F1 Stockcar Setup Procedure by Drumbstick
Step 1 Getting Setup
This guide is not intended as a quick fix reference but a step by step guide produced in parts to help you setup your own cars. From this point forward I will not be supplying setups to people, however I will be willing to look at setups and help with hints and tips on what people can change to make things more to there liking.
At this time this guide is based on the Tarmac car, but the principles also apply to the shale version. I also presume from the start you are using a wheel and pedals and cannot vouch for how good this process is with a pad. For a pad one main difference will be a lot less steering lock.
Like all good guides we will start off not in the car but making sure everything else is correct. Surf on over to rfactorcentral and get the real feel plug-in. This little tool feeds the forces from the steering arms of the cars directly into you wheel instead of using the fake forces generated by the ISI code. Once downloaded follow the instructions in the read me to install it and either print it out or make a note of the shortcut commands.
Ok so now we have real feel installed, it is important to get a seating position that is both comfortable and constant there is no point the chair you are sitting on rolling across the floor when you hit the brake. It is also important that next time you sit down to race you are sat in the a similar position as the time before, unless you have a race frame you will not get in exactly the same position but there is no point sitting in completely different position each time you race as the car and your whole setup will feel different on track.
Its finally time to start rFactor, once it has loaded click on settings and then controls. Now select the force feedback tab and set it to low. You will also need to make sure your FFB setting is correct, for the MOMO this is -100. This can be tuned anywhere down to -40 depending on your prefferred force feedback strength.
Right time to jump on track though still not to do any setup work. Select a practice session with 23 cars, jump in the car and press CTRL F this should turn on the frame rate display in the top right corner. Now turn some laps keeping an eye on the frame rates if they drop below 35 then go back to settings and adjust the detail and repeat until you get it correct. This should stop any last minute detail changes before a race, there is no point doing 1000s of practice laps to find out that the pole you were using to brake has been turned off by the detail settings.
The last thing before you can start the tuning process is to get real feel setup correctly, now for me the stockcars work fine with the standard setting, except I only use 1200 standard force. Really this is personal choice but to if you start with my settings you can adjust it latter if you like.
Finally it is time to start testing properly. Go to a practice session with no other cars, we will use Ipswich for this test as it is easier to break the long corners there into entry, apex and exit. Once the track is loaded go into the garage and make the following adjustments
• Weight moved fully to the left.
• Weight moved fully to the rear
• Fuel set to 23 laps
• Make sure staggered tyres are selected (they are just faster)
• Wedge set to zero
• All springs set to as soft as they will go
• All dampers set to as soft as they go, both bump and rebound.
• All ride heights set to as low as they will go
• RF set to -5 degrees of camber
• LF set to +5 degrees of camber
• Front toe in set to 0
• RF and LF caster set to 6.0
• Both track bars to there lowest setting
• Tyre pressures, here I will give you shortcut of starting pressures. LF 102KPA(14.7PSI) RF 149KPA(21.6PSI) LR 133KPA(19.2PSI)RR 170KPA(24.6PSI) On a short track such as Birmingham these need to be about 20KPA lower on each wheel.
• Set the brake balance to about 52/48 although you will want to adjust this until you find a setting you are comfortable with.
OK you now have a base setup, save the setup as base and then you CAN hit the track. A setup like this should get you within half a second or so of the final time you produce.
The following instructions are the ones most people will ignore, they will skip this section and go on without ever reading it. To them I say(Actually I don’t because they are not reading this bit) good luck you will hopefully still get a lot from what comes after this but nowhere near as much as you would if you do the following.
Shut this guide down, run lap after lap after lap, until you can do 16 laps within a tenth to a tenth and a half of each other. Then go out and do another bunch of laps until you can do 3 runs all within the same time frame. Once you have done that shut the PC down go watch some TV annoy the missus but do not turn anymore laps for a few hours. Now follow the process again, if you are back to within a tenth of your earlier times you are ready to go onto step 2. If you are not you need to start this process again until you are.
Now I know some of you may think well I have already turned laps here and I am not that slow, why should I bother. Well to be honest I used to be like you, but believe me this is the only way you can get to know the car well enough to feel those subtle changes. Remember I have over 4000 laps logged around this track and when the latest update was released I still had to do 200+ laps before I started playing with the setup.
Ok before you are ready for step 2 please read the links below to get a basic idea of what we will be discussing. Don’t worry if you do not understand it all I will attempt to explain it in much simpler terms in the next instalment.
Summary
• Get your seating and game setup correct before you even start working on your setup
• If you think you have done enough laps you probably have not.
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Step 2 Moving the weight
So you have done hundreds of laps, you can drive the track without even looking, where do you go next. Well if you have read the articles above you will know we are moving onto weight distribution, or more accurately cross weight. But before we start playing with the car, let’s try and understand what is happening when we are in a turn.
Even if you have never been in a race car in real life you still have experiences of the forces at work. Think about what happens when you are in a car and the drivers hits the brakes, the car dives forwards as the body tries to keep moving and the brakes are trying to stop the wheels. This causes the weight on the car to move onto the front wheels.
Under acceleration the opposite happens, the body is slightly behind the wheels as they are being driven faster so the back of the car goes down, causing the weight to move to the back of the car.
In cornering the weight moves towards the outside of the car. Think about it we have all been in a car as either a driver or a passenger that has gone round a roundabout to quickly, and it has felt like you are falling towards the left. This is caused by the centrifugal force being exerted on the car, we don’t need to understand why this is happening (If you really must know read this ) we just need to accept that is does.
So we have established that if you brake the car dives to the front, causing the suspension to compress and the front tyres to become loaded. Now if we also turn into a left hand turn the weight moves towards the outside causing the weight to move to the RF corner more than the LF.
