Which is better for performance, driving with esp on or off?

Also I know that driving hard with esp can wear down your breaks, but will my tires get messed with quickly with esp off?

 

For performance, you can do more with ESP off. However, if you just drive the car hard, ESP won't necessarily come on. It only intervenes when you otherwise would be skidding (either oversteering or understeering). I always leave it on. It's an excellent (and amazing) safety feature, and it defeats the purpose if you turn it off.

ESP uses the brakes, but it certainly does not wear them down. It works by applying short pulses to individual wheels. You probably do more wear by coming to a stop at a stoplight than ESP does while you're driving hard.

So, if you're asking whether you should leave it on or off for your driving style, leave it on and see how often the light flashes. If it never/rarely does, then you should always leave the system on so that it can help you in an emergency. If you're going for a track day, however, you may be better off turning it off.

 

will wear your brakes, however, so you're best-off driving within the limits of ESP.

 

ESP is the brain that manages all these sensors and uses ABS to do so. Without ABS, ESP does NOT work. ESP uses the ABS sensors to determine wheel speed, the steering sensor to see how much steering angle you have and a yaw sensor to determine how fast the car is rotating around its vertical axis. Furthermore there are two levels of traction control associated with ESP and ABS. These are the ASR and the EDL. The ASR will cut back power to the car's engine if need be and is a function of ESP. The EDL uses ABS logic in reverse by sensing wheel spin up under acceleration and applying selective braking to transfer power to the opposite wheel with more traction. EDL is ALWAYS active and will operate on a Quattro car up to speeds of 50 mph, for FWD cars the speed is much less, check your manual.
EDL is not a function of ESP but rather a function of the ABS.

When you DESELECT the ESP switch in the dash (ESP light on), you have basically taken the ASR, the yaw sensor and the steering angle sensor out of the loop. EDL is still functional. It is also said that ESP is in a semi dormant mode and will under extreme conditions jump back in to try to stabilize a car going out of control. Nobody knows at what point this happens. It is also known that this trigger point on the B6 cars is set at a higher threshold than on the previous B5 cars, so less interference from the system.

Finally the only way to cancel all this electronic wizardry is to pull an ABS fuse, because without ABS, there is no ESP. But keep in mind you will also loose your ABS braking and EBD, making the front to back brake bias poor, which will make for premature rear brake lock up.

If you track your car or are an aggressive driver, you should turn OFF your ESP because you will definitely loose performance. Personally that's what I do every time i get into my car. ESP intervention is very noticeable when driving in the wet or on snow/ice covered roads.

 

I dislike the ESP, if you are driving in the snow it never works predictably

 

and even if you do know what you're doing it can seriously save your ***...

 

What do you do when you have to drive a car without an ESP system?

 

of it in cars that do, at least while they're building up their car control skills. If I'm out on the track with someone who has never been out there before, I'd rather know that they have the safety envelope of ESP- Although preferrably, they will just drive within it's limits, and their own.

 

Also, it completely disables the ESP system (instead of lowering the threashold). I've been in full spins in the car with ESP off...there was no intervention.

 

You shouldn't "use" ESP. It's there for emergencies (at least that's the way I look at it).