Hi all,
I've player GP2 and GP4 years ago, and I decided to return and do a proper season. So, I tried to set up my car for Melbourne and run a race, but I found I must have the car badly setup or I'm lousy at braking. What happens is that on the highest braking curves, namely Turn 1, Turn 3, Turn 6 and especially Turn 9, I begin breaking at the 100 sign, or slighly before while the computer cars seem to do it at the 50 sign. Even though, I tend to lock the front wheels and if I try to turn the car will just go ahead and onto the grass. At other times, I will lose control of the rear with the same setup, which is kind of baffling to me. Understeer and oversteering with the same setup brake balance seems strange.
Then at Turns 13 and 14 I usually keep control of the car but this is the sector where I lose the most time, I always reduce to first gear in the first of these curves and 2nd gear in the other, but I seem to be constantly overtaken by the other cars even before the curve.
For reference, I'm playing a patched GP4 without any mod except GPxPatch, so it's the original cars and tracks. I'm playing with Car Power Team Dependent on and with the following setup:
Wings: 9 back, 14 front
Brake balance: 43.000 / 57.000
Gears: don't really know by heart, but I guess they go from 25 to 57.
ARB: 3000 / 300
Springs 1400 / 1000
Packers: 24 (front) / 35 (back)
Ride Height: 33 (front) / 55 (back)
Dampers and differencial: default values.
I've watched the car with the outside camera and I can see that braking from first gear locks the front wheels first. I'm playing with keyboard and have no access to pedals and steering wheel, and I tend to breaking pressing 'Z' all the way down while shifting the gears to 1st or 2nd in the curves I mentioned. I can understand the car understeering in the curves, as the front wheels, once locked, will not turn. But I don't understand losing the rear when I tested the brake balance at 43.500. For that reason, I stayed at 43.000 and never tried other values, but after a whole bad race I could notice I'm not braking efficiently. Also, I noticed that the computer cars accelerated faster than I did in the third sector, namely between Turn 13 and Turn 14.
Also, for reference, I'm playing in Ace, qualified within the 1'33'' second and during race I never went below 1'32'', with most of the last laps around 1'35'' and the best laps, just after pitting, around a consistent 1'33''. I managed to defend from Tomas Enge in Prost until the end of the race but my advantage over him swung constantly from 1.5 to 0.2, so it was not a steady drive. Finally, I admit I had to reload numerous times during the race until I got used to the car. Apparently, I made insufficient practise.
Can anyone please tell me where and how I have to improve? Thanks a lot.
Alex
P.S.: I'm posting from memory, so some values may be wrong, notably the qualifying time. But I'm pretty sure of the race lap times as I put them and most of the setup.