Getting a feel and actually doing an accurate assesment of how a car, let alone hundreds of cars, will, not should, respond at actual race speeds is a big difference.
You certainly wont find many race teams driving their test cars on freeways and city streets to determine how their cars will respond while drving in a race on a specific track...
So yeah... quite a bit more than just a lttle over the top.. in fact what's the word I'm looking for... oh yeah...
LUDICROUS!
You know what, you're reading far too much into this. No one said that driving on a road will give you a full indepth assesment of exactley how a car will drive on a track, what Joey was saying is that it gives you an idea. Generally speaking, road cars characteristics do not change a great deal from fast on the road, and fast on the track. Ofcourse a cars character changes the harder you drive it, the closer to peak power, but reaching peak power is reaching peak power. The cars character is the same, it's no different to reaching maximum braking ability, wherever I do it, I've reached maximum braking. And yes, I've emergency stopped more than once in my lifetime.
As I said in the thread you took this from, I have tracked a few times, but my cars felt the same, only faster. You are reading far too much into this, I get the idea that soon your going to start talking about 10ths of a second in braking and what not, none of that really applies or wins in an argument when applied to how a car feels, it applys to the skill of the driver. I'm not a fantastic driver on a track, but I can push my car to it's limits, I just won't be lapping as fast as a better driver in doing so. I can push my car to it's limits on the road as well, I wouldn't recommend it, but you can do it on the road and it is in some cases legal, such as braking to the limit in an emergency stop when needed (and only when needed).
The bottom line is, you can tell a lot of a cars character from driving it daily. This is after all the area most road cars are desgined for.
As for your comment about race teams testing thier cars on a road, well no, a road car and a race car are two very different machines. Everything about that argument is flawed I don't even know where to begin. Race cars are far more on edge near the limit than most road cars, my 306 on the limit was loud, very loud, but the handling was fine, until you pushed that little bit too hard and it understeered, it wasn't jittery and nervous, it didn't suddenly stop being a hatchback with sporting intentions and become something more extreme. a race car is extreme, even at lowe levels, race cars are extreme.
What will tire you out most, tracking an everyday road car for half an hour, or half an hour in a 125cc go-kart. I'll tell you now, it's the go kart and by one hell of a margin. Road cars are sedate, they're comfortable and they're placid, their behaviour on a track (generally speaking) reflects this in comparison to even low level race cars like 125bhp junior touring cars or whaever they're called.
No one, myself included, is saying that driving on a raod will mean your good enough to be a master on a track, driver skill does not come into this. But the feel for how the car will behave doesn't radically change in general. Again, no one myself included is saying that this is the cas for
all road cars, if you say that your TL does then I'll take your word for it, I don't know that car, but I do know the general trend. I can also say that GT4 feels nothing like driving a real car, I'm not saying GT4 is rubbish, but games have a hell of a long way to go yet.
