[GUIDE] Car Setup Discussion

[JayCoops435]

A place to discuss setup tips. Setup files can also be shared, so if you have a good one, plop it in the dropbox.

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That was fun last night, but what is the secret Jay and Alex. I heard that there is some setup tips...

There's no secret really. You just need to know what needs to be altered. I only made small changes to the default set up. Alex has asked me a few times now to come up with a thread that will help explain what does what and the effects when setting up the car. To explain it all would take forever. So I think I'll either do bit by bit, or leave it for you guys to ask me what bit you don't understand or need help with.

[Mr Flobadob]

There's no secret really. You just need to know what needs to be altered. I only made small changes to the default set up. Alex has asked me a few times now to come up with a thread that will help explain what does what and the effects when setting up the car. To explain it all would take forever. So I think I'll either do bit by bit, or leave it for you guys to ask me what bit you don't understand or need help with.

Anti-roll bars and springs tips would help, I've realised recently I have no genuine knowledge of what influence they have on the car.

[ajokay]

I think the anti roll bars tie either sides of the suspensions together, meaning an even stiffer body and less roll in the corners, which i guess leads to better traction as it plants the tyres more firmly to the track

[PJTierney]

There might be some handy stuff in here too.

[smifaye]

I load the deafult setup for the BMW around whichever track we are racing on. The only thing I do is put the braking pressure up to 95% sometimes more.

I find that I am struggling under braking, losing the back end. I have no confidence in braking late. I also notice that the car understeers quite bad.

[JayCoops435]

I started to type out a thread for this. Only when I had written it all, I found this.

Alex is right in saying that the anti roll bars prevents roll in the corners. However, it's full effect is noticed more in slower corners. So if you find you're having problems with grip through a fast corners. It will be more to do with either your aero or spring settings.

Softer anti roll bars will give you more grip in slower corners, but you will have a slower response on turning in (less accuracy). So if you find you are not getting a quick enough response at the front in the slow corners, stiffen the front roll bar. If however you are getting understeer on turning in slower corners. Then you need to stiffen the rear roll bar giving you less grip at the rear helping the car turn in. If you have the reverse effect (too much oversteer), then soften the rear roll bar. Having the roll bars too soft however is not always a good thing. Whilst you'll have grip, you will also have a lot of roll in the car. Finding the right balance is key.

The springs have the same effect when stiffening and softening. Softening the front gives you more grip but less response on turning in. Softening the rear will prevent the back end stepping out so much in fast corners. The reverse will result in more oversteer in fast corners.

Hope this makes sense Flob.

[DanThorn]

Anti Roll bars do indeed tie the sides of the car together and make it stiffer, and are a good simple way of adjusting how the car behaves in corners. Generally speaking, the stiffer the rear the more oversteer, and the stiffer the front the more understeer. Of course it all ties in to how you have the rest of your set up, but realistically the overall stiffness doesn't matter, it's how they balance together, what type of car you're driving and what type of track you're on. I find the anti roll bars a good thing to try and match up with the differential - for instance, on a rear wheel drive car I might soften the rear anti roll bar to try and stop the snap oversteer, but by increasing the acceleration setting on the differential I can still get the car to rotate at the rear, just a little more progressively. (In other words, what Jay wrote! !)

He's nailed spring rate too but you can also use that for straight line performance. For good acceleration, raise the rear of the car and soften the springs at the back to help shift the weight rearwards and improve traction, and the opposite for braking. At some point in this you should probably fiddle with the damper settings, but I have no idea what I'm doing with those and I usually leave them well alone

[JayCoops435]

I load the deafult setup for the BMW around whichever track we are racing on. The only thing I do is put the braking pressure up to 95% sometimes more.

I find that I am struggling under braking, losing the back end. I have no confidence in braking late. I also notice that the car understeers quite bad.

Ok, the problem you have with braking Smif, is that you have too much bias on the rear of the car. A good default setup with brake bias is 60:40. 60% of braking force on the front, 40% on the rear. If you then have too much understeer, put more bias to the rear. I normally will move things in twos. So if I had too much understeer under braking. I will move 2% more bias to the rear (58:42). If then that is too much I will move 1% back to the front (59:41). Of course you can move as much as you like over at one time. However too much can lead you from going one extreme to the other. And you just find yourself getting lost in what you were doing or what the previous setting was etc. Small adjustments are better and more manageable.

[DanThorn]

I load the deafult setup for the BMW around whichever track we are racing on. The only thing I do is put the braking pressure up to 95% sometimes more.

I find that I am struggling under braking, losing the back end. I have no confidence in braking late. I also notice that the car understeers quite bad.

Ok, the problem you have with braking Smif, is that you have too much bias on the rear of the car. A good default setup with brake bias is 60:40. 60% of braking force on the front, 40% on the rear. If you then have too much understeer, put more bias to the rear. I normally will move things in twos. So if I had too much understeer under braking. I will move 2% more bias to the rear (58:42). If then that is too much I will move 1% back to the front (59:41). Of course you can move as much as you like over at one time. However too much can lead you from going one extreme to the other. And you just find yourself getting lost in what you were doing or what the previous setting was etc. Small adjustments are better and more manageable.