We also know that under acceleration the weight moves towards the rear, again combine this with the knowledge that a cars weight moves to the outside in a corner and we can see that the RR will become more loaded than the LR.
So now we know how the weight moves, we need to know why it matters where the weight is. Well below is as simple an explanation as I can come up with.
Every tyre ever made has a maximum force at which it grips best, there are a number of factors that contribute to the build up of this force including torque at the wheels(Including acceleration and braking) and the amount of weight on a tyre at any given time. For now we will ignore all the forces acting on the tyre except the weight at each corner of the car to keep things simple.
Imagine our car was sat flat with perfect 50% weight distribution left to right and front to back, in this scenario all the tyres would have the same grip levels say 5 out of 10
LF RF
5/10 5/10
LR RR
5/10 5/10
Now take the same car and imagine it accelerating, we know the weight moves off the front wheels and on to the back so some of the traction is lost from the front and added to the rear, as shown below.
LF RF
3/10 3/10
LR RR
7/10 7/10
Now imagine the car is going round a corner on neutral throttle, the weight will move to the outside so you will a result as shown below
LF RF
2/10 8/10
LR RR
2/10 8/10
Ok so we can now see how the weight moves around the car, but what if we then combine braking with turning in. Well as we have already said the weight moves to the front right.
LF RF
5/10 8/10
LR RR
2/10 5/10
Now the above car would probably handle quite well, but be slow as it is not using its maximum friction on each tyre. Let’s bring back some of the other forces that affect the tyres (We don’t need to know what they are yet just that they are there) now our rolling car has the following forces acting on the tyres when it is running in a straight line.
LF RF
7/10 7/10
LR RR
7/10 7/10
And when you brake and turn in the following happens
LF RF
7/10 11/10
LR RR
4/10 7/10
Now as you can see the right front has exceeded its maximum force. When this happens the tyre will loose grip, not turn in and just push or understeer into the corner.
Now by raising the LR a click or more we add cross weight to the car and move the balance more towards the LR(It has other effects but these are for another step). So now in a corner you get this scenario
LF RF
6/10 10/10
LR RR
6/10 6/10
Although this is a simplified exaggeration to make a point, as you can see all the tyres are under there maximum and the weight distribution is more even creating a more neutral car.
With our original car under acceleration we get the following while cornering at the same time.
LF RF
2/10 5/10
LR RR
5/10 8/10
If we add the other forces back in again we get the following, with the right rear over its maximum potential causing the car to oversteer.
LF RF
3/10 7/10
LR RR
7/10 11/10
By raising the left rear we get the following weights
LF RF
3/10 7/10
LR RR
8/10 10/10
These not only keep all the tyres under there maximum load but give you more grip on the inside rear giving more overall traction. However we could have caused oversteer on entry by moving the weight more towards the RF. And this is the problem with changing anything on the car it moves something else and changes the effect other settings have.
So there we have it in as simple a form as I can present it, however there is one aspect we have not covered and you will notice we moved the LR not the LF in the last example and this is because of the roll angle. Let’s go back to my roundabout example from earlier, you are all being pressed to the outside of the car. So what if the car started with the inside 1 inch lower and the outside 1 inch higher. Well the car would be much flatter in the turn and as a result each of the tyres would be closer to the maximum force available making not only the ride more comfortable but also quicker.
Ok that was a huge amount of information to take in and please go back and read it a few more times when you get a chance, it will become clearer I promise. Still now I am sure all you want to do is get back on the track so how do you put all this into practice so jump in the car and do a run just to get the feel one last time. When you have done that we can start adjusting the ride height, first place to start is the right rear as this will always end up the highest. Move it up a click and go for a run you will feel the car is more responsive at turn in and mid corner. This is because we have increase the weight on the LF giving it more grip, while also adding weight to the RR making the point it starts to slide slightly earlier. Add another click and go out again, the car should now be even more responsive. Keep going over this process until the car becomes loose normally after about 4 clicks.
When you are happy with the RR start on the RF, again go up one click at a time and keep going till you are happy with it. This time you should feel car getting better on entry until it gets tight normally after 2 or 3 clicks. When this is done move to the LR, this time you should be concentrating on corner exit which should become better until you start getting push mid corner. This will normally be no more that 1 click difference to the RF remember we need to keep the cross weight as close as possible
Well if you guessed we are going to the left front next you would be correct, however I have not developed a setup yet where this has been anything but the minimum. By raising this you will get much more response on turn in but for some reason I have never been able to get on with that. Just have a play and find what is best for you.
Summary
• Every setting on a race car really just changes the way the weight moves around the car.
• The ride heights will end up from highest LR, RF/LR, LF
• Once you have your ride heights as you like them, to induce turn in understeer raise the RF and vice versa for oversteer
• To get exit understeer raise the LR and vice versa for oversteer
• Keep the cross weight ride heights as close as possible
I suggest you read the links below before going on to step 3
References
http://www.hpiracing.com/tuning/chap_6.html
http://www.afcoracing.com/tech_pages/spring.shtml
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Step 3 Boing said Zebedy
Well if you managed to get this far through the guide and you are still reading, you will be glad to know the sections should get shorter from here on in. Having said that back to the classroom for a little bit.
For anyone reading this before there first coffee of the day here we are going to look at springs. So what do they do, well in there most basic function they hold the suspension up and allow the suspension to function.
Now you have the car ready to go with springs fitted how can, you use them to tune the handling. Well in simple terms the harder a spring the more weight is transferred to that corner, in some cases this is good and in some not. Lets look at some scenarios remembering what we learned about weight transfer earlier and see how we can use it to our advantage.
Braking & turn in
So you are flat out down the straight and there is a corner approaching, you hit the brakes and the weight is transferred to the front wheels. Now if you are running equal front springs, and the car is setup with neutral handling the same amount of weight gets transferred to both corners.
