WRC Testing

**Rallyper** · 8th January 2016, 14:57

Analyzing is worthless unless you don´t have more cars/drivers to compare with. Reasons are so many more you cant even count them all.
However the car sounds very powerful and looks good from aside. Hope Paddon makes history this year.

**Bartek** · 8th January 2016, 15:09

**AL14** · 8th January 2016, 15:43

Originally Posted by Bartek

who is he?

**rage82** · 8th January 2016, 15:45

Ptaszek!

**TWRC** · 8th January 2016, 15:46

Originally Posted by AL14

who is he?

Hubert Ptaszek
Edit: pic of the car befor the ditch:
http://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.ne...569a72f456e290

**AL14** · 8th January 2016, 16:09

Thanks.
Meeting ditches on Monte test is not that unusual. The important thing is not to meet them during the rally. Good luck to him.

**Fast Eddie WRC** · 8th January 2016, 17:07

Shame Kubica hit a tree when he went off... damaged car means end of his test today, rather than tomorrow.

RK: "Our crew planned to test two days, but after today's adventure is rather doubtful. Unfortunately, today's tests to the Rallye Monte Carlo we must end prematurely. The slush meant we went off the road and ran into a tree. The damage is small, but we are not able to repair the car on the spot due to a lack of spare parts." Maciej Szczepaniak: "Unfortunately this is the end of the test this weekend."

**Lundefaret** · 8th January 2016, 17:21

Originally Posted by Marcco

I'll give it a try.

Acceleration looks good.

Turn/section 21 and 27: It looks like he is throwing a car a bit sideways, but then he starts accelerating quite early so that is good, I guess you can call it nosendfirst'ish?

Long right hander, again he puts it sideways and early on throttle. Maybe car is set up to be more "tail happy" and use snowbanks to keep rear end on the road?

Generally I quite like what I see, looks pretty fast, at least it looks that way for my inexperienced eyes.

Let us know what you think Lundefaret.

Okay, here is what I think - and I am open for input.

What I will say is that - tough I dont completely agree with RallyPer about the "analysing is worthless" bit, its difficult to know about stuff like grip level etc, since I neither was present at the test, nor have any other cars to compare with.

0.10:
Very little squat/weight transfer in acceleration.

This could have several reasons, for example:
- Low grip
- Stiff sett up longitudinally compared to grip level
- Strategy (like wanting the car to pull more from the front, testing it with stiffer set up etc)

For me this is maybe there could have been more weight transfer to get more grip.

0.21:
Very little yaw.

This continues my observation in regards to the car being quite stiff in set up.
The front dips very little.
The VW has a very nice movement where it really lowers down on all four wheels - if You want it to.

The left hand corner is taken with a good amount of speed. But there is maybe to much oversteer on the exit. This is especially bad since the next straighter section starts with an uphill, so there is really no acceleration until just a few meters before the next right hander.
And then the car is placed to the right, so not an optimal position for the best acceleration.
A driver like Ogier would have gotten a little more acceleration out of the left hander, just to win a couple of metres, maybe five, on the opponents.

0.27:
Turn in maybe a little to early, so that full acceleration have to wait a little to long?
Acceleration looks OK, but this is difficult to judge whit out a comparison, but it looks like a very good pull from the front.
Still very little body movement longditudally, which either means a stiff set up or low grip, or a combination.

0.35:
Long right hander.
- 0.36: Coming in to the frame with an accelerating rotation angle.
- 0.37: The car has quit a big rotation angle with all wheels pointing in one direction.
- 0.37,5: The steering wheels start pointing in to the turn.
The rest of the corner is driven with this kind of understeer. And this is very fast, and should be a result of a driver with both high confidence in the car, and grip level.
(Or else its just madness

)

0.41:
Snow bank steering.
Comes in to the frame with a very accelerating rotation angle.
Hits the snow bank with the rear, which stops the rotating, and straightens the car for a clean acceleration.
This is a high risk move:
- Snow banks can have different densities.
- The hit in the rear could force a counter reaction in the front, leading the front to be pushed out hard and fast.
But as long as You have these two issues covered, this is a very fast way to end the turn before acceleration.

Summary:
- The car looks to be surprisingly stiff in set up.
- Paddon tends to drive very long with much oversteer when he is under certain grip levels, as we saw in the Monte test with studs on asphalt. He should work on developing some tools to counter this - when its needed.