Originally Posted by
Greg Amy
ABS has been creating significant problems with many race cars in the Grand-Am Continental series. I saw it first-hand when I was doing data acq for a team: drivers were complaining that the cars were not braking no matter how hard they pushed on the pedals. In fact, a couple times drivers wrecked cars because they couldn't get the cars slowed down. Looking at the data I could see they were pushing on the brake pedal to save their life (high MC output pressure) but the decel g-forces just weren't there. Turns out the stock system just wasn't designed for the way the car was being driven (and, assuming, how it was modified) and just freaked out and gave up. Pobst briefly touched on this subject in his recent column in SportsCar.
It's not a snobby racing driver thing, either. Modern OEM street ABS systems just aren't designed for this. And unless you're a combo of braking engineer and software programmer, you just don't have the tools to make it right. True racing ABS systems, like on factory Porsche racing cars (GT3 and RS) are totally different animals.
GA