ABS brakes for HPDE?

Is ABS on modern production cars seen as an advantage for lap times, or more or less a safety in case the driver panics and slams on the pedal? The traction control on an F1 car is one thing, but I mean average car from the 80s 90s 00s. Would you rather keep ABS for track use, lose it, or neutral either way?

Absolutely keep ABS. All it takes is one wheel lockup to flat-spot a tire and ruin it.

Perhaps at an elevated level such as W2W racing you may be able to turn faster lap times without it but I never wanted to. With race pads and sticky tires I could stomp the pedal as hard as I wanted deep into a turn and never be met with drama.

Depends on the ABS.  When ABS is good, it is very very good, but when it is bad it is horrid.

There can be a difference between a car designed to run without ABS and one that’s had its ABS disabled.

When the ABS died on my 190E Cosworth race car, I didn’t really care. But the car became practically undriveable on track. Turns out the brake bias was controlled by the ABS system. Without it, I was locking up the rear brakes with the lightest touch of the pedal. 

On a car with a proper, unboosted, dual-MC, bias-adjustable race setup I think no-ABS is just fine. But I discovered that a street car with Hoosiers, race pads, and disabled ABS can be a serious issue. 

Or, on an older Neon, abs must go, for fear of lifting a rear tire on corner entry, causing that tire to stop rotating, causing the ancient panicking abs to shut off all the brakes...

Depends on the car.

My only complaint is that driver aids don’t make you a better driver. They can and will make the car faster but it is removing driver talent from racing. And yes it does add a higher safety margins  to the sport. I get that. It just bugs me when people get in their completely computer controled  car and say they are a better driver than I am.  

Oh and get off my lawn. 

dean1484 said:

My only complaint is that driver aids don’t make you a better driver. They can and will make the car faster but it is removing driver talent from racing. And yes it does add a higher safety margins  to the sport. I get that. It just bugs me when people get in their completely computer controled  car and say they are a better driver than I am.  

Oh and get off my lawn. 

You feel the same way about ignition timing and fuel mixture, right?  :-3

Personally I am a fan of no ABS on a track car, but I also have a car that didn't have ABS from the factory ('95 Miata). When I was tracking my RX-8, I had three occurrences where the ABS went into Ice mode, reducing braking force considerably. Fortunately they all occurred in places I could still make it through the corner or had plenty of runoff room. If that had happened at a different corner, the outcome would have been a lot messier. That's one of the reasons I switched to tracking a Miata.

agree with the depends on the ABS sentiment. early 90's GM Bosch systems? trash. The ABS on the Forte? Awesome.

red_stapler said:

dean1484 said:

My only complaint is that driver aids don’t make you a better driver. They can and will make the car faster but it is removing driver talent from racing. And yes it does add a higher safety margins  to the sport. I get that. It just bugs me when people get in their completely computer controled  car and say they are a better driver than I am.  

Oh and get off my lawn. 

You feel the same way about ignition timing and fuel mixture, right?  :-3

Don't forget the electric starters, those only add weight .

If you're a driving god, you might be able to out-threshold-brake the ABS. For us mere mortals, it tends to stop us from flatspotting tires...

Unless there are conditions that confuse the ABS, you're better off learning how to drive with it and brake right up to the threshold where you *almost* trigger it.

Ease of being able to threshold brake better than the ABS also depends on how the car behaves, how high the brake pedal effort is and how the tires react close to the limits.  Some combos are easy to threshold brake well, others are a challenge.  

ABS on 1993 RX7 wasn't so bad when braking in a straight line, but in a spin it would double the distance it took to stop the car because it became impossible to lock up the wheels with both feet in. Fortunately I learned this on the skidpad and always disabled my ABS on track from that point forward. You have to be ready for when lockup occurs under hard braking but I've never flatspotted my tires.

Don't see the point in removing ABS unless its an old and ineffective system.  McLaren isn't calling any of us to be team drivers for them, so might as well take every advantage you can.

BoxheadCougarTim said:

If you're a driving god, you might be able to out-threshold-brake the ABS. For us mere mortals, it tends to stop us from flatspotting tires...

