What does the PC crowd has to do with this?

Following your logic, once it rains and you have good traction in the front and you turn with sufficient speed (not everyone has the foresight to realize they are about to oversteer and spin out of control), you are risking a dangerous outcome.

So how much risk are you willing to live with? Is it worth it?

In the rain on relatively fast turns like freeway on and off ramps, how often do you see people that don't slow down? I see people drive over the speed limit posted in these situations regularly, while most do OK you DON'T want to be the person that is NOT OK and looses control

Be smart, be safe.

 

PC crowd jumps on "be safe, love UNERsteer, put best tires on rear axle always" bandwagon without thinking too much about it logically.

I see it the other way around: if, in a turn, one of the two axles is going to loose traction, which way would I rather have it:

Option A: front axles goes, and you have NO control of either the steering or the throttle. Projected outcome: you scrub enough speed before you run out of the road, else you go agricultural.
Option B: rear axles goes, and you have full control of the direction (steering) and speed (throttle) of the car, and continue turning with an added slip angle. Projected outcome: You stay in control and bring rear axle back inline as long as you don't panic and hit the break and make things worse.

I choose Option B every time.
Logically, it has the lowest risk for someone who can keep his/her @#$% together and not panic.

For an average lemming, Option A is the safest, as you DO expect them to panic!

Indeed!

a

 

I thought that is what you were suggesting with PC crowd.

However I don't consider myself as a bandwagon follower, I don't love understeer and I consider rules as a guideline to consider not a mindless thing to follow. I have owned some 30+ Macs and never a PC.

Having said that, for your option A. I think when understeer happens, you DO have full control of the car as all you need to do is slow down, either by getting on the brake or getting off the throttle. You'll know rightaway that you are overshooting the turn and there is usually enough shoulder runoff space to catch yourself even if you are quite novice. With the help of ABS and traction control it's relatively easy to stay in control.

For your option B, once the rear axle traction starts to slip you have a fraction of a second to initiate corrective action and steer into the turn, if you are used to ice driving and do this without thinking then you have a fighting chance to recover. But since most of use don't usually experience oversteer in our FWD MINIs it might be a new experience.

If the driver fails to realize the oversteer condition and keeps going without correction it will cause complete loss of control from which there is no return and you are following the laws of physics with dire results.

All of this hinge on your driving skills and ability to recover in an oversteer condition.
If you have ever witnessed a driving school where the road was wet down enough to cause slick conditions and young drivers were given the chance to drive a skid pad you would see that it darn easy to loose control. Sometimes the worst outcome comes from over correction of the oversteer which only compounds the problem and sends your car fishtailing out of control in the opposite direction. It can get very ugly very fast.

Why do I have such a strong opinion about this matter? I serve as Regional SCCA safety steward at all of our events whether Autocross, Evolution Driving school, Road Rally, Rally cross or Junior Karts. While we want drivers to learn how to control their cars, we can appreciate the wide variety of driving experience and skill levels they have. We do not expect or teach panic, we teach calm confidence and skill.

Understeer is easier to control than oversteer, ALWAYS.

If you were following someone else on the road in the wet on a turn with some speed, would you trust them with more traction and grip on the front or rear axle?

 

Not to muddy the discussion...
But the understeer vs oversteer discussion is VALID....but also should be discussed when suggesting folks add a bigger rear sway bar....
For that reason I usually suggest a fairly MILD increase for a daily driver...as opposed to a "comp bar" that is HUGE and can make EXACTLY what is discussed here happen on a dry road....
All comes down to judgment and degrees of rightness....
No black and white........

 

I always fall back to Road & Track's well-aged response to the under/oversteer question. To paraphrase with an equally old memory: With an unskilled driver an understeering car will leave the road front first and an oversteering car will exit the road at the same spot going backwards.

I don't share the respectable Minihume's opinion that understeer is always safer. But then I can correct oversteer with a quick flick of partial opposite lock and can do nothing about understeer other than pause to remember to straighten the wheel, get off the throttle, and wait to get traction back. It doesn't suit my natural instincts and I spent some very, very long seconds doing the latter in the outer lane of a right turn on a very wet banked freeway with an eighteen wheeler next to me. In that particular case I would rather have oversteered onto the outside shoulder of the divided highway than continuing to slip down the slope and very nearly underneath the semi-trailer before the front stopped hydroplaning.

There is no single solution for all drivers in all situations. And people should not be so sure of themselves that they feel justified in producing false evidence of their beliefs as in the staged driving exhibitions in the video. Or so it seems to me.

 

Ah, more claims that Michelin is producing false evidence in pursuit of some unclaimed end goal.

 

I refer the court to my previous comment:

 

Hear, Hear! I completely agree!

 

If all four tires show dry rot or are older than 6 years even with good tread left it would be prudent and reasonable to choose to replace all four as a set. Then this discussion thread would be of less interest.

When discussing the understeer vs oversteer question, if you take the average driver of a MINI the chance of that person being able to control oversteer that happens unexpectedly is much lower than the chance of the same driver being able to control understeer.

I agree than understeer when it happens is a bummer and usually a nuisance, there is not much fun for the driver, however it is alot safer for everyone than when oversteer occurs.

While I consider myself experienced enough to control oversteer most of the time when it happens I don't think I would drive a car on the road that was prone to oversteer in the wet. It is controllable but also can be unpredictable, you must be ready to countersteer.

Anyone with stock swaybars is more prone to understeer, yes changing the rear bar to something stiffer (many options in solid and hollow stiffer bars are sold with up to 3 holes at the bar ends) is a common upgrade and does alter handling to reduce understeer and sometimes even encourage oversteer. For those that do street driving a 19mm rear bar with three holes is reasonable, try to softest or middle setting hole and see how understeer is reduced or sometimes eliminated.

Getting back to driving skill, If you are skilled enough, you can drive and eliminate understeer by controlling corner entry speed, and you can use oversteer at will if you want to rotate the car around a sharp turn. For those that routinely do these maneuvers,
the rule of better tires on the rear has less value. Same applies to those that never see rain or drive in the wet. Weather cannot always be counted on to behave in our favor.

Again, think of the young driver or average MINI owner and their ability to drive in a safe manner under less than optimal conditions which can happen on public roads. What should they do? I think the answer is clear. Err on the side of safety.

 

Minihune: extremely well put!

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