rec.autos.simulators

I've spent a bit of time playing with the setup of a car (at Imola). From my
understanding and the manual I have tried to lower the car as much as possible
(making sure there's not too much plank wear) to increase downforce without
increasing drag. If you do some laps and then look in the performance graphs,
lower the car's setup (front and back) until you're generally around 10mm. At
some points it's much lower (down to 0) than this but that's OK as it's only a
bit of the plank that will wear. When lapping check the in car indicator to see
if the front/back of the car is bottoming out more - it should be about the same
(unless you want to alter the balance of the car).

Also you should check out the suspension travel graph. Load the car with packers
front and back to reduce this as much as possible - especially at parts of the
track where you're bottoming out. It's OK to run on the bump stops as the car
seems to handle fine and you're not really affected. For my Imola setup I've got
about 26mm of packers at the front and about 40 odd at the back. Adding packers
can alter your ride height as you're affecting the amount of suspension travel -
so you will probably have to lower the car more.

I found it's best to alter both the ride height and packers at the same time,
otherwise you set on of them up and when you start altering the other you have
to go back to alter the first.

I also found that the car handles much better if you do like the manual says and
set the rebound values for the dampers to be 2/3's of the corresponding value.
By default the setups have them equal. Other than that I've not changed the
springs/dampers.

From my understanding, you don't get disqualified for having too much plank
wear, it just slows you down. Does this mean that every time you bottom out you
get slowed a little or does the game just make your car go slower when you've
worn more than 1mm from the plank?

Anyone played with the spring/damper settings? Can you explain this a little
more?

thanks,
Jamie

___________________________________________________________________________


______________________________________________________  __  __ _  __ .   __
Opinions expressed here are my own and not those of... (__)|-</-\(__ |__ -_

<snip good setup advice>

For my Imola setup I've got

Ideally you want the car to come off the bump ***s in corners, to get the
benefit of the springs, and to go onto them in the straights to stop you
bottoming out. Look at the suspension travel data and you can see when you're on
the ***s. You need to increase the ride height until you come off the ***s
in the corners, and increase the packers so that you dont wear the plank in the
straights.

Rubbing the plank causes drag and slows you down. I suppose this is realistic.
Why you aren't disqualified for having more than 1mm of wear I don't know - it
s3eems like a fairly easy thing to implement.

_____________________________________________________________________

                                University of Oxford