You are missing the point of balancing. Balancing the cars is not about creating three cars that perform and behave equal. It's about having three different cars that perform and behave differently, but in the end are fairly equal in lap time.
Obviously this is very hard and probably impossible over all tracks, but what is the alternative, everyone just driving one car?
has it occured to anyone that the reason so few people drive the XRR is that it's ugly?
it took me 1000's of laps to get quick in the FXR, but when i drive the XRR i find myself going just as fast after only a few laps. i think it's quite easy to drive, and definitely faster in a straight line.
also, maybe FZR drivers don't like the XRR because of the turbo lag, but coming from the FXR i don't find it a problem.
While that plays some part, I believe it just doesn't have any appeal on several levels:
1) Never been fastest (FZR)
2) Never been easiest to drive (FXR can cover your mistakes)
3) Turbo lag is annoying
Also RWD with that big turbo lag can be unforgiving and tricky in cases. If it were the fastest car (or even with FZR) it would be interesting to see if its usage evened out with the others.
There really aren't many superlatives for the XRR.
For me the turbo kills it. While I can appreciate fast driving with it, for me its just anti-climactic. Turbo is intrinsic to the nature of the car, the power delivery could be improved.
Would be usefull for sprint races but not for endurance racing. We should have an on/off optinon but we would need turbo/exhaust damage. Running with anti-lag for more than an hour or maybe two would destroy the turbo. So it couldn't be sued in an endurance race. WRC cars for example change exhaust and turbos whenever possible.
True, a complete anti-lag system would be complicated for the damage system.
I was speaking of a revised engine with less noticable turbo lag. Since that post I put in some time racing the xrr at the conedodgers server. I was never the fastest, but the lag was not as bad as I had remembered. The XRR is only slightly less drivable than the others, but competitive with the right settings in the right hands.
Seriously, the XRR and XRT are two of my favorite looking cars in the game. The XRR looks like a Mitsu Starion with (more of) an attitude problem. To me, that's a very good thing. The XRR looks more like a real car, and most like one that I'd want to drive. But style is subjective. Even so, you aren't suggesting that so many people are driving the FXR, which looks like the result of a one night stand between an Astra and a '93 Civic, because it's so stunning, are you?
More to the point of this thread, it does seem that the XRR is still mostly in the minority, at least on CD1. On the other hand, I was spectating CD2 the other night, and there seemed to be a fair number of XRR's there, so perhaps the balancing has made the car more appealing to the more skilled set. That's anecdotal, though; I wonder what the actual numbers say?
