F1GP/WC DRIVING GUIDE
F1GP can prove tricky until a few simple techniques are mastered. This
document lists some of the most useful pieces of advice for learning
how to drive quickly enough. Please remember that these tips come from
various people on the net, and that everyone develops their own style.
_DG_: I've made a few personal observations about driving style, based
partly on people's descriptions of how they drive, and partly on their
setups. It seems that the fastest qualifiers tend to be in the Mansell
mould; very exciting to watch, right on the limit of essentially
unstable setups; Ivanhoe Vasiljevich and the Smit brothers, Ren and
Robin, certainly seem to fit this description. Those who consistently
do well in races are in the Prost mould; calm, calculating, pragmatic,
pushing safe, stable setups hard enough to get the job done without
risking an incident which could wipe out their chances; that's the
approach I try to take. Knowing which approach to use when is half the
trick; being able to use either as necessary is the other half...
LEARN THE COURSE
This is probably the hardest, but most effective method for speeding
up. With a good knowledge of the track you can pick up 2-3 seconds a
lap (and that's a pretty conservative estimate!). There is no easy way
to learn the tracks except to drive round them a lot! [Duh, no?] Look
out for landmarks, such as the dome at Mexico, the bridges at
Silverstone and the buildings at Monaco. (Of course, if you have a
slow machine, it's better to turn detail off and learn the courses
_without_ landmarks, so you can get a higher frame rate.) Once you
know what corners are coming up you can anticipate the way that the
opposition are going to move and which side of the course to position
yourself on. Of course with the Ideal Line on it becomes a lot easier
to tell, but on the higher levels you lose this option, and the ideal
line isn't always ideal anyway.
BRAKING
OK, so you know where the corners are, now how about slowing for them.
The Auto-Braking feature is very poor, and you can usually travel
another 50-100 yards before you have to apply the brakes, this is the
main way for passing the other cars and making up a _lot_ of time. The
computer controlled cars always brake very early so it is east to
shoot past them, there is no excuse for not passing 3 or 4 cars at
every 1st or 2nd gear corner.
By late-breaking into all corners whilst on a clear lap you can easily
smash the lap record, the only problem with this technique is that
your tyres get worn quickly and you may find yourself having to make
an extra pit-stop. [_DG_: It isn't entirely clear just how tyre wear
is modelled. Setup seems to play a role, but it's far from proven that
driving conservatively reduces tyre wear.]
STARTING
A good start can gain you plenty of places, or keep you out of the
usual pile up at the first corner. If you have too many revs as the
lights go green you will sit stationary whilst the wheels spin, and if
you have too few revs the car will move away too slowly. There is
quite a large rev-band in the middle where you can make a very good
start.
_GB_: My personnel technique is to hold the car at full revs in first
until the first lights come on, and then let go of the clutch (Gear
change button), by the time the light go green the revs will have
fallen enough for you to make a pretty good start. Note, this does not
apply in the wet, when two many revs causes massive amounts of wheel
spin. See the "In the wet" section for more information.
_DG_: My technique is similar, but I let the revs start dropping after
counting to 5 (about 7 to 8 seconds). This is slightly before the red
lights come on, about 1-2 seconds. That way, the revs are a little
lower when the lights go to green, you get less wheelspin, and a
quicker start.
If you aren't on pole, you should be aware that when the wheels stop
spinning and bite properly, you'll get a sudden burst of acceleration
which can easily put you into the back of anyone in front.
