Just thought the following would be interesting to read. It's from Wikipedia:
A car that tends neither to oversteer nor understeer when pushed to the limit is said to have neutral handling. It seems intuitive that race drivers would prefer a slight oversteer condition to rotate the car around a corner, but this isn't usually the case for two reasons. Accelerating early as the car passes the apex of a corner allows it to gain extra speed down the following straight. The driver who accelerates sooner and/or harder has a large advantage. The rear tires need some excess traction to accelerate the car in this critical phase of the corner, while the front tires can devote all their traction to turning. So the car must be set up with a slight understeer or "tight" tendency. Also, an oversteering car tends to be twitchy and ill tempered, making a race car driver more likely to lose control during a long race or when reacting to sudden situations in traffic.
Carroll Smith, in his book "Drive to Win", provides a detailed explanation of why a fast race car must have a bit of understeer. Note that this applies only to pavement racing. Dirt racing is a different matter.
Even so, some successful race car drivers do prefer a bit of oversteer in their cars, preferring a car which is less sedate and more willing to turn into corners (or inside their opponents). It should be noted that the judgement of a car's handling balance is not an objective one. Driving style is a major factor in the apparent balance of a car. This is why two drivers with identical cars on the same race team often run with rather different balance settings from each other. And both may call the balance of their cars 'neutral'.
The full explanation of oversteer/understeer is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oversteer
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