Panic said:
"the engine accelerated the quickest between the torque peak and the horsepower peak"
AFAIK thats a safe assumption with few exceptions.
However, what remains is "what percentage of the RPM range does this span?", which is (under ideal circumstances) the range to which engine speed should recover on every gear change.
As the maximum speed goes up, the necessity for compliance on the final shift into high gear becomes critical, and with speeds over 200 (?) even the penultimate gears become highly important since the car is accelerating against a huge aero load and falling below the power curve pretty much writes off the run (unless the chassis is traction rather than power limited).
Unless a large number of gears can be used, this means compromising the 1st gear (reducing the number; e.g., 2.00 instead of 2.50:1) to close up the intermediate ratios since the engine is only pulling weight (not as much aero) in 1st gear and can afford less torque multiplication.
A bike engine might have 12 or 14,000 RPM to play with, but only serious power in the last 20% or less; a diesel or high pressure turbo typically has a much wider power range.
In summary: all transmissions have some degree of progression towards the final ratio. The slope of the change in RPM drop is greatly affected by top speed, and the same drop between successive ratios that works well for 200 Mph may abort a 250 Mph run when the engine falls off the planet on the 3-4 shift.
The only nice thing about planning LSR ratios is that (in general) the progression can be a clean slope with no spikes or glitches as would be common in gear sets planned for road race courses to accommodate specific shift points and track lengths."
Lots of buzz words not much sense.
Rex
