Its faster to have control

 

well see if you have to go 30 mph to enter a corner with no understeer then there is no point to that because thats way to slow in the corner. So yes understeering through a corner MAY be faster IF your car is prone to understeer and you have no other choice but to enter the corner at a rediculiously slow speed. I watch top gear a lot and if you watch the celebrity drivers they bring in they always tell them to go slow in the corners to come fast out of the corner.

 

Yea that's what I'm saying. Some corners it may be faster just to dive in and understeer through rather than going slowly enough to not understeer

 

I have never had an autox run with understeer that was faster than a run with a judicious use of brakes. My experience with the saying "smoother is faster" and "slow in fast out" seems to hold true - thus far. But thse are just my results.

Try it and see how it works for you. You never know.

 

Slow in fast out isn't the fastest way around a corner.... Understeer isn't the fastest way around a corner.

Fast in fast out. Understeer is a set up issue.

 

No.

If you're plowing through a corner, you're scrubbing off speed, and therefore not being fast. If you adjust your line and braking/acceleration points to reduce this, you will be faster than if you plowed through.

I think you're confusing an understeer with simply driving the car on its limits, or maybe an over-driving driver...

And "slow in, fast out" is a misnomer, because there are a lot of people who take it too literally, so they slow down way, way too much before entering a corner, thinking that a fast exit will make up for how slow they went in.

That saying is designed to remind you that you can not go around a hairpin with your foot on floor, basically. You want to keep your speed up heading into the corner, brake as late as you can, and maintain the highest speed you can through the corner and through the exit.

 

Not necessarily. Scrubbing off speed/understeering means you were going too fast, not that you're not going fast.
Let's say if there were a corner and a car where you could go into it at 80mph, but you'd understeer and scrub down to 60mph as you reach the corner exit, or you could enter the corner at 60, hit the apex, and increase your radius and exit the corner at 70, you might have been faster through the corner itself, but the real benefit of entering a corner with the latter method is the benefit you get of having a great exit speed at the exit, which is what track is all about.

Autocross, someone said earlier in the thread that it might be beneficial to cut through that distance whatever way you can.

 

Unfortunately, slowing down before the turn is the only way I can keep from plowing out into the cones. Believe me, I've tried to carry speed into the turn and I get punished badly for it. I guess you could say I have a set up problem -- stock suspension. Not enough camber and too much body roll. I'm working on that. Nothing money can't fix.

 

^^^ I experience the exact same thing with my car. stock suspension and a ton of body roll, I consistantly go into corners too hot and the car understeers like nobody's business. I'm really trying to enter corners slower but the combination of DS2500 pads and an overly aggressive driver make it difficult to slow the car down enough to not understeer.

 

^^ sounds like me too.. ahahha.

 

All cars understeer at low speeds and transition towards oversteer at higher speeds and slip angles. Most street cars (FWD and AWD) never actually transition to proper oversteer, the Evo included (in its natural state). RWD cars without massive power and with benign alignments (think Miata, G35) will never transition under 'normal' circumstances either. If you're setting a car up to be fast, you want to move the transition point to somewhere useful, which varies for what type of driving you're doing. Also, be careful not to confuse regular oversteer with throttle oversteer (aka drifting) or lift oversteer (aka ****ing up and lifting in the middle of a turn, then screaming oh **** as you spin).

With regards to Top Gear, I think you're confusing understeer with "plowing", which is a symptom of excessive understeer. The Stig is driving street cars, which as mentioned above, will always lean towards understeer. He's just driving them to their saturation point, where the front tires simply can't do any more. For ideal performance, you'd be right up against that saturation point, but it's easier to be just slightly beyond that point than right on it - thus The Stig will always be plowing through turns. The FR cars with a fair amount of power will exhibit fairly balanced behavior, even on Top Gear's track. Note that Top Gear's track has a couple turns that are specifically designed to invoke terminal understeer (notably the left-hand part of Hammerhead and the turn just before Gambon).

As to your original question, situations where understeer might be advantageous for lap time would be an off camber sweeper or a decreasing radius turn. Having a slight understeer bias would allow you to trail brake the turn (in effect, move your braking point much later) without fear of lift oversteer and a visit to the grass, while maintaining a good amount of speed through the whole turn. Of course that's a gross generalization and YMMV.