Brake Balance Question

Could someone please explain the pros and cons of setting your brakes to the front and to the rear in World Circuit. I have been setting my brakes to the front as of late (around 10), and have been getting faster lap times then when they are set to the rear or nuetral. The manual doesn't explain this setting to well though. Any advice or information would be appreciated. P.S. - Add this to your wish list for WC2 - Networking, similar to doom. Imagine, 4 or 5 players at at time! - A track editor to create new tracks. (Probably difficult). - Keep the graphics fast. Don't worry about looking overly fantastic. Thanks. Jeff Slack University Of Michigan

The way I understand it is this. The brake balance allows the brakes at one end of the car to apply before the other. Therefore if you set the BB to the front then the front end will brake first. This has its advantages, for example if you have a heavy downforce at the front and light at the rear then setting the brakes to the front will stop you quicker. On the other hand putting the BB at the back means that the front wheels are rotating freely into the corner while the back wheels are slowing you down. There is no right or wrong way to set the BB, it is down to personal preference. BTW you will see players in the WCPCHOF detting the BB way to the rear. This creates oversteer and allows them to get into the corners faster. Try this with a fullen laden race car however and you will lose the back end guaranteed. Great idea! Maybe track update packs would be better, to mirror changes to the actual circuits. I agree, smoothness is most important. Paul Live Long and Prosper

Brake balance has do with just that. how the brakes are balanced between front and rear. It has to do with the relative amount of pressure applied to each set of brakes. Taken a little father you could say that it is a way of setting which set of brakes do the most work (most stopping of the car if you will) when braking the car. If your brake balance (BB) is neutral then your front and rear tires should lock up at pretty close to the same instant under heavy braking. If you BB is toward the front then your front wheels will lock up b4 your rears (with less pedal pressure than it takes to lock up the rears). Vice-versa for rear BB. You can use this to help overcome poor weight distribution or to adjust the car so that you can drive a track nmore in your style of driving. If you are driving a track where oversteer is no-no then you can set your BB toward the front of the car so that under braking your front wheels will brake lose b4 the rear and the car pushes. Vice-versa if you want the car to oversteer and get into the corners better. For a track like Monaco where you need to drift/slide a lot your brake BB would probably be very close to neutral. Chris Carter

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> >Could someone please explain the pros and cons of setting your brakes to > >the front and to the rear in World Circuit. > >I have been setting my brakes to the front as of late (around 10), and > >have been getting faster lap times then when they are set to the rear or > >nuetral. The manual doesn't explain this setting to well though. > >Any advice or information would be appreciated. > Brake balance has do with just that. how the brakes are balanced between > front and rear. It has to do with the relative amount of pressure > applied to each set of brakes. Taken a little father you could say that it > is a way of setting which set of brakes do the most work (most stopping of > the car if you will) when braking the car. If your brake balance (BB) is > neutral then your front and rear tires should lock up at pretty close to > the same instant under heavy braking. If you BB is toward the front then > your front wheels will lock up b4 your rears (with less pedal pressure > than it takes to lock up the rears). Vice-versa for rear BB. You can use > this to help overcome poor weight distribution or to adjust the car so > that you can drive a track nmore in your style of driving. > If you are driving a track where oversteer is no-no then you can set your > BB toward the front of the car so that under braking your front wheels > will brake lose b4 the rear and the car pushes. Vice-versa if you want > the car to oversteer and get into the corners better. For a track like > Monaco where you need to drift/slide a lot your brake BB would probably be > very close to neutral.

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. 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. -- 1981 KS region SCCA H/S Solo II #2 '65 VW Squareback. Fav cars: '64 Mustang; '69 Fury III with 440 Super Commando & 2.73 rear end; sad clipped '75 2.0 914. Current: 540cc 4dr Suzuki Alto II, Corolla 1600 Racing sim: NASCAR <good for a sim> and, Japan IS an AutoX course!

Yea I probably oversimplfied things a bit but I still think the concept is sound. You are also over looking some very important details - We are talking about open wheel _rear_ engine race cars whose center of gravity is level with or _below_ the axles. The fact that a significant portion of the cars weight is behind the rear axle and that the weight of the car is "slung" from the axles, not riding on top of them, greatly reduces the inertia induced pitch forward effect. Look at an Indy car or Formula One race when they are run on a road course - you always see the front wheels lock up first because there is less weight on the front of the car. Remember you have to take into account that under race conditions those huge rear spoilers cause the effective weight on the rear axle to be many times the effective weight on the front axles. Not to mention that in F1 the rear tires are significantly wider than the fronts. Expanding on your line of thought you can look at it this way. At speed Indy/F1 cars have a pretty sigificant rear bias where weight is concerned - due to acceleration, down force and drag factors. Because of these last two factors heavy braking in an Indy/F1 car does not even get the car back to a neutral balance wieght balance much less a forward biased one. Yea at some point you lose aero effects and catch up and get to a front bias but this probably won't happen in an F1 until get to under 75km/h - probably 100km/h in Indy cars (you lose the benefit of the Indy cars ground effects at a higher speed than you lose the drag and wing effects) Your arguments are dead on for a car whose center of gravity is significantly _above_ the plane of the axles. This is not the case for Indy or F1 cars. The traction cricle still applies but because of the way the weight in Indy/F1 cars is suspended the dynamics are slightly different. Isn't this what I said. Very true. Chris