Ricardo Nunnini's web site never ceases to amaze me.
(http://website.lineone.net/~richardn/
I found a little golden nugget of information on the
"Giovanni Tifosi's guru meditations" page. In the
section "Keeping the Unloaded Tire Flat" he writes
about the benefits of maximizing the unladen or inside
tire grip. In the last paragraph of the section he writes,
"Ideally, you should look for equal temps across the
unladen tyres, with a temp approximately equal to the
unladen tyres at the inner edge of the laden tyres."
Now this tells me that I should be using positive cambers
(top of the tires leans out further than the bottom)
instead of negative to get some more grip from the inside
tire even at the expense of some outside tire grip. So off
I went to Zandvoort and lo and behold my slightly wimpey
but decent setup shapened right up and found some extra
grip. I'm able to run an easy 1:27.45 there and anticipate
getting into the 1:26's very soon. Now I ran a 1:27.32 there
with my old setup but I was always struggling to get through
the corners so the setup was not really great for racing. The
new positive camber setup feels more responsive and holds
the track better, especially on the first few laps with cold tires.
At first I tried just reversing the camber settings from negative
to positive but I found that on some tires I only needed a fraction
of the original negative setting.
I hope I'm on the right track here (sorry). I'm going to try some other
circuits and see if this really works for me and that I'm not just
deluding myself.
Thanks Ricardo & Giovanni!
Funny but I have been tinkering with that the last few days and also
found that with a slight positive, on just the front tires, I have much
better control going into a turn.