Unless there are conditions that confuse the ABS, you're better off learning how to drive with it and brake right up to the threshold where you *almost* trigger it.

Even if you are a driving GOD, electronic aids always make you faster. Why do you think TC and ABS and such are outlawed in F1? And if those guys can't be considered some of the best on the planet, then I don't know who can. 

Watch a race and see how often they lock up a wheel, or send the back end lose out of a corner losing precious drive.

Remember that with good ABS, ABS only changes the shape of the pedal force/braking force curve after the peak (where you should be threshold braking).

With ABS, if you overshoot peak braking, you hit ABS and only lose a little bit of braking performance, and as a bonus you don't flat spot a tire or lose control of the car.

Without ABS, if you overshoot peak braking, you get near zero braking performance, a flat spot, and potentially a loss of control depending on which wheel it is.

On any car >2000, absolutely keep the ABS system in place.

docwyte said:

McLaren isn't calling any of us to be team drivers for them, so might as well take every advantage you can.

Are you trying to tell me that email I got from them was a scam?

red_stapler said:

dean1484 said:

My only complaint is that driver aids don’t make you a better driver. They can and will make the car faster but it is removing driver talent from racing. And yes it does add a higher safety margins  to the sport. I get that. It just bugs me when people get in their completely computer controled  car and say they are a better driver than I am.  

Oh and get off my lawn. 

You feel the same way about ignition timing and fuel mixture, right?  :-3

Hey, that's MY line... :)

1000% Keep your ABS unless it's just that bad (in which case you'd already know the answer this question). Try hitting grass/loose surface/anything unexpected without ABS. Personally I love Stability control as well - I have to turn off TC since it's bogs the engine on wheel spin (which happens frequently with a MS3) - but that's not a big deal. 

I've been saved from a wall twice with my stability control - would I be a better driver if I turned all of those off? No - I would have been in a wall and really sad. Just be aware of what ST/TC/etc is doing for you and be aware of your human limits. 

The advice I give my students regarding all electronic driving aids is to leave them enabled until you can feel them working and you can tell that they're interfering with something you're trying to do.  I can't take credit for coming up with that.  I stole it from someone.  Randy Pobst I think.

Matthew Kennedy said:

Remember that with good ABS, ABS only changes the shape of the pedal force/braking force curve after the peak (where you should be threshold braking).

With ABS, if you overshoot peak braking, you hit ABS and only lose a little bit of braking performance, and as a bonus you don't flat spot a tire or lose control of the car.

Without ABS, if you overshoot peak braking, you get near zero braking performance, a flat spot, and potentially a loss of control depending on which wheel it is.

 

On any car >2000, absolutely keep the ABS system in place.

Do keep in mind, some ABS engages before the peak braking point.  It's often tuned for all-seasons which hit peak braking at a fairly low amount of slip.  So if you're running tires that take more slip to hit peak braking, ABS may never let you get there.  Mind you, I've seen this more with snow tires than sticky rubber.  

In reply to rslifkin :

Of course the other question is that unless you're running time attack, does that last 5% really matter compared to the advantages of not disabling the ABS?

ABS on track is great... if you know it's there. Before an Arrive and Drive in a 95 mustang at Barber I asked the car builder, "does it have ABS?" He told me no and I went out for my first stint. As I'm learning the car, braking deeper and deeper I crammed the brakes on concrete and thought I broke something when the car started shaking and the pedal started pulsing. After the day of racing I popped the hood and noted the existence of an ABS pump.

What is all this of braking in a corner ?

docwyte said:

Don't see the point in removing ABS unless its an old and ineffective system.  McLaren isn't calling any of us to be team drivers for them, so might as well take every advantage you can.

My point is: Yes it will make the CAR faster.  No it will not make YOU better / faster.   The car's computer is letting you do something that you don't have the talent to do and there for you are not becoming a better driver.  Stability control is another one that I don't like.  You need to learn how to control a car and when it is going to spin.  Electronic nannys let poor or average drivers think they are better than they really are.