Understeer and oversteer Puns

I'm old enough to have learned to drive 40+ years ago on a stick shift. (A 1970 Fiat 124, heaven help me.) I watch "Top Gear" and "The Grand Tour" and I'll flip through Road & Track magazine at the barber shop.

But I confess: I do not really know what understeer and oversteer are, or why they matter, and why whichever one is desirable (or not) in any given circumstance.

Please help.

ETA: Thanks for the very helpful answers.

Hello everyone, I have, what is probably, a very stupid question. I understand the concepts of oversteer and understeer but i dont understand how to determine whether it's me or the setup. Oversteer typically shows up from over braking or applying too much throttle with too high of a steering angle. Understeer tends to show up when entering a corner too quickly.

I'm trying to learn how to make adjustments on my NA Miata (something I've never done before) and I'm a bit lost, to be honest. In a racing situation, I dont tend to experience too much oversteer or understeer unless I've made a mistake. Typically, I can adjust from understeer by reducing the maintenance throttle or adjust from oversteer by increasing the maintenance throttle. When I make an adjustment to the car, there is typically a change in how the car behaves but it can be compensated by braking more or less.

How do you determine which direction you need to adjust the car? Do you simply make an adjustment and run laps to see if your lap time improves or gets worse? With a limited time to make adjustments, how do you determine direction to go first?

OVERSTEER IS WHEN THE BACK OF VETTEL’S CAR HITS THE WALL AND UNDERSTEER IS WHEN THE FRONT OF LECLERC’S CAR HITS THE WALL

i like the car to understeer but i'm learning to drive with oversteer now because it's a bit faster

Does everyone remember several months back, how Rachel McKinnon took the women's cycling world by storm. By being a transgender woman who won the world championship in her 40s. A woman who used to be a man that just jumped on a bike and a couple years later, bang she was a world champion. Before that, do you remember how Fallon Fox was taking the world of female MMA by storm. How she beat the living hell out of these poor "real" women and she was only a breath away from robbing Ronda Rousey of her title. Thus obliterating women's sports all together. This was would all be very dramatic and concerning if any of it were true.

The reality is that for both of these athletes who made headlines across the world for being trans women in sports. Whose public narrative included how they were these no name athletes as guys and now were dominating the women's circuit left and right. Except in both of the aforementioned cases it just wasn't true. Rachel McKinnon won the over 40 world championship, which as a female athlete myself I can say is wildly different from winning the Olympics. There are simply fewer people with less competition. However, by the media coverage she got, you would have thought this woman was on the verge of a world championship. Similarly, Fallon Fox for all her publicity never even made it into the minor leagues. She got obliterated in the championship of the league below the minor leagues. Despite the media narrative that she was hopelessly overmatching all and any female competitors who would stand in her way.

I would like to enter into this discourse the case of June Eastwood. A transgeder woman who also happens to be a runner for the NCAA D1 program at the University of Montana. The catch here is though, unlike the majority of trans women. She also had success at a high level of men's athletics before reaching this plateau (though you wouldn't know it at first glance by her coverage). In fact she was the number one runner for the Grizzlies on their own NCAA D1 Men's team prior to transitioning which makes her the perfect case study for this topic.

You see the narrative of June Eastwood started out as a man who was going to upend the NCAA D1 long-distance running scene. That her male times were so completely dominate compared to the women's times (1500m at 3:50.19) that she was undoubtedly going to have an unfair advantage. But when that didn't happen (stats in the link included: [https://xc.tfrrs.org/athletes/7391484.html](https://xc.tf

I wasn't that quick on the pad anyway, B rated, about 25k points at my best, but it's even worse now. I've tried tweaking the settings a little bit, usually keeping the FFB sensitivity at 2 and controller at 7, but I'm not very experienced when it comes to setting up a wheel to suit my needs. Should I try different settings or a different approach? Maybe there are certain cars that can help me pinpoint the issues I have with handling oversteer?

