I think I posted about Zygrene's reviews of my car before on the street, but finally got around to letting him review my car on track.
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Crisandres
Track Review of My Elise
Sounds like you need some steering arms to get more negative camber if you don’t have them. It will help with the understeer!
These cars have driver-selected under or over steer. They're incredibly well balanced. If you go a bit too hard on the throttle coming out of a turn, it'll understeer. If, as your friend did, you lift a tiny bit while cornering, you will oversteer instantly. The chassis has amazing response to throttle steer in a corner. In the corkscrew at Sonoma, where your friend had the oversteer, I can select whether the car under or over steers with the throttle. I am not running V2 arms, but my camber is maxed out given OEM arms, I forget the precise values. The S111 platform doesn't have a rear sway bar, and the front one is tiny, so there's a lot of body roll when cornering (and a lot of grip too!), when you try to fix that roll with stiff suspensions, you actually end up having less predictable handling.
Your friend even commented, that the more throttle you have the more it understeers. That's the nature of this chassis, you're not going to change it too much without some other cost. If you add more rubber up front, you'll change the balance to more oversteer as relative to front, the rear now has less grip. You can't drive it like a nose heavy car. nose heavy cars have great benefit from weight transfer to the rear, but ours is rear-heavy, and the weight transfer under throttle leaves little pressure and little grip in the front. It's a bit like old Porsches, where under throttle, you're sawing at the wheel, while under breaking, it's super-twitchy.
Your friend even commented, that the more throttle you have the more it understeers. That's the nature of this chassis, you're not going to change it too much without some other cost. If you add more rubber up front, you'll change the balance to more oversteer as relative to front, the rear now has less grip. You can't drive it like a nose heavy car. nose heavy cars have great benefit from weight transfer to the rear, but ours is rear-heavy, and the weight transfer under throttle leaves little pressure and little grip in the front. It's a bit like old Porsches, where under throttle, you're sawing at the wheel, while under breaking, it's super-twitchy.
Yeah, you're right, the Elise isn't perfectly balanced, but it's really communicative and requires quick reflexes due to its darty nature, so I think of it as well balanced because I can make it do what I want it to do.
I do not think there is such a thing as a perfectly balanced car. Rear-heavy cars, like the Elise, are spectacular under braking due to weight transfer making them nicely balanced at that time; the result is that we can brake a lot later and a lot harder than most other cars. On the flip side, this makes the cars not so great at handling while accelerating. Big front engine cars can be amazing at cornering under power, because the weight transfer balances them, but when braking, they're going to have a really lose rear end. The best car I've ever driven in terms of balance was a McLaren 570S when I was coaching someone, and it was better than the Elise, for sure, but then things like price and maintenance come into the equation.
In my little Elise, my favorite way of overtaking was to get inside someone starting to brake for a turn because I didn't have to brake until much later, it was glorious.
I do not think there is such a thing as a perfectly balanced car. Rear-heavy cars, like the Elise, are spectacular under braking due to weight transfer making them nicely balanced at that time; the result is that we can brake a lot later and a lot harder than most other cars. On the flip side, this makes the cars not so great at handling while accelerating. Big front engine cars can be amazing at cornering under power, because the weight transfer balances them, but when braking, they're going to have a really lose rear end. The best car I've ever driven in terms of balance was a McLaren 570S when I was coaching someone, and it was better than the Elise, for sure, but then things like price and maintenance come into the equation.
In my little Elise, my favorite way of overtaking was to get inside someone starting to brake for a turn because I didn't have to brake until much later, it was glorious.
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