I've always done the opposite for braking! If I'm struggling with the back end in a mid engined I'll shift more rearwards and give up a bit in term of being able to brake as late as possible, but offset that by trail braking towards the apex to help turn the rear of the car better

[Mr Flobadob]

I started to type out a thread for this. Only when I had written it all, I found this.

Alex is right in saying that the anti roll bars prevents roll in the corners. However, it's full effect is noticed more in slower corners. So if you find you're having problems with grip through a fast corners. It will be more to do with either your aero or spring settings.

Softer anti roll bars will give you more grip in slower corners, but you will have a slower response on turning in (less accuracy). So if you find you are not getting a quick enough response at the front in the slow corners, stiffen the front roll bar. If however you are getting understeer on turning in slower corners. Then you need to stiffen the rear roll bar giving you less grip at the rear helping the car turn in. If you have the reverse effect (too much oversteer), then soften the rear roll bar. Having the roll bars too soft however is not always a good thing. Whilst you'll have grip, you will also have a lot of roll in the car. Finding the right balance is key.

The springs have the same effect when stiffening and softening. Softening the front gives you more grip but less response on turning in. Softening the rear will prevent the back end stepping out so much in fast corners. The reverse will result in more oversteer in fast corners.

Hope this makes sense Flob.

It does, mostly. I do believe I was making the car worse with my tinkering last night, oh well lol.

EDIT: I was having the same braking problems as Smiff, found moving the brake bias to 65:35 was good for me (I always like it heavily biased to the front anyway), and I also found a way to minimise the sliding which didn't always work!

[ajokay]

Except from iRacing, I've found in this game more than ever that you really can only do one thing at a time. You have to brake, then steer, then accelerate. The BMW's do swap ends (albeit slowly) if you put a little too much steering in or floor it leaving a corner. I also found whilst lapping Pau that you can't downshift before the car is ready, especially whilst turning, because this'll give you some serious mid-corner oversteer with little time to correct it.

[smifaye]

I load the deafult setup for the BMW around whichever track we are racing on. The only thing I do is put the braking pressure up to 95% sometimes more.

I find that I am struggling under braking, losing the back end. I have no confidence in braking late. I also notice that the car understeers quite bad.

Ok, the problem you have with braking Smif, is that you have too much bias on the rear of the car. A good default setup with brake bias is 60:40. 60% of braking force on the front, 40% on the rear. If you then have too much understeer, put more bias to the rear. I normally will move things in twos. So if I had too much understeer under braking. I will move 2% more bias to the rear (58:42). If then that is too much I will move 1% back to the front (59:41). Of course you can move as much as you like over at one time. However too much can lead you from going one extreme to the other. And you just find yourself getting lost in what you were doing or what the previous setting was etc. Small adjustments are better and more manageable.

Yeah I found that this helped but I was only fiddling about with it mid race. To be fair I also probably need to use my wheel to race, not just my xbox controller

I will try the anti-roll bars too. Thanks guys. Still love this game despite being way off the pace though!

[Mr Flobadob]

Yeah I much prefer PC racing tbh, at the risk of derailing the thread, I really wish we'd all do rFactor, but that's for another time maybe.

[ajokay]

Still love this game despite being way off the pace though!

This is what I'm really enjoying. When you truly nail a fast lap it's really satisfying, and even when Jay has been way faster than me, I've been enjoying myself. But then all it takes is on the 9th lap in a 10 lap race, Jay puts a wheel wrong and spins into the barriers and I'm back up there in first again. There's so much more risk vs reward with this game than Forza, where you can just keep on going.

And the three of us had some great close racing at Brands last night.

I definitely recommend getting your wheel working though. No doubt you'll be back to being fastest.

[JayCoops435]

I load the deafult setup for the BMW around whichever track we are racing on. The only thing I do is put the braking pressure up to 95% sometimes more.

I find that I am struggling under braking, losing the back end. I have no confidence in braking late. I also notice that the car understeers quite bad.

I've just remembered Adam that it could possibly be your diff settings too. You could be getting a touch of lift off oversteer. To fix that, you need to raise the coast percentage in your diff settings. In a nut shell, the higher the percentage, the less oversteer you will get when lifting off.

[OLL1E_K]

Right, remembered i've got an old iRacing setup guide which does a fairly good job of covering the basics and its still pretty relevant to Race 07, one or two bits aren't relevant but generally its all in there to give you a rough idea of how different changes effect the cars handling. Also has a nice quick reference chart on the last page which is useful for making changes without reading into too much detail.

I'm sure there's an easier way to share it but i'm a touch too dim to work that out so here goes, one link to the dropbox file -

https://www.dropbox.com/s/68bo206u41hpc ... ant%29.pdf

Hopefully it works ok...

