Has anyone driven around town much with ESC off ... what am I to expect?
Expect nothing different "around town". Seriously. Assuming you are driving within the limits of the tires and grip level, and you're avoiding situations where the chassis will get unstable (e.g. Hyperactive lane changes while stomping the throttle) it should feel just like the car always does. ESC intervenes when it senses a series of disconnections between steering wheel input, yaw rates, wheel speed differences, pedal inputs, what it thinks the grip level is etc etc. the idea of ESC is to keep you pointed in the right direction. It uses throttle modulation, selective use of a single brake caliper and damping adjust,nets based on what it's algorithm says. As comparison the SSC control allows more yaw and wheel spin so you can drift or rotate the car, but only up to a certain limit. Same idea, different limits.
hopefully nothing .... or you have a different driving style to me around town. Add some snow into the equation and that might change
I'd have thought mashing the gas would burn rubber pretty easily While turning a corner though... I foresee rapid and large scale oversteer... how abruptly you "mash" will probably correspond to how rapidly that oversteer develops!!
A foot baller in the uk had a new week old 599 and wrecked it in a tunnel with the switch turned up . Tried to say the brakes were no good, but found to be ok.
Stability control tries to control yaw, for the most part. Traction control tries to control wheel spin... it's a bit more complex in the physics but that's easiest way to think about it Mashing the throttle and turning with no TC will light up the tires and rotate the car....hopefully not into a wall. The ESC will try to catch it but it can't override tha laws of physics Remember the FF is also a long wheelbase and uses the 4RM as part of the equation to increase grip and as part of the ESC....plus you have the eDiff which also influences things. Plus the grip is quite good in most conditions If you have a chance put your car on a skid pad or an autocross....try different settings and you can detect what the car is doing. Then try on a wet skid pad.... phenomenal training tool. Have a GOOD coach show you how FWIW my daughter did a skid pad session last week and she has great car control from her karting, doing things in a heavier car really builds some good hand-foot skills
Have not done a skid pad Entropy, yet have been on the track in wet conditions and tested the limits in wet ... they are extreme and easy to manage. Yea Aedo would expect a little oversteer but it's such a balanced car and I'm an experienced driver so instinct would take over very quickly if it got loose.
Any more information and driving experience with ESC off? Street or tracking the heavy beast. Is this not the way to go, if you really want to have fun, and save on the brakes?
I'll save you the trouble. I turned off ESC for one whole week and kept my same style of driving. Here are my thoughts: Off the straight line the car launches harder and feels faster. Steering feels much more involved and direct. I mashed the accelerator on a left turn from a light and the car broke loose. I lost total control of the car and spun out across 4 lanes in broad day light. Thankfully a red light was holding traffic back. Let me tell you careening towards the curb in the opposite lane in a 300k+ car is no fun. Let's just say I've never turned ESC off since that day.
Wtf... mashed the accelerator and spun out across 4 lanes? You should really look into some driving courses and not try this on public roads in a 660hp 4,0000 lb vehicle. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Before I owned an FF I watched Chris Harris's video about his. He said pretty much the same thing - par for course he just switched ESC to off as usual. Then quickly realised this is not the car to do that in. I could hypothesise why. I have driven 458s on skid pad plenty of times. With ESC off, full throttle and steering lock you will get......understeer. And masses of it. In fact it is very hard to get the car to oversteer unless you apply the throttle when the rear is already beginning to unweight and therefore the front weight up. At which point oversteer is easy and quite natural since the front wheels are always passengers and not trying to get involved in the action. On the FF, the four wheel drive system complicates an already complicated situation with front engine (less inherent balance) and high weight. Remember, this is not traction control, where the advantages for switching off would be easy to see since a good driver usually prefers to have direct control over throttle management rather than the TC cutting in, which is usually done with little finesse. ESC is when the car has detected it is in a state that suggests there is unusual lateral movement, accompanied by incorrect inputs from the driver - especially throttle, but also braking and yaw rates etc. On the pilota courses, where ESC is never turned off, telemetry reveal what you have done with no escape. Too much throttle, too early, too late, braking hard, not hard enough, steering movement too much - all visible. Only very occasionally did I get ESC involved (maybe twice per course), at which point there was no discussion with the instructor. Their conclusion was always that I did something stupid, from which I would not easily recover and make sure I don't do that again - not simply because it is dangerous but because it is slow. I also struggled to feel ESC involvement whereas TC is very easy to feel except perhaps in race mode when it is intervening mildly. I just knew I made a mistake and survived. I can still see why you might turn ESC off on track, since for some the idea of you, the car, the track is somehow corrupted if the ESC is there to catch your mistakes. They banned driver aids in F1 for instance. On the road? I have done it occasionally but then never really used the car as I would like. ESC on or off is irrelevant for a perfect driver, he never needs it. But since such driver doesn't exist, switching ESC off on the road is probably not the thing to do - like saying "I'm prepared to gamble with other road users that I'll never make a mistake". Not exactly but sort of. So whenever I've tried it, I've driven much more cautiously and had less fun. CT off is a very good option for a decent driver but it, of course, doesn't exist on the FF. I suspect the reason why it doesn't exist is due to the 4x4 system. When you lose traction from the rear the front cuts in - a sort of built-in traction control. So there would be little point removing traction control in this car since it's use in operation would be calibrated to work with the 4x4 system and you can't switch that off. Whereas ESC would be a very complicated algorithm in the FF, dealing with all the normal things like braking, throttle management, yaw rates yet still having to account for the impact and availability of four wheel drive. This increases the complication significantly I believe. I suspect the main reason ESC-off exists on the FF is for ice and heavy snow driving, where you need the wheels to be slipping and doing odd things compared with movement over clean tarmac. It would be interesting to know if the ice pilota uses ESC off, or if those with regular deep snow use know that the car works better with ESC off under those conditions?
On the contrary, I drive with Esc off all of the time and have ass end out whenever I want. If you're not use to driving a pendulum feeling car (like my gt2) I suspect you'll find yourself in trouble as mentioned above When the back end let's go , it goes and fast! I stopped driving all together like this on the street and in all of my cars since growing up and realizing potential dangers. Sometimes at night however I'll play around It's capable in good hands
Take it to the track, turn ESC off, drive it hard and see how good you are. Public roads are not the place for it, unless you want to get yourself in some YouTube-worthy viral video and kiss your beautiful car (and maybe your life) goodbye Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Over 300hp cars are not for public road powerslide unless you are alone with huge margin. Front grips too much thus make you push harder to initiate slide thus make the car go wider and when it goes touch too far, it will spin and when that happens I hope you are not in mid or rear engined car which will go backward toward the wall lol Sent from my iPhone using FerrariChat.com mobile app
Oh and this is what happens with Lusso esc off trying to drift or slide. Sent from my iPhone using FerrariChat.com mobile app
