Xylander
Well-Known Member
- First Name
- Guy
- Joined
- Sep 12, 2025
- Threads
- 1
- Messages
- 114
- Reaction score
- 164
- Location
- Tallahassee, FL
- Car(s)
- 2024 Nissan NISMO Z
Yep, that's my point. A car has a performance envelope. On one end, performance is under utilized, and at the other extreme, total loss of control. A lot goes into reaching that right extreme. Driver input, tires, suspension loading, road conditions, etc.
The magic factor here, is that it's always driver input that results in total loss of control, save for some catastrophic failure like a tire blowout. What a car is made to do, should be able to do, and what it can do are all different things. A car that can hold 1.5 lateral g won't always be able to, depending on the road surface and torque input, for example.
When people are typically younger, they tend to drive with little to no precision. It's always hammer down on the gas, yank hard on the wheel into turns, pop out the clutch, etc. A lot of what I do as a personal instructor is untraining this type of behavior. You can still be very quick with your inputs, but I always train people to be smooth. Whether its throttle application, clutch actuation, or steering input. Always start smooth, then snap if needed. Newton's 1st and 3rd Laws apply here. A car traveling X speed in Y direction with Z weight has a certain amount of inertia. 3rd Law applies (every action produces an equal and opposite reaction) when you unsettle that inertia. If you make snap movements, you get snap results. The more inertia you have, the larger the potential result, etc. To manage this, instead of waiting too long to start a turn in with a snap of the wheel, you start gradually to redirect the momentum, then lean into the turn more. This maintains control. Same is true for straight line acceleration. Start smooth, then snap on. But, just stomping the accelerator before you gain some positive momentum doesn't allow the suspension time to react and absorb the change in load... thus, tires lose traction.
All cars are different. Just because a Mustang on a Nitto can do X, it doesn't mean a Z on the same tire will do the same thing. A turbo profile vs. an NA or supercharged profile all puts power down differently. My best advice is to learn what your car's limit is. If it's say, 60% throttle @ 3,000rpm and it goes up in smoke, then learn to feather that input until it stops blowing the tires off. THEN, research a tire that directly addresses that issue. Simply picking makes and models of tire willy-nilly to see what works is foreign to me. If I need more traction bite, I look at the current tread rating (softness), the tire's optimal temp range, and sidewall construction. If I'm losing traction, I need a softer sidewall maybe... or a softer compound (or both). But, if the expense is too much loss in turning input feel, then I either drive on a happy medium config or I start the expensive work of sorting the suspension.
In most all cases, a custom suspension will fix most all traction issues. It's just stupid expensive. To make a gross example, take a Camaro with a standard suspension and compare it to the Magride equipped versions and note how you can practically launch a ZL1 on the street at 4,000rpm pretty cleanly and how a base 1SS blows the tires off at half the power output at lower RPM on the same tire.
While not as drastic, the difference between a Nismo and a Sport Z are similar. Don't discount the power of suspension upgrades. There's more to making a car go than just HP and tires.
