Peak torque vs. holding torque – what is the difference?

That’s why it’s worth under­stand­ing exact­ly what torque real­ly means in wheel bases and how it is mea­sured. The way man­u­fac­tur­ers spec­i­fy their per­for­mance val­ues varies great­ly, and not every num­ber actu­al­ly tells you any­thing about how a base feels when you’re deep in a fast cor­ner or catch­ing a vehi­cle at the lim­it.

What torque means for your dri­ving expe­ri­ence
Torque describes the rota­tion­al force that an engine exerts on your steer­ing wheel. In direct dri­ve sys­tems, this force is trans­mit­ted direct­ly from the motor to the steer­ing shaft with­out belts or gears. High­er torque allows the weight, iner­tia and self-cen­tring of real steer­ing sys­tems to be real­is­ti­cal­ly sim­u­lat­ed.

It is not only the strength of this force that is impor­tant, but also how fine­ly it can be mod­u­lat­ed. Small changes in torque give you feed­back on whether a tyre is just start­ing to slip, whether you are dri­ving over a bump, or whether the front axle is slow­ly build­ing up and sta­bil­is­ing. A high-qual­i­ty wheel base is char­ac­terised by the fact that it is not only pow­er­ful, but also extreme­ly pre­cise and con­sis­tent.

Con­stant, clean pow­er deliv­ery ensures that you can build con­fi­dence. You don’t hold the steer­ing wheel against unpre­dictable move­ments, but active­ly work with it. It is pre­cise­ly this con­fi­dence that enables con­sis­tent lap times and clean dri­ving.

Why torque spec­i­fi­ca­tions are often mis­lead­ing
In sim rac­ing, there is cur­rent­ly no bind­ing indus­try stan­dard for how torque must be mea­sured and spec­i­fied. Some man­u­fac­tur­ers quote a the­o­ret­i­cal max­i­mum val­ue for the motor, oth­ers a short-term elec­tron­ic peak, and still oth­ers a val­ue that can only be achieved under ide­al lab­o­ra­to­ry con­di­tions.

The prob­lem with this is that these fig­ures may look impres­sive on paper, but they say lit­tle about how a wheel base behaves in a real dri­ving sit­u­a­tion. Two bases with iden­ti­cal “max­i­mum torque” can feel com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent on the track. The rea­son for this lies in how long and how sta­ble this pow­er actu­al­ly is avail­able.

Peak torque, peaks and over­shoot
Peak torque describes a very short impulse of force that the motor can deliv­er for a frac­tion of a sec­ond. Such peaks often occur when dri­ving over kerbs, dur­ing sud­den steer­ing move­ments or when the force feed­back increas­es abrupt­ly.

How­ev­er, many wheel bases can­not main­tain this peak torque con­tin­u­ous­ly. After a few mil­lisec­onds, the elec­tron­ics reg­u­late the pow­er down again to pro­tect the motor, the out­put stage or the pow­er sup­ply. For your dri­ving expe­ri­ence, this means that you feel a short jolt, but no sus­tained, sta­ble force.

Even more prob­lem­at­ic is the so-called over­shoot val­ue. This occurs when the motor con­trol briefly over­shoots the tar­get dur­ing a rapid torque request. This over­shoot is pure­ly elec­tron­ic, extreme­ly short-lived and has lit­tle to do with the actu­al steer­ing force avail­able. Nev­er­the­less, some man­u­fac­tur­ers com­mu­ni­cate it as the main val­ue. This val­ue is prac­ti­cal­ly irrel­e­vant to your dri­ving expe­ri­ence.

Hold­ing torque and real con­fi­dence
What real­ly shapes your dri­ving expe­ri­ence is the hold­ing torque. The hold­ing torque describes the force that a motor can deliv­er con­tin­u­ous­ly and sta­bly over a longer peri­od of time with­out degrad­ing or over­heat­ing. This is exact­ly the torque you need in long, fast cor­ners, with high down­force or in vehi­cles with heavy steer­ing.

If a wheel base can­not main­tain its hold­ing torque con­sis­tent­ly, you will notice it imme­di­ate­ly. The resis­tance in the steer­ing wheel decreas­es dur­ing the turn, the steer­ing wheel becomes lighter and you lose the feel for the front axle. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly tir­ing and unsafe in high-speed pas­sages or dur­ing long stints, because you con­stant­ly have to work against chang­ing forces.

A base with strong, clean hold­ing torque remains con­sis­tent even after twen­ty, thir­ty or six­ty min­utes. The steer­ing forces build up log­i­cal­ly, remain sta­ble and give you con­tin­u­ous feed­back on grip, load changes and vehi­cle bal­ance. It is this con­stant feed­back that cre­ates real con­fi­dence and allows you to con­cen­trate ful­ly on your line, brak­ing points and race strat­e­gy.