Dragsters go straight. Oval karts turn left. Any change in roll out during a race can very well be the difference in winning or losing.
I like and think you just wrote a great reply. And here's the 'me' of it and a darn good reason for me to like your reply. ...
Ever read on here someone say, "With stagger unless your traveling a perfect circle which matches up to your stagger, one tire or the other must be slipping.
I think the above sentence is true, but there is a lot more which goes into determining how much each tire will slip and all of them are things which relate to the tires and the tracks, physical characteristics. Some for the tire would be the operated diameter, the grip characteristics of it's rubber, side wall flex, etc., and the resulting operated slip angle and slip ratio. For the track we will look at the clay; is there a layer of dirt, stone or rubble between the tire and the clay; a layer of water; and the list goes on and on. I have no doubt Al's spread sheet is accurate for determining diameter when just one radius is involved. And I see him searching to try to relate his calculations to as large a history of data as possible, in an attempt to find some close starting point for any track. Al, what your missing is if you do gather data on all tracks and you are able to tweak your spreadsheet to become close enough to be useful for a starting point, they what? The fact is to prove the validity of the spread sheet, you already have gathered the needed data, on what is required for a good starting point.
I realized the falsehood of a spread sheet to predict stagger many years ago. It came along with gaining knowledge about the seemingly endless amount of variables involved with tires and the track. I chose instead Al, to see if I could come up with a less complicated way of predicting needs out on the track to fix on track problems. I hope you see Al or should I say I hope you all see, identifying and fixing on track problems is the only way to go faster. I found over the years a solid staggered axle, must be used in an ideal specific way to go fast. And everything you do is to enhance your ability to make your staggered solid axle, work in the ideal way.
Back to the subject. For every staggered solid axle out there on a track, and because of your ability to adjusted what you race towards the ideal, there is a best amount of stagger to use. In general if all are racing karts on the same track, with the same tires, needed stagger will be close. And for any given track the close amount of stagger, may match up very closely to calculations of a chosen single radius. The radius picked to make the calculations, may more often then not come close to what is needed. But if the only way to prove the calculations come close is to have knowledge of what is needed, the effort seems to me to be fruitless.
Trying to find a way to get value out of the effort, I just thought about this. Al, if you do indeed find a spread sheet which does predict accurately a close stagger baseline for tracks, I think it could then be used to help determine which way you may want to go on other variables, which you may want to change. Al, looking forward with your spreadsheet, if it's to be used to predict setup there must be at least one accurate baseline. Assuming the stagger baseline is accurate, then a number could be put on other variables and all could be interacted with numerically and used. If your spread sheet proves to be accurate, I can then see others saying, "hey, what if I included this or that to Al's spread sheet".
Long story short, everything using a solid staggered axle, has a best stagger based on a thousand other inputs. And in general more stagger will get you more turning power, depending on a lot of other things. Now if I take all this back to my original question and only include turning power, I think I could change the question to be, "As banking increases, do you need more turning power?".
I think I'd like to take a shot at answering my new question. Let's say you are on a 90 degree track, going fast enough to over come gravity trying to pull you down; as a result are stuck to the track very well and going straight. Because of all the forces involved holding you on the vertical wall going straight, wouldn't it take a lot of effort to turn the wheel, opposing all the force holding you on the wall? Then if stagger helps you turn, wouldn't you need the most stagger helping you turn and over come the forces holding you to the wall? When you on the wall going straight all the logic would remain the same and if you had stagger, one tire or the other must be slipping. So depending on how you had your rear tires loaded, even on the wall going straight, you could have either the left or right rear tire doing the slipping. ... It gets to be complicated again and include all the same variables again doesn't it? I think the thoughts will be, even if your glued to the vertical wall going straight more stagger will likely help you turn. or it won't because this is all IMHO and ain't necessarily right anyway. ...