ACCIDENTS
Invariably there will be an accident during a race, there are three
types, ones that are half a lap away, ones that are a car length away,
and an accident involving your car. Obviously the first sort is the
easiest to cope with, and you will only usually find out about by the
message "Kip Kipper is out the race". When this appears press pause
and then insert to see what happened. This is done for two reasons,
firstly to watch any cool pile-ups and secondly to see if it effects
your lap at all. In most cases there will be no problems and you can
continue as normal, however you should always check for cars parked
half on the track that the computer isn't removing, and any damaged
cars. If any stopped cars are still on the track then remember where
they are so you don't overtake into the side of them! Normally the
marshalls will push stalled cars away pretty quickly, but there are a
few places where they may leave part of the car on the track. Damaged
cars only pose a threat if you catch up with them near the pit-lane
since they will suddenly cut across your path and can cause further
accidents. (This is most noticeable at Mexico where cars going into
the pits slow down on the racing line. Several other tracks also
suffer from similar problems, especially Montreal, where they slow to
40 mph where you need to be going 170 mph!)
Something which you will soon discover is that you can overtake masses
of cars under yellow without worrying about being black flagged.
Shortly after you discover that, you will also find out that this
often results in you slamming into a broken car at high speed, usually
taking you out of the race.
If there is an accident directly in front of you then there is usually
not too much you can do except take avoiding action; always watch the
road ahead for funny shaped blotches that could be spinning cars and
take care near some of the 'blackspots'. If there is a crash and you
can't avoid it then all you can do is slow down and pray that you are
going slow enough to cause no damage. Remember that you could get
stuck behind another damaged car and the same problems as above apply.
Finally, what do you do if you are in an accident? The first thing to
do is not panic or get angry, if you go off course then there is
nothing much you can do except wait for a gap in the traffic to pull
back on. If you pull back on without waiting then chances are you will
be hit by another car and taken out.
Your car can be damaged at the front, the rear, or both combined.
Front damage results in severe understeer, making it very difficult to
turn corners; rear damage equals massive oversteer, resulting in
excessive wheel spin, and a sharp or fast turn will spin the car; both
wings damaged will make the car very difficult to control. Once your
car is damaged, all you can do is limp round to the pits, taking the
straights quickly and the corners slowly and carefully. Once in the
pit it is usually a 25 second stop before you are released.
It helps to practice a bit on the grass. The cars will behave
strangely on grass (and most especially when one side of the car is on
grass and the other on asphalt) and you need to practice getting back
on the course quickly, and without hitting the walls or other cars.
Sometimes no matter how hard you try, other cars will ram straight
into you. That, as Damon Hill would say, is racing.
THE PITS
The pits are where all repairs are conducted on your car, in an ideal
race you will only see them once or twice for pit stops. During a pit
stop bring your car in smoothly, and consider doing another lap if a
car in front is also going to pull in as they will slow you down. When
in the pits watch very carefully for other cars pulling out or racing
down the pit lane as they will hit you mercilessly. A tyre stop is
quick with the get-away being the only problem you have to worry
about.
_GB_: I follow a similar procedure to starting the race, but instead
of waiting for the first lights I wait for the car to begin to be
dropped.
When the car is damaged there is little change in the procedure except
that the stop will take longer and there is more danger of you
overshooting the pit.
THE OPPOSITION
There are 26 cars in a race and if the level is set to 1991 level then
they all have a set performance. In this case it helps to know what
the other team colors are so you know who you are trying to pass. Mono
VGA owners [_GB_: like me] will just have to learn the general
patterns of the faster cars. By knowing who you are up against you can
judge how fast they are going to be traveling and how likely they are
to make a pass on another car.
The artificial Intelligence of the computer cars is very poor and they
will all follow the same line, and brake at the same points so it pays
to learn these patterns. The main problems occur when overtaking two
cars that are battling each other, at some circuits (notably
Hockenheim) sometimes the second car will put out to overtake the
first car as you pull alongside, thus pushing you off. There is no way
around this and you will just have to wait for a corner or be very
brave pull right over to the side of the track and go at it three
abreast.
THE RIGHT LINE
The right line is crucial for going quickly, however, the game
provides a lot of help when it comes to picking out the correct route.
This is done in two way, firstly through the use of the _Ideal Line
Indicator_ which puts the dotted line on the track, and the _Steering
Help_ which tends to pull you over to the correct side of the course.
