This is not the only bug the game has as you would see further on, and a most needed patch it's already on its way. In theory at least that's how it should work, since I haven't noticed any kind of influence from the damage on the steering and handling of the car. Basically, for those of you who don't know much about car mechanics, the suspension model is more complex and allows more realistic simulation of the car handling depending on how you set up your suspensions before the race and the damage that the different suspension parts take. The suspension is modeled after standard McPherson Struts rather than just a prismatic joint as in most racing games.
For those of you looking for a more realistic experience on Finland tracks, a mod has been release called "Richard Burns Rally Realistic Snow banks". It's almost like driving through roadside mist clouds. They don't appear to have any mass and don't seem to put up any resistance when driving through them. I have a little complaint regarding snow banks however.
You will notice that on a particular stage the car that holds the first position so far in the rally will start the last, giving the best drivers an advantage in terms of road condition. The road surface properties also change with the weather and loose material can be swept from the track by other cars that run before you. Each texture has a material assigned to it, making it possible to model different depths and types of gravel, grass, rocks, etc in multiple layers. The road surface material maps are linked to the textures. Therefore, the game is not very forgiving with those who loose grip and handling of the car. Flooring the throttle is not a good idea either, apart from when you are attempting a power slide. If you do so, the game will immediately put you in charge of a straight going, steering ignoring sledge instead of a car.
If you are used to arcade racing games or you just happen to have your real-life car equipped with an ABS system I cannot stress hard enough how wrong it is to floor the brake pedal. In Richard Burns Rally, the "slip" a tire incurs during cornering or braking is calculated in real time depending on the type and wear of the tire, the ground surface, and the tire pressure which translates into the contact surface. That custom paint will not help you improve your time). As a Formula 1 team manager stated, improvements to the engine and/or aerodynamics of car can buy you a few hundreds of a second, while better tires can help you get a couple of extra seconds. Tires, as every racing fan knows, are very important for a racing car because they can only transmit so much brake horse power from the engine to the road before loosing grip and going into a skid (and shamefully, in real racing you do not gain points for the "cool" smoke coming out of your tires). This is the first game that I've played in which you must actually watch out for your speed even in a straight line over uneven road surface.
Practically you can loose grip when going over a bump with only one tire (or one side) which will make your car take a fatal turn and end up in the trees on the side of the road. In Richard Burns Rally, each wheel has its own weight, making it work individually depending on the terrain and road surface. The general body system present in most of the racing games is simplified by modeling the whole car as a single object in terms of mass, and therefore a wheel will lift off the ground when hitting a bump if enough force is generated to lift the whole car off the ground.
After some hours of documenting myself and some good tips on where to search, I was able to catalog all the main features of the physics engine. And if you truly are a simulators fan, you probably don't consider physics as being some boring nonsense reserved for mad scientists. If you really want to understand why this rally game is so different and outstanding in terms of simulation, there is simply no other way but to go into the technical details. This is the first rally game that I have played in which I actually recognized and was able to apply the stuff that I learned from driving my car in real life.