Now lets put a harder spring on the RF, more weight will get transferred to that corner under braking is this a good thing? Well it can be if that tyre is not already at its full load, however as we found out earlier the RF is very heavily loaded on corner entry so there is a good chance it will overload the tyre and case push.. It is at this stage that the people who put in the preparation and laps before they started playing with the setup will have a big advantage, because even changing a spring by 1 or 2 clicks you will feel the difference.
Now using the same principles as above and applying them to the LF, it is easy to see this could help turn in. If you have a harder spring on the LF then more of the weight will get transferred there giving the tyre more grip and more turn in. If we use our example from earlier
LF RF
6/10 10/10
LR RR
6/10 6/10
And then apply a harder LF spring we might get something like this
LF RF
8/10 8/10
LR RR
6/10 6/10
As you can see you take weight of the RF and put it on the LF. Again this is a simplified example of what is happening but illustrates the point well enough. In this example all we are actually doing is helping with tyre wear as neither of the tyres is, or was over its maximum load. However if the RF had been meeting its maximum load the car would now be more stable and quicker on turn entry.
Acceleration & corner exit
The same principle applies to the rear of the car when accelerating and exiting a corner. Now at this point I will say I have never found the need to run anything but the softest spring available on the right rear, I do encourage you to experiment with doing so but for the purpose of this guide I do not believe I need to give examples here as doing so would only be repeating the points made in the rest of this section.
So let’s jump straight to the LR and put a harder spring here, weight generally gets transferred to the rear of the car during acceleration so again let’s look at an example from above.
LF RF
3/10 7/10
LR RR
8/10 10/10
And after adding a stiffer right rear spring
LF RF
3/10 7/10
LR RR
9/10 9/10
As you can see more grip on the LR and again, if the RR had been over its grip limit it may now be under and perform much better.
There are two other issued to take into consideration. 1.) The roll angle will be affected because the resistance of the spring keeps the car slightly more upright causing the cross weight to change. 2.) In general terms the stiffer a car, the more responsive it is on the controls but the less overall grip it has.
The first of these is certainly true but I have found in RF that the difference is so small that it can be ignored; the second I do not think applies as much to a short oval car especially within the spring ranges available in game.
So how do we use this to adjust our basic setup, well I always start with the left front again 1 click at a time go out see how it feels and then try the next setting. At this stage there are two factors to take into account. 1.) Feel 2.) lap times. Generally when doing the LF I will keep going up a click until the car has excessive oversteer on exit. Once you have got to this stage then try and tune the exit oversteer out by adjusting the LR.
Once you have the inside springs adjusted to your liking, move to the right front. Here you need to adjust the corner until the car starts to push on turn in. As discussed earlier you may not be using the whole amount of grip of the tyre so not using it to its maximum potential. Be careful when adjusting this corner though that you do not induce oversteer mid turn as the tyres becomes more loaded.
Summary
• Springs are used mainly to fine tune weight transfer
• Spring rates will generally end up (Hardest to softest (LR. LF. RF, RR)
• Once you have a basic ride height setup, try changing springs before adjusting it.
• Harder springs cause more weight to be transferred to that corner.
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Step 4 Bump & Rebound
First things first, let’s get the terminology out of the way.
Bump: is when the damper closes. This can be over a bump as the wheel moves up over the bump, or when you brake and the weight moves onto the front wheels causing the weight to move forward and the car to dive onto the front suspension.
Rebound: is when the suspension opens. This can be after a bump when the wheel moves back down, or when you brake and the weight moves onto the front wheels causing the weight to move forward and the rear to rise into the air.
Shock Absorbers/Damper: When people refer to shock absorbers or Dampers they are refereeing to the same thing. There is an argument in which some people say they are both, and others say that the springs absorb the shock and the dampers just dissipate the force. That discussion I will leave to others. But will refer to dampers from here on in so as not to offend anyone.
So why have dampers on a car. Well when a car goes over a bump the springs and dampers absorb the force and not only make the ride smoother but do there best to keep the wheels in contact with the ground increasing grip. Now if a car just had springs it would continue to bounce after a bump for quite some time. Think of a ball, if it is dropped it keeps bouncing until all the force has been dissipated and depending on the force of the initial bounce this can go on for some time. Dampers stop this take the force out of the spring and stop the car bouncing.
For the purpose of this article we will presume that the damper ranges that are available in the game are all within the required range to keep the wheels on the ground. We will also not discuss there effectiveness over bumps as all the UKSOM tracks are reasonably flat.
Some of you may be thinking that if we are not going to discuss the above, what are we going to discuss. Well I am afraid it is back to our old friend weight and how it is distributed around the car. Although dampers do not actually change the amount of weight moved around, they can change how quickly the weight being moved does so.
On corner entry we have already established the weight moves to the front right tyre, but by controlling how quickly the weight move there we can fine tune the way the car behaves on entry. As a rule of thumb weight transfer is controlled by the rebound setting, so again once you are happy with a setup you should only ever have to adjust the LR and to a lesser extent the LF. But that is getting ahead of ourselves first lets look at the effect. By adding more rebound damping to the LF it will slow the weight transfer to the RF down, the more you add the more it will slow it down. So what does this achieve, well a number of things and we are now at a stage where everyone’s setup will be sufficiently different that we need to look at more than one possibility.
Scenario 1(Too much weight being transferred on entry)
This is the scenario I am normally faced with as I like to run a car that is very soft. With a soft car the body rolls more and although I run very hard inside springs to help compensate I always need to use the dampers also to slow the transfer down.
The way I do this is to run quite a hard LR rebound damper, this slows the weight transfer just enough that I can get the car turned in before the RF becomes overloaded and starts to push. By doing this is allows me to get on the throttle earlier and move the weight backwards to distribute it more evenly.
