Is this track Twisty, Flowing or Power?

[Spiny Anteater]

The question has been asked, which made me realise there is no list of what class each track is in. I think there will be some discussion on this, certainly around the edges, but for starters, here's how I view the tracks:

Power:
Motegi Oval
Motegi West (use Twisty Tune with overpowered cars)
New York
Road America
Sebring
Sebring Short
Silverstone National
Nissan Speedway
Sunset Infield
Sunset Infield Short
TT Copperhead (Twisty Tune with overpowered cars)

Flowing Tracks
Maple Valley
Maple Valley Short
Motegi
Motegi East
Nuerburgring (use Power Tune for even slightly underpowered cars)
Road Atlanta (use Power Tune for underpowered cars)
Road Atlanta Short
Sebring Club (consider Power Tune for very underpowered cars)
Silverstone GP (consider Power Tune for very underpowered cars)
Suzuka
Suzuka East
Suzuka West (use Power Tune for underpowered cars)


Twisty Tracks
Laguna Seca
Mugello (use Flowing Tune for very underpowered cars)
Mugello Short (use Power Tune for very underpowered cars)
Silverstone International
Tsukuba
Tuskuba Short
All Snakes apart from Copperhead

There you go. Discuss!

[fndrbndr]

Mugello seems more of a flowing track to me, though I might have to agree on the short ribbon.  And one of the Motegi tracks had both Chevelles and MK2's in the top 5 in D at one point.

[Spiny Anteater]

I think the Motegi track you're thinking of is West. It's difficult to be sure with that one - you need power for the straights, but if you can't get around the end corners the straights aren't long enough to make up the ground. I believe that's why the track has both grip and power cars on the leaderboard.

As for Mugello, I used to have that as a flowing track. However, Shyner's times in his Infiniti compared to mine led to me having a rethink. I tried the Infiniti out on there with a twisty tune and knocked off almost a second a lap. That may say more about the Infiniti than anything else though. Sadly, as that is the only random car with major differences between the Flowing and Twisty builds which I've run at Mugello, I don't have the data to convince myself completely one way or the other.

[fndrbndr]

I'll take a shot at this.  I'll try my C-class 2000GT and my MR-S.  The 2000GT is a beast on flowing tracks, and the MR-S kills the twisties.  Even better, the MR-S totally sucked it up at Maple Valley the other day, and the 2000GT has always underperformed at Tsukuba. 

[Ske]

I tend to split them into Speed, Technical and Intermediate instead.. I don't really differentiate much between "flowing" and "twisty" except maybe lean towards accel or lateral grip on certain tracks - though that's got more to do with the car selection than the tune/build. Also note that some tracks fall into more than one category.

Speed - power/top end/no DF
Motegi Super Speedway
Nürburgring
New York
Road America
Sebring
Sebring Short
Nissan Speedway
Sunset Infield
Sunset Infield Short
Suzuka West
Road Atlanta

Intermediate (lateral grip) - full grip/weight/balanced accel vs top end
Maple Valley
Road Atlanta Short
Suzuka
Suzuka West
Mugello

Intermediate (accel) - full grip/weight/torque
Motegi
Motegi West (shortest one)
Silverstone GP
Silverstone National
Road Atlanta
Copperhead
Sebring Club

Technical - full grip/weight/DF
Suzuka
Suzuka East
Laguna Seca
Maple Valley Short
Mugello
Mugello Short
Motegi
Motegi East (Shortened road track)
Road Atlanta Short
Silverstone GP
Silverstone International
Tsukuba
Tsukuba Short
Rest of the TTs

[Blooze]

Ah, good thread!

I agree with both lists... 

I haven't quite got my finger on it yet, but I am tending toward two builds lately - one for the Nissan Oval, and another for everything else.

Perhaps when I get this R1 project finished I will be able to be a bit more difinitive.  I think a lot of my own particular situation is that I don't do well with ungrippy cars.  Therefore, tracks that tend more toward the power side of things also tend to be my worst tracks participation wise. 

$

[fndrbndr]

You know, my C-class Charger (Muscle inc. spec) is currently about #3 or #4 on Sebring short, behind (I THINK) my Toyota MR-S, Renault 5 Turbo, and possibly one other.  Also, my current S-class beast is a Z06.  It beats several cars with MUCH higher top speeds, because it has good power, but also handles corners better than most.  It's a balance issue.  My S-class S7 passes it in the turns, but gets blown by on the oval section.  The extra speed those grippier cars can carry through the corners gives them an advantage, at least in hotlapping.  That said, I'd probably do better with the Charger online at Sebring.  My Z06 does pretty well online, but gets humiliated at "missile" tracks sometimes. 

[Spiny Anteater]

Like Ske I've found (as can be seen from the notes) that there are certain tracks which seem to fall into different categories depending on the car which is being run on them. The classic example is Sebring Short. On that track, i used the Twisty/Flowing tune on the Ferrari as that has a balance more towards power than grip. The converse is true with the Audi which has much more grip than power, and so the low downforce set-up proved faster there.

I think that's why there is some confusion around the edges, and to be honest the splitting the tracks up into 3 separate sections is only a way for me to get by with building fewer tunes - I basically have 2, 3 (or 4 if there's a separate Speedway tune) and the only differences for individual tracks is in the gearing. Even that is not fully split down into tracks as I tend to run the same gears in forwards and reverse - one run at Russell's Viper will show that you will be leaving some time on the table from the gearing doing that.

