Race related areas that could be improved

I've been doing time trials and drag racing in this game for a few years now, and while I love it, there are a few areas that could use improvement, and most would be quite simple fixes.
1. Official drag cars:
The included drag cars (most specifically the Barstow and Moonhawk) simply have a very strange setup, very high ride heights giving the vehicle a tendancy to want to twist on launch, non-tubbed rear suspension which greatly restricts tyre size choices, and very high wheelie bars, which shouldn't even be nessecary for cars that run this slow. 6 second drag cars are where wheelie bars are prevalent, however the official cars have trouble running mid 8 second passes, and it is very rare to see mid 8 second drag cars with wheelie bars these days. The engine setups are also very dated, superchargers for cars of this class are basically extinct, and single turbo V8s/inline 6s are the dominant setup. The transmissions in the official cars are also strange, powerglides (2-speed) and turbo 400s (3-speed) are overwhelmingly the main ones used, so a 4-speed is a very strange choice to me. Not to mention that powerglides and turbo 400s in this scenario are usually manually shifted, so even having a "D" mode is strange but having "2" and "1" lower gear modes is even more unrealistic. Personally I'd like to see the official cars either see more extensive work to convert them to a proper pro stock or pro mod car, or for them to be more realistically set up for what most "street" drag cars use, ie no wheelie bar.

2. Launch control / 2 step:
Launch control in game doesn't act the way I think it should, it just seems to be exactly the same as the standard rev limiter but lower, instead of a proper 2 step limiter which retards engine timing, sending unburnt fuel into the exhaust/turbo housing, where it ignites and spools the turbo. However in game it doesn't spool the turbo whatsoever, so if the in game launch control is in fact a fuel cut limiter (for which there is very little point) instead of an ignition cut type limiter, then that would explain the turbo not building boost. Again, Iif I'm wrong on this then feel free to correct me, but I don't see much point in adding launch control if the same could be accomplished by pushing the pedal/controller trigger in slightly less, instead of being able to achieve proper launches with a turbo setup.

3. Drag race AI:
The drag race AI is a great concept, but currently it seems to use only 90% throttle, which is understandable on launching the cars since some can be tricky, but to still remain at 90% the entire race distance makes them very uncompetitive. The configuration for the drag race AI could use some more options as well, like removing reaction time from the boards (like a test-n-tune setup), and also having the cinematic camera turned off by default would be great . Finally there is a bug with the drag race AI app where if you press start with physics paused, it drops the performance by half, however starting with it unpaused is fine.

Yes it's a bit of a wall of text, but I'd greatly appreciate if one of the devs could maybe give some more details on some of these gameplay choices.

 

You have actually made some pretty valid points there Inertia, sometimes with game mechanics like this, they do need to be improved after a certain amount of time to not become dated and I feel the Drag stuff has become a little...dated, I just hope they do update the Drag system eventually and probably add in a few more modern cars and stuff, I feel something like the I-series along with the 200BX are prime targets for more modern drag cars but thats just a speculation as of what cars could be drag vehicles in the future

 

Are there any plans in the future for improving on the 2 step even by faking some kind of engine loading (same way as transbrake) or is it simply not gonna happen for a while?

 

I would say an update like this would take some months to deal with so it wont be out anytime soon but as for future plans, I would say its very possible but I wouldnt say before the 0.20.0 update thats when I see it more than likely happening but I am speculating here again!