The advantage of doing this is that you can run a slightly softer car overall thus generating more grip. It can also keep the weight more on the LR on exit giving you more traction.
The disadvantage is that on warn tyres it can cause some push as the car is not getting rotated as quickly.
How to know you have gone to far, well simply the car will start pushing again on entry. I know this sound’s odd but what can end up happening it to much weight is on the LR for to long and not enough on the RF causing the car to push on.
Scenario 2(Not enough weight being transferred)
If you like a harder sprung car you may be at the point where the weight is being transferred to the RF very quickly, but not overloading the tyre. In this case the car will be very responsive and likely to feel like it is oversteering into the corner. To fix this we user the same method as above, raise the LR rebound setting and stop the weight being transferred as quickly. This will settle the car down.
The advantage of this setup is that the car will feel more responsive and lighter.
The disadvantage is that you will be generating less overall grip, so your optimum corner speed will be lower.
You may be thinking that is in the above two scenarios the cure is the same then why do we need to know he difference. Well it is important to know which problem you are fixing. If you have a car that is too hard it is probably worth trying a softer RF and harder LF spring to see if you can get the desired result, and if you fins you are having front tyre wear problems it is probably worth trying to run a slightly harder RR spring or LF to move the weight in the car distributing it more evenly.
Ok how about corner exit, well this can be adjusted by the LF rebound damper, and to a much lesser extend the LF. Scenario one above is exactly what happens on every setup I have seen for the F1 Stock cars. If you think over 650HP is going through the rear wheels of these cars on skinny tyres you can see we going to struggle not to overload the RR when the majority of the weight is on it and we are trying to get all that power down. We can lessen this by running a higher LF rebound value. How to you know when you have gone to far, well as above when what you are trying to cure gets worse. If the weight does not travel quickly enough to the RR then it will not be at its maximum grip level causing oversteer.
Bump settings
I know earlier I said we would ignore these but, really that is not possible. I will not say to much about them except have a play, the bump settings do control the un sprung mass of the car(The wheels hubs etc) and do have an impact on the handling but I have fond on most tracks running them higher that 3 or 4 on the outside tyres just causes a loss of grip at that corner.
I did promise these sections would get shorter, it appears I was wrong oh well on to how to apply what we have learned to our base setup. The LR is the place to start again, keep raising the rebound damper until you get entry push and back it off a click or two. Now raise the LF a click at a time until you get exit oversteer.
Summary
• Rebound Dampers are used to control how quickly the weight in the car occurs
• Bump damper control the unsprung mass over bumps
• Your car should now be quite well balanced and competitive.
References
http://www.afcoracing.com/tech_pages/shocks.shtml
http://www.koniracing.com/ovalsetup.html
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Step 5 Track bars, Tracking and Gearing.
Track bars
So what do they do, well there soul purpose is to stop the axel moving backwards and forwards. And for once I am not trying to simplify things, that is all they are there for. So why are they adjustable? Well by lengthening them we can locate the axel further back in the car thus changing the handling, or more precisely loosen the car up.
How do we adjust them to make us go faster then? Well as a general rule of thumb you will not want to have the outside much longer than the inside as this will cause the axel to point towards the fence and not around the corner. However as the angles natural position is sitting pointing slightly towards the corner how much difference you can have before it is pointing the right way I do not know. Apart from this there is no science behind how to set them up is I all down to individual driving styles. I will generally run them very short but I have seen setups with longer bars that work for there drivers, as you will see in this section we are really down to feel now.
Tracking
Tracking is the position the two front wheels are in when no steering is applied. When the tracking is set to 0 the two wheels point straight ahead, when – numbers are applied the front wheels point outwards and + numbers point the wheels in. On a real race car what settings you run are determined by a number of factors including the Ackerman angle and position of the steering arms. As we cannot measure these in rFactor all you really need to know is that toe out gives more turn in and vice versa for toe in.
Again there are no hard and fast rules about how you should adjust these in rFactor. I would suggest you always run – number in the region of -5 to -30 but that is personal preference and you will have to see what works for you. You will probably find tough that if you adjust the caster and camber you will need to also adjust the toe as they change the wheel positions during the turning circle of the wheels.
Gears
I think everyone knows what gears do, you change up the gears to go faster and down to go slower.
When you first look at them in rFactor it can seem like there are endless numbers to choose from. Well to be honest the only number we are interested in is the one in brackets next to second gear. This is the final drive ratio for that gear and will determine our racing speed. I have found with all the tracks release so far that you will always find this number in the range 4:80 to 5:80.
Nearly every guide you read will tell you optimal gearing will be when the engine is just about to hit the rev limiter as you brake, and although this is true for most cars the V8s have such a large and flat power band we can take this one step further. A car that is revving higher will be looser; this is why you sometimes hear commentators say a driver is short shifting. Knowing this can be use to our advantage, if you are struggling to get a car to turn in then running gearing that causes it to rev a bit higher can help this. On the other hand if you are struggling to get the power down on exit being at slightly lower revs can help this. This can be especially useful to know on shale.
So once again this is the point where I say that, it is down to personal choice. The engine gives you an advantage in these cars and as long as you keep it in the power band and do not reach the limiter you can gain that vital extra half a tenth by getting this right.
Summary
• Making track bars longer will make the car looser.
• Adding more –toe will help the car turn in
• You can use the gearing to help adjust turn in and exit balance.
Terms of reference
• A Run: Whenever I refer to a run it is always 16 laps
• Oversteer: When the rear tyres loose grip before the front and the car tries to spin.
• Understeer: When the front tyres loose traction before the rears and the car goes straight instead of turning the corner.
• Cross weight: The balance of weight between the RF and the LF
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written by Drumbstick, many thanks to him for the massive amount of time put into this guide.
