Hi would someone with good knowledge of car set up please help in giving me some understanding of the important things to change/try to improve car performance , i am rather confused on what changes i make that actually give me better preformance , as many of the changes i ve made have made no difference to the standard set up , would welcome some helpful advice , thank you.
I'd suggest you to ask this on Discord because there's much more people there. And when you ask it, make sure to mention what car you're driving since they are different and can require different setup changes.
Hey Doug, I see this thread is a couple months old and you may have received the information you sought, but if you still want to discuss it, I'm happy to do so here. I've only just noticed this thread. If you want to talk about suspension and balance changes, how to correct undesirable behavior, and to dial it in to suit you we can do so. If no longer needed kindly disregard.
Doug replied by PM, and I wanted to keep this discussion here on the board in case others want to chime in, or might benefit from it. As such I'm not certain what specifically needs attention, so I want to make a catch-all sort of thread. Talk about how I approach it, which by definition means it is not intended to be a definitive guide, just one man's approach to finding the right balance. And 'balance' is the key word. Setup is a compromise, finding the right balance to get round the circuit as fast as possible. It does little good to dial it in to nail the hairpin perfectly, if it means you can't get around the high-speed sweepers. We want to dial it in, find the balance that allows us to clock the fastest laptimes, or maybe we want to make the car easier to handle. Overall, remove the unsavory bits, making the car faster and more predictable, easier to handle, when it is needed. In my case I head out for a few exploratory laps when I drive a car for the first time. In my view, RR has the best default setups in the business, at least they are the closest to the balance I am looking for, which could be described as a touch of entry oversteer. RR's defaults are nearly there. In the main they require little adjustment, to achieve what I want. But every driver is looking for a different feel, a different response, a different balance. Which is why I think it is good to be capable of doing this yourself, rather than relying on downloaded setups made by other drivers. They may indeed be rapid, but they may not suit you so well too. In this exploratory phase I want to assess the four main phases -- entry, mid-corner, exit and top speed. The changes I make will be based on this. If it understeers on entry, that's no good. If the rear steps out on exit, no good. It's vital that you are driving well. Changes to the car's balance should only come once you've learned the proper braking points, corner entries and line. Attempting to dial out driver mistakes will lead us astray. For this post I will focus on a few specific changes. Springs, roll bars, rake (ride height) aero and differential. That's a small subset of what is possible. Changes to bump, rebound, camber, tire pressures and more are possible too, but I'll ignore those for now. Once the exploration is enough to get a feel for what the car needs, I come back in for the initial tweaks. Springs are key. It's the relationship between them, front and back, that gives the car its general balance, how it reacts to braking and acceleration, how much under or oversteer it has. Think of it as the two ends of the car in constant battle for grip. When the front wins, we have oversteer, When the rear wins, we have understeer. It controls how much weight we want to shift in these two phases. So if it understeers on entry, we need more front grip, or, perhaps counterintuitively, less rear grip. So a softer front spring (or stiffer rear) will throw more of the car's weight on to the front axle in a braking event, increasing grip and reducing understeer. If it has oversteer on exit then the front is winning the grip battle. Softening the rear springs, or stiffening the front will keep more weight on the rear axle and help control exit oversteer. What we want to do here is find the right balance, to handle both of those opposite goals. There's no free lunch as they say, and making one thing better can make the other thing worse. Balance. Roll bars work in much the same way. Soften the front to reduce entry understeer, and so on. Rake can be used as well. I used to think of ride height as simply a way to keep the car from bottoming. But is a balancing thing too, when you think of it as setting more or less weight on one end or the other. The more the car is tipped forward, the more weight on the front axle. More front grip, less rear, and of course the opposites are true as well. We often think of aero as drag and downforce, but this too can be used for balancing the car. For the counterintuitively bit I mentioned above, we can for example reduce exit oversteer by having lower front aero, and vice versa. Again, balance. These things above I consider rough cuts, dialing the car in to give it the general balance I want. The fine tune is the differential. Not all cars in RR have it as adjustable. And some only allow pre-load, but it is one of the most vital components to determine how the car corners. In simple terms, a differential exists to allow the inside and outside wheels to rotate at different speeds. Without this it's a solid axle, like a Mustang, and we know those don't go round the twisty bits. In some cars the differential is divided in to both a power and a coast side, controlling the behavior in those two phases. Whereas most of the adjustments mentioned above affect all phases of cornering, differential like this allow us to do entries and exits separately, making the differential one of the most important, and accurate changes we can make. This post is getting very long, and we can discuss it in more detail below. But in general we want to look at the car's behavior. If it has exit oversteer, increasing power-side can tame it. If it won't rotate in to the corner -- understeer-- a lower coast side will help. There is far more to all of this, just a general post to get started. If you have any specific issues with balance post them up. Describe the problem, entry understeer for example, or the car won't get round the hairpins, this sort of thing. Long post yeah, but it's a complex subject.