[ajokay]

Cheers for that Ollie. Oh you actually meant link the file?

Saying "It's in the dropbox" will usually suffice.

[Boovolari]

I've moved this thread to the RlyRTCC2 section so hopefully we can get some touring car setup discussion going (we can move it on to PC-3 etc as we go).

So... Ollie, Jay and co... help us out! I've only minor setup changes so far (generally suspension and A/R bars), but I'm sure there's more lap time to be gained. Any general tips you could throw our way?

Same goes for anybody else that has any tips!

Last night I stiffened the car up, increased the anti-roll and added some front bump rebound to cope with the bump at McLaren. It helped settle the car over the bump and the car seemed a bit more responsive in the corners, but I think I killed off some of the traction. The car was pretty good overall, but I'm certain there's more corner speed to be gained.

How's everybody else getting along with the setup so far?

[Mr Flobadob]

Me and James just used the default setup and put the brake pressure up to 100%.

At one point I tried to adjust the camber to help the tyres but it completely ruined the car so we sort of decided to just leave the setup alone after that.

[DanThorn]

I made the rear stiff as a board with loads of camber and no wing, and softened up the front end with lower tyre pressures, heavy front brake bias but low brake pressure. It changes direction like a ferret but does make the back end loose as anything and my tyre wear was through the roof. It stayed nice and balanced over the race distance though, and I seemed to be really quick through the final sector, but a bit unpredictable through Paddock Hill and Graham Hill.

That's generally how I like my front wheel drive cars to be (think how the MiTo drove in the GTSSS support series) but I've had to tone it down for Gothenberg - a skittish rear end with walls that close isn't good

[JayCoops435]

added some front bump rebound to cope with the bump at McLaren. It helped settle the car over the bump and the car seemed a bit more responsive in the corners, but I think I killed off some of the traction.

Whilst bump/rebound will help against bumps. I feel I should explain what this actually does in the simplest way I can.

Bump and rebound stiffness is all about the shock absorbers. Bump is when the shock is compressing, rebound when it's retracting. The softer these settings are, the quicker they will compress/retract. Mainly, this is used for weight transfer under braking. We use this massively in autograss to unsettle the rear to help us kick it out for the corners. The best way I can explain this is key pointing what or which way you set these to get the desired effect. So.....

Front Bump- Softening will make the front dip more quickly under braking, making the rear light and therefore more twitchy when entering corners. Obviously, the harder you set this, the slower it will dip therefore slowing down the transfer of weight from back to front.

Front Rebound- When set at soft. As you accelerate out of a corner, the front of the car will raise very quickly, transfering the weight to the rear. This is ideal if you have a rwd car. Fwd cars obviously not so much. You need the traction and if the weight is to the rear, you have no weight pushing down on the front wheels therefore no grip and less drive coming out of the corner.

Rear Bump- Like front bump but in reverse. This comes in to play with front rebound under acceleration.

Rear Rebound- Again, like front rebound but in reverse and comes in to play with front bump under braking.

Hope this explanation makes sense. There's a very fine balance with this and if you get it wrong, it can be difficult to get it back unless you mark down each change you make. So make small differences that you can easily remember what you've changed. This way if it doesn't feel any better. You can put it back where it was.

[OLL1E_K]

The link that PJ posted to Race Department is a good one, their set up guide (second from the top) is very useful for understanding what the effects of each change that you make are and something i refer to from time to time.

In terms of getting a good set up, there is no "magic" set up, 90% of it is just down to getting a balance you like and feeling that the car is doing what you want it to do. The important thing is to make only one change at a time, then you know exactly what has changed and its pros/cons. Also when making any changes i find doing it 2 clicks at a time the most efficient way of getting a noticeable change but also so its not too drastic. Make sure you can lap the circuit pretty consistently before you go making any changes too, that way you'll see if there's a lap time improvement from the set up, rather than just your driving as you learn the circuit.

You really don't need any big changes, as Jay says its the small things that can make a difference, its more important you understand what the effect of each change is i think. At Brands for example i only changed the rear wing, coast diff, front/rear springs and toe a few clicks either way from the base set up.

EDIT: Also, its pretty obvious Jay knows a HELL of a lot more on this subject! He's the man to ask!

[blairy20]

Tried setups at Imola, then slapped on the dry default setup and immediately felt comfortable bar a couple of changes to the brakes and gear ratios. Brands wasn't so nice as I have no idea if something's improved or if I've just driven a better lap. Tyre wear was my main issue there and ended up just bolting the default setup on again.

[HFG Ben]

Can anyone recommend any good Youtube tutorials on Race07 setup? I tend to learn more from Youtube videos so if there are any specifically for Race07 then that would be awesome.

[shaxberd]

Some resources I've found to be kinda useful. Though I'm still struggling to get RWD cars right.

un
deux
trois

There's another one which is actually my main reference, but that is german, so.. yeah