Step 1 Getting Setup
This guide is not intended as a quick fix reference but a step by step guide produced in parts to help you setup your own cars. From this point forward I will not be supplying setups to people, however I will be willing to look at setups and help with hints and tips on what people can change to make things more to there liking.
At this time this guide is based on the Tarmac car, but the principles also apply to the shale version. I also presume from the start you are using a wheel and pedals and cannot vouch for how good this process is with a pad. For a pad one main difference will be a lot less steering lock.
Like all good guides we will start off not in the car but making sure everything else is correct. Surf on over to rfactorcentral and get the real feel plug-in. This little tool feeds the forces from the steering arms of the cars directly into you wheel instead of using the fake forces generated by the ISI code. Once downloaded follow the instructions in the read me to install it and either print it out or make a note of the shortcut commands.
Ok so now we have real feel installed, it is important to get a seating position that is both comfortable and constant there is no point the chair you are sitting on rolling across the floor when you hit the brake. It is also important that next time you sit down to race you are sat in the a similar position as the time before, unless you have a race frame you will not get in exactly the same position but there is no point sitting in completely different position each time you race as the car and your whole setup will feel different on track.
Its finally time to start rFactor, once it has loaded click on settings and then controls. Now select the force feedback tab and set it to low. You will also need to make sure your FFB setting is correct, for the MOMO this is -100. This can be tuned anywhere down to -40 depending on your prefferred force feedback strength.
Right time to jump on track though still not to do any setup work. Select a practice session with 23 cars, jump in the car and press CTRL F this should turn on the frame rate display in the top right corner. Now turn some laps keeping an eye on the frame rates if they drop below 35 then go back to settings and adjust the detail and repeat until you get it correct. This should stop any last minute detail changes before a race, there is no point doing 1000s of practice laps to find out that the pole you were using to brake has been turned off by the detail settings.
The last thing before you can start the tuning process is to get real feel setup correctly, now for me the stockcars work fine with the standard setting, except I only use 1200 standard force. Really this is personal choice but to if you start with my settings you can adjust it latter if you like.
Finally it is time to start testing properly. Go to a practice session with no other cars, we will use Ipswich for this test as it is easier to break the long corners there into entry, apex and exit. Once the track is loaded go into the garage and make the following adjustments
• Weight moved fully to the left.
• Weight moved fully to the rear
• Fuel set to 23 laps
• Make sure staggered tyres are selected (they are just faster)
• Wedge set to zero
• All springs set to as soft as they will go
• All dampers set to as soft as they go, both bump and rebound.
• All ride heights set to as low as they will go
• RF set to -5 degrees of camber
• LF set to +5 degrees of camber
• Front toe in set to 0
• RF and LF caster set to 6.0
• Both track bars to there lowest setting
• Tyre pressures, here I will give you shortcut of starting pressures. LF 102KPA(14.7PSI) RF 149KPA(21.6PSI) LR 133KPA(19.2PSI)RR 170KPA(24.6PSI) On a short track such as Birmingham these need to be about 20KPA lower on each wheel.
• Set the brake balance to about 52/48 although you will want to adjust this until you find a setting you are comfortable with.
OK you now have a base setup, save the setup as base and then you CAN hit the track. A setup like this should get you within half a second or so of the final time you produce.
The following instructions are the ones most people will ignore, they will skip this section and go on without ever reading it. To them I say(Actually I don’t because they are not reading this bit) good luck you will hopefully still get a lot from what comes after this but nowhere near as much as you would if you do the following.
Shut this guide down, run lap after lap after lap, until you can do 16 laps within a tenth to a tenth and a half of each other. Then go out and do another bunch of laps until you can do 3 runs all within the same time frame. Once you have done that shut the PC down go watch some TV annoy the missus but do not turn anymore laps for a few hours. Now follow the process again, if you are back to within a tenth of your earlier times you are ready to go onto step 2. If you are not you need to start this process again until you are.
Now I know some of you may think well I have already turned laps here and I am not that slow, why should I bother. Well to be honest I used to be like you, but believe me this is the only way you can get to know the car well enough to feel those subtle changes. Remember I have over 4000 laps logged around this track and when the latest update was released I still had to do 200+ laps before I started playing with the setup.
Ok before you are ready for step 2 please read the links below to get a basic idea of what we will be discussing. Don’t worry if you do not understand it all I will attempt to explain it in much simpler terms in the next instalment.
Summary
• Get your seating and game setup correct before you even start working on your setup
• If you think you have done enough laps you probably have not.
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Step 2 Moving the weight
So you have done hundreds of laps, you can drive the track without even looking, where do you go next. Well if you have read the articles above you will know we are moving onto weight distribution, or more accurately cross weight. But before we start playing with the car, let’s try and understand what is happening when we are in a turn.
Even if you have never been in a race car in real life you still have experiences of the forces at work. Think about what happens when you are in a car and the drivers hits the brakes, the car dives forwards as the body tries to keep moving and the brakes are trying to stop the wheels. This causes the weight on the car to move onto the front wheels.
Under acceleration the opposite happens, the body is slightly behind the wheels as they are being driven faster so the back of the car goes down, causing the weight to move to the back of the car.
In cornering the weight moves towards the outside of the car. Think about it we have all been in a car as either a driver or a passenger that has gone round a roundabout to quickly, and it has felt like you are falling towards the left. This is caused by the centrifugal force being exerted on the car, we don’t need to understand why this is happening (If you really must know read this ) we just need to accept that is does.
So we have established that if you brake the car dives to the front, causing the suspension to compress and the front tyres to become loaded. Now if we also turn into a left hand turn the weight moves towards the outside causing the weight to move to the RF corner more than the LF.