Although both of these options can be turned off, by the time you
reach the levels where the former is not allowed you should know the
courses quite well. At some corners it helps to come up with your own
line, but this will tend to happen naturally depending on your style.
CORNERING
Grand Prix cars have a different cornering characteristics depending
on their set up, and learning these is just a matter of trial and
experiment. With a lot of downforce at the back, the car will be
unresponsive in corners but it will tend to drift out of corners
nicely, the main thing to remember is not to accelerate mid corner as
the car will understeer off the course.
If the cars has more front downforce then it will turn in well and be
better at taking sharp corners, the problem with this set up is that
if you accelerate too early the car will spin or turn too quickly
(this is often desirable!); it takes time to learn the correct
acceleration point, but this just takes practice. Sometimes the rear
wheels will skid as you come round a long corner (such as Peralta at
Mexico), occasionally it pays off to accelerate when this happens, and
hope the tyres bite the road, also steering the opposite direction to
try and prevent a spin. This technique takes a lot of practice and
good luck, but once you learn it, the cars become far more
controllable than before.
_DG_: Read the manual carefully. It does explain how the setup will
affect the car's handling, and what oversteer and understeer are, but
not very clearly. Practice and experiment a lot until you can identify
how a setup change will affect handling and performance. And the
manual has some good advice: only change one thing at once.
OVERTAKING
Apart from the methods described in 'Braking' and 'The Opposition'
there is Slipstreaming, where you move up close behind the car in
front and pick up a tow (This is a "hole" in the air behind a car in
front, by moving into it you lose both drag and downforce and so move
faster). As your car picks up speed pull out quickly and use the extra
10mph to overtake. This is fairly easy to do, the only problem
happening if you have a low downforce car and you turn out too sharply
and lose control. There isn't too much you can do about this except to
turn out more gently or be ready to catch the skid. It's also all too
easy to get _too_ close before pulling out and accidently hit the car
in front, often resulting in you spinning out.
IN THE WET
_GB_: I am rubbish at this! Any tips appreciated for both me and the
FAQ. _DG_: Err, yeah, me too! Still, here goes...
First, forget any knowledge of the track you already have; it's
totally different in the wet, and forget any notions of running
without Traction Help, unless you like spinning. Your setup will have
much less downforce, and the differential between front and rear wings
must be less or you'll have uncontrollable oversteer and will lose the
back end at pretty much every corner. When starting, you want no
wheelspin, so just engage first and wait for the light; the AI cars
will beat you off the line but there's apparently nothing you can do
about it. Do not attempt to brake into a slow corner like you can in
the dry; you must finish braking before you turn in or you will lose
the back end.
SET UP HINTS
Take a look at the Halls Of Fame for some good setups; below are some
more general bits of advice from various people.
Doug Reichley
[DG: I lifted this from an article posted to rec.autos.simulators. It
has been very lightly edited.]
Some of you will remember the advice I gave for the German track
last year. I said to have just enough wing to make it through turn 1
and the Agipkurve flat out.
Well, I have changed my mind (and my car). After practicing at other
`fast' tracks (I'm _smokn_' at Monza), I brought in what I learned
and am now solidly in the 1m31 lap range on Q tires (and no
drafting, of course).
Last year's car was getting 207 to 208mph down the straights. This
year's car is only getting 203mph. The difference is definitely in
the slower corners. Last year's car pushed through the pit entrance
corners at 80mph. This year's car is nuetral going 109-112mph.
Wings made the difference. Here is what I suggest (I've been wrong
before):
Put your wings at 10 (front) and 1 (rear). Don't worry about
cornering yet; you will still be flat out for the 2 fastest corners
with these wings. Set your gears to get the maximum speed down the
straightaway. Don't be afraid to try a setting above 64. Once the
gears are set for maximum speed, don't change them for the wing
adjustments.
Change only your _front_ wing until your car starts oversteering.
I'm not talking about while braking, but rather snapping into
oversteer during high-speed cornering. You'll know it when you see
it `cause you'll kiss the wall big time. You can expect to be about
20 counts apart when this starts happening, depending on your style.
