nsxtasy has explained is completely and accurately. Jimbo, you may well understand how it really works, but your statements would lead almost anyone who doesn’t understand it to the wrong conclusion. When you say something like “Acceleration (...the rate at which an object changes its velocity...) is always faster with the lower gears.” the reader can and probably will misinterpret this. The following statement is true but clearly contrary to what yours seems to state: “Acceleration (...the rate at which an object changes its velocity...) with lower gears will be greater in some speed ranges (from x mph to y mph) but less in other speed ranges.”
For your statement to be accurate, or at least understandable, would require that you include a reference to being gear specific. “Acceleration in any given gear is always faster with the lower gears.” But come on, that’s almost too obvious to point out and stressing it is guaranteed to distract the novice from the really important fact that the options are always a game of give and take from gear to gear, speed to speed.
All that said, I’m still inclined to think that the shorter R&P will more often help than hurt on road course, and this is where nsxtasy and I part. I won’t attempt to go into all the calculations, and I’ve seen the charts comparing the gearing options, but I’ve driven enough and crewed enough to believe that the 11% bonus in every gear more than offsets the downside. Sure, there will be individual corners and even whole tracks where you’ll wish you had the old ratio, but with no specific knowledge of a given track, I’ll play the odds and take the shorter diff every time. So here I agree with Jimo as he referred to the Type R. There was nothing magical performance wise about Honda’s selection of the R&P ratio for US spec cars. They needed something that matched with the transmission yields a good compromise between acceleration and cruising.
But, is it where I'd spend my money on a street car sometimes used on the track? Nope, too much $ for too little, and too buzzy on the street.
[This message has been edited by sjs (edited 23 September 2002).]