We also know that under acceleration the weight moves towards the rear, again combine this with the knowledge that a cars weight moves to the outside in a corner and we can see that the RR will become more loaded than the LR.
So now we know how the weight moves, we need to know why it matters where the weight is. Well below is as simple an explanation as I can come up with.
Every tyre ever made has a maximum force at which it grips best, there are a number of factors that contribute to the build up of this force including torque at the wheels(Including acceleration and braking) and the amount of weight on a tyre at any given time. For now we will ignore all the forces acting on the tyre except the weight at each corner of the car to keep things simple.
Imagine our car was sat flat with perfect 50% weight distribution left to right and front to back, in this scenario all the tyres would have the same grip levels say 5 out of 10
LF RF
5/10 5/10
LR RR
5/10 5/10
Now take the same car and imagine it accelerating, we know the weight moves off the front wheels and on to the back so some of the traction is lost from the front and added to the rear, as shown below.
LF RF
3/10 3/10
LR RR
7/10 7/10
Now imagine the car is going round a corner on neutral throttle, the weight will move to the outside so you will a result as shown below
LF RF
2/10 8/10
LR RR
2/10 8/10
Ok so we can now see how the weight moves around the car, but what if we then combine braking with turning in. Well as we have already said the weight moves to the front right.
LF RF
5/10 8/10
LR RR
2/10 5/10
Now the above car would probably handle quite well, but be slow as it is not using its maximum friction on each tyre. Let’s bring back some of the other forces that affect the tyres (We don’t need to know what they are yet just that they are there) now our rolling car has the following forces acting on the tyres when it is running in a straight line.
LF RF
7/10 7/10
LR RR
7/10 7/10
And when you brake and turn in the following happens
LF RF
7/10 11/10
LR RR
4/10 7/10
Now as you can see the right front has exceeded its maximum force. When this happens the tyre will loose grip, not turn in and just push or understeer into the corner.
Now by raising the LR a click or more we add cross weight to the car and move the balance more towards the LR(It has other effects but these are for another step). So now in a corner you get this scenario
LF RF
6/10 10/10
LR RR
6/10 6/10
Although this is a simplified exaggeration to make a point, as you can see all the tyres are under there maximum and the weight distribution is more even creating a more neutral car.
With our original car under acceleration we get the following while cornering at the same time.
LF RF
2/10 5/10
LR RR
5/10 8/10
If we add the other forces back in again we get the following, with the right rear over its maximum potential causing the car to oversteer.
LF RF
3/10 7/10
LR RR
7/10 11/10
By raising the left rear we get the following weights
LF RF
3/10 7/10
LR RR
8/10 10/10
These not only keep all the tyres under there maximum load but give you more grip on the inside rear giving more overall traction. However we could have caused oversteer on entry by moving the weight more towards the RF. And this is the problem with changing anything on the car it moves something else and changes the effect other settings have.
So there we have it in as simple a form as I can present it, however there is one aspect we have not covered and you will notice we moved the LR not the LF in the last example and this is because of the roll angle. Let’s go back to my roundabout example from earlier, you are all being pressed to the outside of the car. So what if the car started with the inside 1 inch lower and the outside 1 inch higher. Well the car would be much flatter in the turn and as a result each of the tyres would be closer to the maximum force available making not only the ride more comfortable but also quicker.
Ok that was a huge amount of information to take in and please go back and read it a few more times when you get a chance, it will become clearer I promise. Still now I am sure all you want to do is get back on the track so how do you put all this into practice so jump in the car and do a run just to get the feel one last time. When you have done that we can start adjusting the ride height, first place to start is the right rear as this will always end up the highest. Move it up a click and go for a run you will feel the car is more responsive at turn in and mid corner. This is because we have increase the weight on the LF giving it more grip, while also adding weight to the RR making the point it starts to slide slightly earlier. Add another click and go out again, the car should now be even more responsive. Keep going over this process until the car becomes loose normally after about 4 clicks.
When you are happy with the RR start on the RF, again go up one click at a time and keep going till you are happy with it. This time you should feel car getting better on entry until it gets tight normally after 2 or 3 clicks. When this is done move to the LR, this time you should be concentrating on corner exit which should become better until you start getting push mid corner. This will normally be no more that 1 click difference to the RF remember we need to keep the cross weight as close as possible
Well if you guessed we are going to the left front next you would be correct, however I have not developed a setup yet where this has been anything but the minimum. By raising this you will get much more response on turn in but for some reason I have never been able to get on with that. Just have a play and find what is best for you.
Summary
• Every setting on a race car really just changes the way the weight moves around the car.
• The ride heights will end up from highest LR, RF/LR, LF
• Once you have your ride heights as you like them, to induce turn in understeer raise the RF and vice versa for oversteer
• To get exit understeer raise the LR and vice versa for oversteer
• Keep the cross weight ride heights as close as possible
I suggest you read the links below before going on to step 3
References
http://www.hpiracing.com/tuning/chap_6.html
http://www.afcoracing.com/tech_pages/spring.shtml
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Step 3 Boing said Zebedy
Well if you managed to get this far through the guide and you are still reading, you will be glad to know the sections should get shorter from here on in. Having said that back to the classroom for a little bit.
For anyone reading this before there first coffee of the day here we are going to look at springs. So what do they do, well in there most basic function they hold the suspension up and allow the suspension to function.
Now you have the car ready to go with springs fitted how can, you use them to tune the handling. Well in simple terms the harder a spring the more weight is transferred to that corner, in some cases this is good and in some not. Lets look at some scenarios remembering what we learned about weight transfer earlier and see how we can use it to our advantage.
Braking & turn in
So you are flat out down the straight and there is a corner approaching, you hit the brakes and the weight is transferred to the front wheels. Now if you are running equal front springs, and the car is setup with neutral handling the same amount of weight gets transferred to both corners.
