I never said I did en exact test. And yes, stickier tires will boost your speed reached on an oval where your car can't get up to top speed. That's the point of it. So it has more chance to reach it's top speed. Hell, maybe it can't reach over 205 on any tires GT5P. But if can reach even 203 on Daytona, it'd almost have to reach well over 205, unless it hits a brick wall within 2 mph.
Stickier tires allow you faster corner exit and allow you to get closer to theoretical max. Standard physics will allow you to get much closer still. In professional, even with R3 tires, with standard power, I've never seen a GT, or any other car go over 205 mph. The GT-tuned, yes... but the regular GT is fair game for some of the bigger guns in the game.
It's been my experience that in the GT series, certain cars get benefits, and others do not. The PP system is no different from what I can see than the "a-Spec" points system, and it gives certain cars advantages, the same cars that had advantages in GT4.
A prime example would be any 750-800pp race on expert other than Daytona Speedway, where the GT-R and Ford GT are the just about the only cars on the leaderboard, and always fill the top 10. They're just way to much faster.
And no, I don't see why it would be so hard for the guys who can put all the programming into this insanely detailed game, to manage a system where more than 2 cars can compete in a "pp" zone. Do you? Any of you?
So... should a bunch of computer hacks be more intelligent than racing drivers and longtime members of the FIA?
Take LeMans. The Audi R8 dominated for nearly a decade, despite rules that specified weight, air restrictor size and maximum engine size. After the R8, the R10 dominated because LeMans rules, meticulously studied by the governing body and considered "fair", allowed diesel engines 1.5 liters more displacement, larger air restrictors, and variable geometry turbos.
After a few years of utter domination by diesels, how does the FIA rebalance the rules? Give the diesels smaller gas tanks. Yeah... that'll work a treat. Another year of diesel wins... at least there are now two teams at the top, instead of one blitzing everyone else.
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Take F1. What series of modern-day F1, besides the present one, has had more than two or three teams with a great chance of winning it all? Despite engine size restrictions, ECU restrictions, etcetera... there are still engines that are more powerful than "they ought to be". The only reason you have so many teams competitive now is because of the mixed-up semi-two-tier system created by the boggled-up implementation of KERS rules.
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Take the JGTC, and the dominance of the Nissan GT-R over the past few seasons. Last season, it took a ton of penalty weights to finally make the front-running GT-R actually lose a race. And that's a rules-balanced series.
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Take the WRC. Rules balanced, but even with equal weight and power restrictions, hatchbacks are much faster than sedans over the course. Again, an example of how body-style, center-of-gravity and polar-moment-of-inertia (plus easier suspension packaging) have an effect on how fast a car is in a race compared to an otherwise equivalent car.
Three cars you complain about, the Ford GT, the Clio, and the Integra, all have better inherent weight balance and chassis balance than their competition. The Clio and GT are both mid-engined, which gives them a better polar-moment-of-inertia, and better handling. In the case of the GT and Integra, they both have a better, stiffer, chassis, than most. Though again, the Focus ST is a near-on match for the Integra... simply because Ford got the suspension on that car right (it's better than the Integra's) and the chassis is the stiffest in the front-drive class in GT5P.
The GT-R is, as it is in real-life, faster than most anything in the game. It's faster than the F430 in real life, and faster than the 599 (around corners, at least, and has a better laptime around most tracks). And, being AWD, it's not hampered by throttle-calibration issues with the controller. Complaining that it's fast in game is tantamount to complaining that Nissan made the thing way too fast for its apparent PP rating. Yes, Nissan "cheated". Simply by using a transmission with no perceptible shift-lag and giving a 485 hp engine the torque of a 600 hp one.
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Take touring car racing. Even with the huge amount of weight penalties given to front runners in the WTCC, you can hardly expect anyone not in a BMW or a Seat Diesel to consistently win. And the diesels here get the same idiotic "pass" that they get in LeMans. Not that I mind seeing diesels in racing, it's just that fair's fair.
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Take the upper echelons of non-LMP endurance racing... where the Corvette racer dominates... simply because it has one of the biggest motors around, and can build a ton of naturally aspirated, unstressed power. (note, of course, that the Corvette racer, despite sharing parts with the street car, is
not identical to the road car.)
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Most professional motorsports leagues have cars that are "better" than others. There are some things you can't balance out. Even going down to the amateur ranks, this is still true. Take a look at SCCA racing results... there are segments dominated by Hondas... segments dominated by BMWs, etcetera...
The only way to have a series completely and fairly balanced is to make every single competitor drive what is essentially the same car. (try.... NASCAR). And even then, some will be more "equal" than others, not just due to drivers' skill, but in the strength of their suspension and aero packages, on otherwise identical vehicles.
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If you don't want everyone racing the same car, your system needs to be dynamic. In other words, it has to adjust to what's better. And GT5P
doesn't do that. In fact, since PD is no longer updating GT5P, it
can't do that. A further problem with PP is that it is calculated in the same way on every track, even though the optimum balance between grip, weight and power changes for every track... in fact... for almost every corner, there's a different combination that is better.
I'm not in the WRS here, but as I recall Famine saying, upon a time, they had trouble balancing out their simulated touring car series in GT4. They couldn't rely directly on power-to-weight and had to fudge the numbers on a per-race basis.
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Is PP unfair? Again, yes... just like any
real life performance-balancing system, it is imperfect.
Does that matter to me? Yes. It means that I'll never beat a well-driven Integra with my Mazda6... and I'll never win a 700PP race with the Z06 (which I do love). That doesn't stop me from trying, though.
Do I go around accusing PD of being biased? Nope. Because I understand, at least, the limitations of such balancing systems.
But: can they do it better? Of course they can. And I hope they do, as it'll make racing more interesting.