Dr. Frankentire's at it again. Was looking at the tire file differences
between NSR and rFactor to try and figure out why rFactor had so much better
limit behavior, even with it being an early build. Of course I had to muck
around and do some mixing and matching to see what might blow up. Found a
few interesting things.

1) The slipcurves in NSR ain't the problem. Matter of fact, they look a lot
like what some of the recent industry lit is showing, esp. the way the lat
and long curves differ. And rFactor still feels good using them.

2) You can eliminate some of the lines from NSR's tire files and use
different ones from rFactor without any problems, even though the variables
referenced aren't the same, let alone the values. Some flexibility in
there...

3) building a hybrid tire using a lot of the rFactor settings, in concert
with locking the power-side rear diff in the setup file you're using
(DiffPowerSetting=17), makes the dirt tracking thing go away completely.
It's a bodge of course, but I tested a bit at Kansas and laptimes are about
the same (in spite of having about 10% less raw grip). The car feels even
more planted when you're hooked up, and you have to keep it that way since
you can't drive around sideways like Sammy Swindell anymore. The cars are
still heavy and slow to respond vs. the rFactor ZRs, (bit too much so, imho)
but at least you have to drive them now.

Just proves to me this thing could easily be made better if they choose to
do it, at least in terms of the driving part. Lots of other issues I won't
even get into... ;-) It'll be interesting to see what they end up doing to
it with the patch.

Anyone interested in trying out the Frankentires, drop me a note and I'll
send you the file. Just remove the NOSPAM from my email address.

Cheers,

SB