In summary, the 3 types of track are to make things simpler for me, and I hope for some of you as well. If you find that it makes things more complicated for you, don't use it. But, I have seen that some of the fastest drivers use three track types as well, they just probably don't use the same classes as me

[Snyder005]

Here's my list, from what i've discovered in my hotlapping:

Power: (favor power of everything)

Road Atlanta
Road America
Sebring
Sebring Club
Sebring Short
Silverstone International
Silverstone National
New York
Motegi
Motegi West
Suzuka
Suzuka West
Sunset Infield
Sunset Infield Short
Nurburgring
TT - Copperhead

Flowing: (favor handling/momentum over power and accel)

Road Atlanta Short
Suzuka East
Maple Valley
Mugello

Technical: (favor accel and handling)

Tsukuba
Tsukaba Short
Test Tracks save Copperhead
Mazda Laguna Seca

Dependent on the Class: (favor either power or handling depending on class)

Silverstone GP
Mugello Short
Motegi East

[fndrbndr]

Flowing tracks are the real fly in the ointment here.  Maple Valley seems to be almost in its own category because of the speeds involved.  At Road Atlanta Short, you'll hit 120-130 in B class, it seems, using flowing cars, and do fine.  I've hit 150 at Maple Valley, and not even in extremely powerful cars (My 2000GT was built at that track, and runs 241 bhp, usually 149 mph at the end of the straight, IIRC).  At Road Atlanta, in C class, my MR2 and 914/6 both beat the 2000GT, but they were useless against it at Maple Valley, giving up over a second per lap.  Maybe it's something other than top speed (I'm pretty sure the 2000GT enjoys a Charger-esque aero advantage), but that seems to be part of it.  Admittedly, there are grey areas, but I think this may be the contributing factor.

[Spiny Anteater]

Running this week's hotlap challenge, I would definitely agree with you about Maple valley (and also that the flowing tracks are harder to define). I think the thing with Maple Valley is that (as you said) the speeds involved start to introduce other elements. You need to have a very good handling car as the track is almost all corner, but, especially in the lower classes, you need to have the power to reach the speeds necessary to make that handling an advantage.

In this week's challenge, i started out with a Scion built out for handling. I was way off the pace (think 9 seconds off). Knocking the tyres back to stock and adding power has found another 3 seconds without any effort at all. And yet, I'm still only braking once in the whole lap and even with the higher speeds and crappier tyres the corners aren't too much of a struggle. Looks like the next step is to add back in some wieght and stick some more horses under the bonnet. However, I do feel that MV is one of the biggest users of downforce, again because of the speeds involved. But, int he lower tracks at least, power is needed over the handling upgrades.

[Snyder005]

Running this week's hotlap challenge, I would definitely agree with you about Maple valley (and also that the flowing tracks are harder to define). I think the thing with Maple Valley is that (as you said) the speeds involved start to introduce other elements. You need to have a very good handling car as the track is almost all corner, but, especially in the lower classes, you need to have the power to reach the speeds necessary to make that handling an advantage.

In this week's challenge, i started out with a Scion built out for handling. I was way off the pace (think 9 seconds off). Knocking the tyres back to stock and adding power has found another 3 seconds without any effort at all. And yet, I'm still only braking once in the whole lap and even with the higher speeds and crappier tyres the corners aren't too much of a struggle. Looks like the next step is to add back in some wieght and stick some more horses under the bonnet. However, I do feel that MV is one of the biggest users of downforce, again because of the speeds involved. But, int he lower tracks at least, power is needed over the handling upgrades.

wow completely diff approach then me.  From my experiences in B, i knew that speed is a must.  So i added full handling and left power stock, then just dropped the aero levels to minimum, and boom 1:40.3xx (granted i needed some laps to get used to FWD as i don't race that often, or the lower classes.)  I would not reccoment adding weight at all though, as the uphill at the beginning would just kill the car's speed.  I do have brakes stock though (learned this from my C-Class peugeot i used in the HLC at Road Atlanta Short), so i could go grippier tires and lighter rims.

[Spiny Anteater]

I would say looking at the times that your low downforce approach is working better than my high downforce method

[Blooze]

It occurred to me today that I have the means to make some sort of call on this in the not too distant future.  Will it be definitive?  The last word?  Hell No!    Mostly it will be a division of labor based on my own build and driving tendencies.

My plan is to take the run all of the real world tracks with my best PR car.  The idea will be to really bust my hump trying to set the top time on each and everyone of the RWT tracks.  Next, I will do it all again with my best Twisty/Flow car and see how many times I can take from the PR car.

Then, once having done this, I will create two new sets of ranking tracks based on the winners.  If this makes sense once it is completed I will have at least simplified my world in that I'll have 3 less ranking tracks and will be concerned with only two types of build.

The thing that has made me think this is worth a try is noticing lately that my top FR and TR cars are almost always the same car.

We'll see - right now it looks like a lot of work...    ...I may lose my initial leading in the midst of the project.  That's been know to happen.

$

[Serial]

Well, I haven't done a ton of 'research' on this yet, but it shouldn't be too hard.  We have all the quantitative data we need - the leaderboards !  Take B Class for example - you've got Mugen Tracks (Twisty) and Charger Tracks (Power).  Past that, I don't think there's much else....I think there are really only 2 types.  In all actuality, there are a few more cars than those 2 that show up on the leaderboards.  For grip, there's also the Lotus/Renault crew, and some other cars can be run with gobs of power. Also, I haven't actually examined the builds on each track.  Some may be using more power than others...I don't have access to the replays at the moment, but I would imagine that it could be very helpful in narrowing this down.  I think doing this for all class/tracks (even just looking at the Top 10 cars overall) would give us a pretty good idea of what we're looking for...