This impies that Mustangs don't have a diff, but that's incorrect. Solid axle is a dependent suspension, it tells nothing about whether the drivetrain has a diff or not.
It was a joke, bagging on the Mustang. I withdraw the remark as it implies incorrect information, as Makserader was kind enough to point out.
It would be more like a Big Wheel, if anyone had one of those as a kid. Solid axle makes turns difficult, or more fun, as the case may be. Not good for road racing cars though
I said above that I think RR's default's are really good. In most sims, the default setups have gobs of understeer, which makes sense, as beginners will benefit from a more stable platform. But beyond the beginner stage you'll want that gone, to go fast. In RR there is less inherent understeer in the main on the defaults. But still a little more than what I like, generally. Each driver will be looking for his own balance. On most cars I am looking to get the car rotating more easily on entry. Lift oversteer I like to call it. This allows you to steer the car as much with the pedals as with the steering wheel. The more you lift or slow, the more the car wants to turn. When it turns too much you give it some throttle. Steering with your feet. How do we get more entry oversteer? Many ways, and this is what is tricky about tweaking setups. You can achieve the same sort of balance with a variety of changes. I'll just list a few Softer front springs Stiffer rear springs Softer front roll bar Stiffer rear roll bar Lower coast side differential Lower preload Higher front downforce Lower rear downforce Lower front ride height Higher rear ride height That's ten things right there, and it's just a partial list. So how will you know which thing to focus on? Who knows haha. It's a matter of trial and error. But over time you get a feel for it. You start to learn which things work best for you, you understand which tweaks will achieve your goals. I was driving the KTM X-Bow at Zandy comp over the past few days, and struggling with entry understeer, slowing me down. At first I dropped front springs, but that made it a little too loose. Softer front roll bar felt better. In the end I set my fast lap with a slightly stiffer rear, which increases that lift oversteer I am hunting. It's important to only make single, small changes, reverting to default setting, and trying a different thing. If you make multiple changes at once it's difficult to know which thing did what. For folks just starting out with setting up your own cars I suggest doing some experimentation with drastic changes. Turn some laps with default setup, get a feel for it. Then come in and drop front spring a lot. Head back out and it is immediately obvious what a softer front spring does. Try it with the diff, with roll bars, and so on down the line. Small changes are more difficult to feel. So make big ones to instill its effect, which will give you confidence that you are making the right minor changes, even if they are hard to feel straight away. Your lap times will reveal what is working, even if it is hard to feel at first. Of all the sims I drive, and it's just about all of them, RR has my favorite setup UI. Changes you make are shown by retaining a mark at the original setting, so it's easy to revert, and to see later how much change you've already made. The setup name-saving is great too, better than most of the competition. Take advantage of this and start to build a library of custom setups
No problem Doug, I hope it might help. When you get back behind the wheel, pop in and let us know what's giving you trouble, if anything. I was hoping to attempt to address your specific issue(s), but that can wait. Bottom line is that most balance issues can be satisfactorily sorted with springs, roll bars and differential. Turn some recon laps, determine where and how the balance is off, or the balance you are looking to achieve, and then come back in and make the change. Back out to test, and so it goes. Over time, the exploratory nature, the trial and error stuff, will recede as you have in your bank all the little changes and what they will do. So that soon you'll hit the track and say 'needs a little power side diff' in the same way you'd taste some food and say 'needs a little salt.'
