I am sorry as I'm sure it's been expanded before but I can't find the right thread. What is the difference between full and performance impacting damage? And what is the difference between that and the separate option of mechanical failures? Thank you very much and sorry again if this is a duplicate.
Performance impacting damage is full (body/suspension/brake) damage minus wheel loss, so that you can limp into the pits to repair. Mechanical failures is separate from damage (and damage scale) in that it allows the clutch and engine to fail. If you also enable Advanced Mechanical Damage Modeling (rolling out to more and more cars over the coming months), cars can break on you by pushing them too closely to their limit or in unfavorable situations (not enough cooling/too high temps killing coolant lines, turbo and/or engine, suspension damage being able to cause wheel loss if not immediately repaired, etc).
I think it's always on if available for a certain car if mechanical failures are enabled. I am trying to find a list of cars with ADM. No luck so far. Edit. So far the best I could find is: AMDM is currently featuring with most open wheelers, GTs and faster prototypes.
