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Besides inertia consideration, unsprung weight only matters when there are bumps to absorb, right? Given a perfectly smooth road there should be no difference between a heavy wheel and a light wheel, right? (I'm assuming here that lighter unsprung weight means that you can use less damping and therefore more compliant shock absorption and therefore less bouncing of the wheel over the bumps and therefore more often in contact with the ground and therefore more grip). (please someone tell me if there's a flaw in my reasoning here).
Now given the assumption (true at least in the Bay Area) that the street is (much) more bumpy than the track wouldn't you want lighter wheels even more on the street than on the track? (on top of a higher (therefore more flexible) sidewall also helping swallow the smaller bumps).
Just trying to make sense of the fact that the 'performance model'/competition package of cars seems to now mean 19" wheels rather than 18" only for people that actually track the car to swap them for 18", why not just sell the performance cars with 18" wheels and just be done with it?
Not like BMW (or other car makers) actually make sense in their decisions, if that was the case they'd make a lot more 1Ms for the US for example.
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