Red Egg wrote:I see what you are saying here. OK, if we had two identical MX3s with the same engines and specs except for the fact that one is FWD and the other is RWD, what would be the result? I say that the FWD would be lighter and therefore would be faster. It would also have the handling advantages of a lighter, FWD car; good for both rally & track.
Being lighter doesn't necessarilly mean that the car will automatically have better handling and will be faster. In accelerating, the car's weight get's transfered towards the rear, on the RWD car, it will improve traction, on FWD, you will loose traction, traction is kinda essential. This would definitely be a problem in low traction scenerios and fast acceleration. Sure, you have the benefit of having the motor over the wheels to help give you traction, but this is pretty much only beneficial tho regular drivers where acceleration isn't full throttle. The weight-over-the-wheels benefit is only when the car is at a standstill for initial traction, but that's short lived, as the RWD should accelerate faster once it started to accelerate. You can argue on RWD if you try to accelerate too hard, the rear will want to kick out, while on FWD, you can just mash the gas and it will pull the car forward regardless, but that is something that only novices apply, professionals should be able to accelerate properly given any drivetrain layout.
As for rally and cornering. Your looking at the benefit of the pulling effect of FWD as opposed to how it's executed. You forget that FWD's downfall is understeer. If you want to enduce oversteer for going a round a corner, you either hit the brakes or use the ebrake. In either case, they slow down the car. On RWD, they naturally want to oversteer, so all they need to go is actually give it more power, so as opposed to slowing down with FWD, RWD's can actually retain their speed or accelerate at that same point. If there's a given corner where you need to slow down, you could use those techniques to rotate the car around the corner and pull you out, probably giving a the FWD a much higher entrance speed.
Even worse is on pavement, trying to get the rear loose will seriously slow you down. On pavement, FWD will suffer from understeer, especially on hard cornering or where the corner tightens. One of the main downfalls is that on FWD is that the front tires have to not only pull the car forward, but also turn it, so in essence, to the tires have to device the work load amonst those tasks, so if your turning, you're sacrificing traction for acceleration, or moretypically, if your accerating, you have less grip for turning (understeer). FWD are suppose to be better for tight turns like chicanes because of it's layout, you just turn the wheels and the car follows, but on RWD, the car need to basically straighten out to prepare for the next corner. FWD is suppose to be better for braking for what I remember that I read at one point, but from what I see and have experienced, it hasn't. The same principle applies as turn accelerating. Your braking, you can easilly overload the max traction of the tires, leaving nothing to grip for turning, again, more understeer.
FWD is more forgiving for the novice driver, however RWD is typically superior in all cases. However, there is a saying; Front Wheel Drive: Easiest To Learn, Hardest To Master. There are techniques and ways to drive for compensating some of the FWD's disadvantages,
I wonder if the Shelby Cobra owner would be willing to race for pink slips? 
