Advanced setups

OK after several years of using the basic (okay laugh) setup i decided i might give the advanced setup a bit of a go, especially after seeing the hotlap comp times! I'm slowly going through each of the settings to seee what effect it has on the car and how much. I read the little summaries in GP4 but they are crap and dont give me much indication.

First on the list was roll bars. i'm testing @ monza btw. My fastest time with deafult roll bars was a pretty crap 1:23.123. I made the front roll bar to the max and did a 1:23:012! I only noticed a hint of oversteer, not enough to take me off the road. I changed the fronts back and repeated the same process with the rear. Had a touch of understeer and went faster again.
WTF is effect of roll bars. Should i leave it at default or what? I'll probably have more on the front cos a i like the front nice and pointy

I'm going to see the effect of the springs on the weekend. i have alerady tried it before but i will make sure i know how to use them properly this time. Is it better to have stiffer fronts cos they seem to bounce down the straights and my rear plank is hitting the ground into braking.

Sorry about the long post , but i need to start training for next years hotlap comp inorder to be competetive.

Piranha



-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I live to eat and eat to live!

The ARBs have a number of effects on the car and watching the telemetry will highlight them. (Note: I have found some none realistic results in the telemetry, so use is as a guide, not as absolute truth. )

The primary function is to keep the car from leaning so much from side to side. Hence the term "anti-roll" This has a secondary effect of making the car more reactive to steering input. Since you don't have to wait for the weight of the car to shift from left to right , or vise-verse, going through chicanes is snappier. The delay between turning into a corner and the car actually turning is less. Another effect is that the car won't roll to the side as much, during long or high speed corners. Since the right and left sides are more rigidly connected , with higher ARB settings, the inside tire would have to lift off the ground, to roll to much. If you watch some of the actuall F1 coverage, you will see the inside tires lockup sooner, or stop rolling entirely in sharp corners. That's becaus they run so stiff that the inside tire gets very "unweighted" in the corners.

Ah, but there is a bad side. Since a stiff ARB makes the weight of the car work harder on the outside wheel, the car will have less grip in the corner and will understeer. It will also wear the tires out faster, since the work is not balanced between right and left.

How well that GP4 actually models this is up for debate. What you try to find is a setting that is agile enough for your driving but doesn't understeer.


JohnW

Note: The above post delt with the FRONT anti-roll bar, when talking about under or over steer.

You will notice that the rear ARB has much lower scale of values than the front. This is because you often have the rear ARB set much lower than the front. In some setups, you set the rear ARB to ZERO. Why ? Because you often what as much grip at the rear as you can, when accelerating from a corner. If it is too stiff, the back end will step out. In GPx, that most often means a spin.

You can very much affect the under or over steer of the car by changing the ratio of F/R anti-roll bars. A high Front and very low rear ARB will give you understeer, all things being within a normal range. The reverse will give you oversteer. I often have the front at about 1000 - 1200 and the rear at 100 or below. If I want to induce a bit if oversteer, I give the ration a tweak. Of course this in NOT the only way, or even the BEST way to change from under to over steer, but it is effective. If you have trouble losing traction on corner exit ( under acceleration ) softening the rear ARB will help.

p.s Considering my lowly HL time for Spa, this can all be taken as accurate or not.


JohnW

Anyone have differing ideas on this ?


JohnW