Quote Originally Posted by Vigo View Post
As far as i can tell, what glh875 is describing is that the squat/rotation 'softens' the hit which can be helpful if you are on the edge of spinning your slicks. A car with no give in the rear suspension would be like a sidewall that doesn't wrinkle on the slick. Of course, if you have enough traction from the slicks, limiting that suspension movement should incrementally help right up to the point where you start spinning the slicks.


I understand what he is saying.



But lets say a vehicle is on a glass smooth surface with the proper traction the suspension becomes un-neccessary period. A vehicles power will only be able to overcome traction to a certain point.
Example
My son has a Razor-Ground-Force-Drifter-Electric-Go-Kart which does not have any suspension. If he is in it, it will spin the tires when he takes off. If my fata$$ is in it, it just takes off, hence more weight being over the tires causing them to build more traction. I realize it is faster once it gets moving with him in it(power to weight) but it launches much faster with me in it.


here is a good read:
"
When people think of automobile performance, they normally think of horsepower, torque and zero-to-60 acceleration. But all of the power generated by a piston engine is useless if the driver can't control the car. That's why automobile engineers turned their attention to the suspension system almost as soon as they had mastered the four-stroke internal combustion engine. The job of a car suspension is to maximize the friction between the tires and the road surface, to provide steering stability with good handling and to ensure the comfort of the passengers. In this article, we'll explore how car suspensions work, how they've evolved over the years and where the design of suspensions is headed in the future.


"If a road were perfectly flat, with no irregularities, suspensions wouldn't be necessary. But roads are far from flat. Even freshly paved highways have subtle imperfections that can interact with the wheels- of a car. It's these imperfections that apply forces to the wheels. According to Newton's laws of motion, all forces have both magnitude and direction. A bump in the road causes the wheel to move up and down perpendicular to the road surface. The magnitude, of course, depends on whether the wheel is striking a giant bump or a tiny speck. Either way, the car wheel experiences a vertical acceleration as it passes over an imperfection. Without an intervening structure, all of wheel's vertical energy is transferred to the frame, which moves in the same direction. In such a situation, the wheels can lose contact with the road completely. Then, under the downward force of gravity, the wheels can slam back into the road surface. What you need is a system that will absorb the energy of the vertically accelerated wheel, allowing the frame and body to ride undisturbed while the wheels follow bumps in the road."


With all this being said, I realize that some give can be helpful, but too much can also be detrimental.