Back off on the front wing until the car no longer snaps into
oversteer.
Now adjust _both_ wings equally until you start losing top-end
speed. This may surprise you how far up you will get them before you
start losing speed. I don't mean 1 or 2 mph, but rather 4 or 5.
Now pay attention to cornering. Is the car pushing [understeering]
in the slow corners? It most likely will be at this point. This is
where the compromise will come into play. You will want to get rid
of the push (again adjust both wings _up_ equally), but you will
need to sacrifice top-end speed. 5-7mph is no big loss since the
cornering speeds are now higher.
Once you get comfortable with this, you can start using the brake
bias to see how it will affect cornering at the slower speeds. I
still have negative (rear) bias on my car (-10 for now to be exact).
Now the final step will be to re-adjust the gearing to gain any
speed that may be left in the motor.
Once all that is done, you should have a nice car to drive. Don't be
afraid to tweak it in any direction. You may be _real_ close to that
`magical' setup I always talk about.
This was written specifically for Germany, but can be used at most
of the tracks. I hope it helps someone out.
[DG: Here's another article I pinched from Doug off Usenet.]
[...]
Pit strategy depends entirely on 2 things:
* The type of track it is (ie how hard it is on tires)
* Your setup (ie how hard it is on tires)
A track such as Monza is real easy on tires (ie you may go 100%
distance on Cs and turn roughly the same laps all the way through),
whereas France will eat them for lunch if you have a bad setup (ie
you may only get 12 good laps out of them before they drop off and
go bad).
The first thing you have to do is learn what worn out tires 'feel'
like. There are two ways you can get a quick feel for worn tires:
* Use Q tires for many laps without changing them.
* Use W tires on a dry track.
The Q tires will teach you how the tire feels when it is good and
then falls off over time. The W tires will teach you how worn tires
feel almost immediately.
I would suggest to use both techniques. Use the W's first to get a
good 'feel' for REALLY worn tires.
Then switch to Q's and drive on them until you think they are worn.
It's not really as hard as it sounds and it won't really take that
long either.
Once you have mastered the art of detecting worn tires, you are
ready to move on to step 2.
Step 2 is lap timing in your head. It's really quite easy. It's not
as hard as counting cards in poker, but easier than counting jelly
beans in a jar.
EVERY lap you should keep a note in your brain of what your lap
times are. You should see a nice ramp downwards, then a leveling off
and finally a slight ramp back up.
Like this:
T \
I \
M --__ ___---
E ---
Number of Laps
Your going to want to pit on the plateau. How long you stay on the
plateau is up to you and the tires. What you learned with the tire
trick will pay off big now.
The only reason to get off the plateau early is if new tires will be
MUCH faster than if you waited. You always want your time to be on
the downward slope lap after lap.
You have to time your last pit stop so that the last ten laps are
not going on the upward slope. You always want to finish on the
plateau.
If you have troubles 'timing in your head', then use GPLAP to do
this. The only problem with that is if you don't test a lot, you
will not have sufficient data to make your decision.
Timing in your head is really the only way to go. It also makes
those snap decisions easier to make if you know what worn tires feel
like.
As always, this is, of course, only my opinion. If you asked 3
people you would get 3 answers. Consider this one of those 3
answers; nothing more, nothing less.
Dave Gymer
I start by "stealing" the setup from the Hall Of Fame; I usually use
Ivanhoe Vasiljevich's. Then I shunt the brake balance forward a
little.
Then I go out and drive test laps in ones and twos, adjusting the rear
wing so I can get round the fastest corners on Q tyres with the car
not quite breaking loose (take rear wing off one step at a time until
it becomes loose, than back up one step). At some tracks this means a
light touch on the joystick.
