What’s the Best Modification for a Track-Prepped Corvette?
Your Corvette is a thoroughbred racing machine, and like many owners, you want to take it to the track and see what it can do. You might be asking yourself, “What can I do to prepare my car and maybe give myself that extra edge?” Well, today you’ll find out. We’ve got science on our side.
Simply put, nothing else makes as big of a difference as a good set of tires. Tires impact not only handling, but braking and acceleration as well. Using the excellent book “Physics for Gearheads” from Bentley Publishing, Engineering Explained shows us exactly why.
The course is calculated for three cars: Car 1, which is stock; Car 2, which is identical to Car 1, save for tires, and Car 3, which is Car 1 with horsepower and torque doubled. While Car 3 has a higher top speed, it’s Car 2 that wins the theoretical race, as its higher cornering speeds allowed it to set the fastest lap time.
As we can see, having prodigious amounts of power is only helpful once or twice on a race course, while the benefits of superior handling and braking are felt the whole way around the track. Power is nothing without control, it’s a mathematical fact.
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