Quote from Fischfix :

balancing the gtrs makes no sense. in the end we have 3 cars which are the same speed but look different. which means we have 1 car with 3 body-kits. WOW....

the only difference: FXR is 4WD and the FZR uses a bit more fuel... these cars should be much more different in my opinion, not balanced out...

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?

I haven’t read the whole thread so I’m sorry if this has been suggested already.

Why not do like the old STCC servers and restrict the public CD1 server to just the FXR (the easiest car to drive). Those that do a better time than 1:43 get a license to CD2 where all GTRs are available.

There needs to be a carrot of some sort to make people want to move over to the faster server. Since the FZR is the most popular car among the fastest drivers, they will move to CD2 for sure then.

Thank you Scawen. 10kg less is a step in the right direction, it will be interesting to see how much difference it makes.

Quote from DeKo :

but the XRR has the advantage of being able to do much longer runs than either of the other 2, which balances it out, and the FXR is much easier to drive.

You are probably right that in league races that are done over long distances, the cars have different characteristics that even them out in the end. Most online races are between 5-20 laps though, so that long run factor never comes into play.

Quote from DeKo :

Its pretty spot on, the FZR should be the fastest

I’ve seen this comment from a lot of people, but I’ve never heard any motivation for why it should be the fastest. It’s not the most difficult car to drive of the three, so that can’t be the reason. Perhaps it’s just because that’s how it’s always been ?

Personally, I would like to see the GTR class a bit closer in performance overall with a slightly slower FZR and a faster XRR.

Quote from Flotch :

stop trying to make the perfect balance on only one track !!

Without checking any charts or hotlap data, I’m still pretty sure that the XRR is the slowest car of the three on all Fern Bay tracks, on all South City tracks, on Blackwood, on all Aston tracks with the possible exception of AS4. And I’m not sure that removing the ballast is going to make much difference but at least it will be less far behind.

Quote from [TDRT] Spøgelset :

How about a little database how the diff. cars are performing on the various tracks after version X?
As a FXR driver of course my POV is that the XRR and FZR cars still are too fast...

Att. file from the 4 hour IGTC race. 30 mins. quali and 4 hours of racing at WE int..

Westhill is different from all the other LFS tracks in that it has no slow corners, just long sweeping fast corners with long straights which suit the XRR. So you found the one exception to the rule here.

Quote from srdsprinter :

I dunno. In our most recent race a XRR qualified second just off the pace of the leading FZR. It won too.

Granted thats a 4 hour race, but it had outright speed and endurance...

Well, my guess is that the XRR driver would have won with an even greater margin if he had raced in any of the other cars

Also, I’m not sure that it’s a good idea to balance the cars based on results from pro leagues. That will simply not translate to the average race on a pub server. Leagues can always make their own rules about ballast and so on.

I agree, the XRR needs to lose its ballast all together to make it competitive. I drive the XRR a lot on AS3 and I think it’s a really fun and difficult car to drive, but I don’t really understand why it has 40kg ballast in the latest patch.

The XRR has the following downsides compared to the FZR / FXR
-It’s slow off the grid (you’ll lose 3-4 places every time)
-It’s slow out of slow corners.
This is because the car is heavier in the front, it results in a lack of rear wheel grip during acceleration. And to make it even worse, it has turbo lag.

Also, while the absolute best XRR lap times are fairly close, it’s difficult to do those times consistently. The XRR’s handling is extremely twitchy compared to the other cars, make the slightest mistake and you’ll be 2-3 seconds slower.

All these downsides of the XRR are fine with me though, I like that the car is a challenge to drive fast.

What I don’t like is that the car that has the most weaknesses, and the worst handling before patch X, is still given an extra 40kg ballast to make it even slower. It’s no wonder that out of a 30 car grid, there is usually only two or three XRR’s.