Not Ranked
DD,
You're right in your conclusions.....With road racing, it's nice to have a higher revving engine for the straights....that way if you run out of gear, you still have some revs left to turn.
In autocrossing, you're generally only running in one gear...usually 2nd. So in that case, you need a broad torque curve to pull you out of any curve that's necessary....
You have to remember though....you're driving a 2200-2300 lb car. This isn't a Chevelle. It doesn't take much torque to get it moving.
What would I set the powerband at ? Probably 3500-6500 for a street car that will see track time. That should be low enough to putz you around town easily....and high enough to give you the extra revs on the race course. If you want a pure track car, the sky's the limit. But at that point, you're making power so high in the powerband, that you need a cam to accomodate that....which will give you poor idle quality and poor low rpm streetability.
My car will take off in 3rd gear by just letting out the clutch slowly. I have max torque at 4500 and max rpm at 5400.
Like I said, you could probably get away with about anything in these cars...they're so light.
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