Traction Control

[Thundersports]

Having thoroughly enjoyed my first taste of the British Hillclimb Championship at Prescott one thing puzzled me; The big single seaters are using traction control. Why is it permitted? Is it safety?

[Woolley]

It's a very open formula, hillclimb is very open to technology of all kinds. I imagine policing it would be difficult as well.

If I'm correctly informed, a certain F1 team's TC software was tested on a hillclimb car long before it was used in F1.

[midgetman]

Speed events are fantastic as the last bastion of the home engineer. Single seater with an engine that you just happen to have lying around? No problem. What about a jet engine in a Clubmans car? Par for the course.

It all makes TC on the big cars look pretty simple and long may it remain. Love it, such a refreshing change from "spec racing" on circuits.

Sent from my SM-G981B using Tapatalk

[Tel 911S]

What a lot of people do not know is that maximum grip for accelerating , cornering or braking comes when there is a certain amount of tyre slip across the road surface .This can be something like 10% on dry tarmac , up to 20% odd on other surfaces .
Road going traction control is no good for competition use as it does not allow hardly any slip factor .
There are special competition ones made , which are being improved for various uses , and are getting better , but still not as good as a top driver who is looking ahead and seeing bumps, water , gravel etc and adjusting for it before it happens , which is something the computer cannot do .
Couple of examples --- Audi tried an ABS and traction control on the Scottish Rally a few years ago . It was totally useless .
Another one was the Peugeot works car on Pikes Peak . Over several practice runs they adjusted the various settings to try for the best time . Then Seb Loeb went a lot quicker than the computer said was possible .
So a good driver is still probably better than any computer controlled system .