Now I decide if the front wing needs changes to either increase speed,
or increase cornering speeds. This will typically happen at a
medium-fast circuit like Interlagos, where compromise is the name of
the game. By this stage the wings should be within 2 or 3 steps of the
nominally correct position, so it's time to start playing with the
brake balance. I shift it rearwards until the car oversteers under
braking; some drivers like oversteer but I prefer a shorter braking
distance and a smoother line through the corner (except at tracks with
corners which need to be taken at speed but still braked into, like
Silverstone, where the front end of the car needs to "twist" into the
corner under braking). At this point it _might_ be worth fiddling with
the rear wing as well as brake balance, but most likely all you'll do
is upset the balance of the car.
Finally, adjust gear ratios. The lowest ratio should be sufficiently
low as to permit good acceleration out of the slowest corner
(typically a hairpin); you may want to experiment with a ratio as low
as 20. The highest gear wants to get you to about 12500 rpm at top
speed; that leaves a bit over for drafting. Those who use autogears
should keep their lower 3 gears within 7 or 8 steps of each other or
the autoshifter will get confused under wheelspin and get stuck in
2nd. At really tight circuits like Monaco I keep the bottom three
ratios within 5 of each other.
When I'm choosing a race setup, I tend to move the brake balance
forward a place or two to reduce any oversteer, add a little rear wing
for more stability, especially with a heavy fuel load and when pulling
out of a draft, and always start on Cs.
Kevin Sullivan
[...] late apexing... go deep into corners on the brakes to carry
straightaway speed, lighten brakes and corner in then begin
accelerating out... maximizing exit speed onto the straights (longest
straight corner before is the most important!) is crucial. This
general strategy works in the real world, and in the sim as well
(methinks, but I was a real-world racer once...).
As a general rule, this is most important to real-world fast lines
through corners.
[...] Maybe in the sim this is so, though I doubt it, really. Too
oversimplified for reality. If you've ever ridden a motorcycle or read
a driver's education manual, you would know that under heavy braking,
with the pitch forward and resulting weight shift to the front wheels
increasing the grip available, the front brakes normally do about 70%
of the braking work to stop a vehicle. The physics models would have
to take this into account to make a decent sim, or it wouldn't feel as
good as it does.
Know the traction circle concept, taught in every basic driving school
class? The idea is that tires only have so much grip available that
can be given to a "circle" with no accel/braking/turning vectors at
the center, then full braking, full accel, turning left/right, and
points in between defining your circle of traction... Practical aspect
being that if you try to turn a corner under full braking, no doubt
you exceed the circle of traction available and understeer occurs. Got
to let off the brakes a bit to devote some of the grip available
towards turning the car into the corner, and this is also why you need
to balance throttle and turning coming out of a corner, because in
addition to the traction circle idea, you are now accelerating with
the rear wheels thus picking up the nose putting more traction towards
the rear of the car on the driving wheels and taking weight off the
front of the car on the steering wheels...
Play with it on your street car sometime... pick a constant radius
turn at highway speeds and check the turn in/out factors based on
throttle inputs only. More throttle more relative understeer, throttle
off you will see the car turn in more. I am _not_ talking about
spinning the rears to oversteer, just mild throttle changes
approaching your tires traction limits when these effects are easily
visible.
[DG: It should go without saying that you should not be experimenting
with racecar techniques on public roads.]
For your sim, if you find yourself understeering in a corner, then
adjust brake balance to the rear (fronts locked and steering, exceeds
grip available, so shift work rearward), but if you find yourself
oversteering, even if smooth into the corner, then this means the
rears are possibly locking up first so shift brake balance more
towards the front, thus distributing work more evenly. When you get to
a neutral balance of controllability (or uncontrollability if
overcooking the entrance) then you've found a good balance for you.
Of course, setup has a LOT to do with the relative stiffness at each
corner affecting the weight shift and effects of brake balance, so
don't start here, end here. Springs/shocks/weighting affects.
And I don't own F1gp, or IC, just know cars and how it should be when
you have a well-balanced race setup that is a joy to drive.
Chris "Dreams" Peper, maintainer of the official F1GP/WC FAQ
j.c.a.pe...@research.kpn.com