Now lets put a harder spring on the RF, more weight will get transferred to that corner under braking is this a good thing? Well it can be if that tyre is not already at its full load, however as we found out earlier the RF is very heavily loaded on corner entry so there is a good chance it will overload the tyre and case push.. It is at this stage that the people who put in the preparation and laps before they started playing with the setup will have a big advantage, because even changing a spring by 1 or 2 clicks you will feel the difference.
Now using the same principles as above and applying them to the LF, it is easy to see this could help turn in. If you have a harder spring on the LF then more of the weight will get transferred there giving the tyre more grip and more turn in. If we use our example from earlier
LF RF
6/10 10/10
LR RR
6/10 6/10
And then apply a harder LF spring we might get something like this
LF RF
8/10 8/10
LR RR
6/10 6/10
As you can see you take weight of the RF and put it on the LF. Again this is a simplified example of what is happening but illustrates the point well enough. In this example all we are actually doing is helping with tyre wear as neither of the tyres is, or was over its maximum load. However if the RF had been meeting its maximum load the car would now be more stable and quicker on turn entry.
Acceleration & corner exit
The same principle applies to the rear of the car when accelerating and exiting a corner. Now at this point I will say I have never found the need to run anything but the softest spring available on the right rear, I do encourage you to experiment with doing so but for the purpose of this guide I do not believe I need to give examples here as doing so would only be repeating the points made in the rest of this section.
So let’s jump straight to the LR and put a harder spring here, weight generally gets transferred to the rear of the car during acceleration so again let’s look at an example from above.
LF RF
3/10 7/10
LR RR
8/10 10/10
And after adding a stiffer right rear spring
LF RF
3/10 7/10
LR RR
9/10 9/10
As you can see more grip on the LR and again, if the RR had been over its grip limit it may now be under and perform much better.
There are two other issued to take into consideration. 1.) The roll angle will be affected because the resistance of the spring keeps the car slightly more upright causing the cross weight to change. 2.) In general terms the stiffer a car, the more responsive it is on the controls but the less overall grip it has.
The first of these is certainly true but I have found in RF that the difference is so small that it can be ignored; the second I do not think applies as much to a short oval car especially within the spring ranges available in game.
So how do we use this to adjust our basic setup, well I always start with the left front again 1 click at a time go out see how it feels and then try the next setting. At this stage there are two factors to take into account. 1.) Feel 2.) lap times. Generally when doing the LF I will keep going up a click until the car has excessive oversteer on exit. Once you have got to this stage then try and tune the exit oversteer out by adjusting the LR.
Once you have the inside springs adjusted to your liking, move to the right front. Here you need to adjust the corner until the car starts to push on turn in. As discussed earlier you may not be using the whole amount of grip of the tyre so not using it to its maximum potential. Be careful when adjusting this corner though that you do not induce oversteer mid turn as the tyres becomes more loaded.
Summary
• Springs are used mainly to fine tune weight transfer
• Spring rates will generally end up (Hardest to softest (LR. LF. RF, RR)
• Once you have a basic ride height setup, try changing springs before adjusting it.
• Harder springs cause more weight to be transferred to that corner.
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Step 4 Bump & Rebound
First things first, let’s get the terminology out of the way.
Bump: is when the damper closes. This can be over a bump as the wheel moves up over the bump, or when you brake and the weight moves onto the front wheels causing the weight to move forward and the car to dive onto the front suspension.
Rebound: is when the suspension opens. This can be after a bump when the wheel moves back down, or when you brake and the weight moves onto the front wheels causing the weight to move forward and the rear to rise into the air.
Shock Absorbers/Damper: When people refer to shock absorbers or Dampers they are refereeing to the same thing. There is an argument in which some people say they are both, and others say that the springs absorb the shock and the dampers just dissipate the force. That discussion I will leave to others. But will refer to dampers from here on in so as not to offend anyone.
So why have dampers on a car. Well when a car goes over a bump the springs and dampers absorb the force and not only make the ride smoother but do there best to keep the wheels in contact with the ground increasing grip. Now if a car just had springs it would continue to bounce after a bump for quite some time. Think of a ball, if it is dropped it keeps bouncing until all the force has been dissipated and depending on the force of the initial bounce this can go on for some time. Dampers stop this take the force out of the spring and stop the car bouncing.
For the purpose of this article we will presume that the damper ranges that are available in the game are all within the required range to keep the wheels on the ground. We will also not discuss there effectiveness over bumps as all the UKSOM tracks are reasonably flat.
Some of you may be thinking that if we are not going to discuss the above, what are we going to discuss. Well I am afraid it is back to our old friend weight and how it is distributed around the car. Although dampers do not actually change the amount of weight moved around, they can change how quickly the weight being moved does so.
On corner entry we have already established the weight moves to the front right tyre, but by controlling how quickly the weight move there we can fine tune the way the car behaves on entry. As a rule of thumb weight transfer is controlled by the rebound setting, so again once you are happy with a setup you should only ever have to adjust the LR and to a lesser extent the LF. But that is getting ahead of ourselves first lets look at the effect. By adding more rebound damping to the LF it will slow the weight transfer to the RF down, the more you add the more it will slow it down. So what does this achieve, well a number of things and we are now at a stage where everyone’s setup will be sufficiently different that we need to look at more than one possibility.
Scenario 1(Too much weight being transferred on entry)
This is the scenario I am normally faced with as I like to run a car that is very soft. With a soft car the body rolls more and although I run very hard inside springs to help compensate I always need to use the dampers also to slow the transfer down.
The way I do this is to run quite a hard LR rebound damper, this slows the weight transfer just enough that I can get the car turned in before the RF becomes overloaded and starts to push. By doing this is allows me to get on the throttle earlier and move the weight backwards to distribute it more evenly.
