Howard,
You make a very good point about the brakes. One of the bonuses you get by going to wider tires is that it forces you to use 17” wheels because you can’t get wide DOT legal rubber for smaller wheels anymore.
The nice byproduct of this is that you have room to run 13” brakes instead of the 11½” brakes that you are stuck with on 15” wheels.
Your mention of bikes is also a very good comparison. As I’m sure you know, the 600cc bikes will lap a racetrack within a second or so of the 1,000cc bikes, and on a tight, technical course will often beat them in spite of a large difference in horsepower. And in the case of the bikes, the weight difference is only 10 to 15 lbs, so it is not because they are a lot lighter. It is strictly because they are more agile from the smaller gyroscopic effect of their cranks.
Kevin
You make a very good point about the brakes. One of the bonuses you get by going to wider tires is that it forces you to use 17” wheels because you can’t get wide DOT legal rubber for smaller wheels anymore.
The nice byproduct of this is that you have room to run 13” brakes instead of the 11½” brakes that you are stuck with on 15” wheels.
Your mention of bikes is also a very good comparison. As I’m sure you know, the 600cc bikes will lap a racetrack within a second or so of the 1,000cc bikes, and on a tight, technical course will often beat them in spite of a large difference in horsepower. And in the case of the bikes, the weight difference is only 10 to 15 lbs, so it is not because they are a lot lighter. It is strictly because they are more agile from the smaller gyroscopic effect of their cranks.
Kevin