I think i might go insane if i hear another person say that all of these cars aren't functional because they're so low and wide.
It's not because they're wide or low. It's because that most of them don't have enough wheel travel and have compromised their suspension geometries, as PB has stated.
Ultra-low is not a huge handicap for a car on R-Comps with an incredibly stiff suspension on a dry racetrack with no lumps or bumps thicker than a sanitary napkin, but it's crud in the real-world or if you've got a slightly-modified street car and need to do some kerb-hopping to maximize the amount of track you can use. I've seen guys go off the track backwards simply because their cars were too low and soft for kerb-hopping.
Race cars that are really low have altered suspension geometries, with many points relocated from their stock positions so that the suspension works properly. Most street cars with nothing more than coilovers don't.
And when they're hellaflush... where do the wheels go over a bump? Grind-grind-grind? Or grind-grind-pop?
When you've got fat wheels and wide arches, the arches are there to clear the wheels.
Just because you
can run an ultra-low, hellaflush car on the racetrack with virtually no suspension travel doesn't mean it's the ideal solution. And now that more and more high-level teams are entering drift and time attack events, it seems that the trend is starting to tail off a bit.