The advantage of doing this is that you can run a slightly softer car overall thus generating more grip. It can also keep the weight more on the LR on exit giving you more traction.
The disadvantage is that on warn tyres it can cause some push as the car is not getting rotated as quickly.
How to know you have gone to far, well simply the car will start pushing again on entry. I know this sound’s odd but what can end up happening it to much weight is on the LR for to long and not enough on the RF causing the car to push on.
Scenario 2(Not enough weight being transferred)
If you like a harder sprung car you may be at the point where the weight is being transferred to the RF very quickly, but not overloading the tyre. In this case the car will be very responsive and likely to feel like it is oversteering into the corner. To fix this we user the same method as above, raise the LR rebound setting and stop the weight being transferred as quickly. This will settle the car down.
The advantage of this setup is that the car will feel more responsive and lighter.
The disadvantage is that you will be generating less overall grip, so your optimum corner speed will be lower.
You may be thinking that is in the above two scenarios the cure is the same then why do we need to know he difference. Well it is important to know which problem you are fixing. If you have a car that is too hard it is probably worth trying a softer RF and harder LF spring to see if you can get the desired result, and if you fins you are having front tyre wear problems it is probably worth trying to run a slightly harder RR spring or LF to move the weight in the car distributing it more evenly.
Ok how about corner exit, well this can be adjusted by the LF rebound damper, and to a much lesser extend the LF. Scenario one above is exactly what happens on every setup I have seen for the F1 Stock cars. If you think over 650HP is going through the rear wheels of these cars on skinny tyres you can see we going to struggle not to overload the RR when the majority of the weight is on it and we are trying to get all that power down. We can lessen this by running a higher LF rebound value. How to you know when you have gone to far, well as above when what you are trying to cure gets worse. If the weight does not travel quickly enough to the RR then it will not be at its maximum grip level causing oversteer.
Bump settings
I know earlier I said we would ignore these but, really that is not possible. I will not say to much about them except have a play, the bump settings do control the un sprung mass of the car(The wheels hubs etc) and do have an impact on the handling but I have fond on most tracks running them higher that 3 or 4 on the outside tyres just causes a loss of grip at that corner.
I did promise these sections would get shorter, it appears I was wrong oh well on to how to apply what we have learned to our base setup. The LR is the place to start again, keep raising the rebound damper until you get entry push and back it off a click or two. Now raise the LF a click at a time until you get exit oversteer.
Summary
• Rebound Dampers are used to control how quickly the weight in the car occurs
• Bump damper control the unsprung mass over bumps
• Your car should now be quite well balanced and competitive.
References
http://www.afcoracing.com/tech_pages/shocks.shtml
http://www.koniracing.com/ovalsetup.html
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Step 5 Track bars, Tracking and Gearing.
Track bars
So what do they do, well there soul purpose is to stop the axel moving backwards and forwards. And for once I am not trying to simplify things, that is all they are there for. So why are they adjustable? Well by lengthening them we can locate the axel further back in the car thus changing the handling, or more precisely loosen the car up.
How do we adjust them to make us go faster then? Well as a general rule of thumb you will not want to have the outside much longer than the inside as this will cause the axel to point towards the fence and not around the corner. However as the angles natural position is sitting pointing slightly towards the corner how much difference you can have before it is pointing the right way I do not know. Apart from this there is no science behind how to set them up is I all down to individual driving styles. I will generally run them very short but I have seen setups with longer bars that work for there drivers, as you will see in this section we are really down to feel now.
Tracking
Tracking is the position the two front wheels are in when no steering is applied. When the tracking is set to 0 the two wheels point straight ahead, when – numbers are applied the front wheels point outwards and + numbers point the wheels in. On a real race car what settings you run are determined by a number of factors including the Ackerman angle and position of the steering arms. As we cannot measure these in rFactor all you really need to know is that toe out gives more turn in and vice versa for toe in.
Again there are no hard and fast rules about how you should adjust these in rFactor. I would suggest you always run – number in the region of -5 to -30 but that is personal preference and you will have to see what works for you. You will probably find tough that if you adjust the caster and camber you will need to also adjust the toe as they change the wheel positions during the turning circle of the wheels.
Gears
I think everyone knows what gears do, you change up the gears to go faster and down to go slower.
When you first look at them in rFactor it can seem like there are endless numbers to choose from. Well to be honest the only number we are interested in is the one in brackets next to second gear. This is the final drive ratio for that gear and will determine our racing speed. I have found with all the tracks release so far that you will always find this number in the range 4:80 to 5:80.
Nearly every guide you read will tell you optimal gearing will be when the engine is just about to hit the rev limiter as you brake, and although this is true for most cars the V8s have such a large and flat power band we can take this one step further. A car that is revving higher will be looser; this is why you sometimes hear commentators say a driver is short shifting. Knowing this can be use to our advantage, if you are struggling to get a car to turn in then running gearing that causes it to rev a bit higher can help this. On the other hand if you are struggling to get the power down on exit being at slightly lower revs can help this. This can be especially useful to know on shale.
So once again this is the point where I say that, it is down to personal choice. The engine gives you an advantage in these cars and as long as you keep it in the power band and do not reach the limiter you can gain that vital extra half a tenth by getting this right.
Summary
• Making track bars longer will make the car looser.
• Adding more –toe will help the car turn in
• You can use the gearing to help adjust turn in and exit balance.
Terms of reference
• A Run: Whenever I refer to a run it is always 16 laps
• Oversteer: When the rear tyres loose grip before the front and the car tries to spin.
• Understeer: When the front tyres loose traction before the rears and the car goes straight instead of turning the corner.
• Cross weight: The balance of weight between the RF and the LF
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written by Drumbstick, many thanks to him for the massive amount of time put into this guide.
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