Is lift off oversteer completly undesirable?

I think it's mostly about personal preferences and getting the right feeling with the car.

 

I remember back in my F1 experience, coast torque from the engine was kept super super low to avoid LOO... one of the reasoning was that the car was easier to balance through mechanic and aero setup and the balance was const through the corner.
I found it weird at the time, and somehow, still do

The other thing I find weird is how motorists scratch their head when you ask them about coast torque.. I never met anybody who went and measured it (outside of F1).. super weird considering how essential it is to car behavior during cornering.

 

I use it on the Sport quattro to get it sideways. Comes in handy on the tight corners on the Trento Bondone hill climb.

Don't like it on racing cars, must be stable.

 

yep

 

engine brake? Sure.. modern cars don't really slow down... they'll go uphill with no gas at all without stopping... once you have drive by wire you can do anything you want.

 

I rely on LOO to get around slow corners and get away with it in the fast corners by keeping a touch on the throttle

 

I'm still coming to terms with loo and incorporating it into my toolbox. I find that I haven't got the confidence and skill to really use it reliably.

For instance were doing a club race with the 312T at the Nordschleife tomorrow and I'm still not very confident with how to set up the car to put more weight on the front of the car and not create to much loo. Been a blast trying though!

 

Me too! Weight transfer at work. Just a touch of gas when braking, to prevent LOO.

 

I use it quite a lot. Nothing scary but I do like to have the front end tuck in when I lift.

In long sweepers I end up fighting overtseer with a slight lift and fighting understeer with a big lift.

 

I'm everybody here is aware that this can also be tuned with the DIFF "coast" setting.

LATE4APEX

 

Well, that changes the ramp angle of the differential under coasting...it has no direct effect on engine braking.

 

The OP simply said LOO,...and I did not comment on IF or HOW the engine effected that.
The diff "coast" setting WILL effect LOO, also know as "trailing throttle oversteer".

LATE4APEX

 

Yeah I was just in the mind of engine braking when writing that. The diff will most definitely help LOO, but it won't get rid of the "problem" (with engine braking usually being the root of the LOO)

 

No.
I do use lower rear camber on some cars in AC to induce oversteer because I can't get enough front grip. So I have to balance it out with the rear. This is most common on civil cars and old cars.

GT86 is an understeering crap. I do use lower rear camber on it to balance it with the front and get better turn radius.

Yes. E30 DTM in AC has about the highest, maybe not numbers wise but from driving experience it seems so. You need to use throttle while braking and coasting otherwise the rear slides because of engine brake force.

I would not classify strong engine brake force as lift off oversteer but only one of the parts that can cause it.

 

I personally love lift off oversteer, especially when its in a front wheel drive situation like in a nippy touring car or a 4WD hill climb/rally spec machine. But I absolutely despise lift off oversteer in RWD GT cars or just ones with fat sticky tires in general, simply because it makes things unnecessarily annoying as catching sudden slides in those type of cars is more often than not quite panicky and fidgety. Like Minolin said about the various Lotuses/Lotii thingies in AC remaining stable on lift off/part throttle being good examples of desirable loo, the 2-11 especially suffers from a chronic disease of unwanted loo simply because once it starts sliding it immediately gives up on life and faces backwards, so I tend to run a bit lower pressures on the front and bump up the front camber to make the nose a bit stable under braking /understeer/. I'd rather go for a safe neutral/undesteery setup in cars which suffer from loo just for the sake of solid consistency.

Usually on most race cars where you do have more options than above to fiddle with you obviously get more freedom to tailor just enough loo to keep it in the fine desirable spectrum without completely destroying the tires with too little pressures and literally cooking them. A few solutions would be lowering front tire and/or raising rear tire pressures, making the front springs a bit stiffer, bumping up front neg camber, raising the front end, just bumping up the rear wing helps too just to have the car more planted during high speed lift off situations in GT cars like say Mutkurve on the ring... never fiddled with toe myself so wouldn't expect it would change much from my exp.

@Lord Kunos But some modern cars do exhibit hard engine braking though, your very own Italian masterpiece the 458 Italia seems to show that trait. In an article that was talking about the new Corvette's complete lack of engine braking they say this "For kicks, on the complete opposite end of the overrun-engine-braking spectrum, the car that's hyper-willing to jump into full engine braking at the slightest hint of a throttle lift is the Ferrari 458 Italia. It's almost disconcerting." But given how well damped the 458 is, it's loo is quite natural and controllable when combined with its ultra darty steering which makes the car a joy to drive.

 

When I saw this thread my first reaction was "Sweet! In between coding and keeping the little woman happy @Minolin is actually finding time to race".