Spring rate help?

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^ I should add to the above, I think there's a distinction to be drawn between ideal situations and the real world, too.

In an ideal scenario, the pavement is perfect, there's no surprises from traffic or turtles or mud clods, I hit my reference points at precisely the correct location and speed every lap, and nothing about the car changes over the course of a session (e.g. tires warming up). If this were always the case, my inputs would always be perfect to keep the car exactly where it should be at the best slip angle for traction, and the car would always naturally track-out to the correct point at the end, etc.

In the real world, there are too many variables to even try to list, all the time. If you're consistent you've eliminated a lot of variables, but millisecond-by-millisecond you're making small (and sometimes, large) corrections to your inputs to account for all these variable things coming into play. Many of those corrections get to be a subconscious thing over time - they happen way too fast for it to even be possible that you're consciously thinking through the decision process. Either that or you drive slow enough that most of these variables don't actually matter because you're not that close to the edge.

I think when you're out there in that mode, near the edge, where you're constantly making corrections to keep the car where you want it to be and not flying off the track just because you happened to hit a blade of loose grass or dropped a couple wheels in the dirt to avoid traffic, a loose tendency is easier to control than a tight one (at least, it is for my brain, and it seems like it's not uncommon to feel that way).

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