The first thing to look at once you have balanced the springs and roll is the tyre temps, you want to balance the pressures front to rear, you do that without touching the tyres, its a combination of toe and roll, that will take care of most of your corner entry and exit oversteer, which is caused by your rear tyre temp overtaking your front, you fine tune with the preload, theres a little app on here for motec, R2M, you only need a few pages in motec to get the car tuned up, if not just use the tyre info in the garage When you add toe to the tyre you increase the temp which in turn increases the pressure, thats why you dont have to touch the tyres untill you have finished tuning it, at that point the pressure you add will be minimum
Yes, use springs, roll bars and diff to set the rough balance. Use toe, rake, aero, preload and more to fine tune it. Preload is a popular tweak I think, reading posts from other drivers. Preload affects both sides of the diff, which can be useful, and sometimes is the perfect adjustment. If the car allows both power and coast-side adjustment I suggest tweaking those instead of preload since it allows you to dial in entries and exits individually. But some cars only have preload (and some have none of this at all). For the cars with only preload and no other diff settings then have at it. But like most tweaks, there's an opposite reaction. You might lower preload to get more entry rotation, but now you've got more exit understeer, so as always it is about finding the right balance.
Just for the record : After a season of (highly competitive) League Racing with Fixed Setups a few years ago I had to reconsider my approach to setup changes vs car performance vs DRIVER PERFORMANCE, cause the basic setups are (or were at least) actually good enough for some top leaderboard results depending on the driver - or better said the driving style - behind the wheel. So apart from very basic changes like break balance, gear box ratio (if allowed), toe, anti-rollbar to your liking you should be absolutely sure you really maxed out your (personal) driving performance bringing the respective car to it's (true) limit . I can assure you there's always a good second to find even with standard setups. From there on you can go deeper since changes you made before that point might even worsen your performance. Even today when fiddling with setup changes I always go back to standard settings to make sure I don't fall for wishful thinking cause with any practice lap you do (more) you're getting better anyway
if your more than 1.5 seconds away from the the top timesxno setup will save you , just do the laps , the practice Andi
Practice is always a good idea of course, but i disagree with this quote. No matter how far off the pace you are, a car with balance that suits the driver or track better will help you improve whether you are 1.5 seconds back or 10 seconds back. And with Denis Gicquel on the leaderboards, nearly everyone is 1.5 seconds off the pace. Tweaking setups isn't strictly about finding more speed, but a car that handles better, more suitably, and faster laptimes are the result, if all goes well. Consistency should improve as well. As I said above, I think RR's defaults need the least amount of work across the major racing sims, but that doesn't mean they all suit me perfectly and I won't go faster if I dial it in to suit my driving style or the track characteristics. For example I've been driving the Crossle 90F over the past few days, posting laps at some appropriate tracks like Pau, Charade and the like. This car has too much entry oversteer for me, which ironically is what I am usually looking to add to RR's defaults. But the Crossle is a different sort of beast, like GPL's BRM, and I needed to tame this to turn consistently fast laps, and I did so with stiffer front springs. That reduced the lift oversteer and made entries more settled. In my view, the gaps are not the gate to allow setup adjustment. Balance is. This link is an image showing my leaderboard double stint yesterday at Brands Indy in the Crossle. Yeah, it shows how I've hit the proverbial wall. But I will say that without stiffening the front end I would not have been so consistent. I would have preferred to go faster haha, but this shows every lap in the fifty eights, the sort of consistency I could only achieve with setups dialed in to suit me. Default would have had more deviation I am certain, as it doesn't handle as well (for me) https://simhq.net/forum/ubbthreads.php/ubb/download/Number/49841/filename/fiftyeights.jpg
I'm setting up Sachsenring now, my FL is low on temp and pressure and my FR is running hot, in order to bring up the temp and pressure on the FL I'm going to add front toe to give it some heat, what I don't want to do is bring it up so much it overpowers the RL or I'm creating understeer