Is there a tell tell sign that you are using too much / not enough steering input on the wheel?My biggest problem at the moment is knowing when I'm killing the fronts or not using the tires to their fullest abilities. I know the tires squeal, but is that it? Does FFB clue you in like it does Assetto Corsa and I'm just not feeling it? I have a trusty old G25 that I've used since they first came out (12 year old wheel) so I was wondering if it just doesn't have the clarity needed for iRacing anymore. I will be swapping to Fanatec wheel after black Friday, and just wondering if I will notice a change. Or will I still be wondering, just with nicer equipment 😁

Do you have any setup tips that could solve this problem? I‘ve tried increasing the front wing 1-2 ticks and putting the brake balance at 50% and these changes have helped a bit, but I‘m still loosing a considerable amount of acceleration after being slowed down through the understeering. This is really noticeable in multiplayer, I‘ll often pull away from my opponents in faster sections but loose time in the slow corners. We’re talking about roughly 0.5-0.8 seconds per lap here, may not sound like a lot of time but it can make a huge difference in ranked :/

So I have owned my 1987 MR2 for 5 years now. I have fully rebuilt its suspension (koni yellows, prothane total kit, eibach springs) and engine. I absolutely love and enjoy driving it. It's organic, it just feels right. I haven't driven hyper cars through corners, but I have driven a bunch of fast and capable cars but nothing felt nearly as good as my aw11 in the the corners.

So you can imagine I'm kinda pissed when I meet people, and they like the car and we hit it off, but almost always they have to drop something like "that snap oversteer tho?" or "It's cool that you haven't died yet" or " bs bs bs snap oversteer bs bs bs". Don't even get me started on the memes.

And here's the cherry on top! That same cookie cutter approach is already being applied to the Corvette C8. "It's mid engined so it will snap oversteer and be horrible and a step back compared to the previous vette". I mean come on!!!

I have a little channel centered around my aw11 and I wanted to make an objective video about snap oversteer since forever. I wanted to show in real world conditions how bad it really is. How, when and why it happens and how you can recover from it. Yesterday I finally made that video and published it today. You can see it here: https://youtu.be/k1wxCIqW7KI

If you don't wanna watch it, that's cool, I'll just sum it up for you, because there are a few things that need to be said. The objective voice on this matter somehow seems to me to be outgunned by all the hype and some sort of blown out of proportion over-generalized idea about mid-engined cars. If you're thinking about buying an mr2 or any other mid-engined car for that matter, but the snap oversteer talk is making you have second thoughts, just ignore the bs and buy the car when the time comes. I see myself as an average driver, and yet I have never ran into the snap oversteer issue. Even when driving very fast through corners. Snap oversteer needs three things to happen. 1. An over enthusiastic inexperienced driver that freezes up when oversteer happens 2. Mechanically unsound suspension without a proper alignment. 3 Cheap no name brand and/ or worn out tires. The mr2 got the hype because people buy the car for cheap, they just want to drive it, they go out without any precautions or servicing it, they drive fast, the car feels good and stable, they push it harder, they enter a corner too fast, they panic and abruptly release throttle, they freeze up when oversteer happens...... and you can guess the

So I bought my first ever wheel the Logitech G29, and so far I'm doing okay, however 9 times out of 10 I have to slow down because I'm experiencing severe understeer with the wheel. Is this a problem with the wheel? Or just the fact that I'm not used to using a wheel yet?

This is just a personal question of mine. I play a lot of rally sims and have always wondered. How come you get more understeer with a 4WD car instead of a RWD car. In my mind, I think that the front wheels are connected to the engine, so the wheels would pull the car around the turn. this might be a dumb question, I'm not too sure. Thanks

I was gently wondering whether any of you know of a non-proprietary understeer spreadsheet?

