I have just spent the last week or two racing the same car at the same track, in what I believe to be the most challenging GT7 race by far (following the various mid-2023 updates): The Human Comedy Mission 8, Gr.3 at Lake Maggiore. I've been pounding away in a McLaren 650S GT3 over and over again, slowly improving my consistency in order to win the ultimate Gold (in my opinion), using TC1 and ABS weak. Yesterday I finally got the win through sheer consistency of good laptimes with zero mistakes (you can't afford any mistakes whatsoever if you want to win), so I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to test the differences of 'assist'. So this morning I tried the same race in the same car but with TC to zero, and this is what I found (bare in mind that I now know every single nuance of this circuit and car)...
The car was faster through the left-right-left-right complex leading to the banked hairpin - so much so that I was now gaining and passing cars on the hill down to the hairpin. The car was very slightly faster through the banked hairpin. So on this part of the circuit there was a clear improvement.
The car was neither quicker nor slower through the complex of curves after the banked hairpin and leading on to the pit-straight - it was like driving the same car.
The car became a little more tricky to get the power down on the exit of the hairpin after the pit-straight, and at the hairpin at the top of the hill. Previously I never lost the back-end once, but now I had to rescue it a couple of times, and I had to ease getting the power down by fractions of a second more than previously ...enough not to be able to stick with the car directly in front.
Overall, I spent all of my second stint wheel-to-wheel with Rubilar (the ultimate winner), and most of my third stint wheel-to-wheel with Fraga (the ultimate P.2), both of whom I have spent many hours battling with previously. And the advantages of one part of the track were almost perfectly cancelled out by the disadvantages of the other part of the track, leaving me neither quicker or slower across a lap, than with TC set to 1.
But it doesn't end there, because in this particular race, the tyres go off after eight laps, but each stint is ten laps (by my strategy), and three laps are 'warming' laps at the start of each stint. So nine laps of the race have to be taken very carefully, braking slightly early at tight bends. But with TC set to zero, the tyres are less forgiving, as one might expect, which ultimately sent me spinning into a wall close to the end of the race, otherwise I would have been P.2 by just a couple of seconds, I think.
Conclusion: Based on a test in one car at one circuit, TC0 is quicker than TC1 in some circumstances, but no different in others. It requires more careful application of the power out of hairpins, which takes skill to cope with. It increases your chances of trouble on worn tyres, which again takes skill to cope with. So yes, TC0 is quicker, but only in a way that the very best drivers can take advantage of without increasing the risk of spinning wheels and spinning cars. I can win The Human Comedy Mission 8, Gr.3 at Lake Maggiore, but I'm still not good enough to get an overall advantage by racing in TC0.
...so no surprises there then! 🙄
Next Test: ABS weak vs ABS normal.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
EDIT: I've just run the race again with TC:1 and ABS: default. I won by 1 second but had a penalty that cost me 4 seconds, so the victory would have been by 5 seconds without the penalty, which is the exact same time (to the second) that I won the race by yesterday with ABS: weak.
It was very difficult to tell much difference, although I did realise after a while that I could brake slightly later to hit the same apexes. But I'm only talking about two virtual metres at a closing-speed of flat-out mph. Trail breaking was not affected, except that I sometimes seemed to drift slightly deeper for the same muscle-memory of throttle and brake pedal control. Again, it took me a while to understand why, and I put this down to the tyre-wear, which seemed to be slightly higher, possibly due to the different braking mechanism, whatever that is.
One test does not make a definitive study, and my driving style is my driving style, not anyone else's. But as before, this is a very good way to test these things given that I have done this race twice a day for the last two weeks.
Conclusion: at a high speed circuit, in a Gr.3 car, there is almost no difference between ABS weak and ABS default. If I had to side one way or the other, I would say that 'default' allows you to stop slightly quicker, at the expense of extra tyre wear.
