abused press cars after all, and in a modern sports car it is relatively easy to dial up/down with different geo settings) or just driver style being particularly matched/mis-matched to specific setups (and they hardly ever seem to be able to identify in meaningful detail where in the cornering cycle the understeer/oversteer is happening - again something that can be impacted hugely by driving style).

I just find reviews that take a 'linear' view on this a bit... meh!

It's almost like many of them are not the super competent hot shoe drivers they make themselves out to be, and even if they were, they often don't have the meaningful experimentation time or safe environment to really push the cars sufficiently to discover the real characteristics of the chassis. So it's a game of doing hamfisted driving maneuvers to upset the chassis and get it to slide, and then using those few wild data points to make inferences about the dynamic limits.

It's a real minefield of questionable claims. I put it on the same level as wine tasting notes from people who aren't wine experts. I mean plenty of us like wine, but our insights into the fine detail of the thing shouldn't be taken to mean much beyond, "I liked it" or "I didn't like it", because we aren't trained sommeliers.

And no, getting a ride as a driver in a race series once or twice does not make one a dynamics expert. Any rich jerk can buy a seat, that's how a bunch of the teams fund part of their season.

 

[nelly111s]

When I got my second Elise, a 111R, I had it for a few months before taking it to be “geo’d”. By then I knew that the under steer I was feeling on initial entry to roundabouts wasn’t what I wanted. But it had taken a few months of “experimenting “ to get to that conclusion, with a car that I knew.