I found one that seems quite nice, sadly it is rather algorithmically challenged. (it is wrong).

https://projects.skill-lync.com/projects/Final-Project-83167

Hi, so I drive a Honda Accord as fun, cheap track car. The other day I was driving on some backroads with it and I I actually got some oversteer while going downhill. While I am very familiar with understeer, I haven’t dealt with oversteer much in a FWD car. How should I control this since I can’t control the rear tires. I felt like whenever the rear came out I would over correct and what seemed like snap oversteer would happen. Any help?

So I've been playing for a couple of years now every now and then but now I'm at the point where I would love to improve big time! I have always thrown Very high speed, overstable discs. (Currently Teedevil, Nuke and forehand Wraith.) Common noobie mistake is to start with discs like those. I can throw ~300feet with a flex line pretty accurate but when theres a shorter hole or I throw a mid or a putter it always turns overs, Unless I throw it with major hyzer. So I kinda want to go back and learn to throw my putter and then move on. What's the distance I should be able to throw my understable putter so I know my form is decent and I can move on. And should I try to really rip the putter or will that make it always turned over, how do i get the max straight distance from my putter?

I've been making cars in automation on and off for a few years now, but right now I'm having oversteer issues, for the longest time I just wrote myself off as bad at making cars, but now I'm starting to get better at juggling everything, but oversteer is a huge issue for me. I am making a 1970's 5 cylinder, but I am having issues with oversteer, it is currently a staggered 190 front, 245 rear setup, but it's still having issues. Help!

I posted a few days back about getting started on my wheel. So far it’s been a steep learning curve but I’m managing. I’m about 10 seconds off the pace on every track I’ve run. Mostly because I cannot get the car to rotate at all. Is it a setup issue maybe? Is my wheel not properly calibrated? Because right now I’m full lock to get through most corners.

Im all ears, Sincerely, The Reigning King of Runoff areas

Hi I'm interested in getting an MR2 mk1 or mk2 unfortunately every time I look they've gone up in price and there is less available so potentially I might get the infamous rev 1 mk2. Sooo how bad is the snap oversteer? I'm an inexperienced driver whose only driven an seat Mii before lol. Also if you've made it this far what do people think of this? Thanks!

When the car oversteers at the limit, does it carve a line that is tighter than it could if it had neutral steer with at the same speed and turn? Or does it just "yaw" more and slide out? If we keep the steering angle fixed when grip is lost.

Still amped from a shit load of runs tonight, I lost count. Last event I got it down from a 57.7 to a 57.2

I was deadset on getting a 56 tonight... After the first four runs I was at 57.007! Next set of runs I nailed a 56.9... 3rd set of runs I pulled out a 56.1... and the last 5 runs didn't touch it sadly...

We usually run bi-weekly, think I'm going to skip a session and try to get a front strut tower bar back on(original doesn't fit my new intake manifold) and run an aggressive alignment just for the autox... I can align my own car so it's not a big deal... I've been running my regular -2.0 daily driver camber setting, think I'm gonna max it out next event and see what happens...

I've been getting some understeer which I think is killing some of my time, it may be just from overshooting the corner entry or too much entry speed. I did notice slightly more understeer on the street when I removed the strut tower bar. I also get a little brake lockup in a couple places if I build up some good speed...

Would it be possible that I would have more issues with brake lock up if I run say -2.5 or -3.0 on the front? Should I even bother running that much negative camber in hopes it helps with understeer or am I barking up the wrong tree?

Running Michelin super sport 255-40-18 on my front 18x8s... I'm actually surprised how beefy this tire is and feel it's too wide for my wheel, possibly contributing to some of my understeer? I have 285-35-18 out back old school Michelin asplus tires on a 18x10 and the 255 pilot sports seem almost as wide...

I run 32psi front and 28 psi rear... Seems to be ok on a chalk test but I can't tell much of a difference between a few psi... With the chalk test... Should I try some different higher pressures? I've never checked tire temperatures before I'll admit

Forgot to add. 96 Mustang. Aftermarket springs/struts, and larger rear sway bar

Plans are strut tower bar back on the front and a panhard bar will be my next mod for suspension after that