What are your feelings on R1/Tight bends?

When people talk about "fluid tempo" they usually would not like R1 turns. R1 turns bring your tempo to 0/0 once per lap, just about. If you want your car to be flying about while you hum a tune in your head to the tempo of your trigger pulls and releases, then the ONLY time you would want in R1 turn is inside a combination that begins and ends with wider turns. A R2-R1-R1-R2 combo is a popular way to include them without forcing cars to almost stop.

Me, I like a track that requires me to watch the car at every moment, and look ahead to know when to brake and when I can punch it again. I like having to almost stop the car to get around a turn without coming off. I also like wide turns that let me carry a lot of speed. Most of all, I like variety. That way, I'm not just finding the one or two spots on the controller I can hold the car at for the turns and straights. I have to use the entire throttle range to get the best lap time for any car, and that means the low end for sharp turns and challenging technical sections.

I definitely do not agree that R1 should only be used as a hairpin turn. As for "digital crew" and pace cars, I'll be happy to rant on that any time. Suffice it to say that pace cars are never competition without them outgunning the driven cars, in which case the R1 turns make no difference. That said, I only ever use pace cars any more to run in a brand new car.

I agree that an R2 bend is more "scale accurate" for a hairpin turn than an R1 turn. R1 turns are tighter than those cars would even be ABLE to turn, especially on the inside. But, other than the cars themselves (and even that is debatable), what is "scale accurate" about our tracks? The straights are severely truncated, and the rest of the turns are still too tight for scale accuracy outside R2 as hairpins and then R4s for tight non-hairpin turns. Even large tracks are still woefully under sized. Routed tracks provide more freedom, but they're still limited to the size of the room its in. Our tracks are "scale accurate" for go-kart tracks, and then only maybe.

There isn't a slot car I can't drive around a Scaley R1 turn. Fly trucks? No problem. Scaley Moto GP? No problem. I've even run 1/24 scale brass chassis wing cars around my track, including all 3 turns with R1 pieces in them. Most magless, and some magnet. In every case, the vehicle needs to be driven in a particular way to get through it successfully.

And Carrera people complain about the tightness of their smallest turns.