Originally Posted by TiB
Only if your talking in percentages. in reality it will still be faster accelerating if its lighter.
No thats not true at all.
Take a caterham with a top speed of 130mph and 200bhp
Take an astra with a top speed of 150mph and 200bhp
Do you really think that caterham will get from 120-130 quicker than the astra?
If so, you are not thinking about it enough!
Think about the amount of BHP available to accelerate each car.
Imagine the caterham needs 80% of its power to maintain than 120mph but the astra only needs 50% of its power to maintain it, due to better aerodynamics.
Even if the caterham is half the weight of the astra, the available power to accelerate with is less than half the amount (40bhp versus 100bhp) so the caterham has a worse power to weight ratio in terms of the power actually available to acceelrate it.
Not actual numbers, but not a million miles off either!