I recently read an article in Race Tech which mentioned that the Arrows
team had a pretty much standard spring and damper setup and just changed
wings and roll bars for a given track.
This got me thinking, so I put all my GP2 race setups (still using
mid-range values throughout - haven't gone to extremes, though I hotlap
with zero damping) into Excel, took a mean of each value and called that a
setup.
I then drove it at a few tracks and found it very responsive and
driveable, wearing the plank and tyres flat and turning in and getting the
power down well. It needed raising slightly, the gearing altering
(according to circuit - it was under at Imola and over at Jerez) and a
little more slow front damping added to prevent corner entry oversteer,
and then after a little tweaking to the gears I found it was quicker than
my previous race setup for Jerez (my current track in the season).
I finished pre-race practice with the new setup, then ran the race and won
- comfortably, and with just one broken car-type mistake; better than my
average I reckon!
It didn't work at Monaco (too little wing, too little traction) and the
wings will need changing for the really fast circuits (Monza, Hockenheim,
Spa) but it seems pretty sweet at various other medium speed tracks.
Has anyone tried similar tricks with any of the other sims (or GP2), or
does anyone run the same setup throughout anyway? IIRC most of the top
runners in HOF2 used pretty much the same setup at all circuits...
Jonny
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| Jonathan Hodgson | TTech Predator |
| than win by two laps | LSU Archery Club and Orchestra | ---------------------------------------------------------------------
