Setups - Max speed vs acceleration

[AA™| joruss]

Perhaps I'll be stating the obvious but perhaps someone does not realises this.

Anyway.

Why having greater top speed is not necessarily better? Let's have a look at the chart below:


Fig1. Distance vs Time




Fig2. Speed vs Time


Now some definitions:
"Normal gears" - setup with gears you'd use to maximise end-of-straight speed
"Shorter gears" - setup with gears allowing for better acceleration (like for drag racing) - ideal one with unlimited number of gears
"Shorter gears (top speed limit)" - same as above but with limited number of gears - top speed is capped

As you can see on the images sometimes it really pays of to sacrifice even 20% of top speed in trade for travelled distance time.

Admittedly there's a point when this is no longer advantageous and you're just sitting duck at the end of the straight :-)

And to back it with some real life testimony I've just (couple hours ago) improved my PB on BL2 by simply reducing tops speed for gears 4 and 5


Attached: spreadsheet to play with if you'd like.

[Seven]

This is interesting science, Jo!