[masraum]

Originally Posted by Superman

All the comments here are good. Having the car in gear give you more control options. With almost any car, having the drive wheels provide at least a little bit of power seems to make the car more stable, particularly with a rear wheel drive car. And perhaps that has to do with how the geometry of alignments is set up.

I'll add one thing, which is sort of just a bit more detail on the above: Cars seem to dive just a tiny bit onto the outside front wheel, in a turn where no power is applied. Perhaps the car is slowing down when no power is applied (on a flat plane). It feels like a tiny bit of power is needed to avoid loading that outside front wheel.

And then there are 911s. As we know, power is absolutely needed for stable turning. If we find ourselves in a situation where we are worried about losing traction and going off the road, the LAST thing you want to do is lift. Lifting transfers weight off the rear axle. This lightens the rear axle; reducing traction, while centrifugal forces are trying to push that engine to the outside of the curve. In a "pucker" situation, we have no choice but to keep our foot on the gas.

Yep, there's always drag on a car from aero and/or due to tire deformation and whatever other factors are causing a car to slow down. When you turn the steering wheel, both front tires will deform and increase drag and deceleration, especially on those two tires, which will cause the car to rotate. Presumably, when the car rotates, the rear tires will also deform and some of the deceleration will be generated by the rear tires as well (although I would think still biased towards the front). I would think the fact that the rear tires are decoupled from the engine and having to provide accelerative forces from the engine would mean that the tires would be able to skew farther into the cornering portion of the friction circle.