Is there anything that can be done with the grip changes? Just take the combination Mills-Megane as an example. In practice without any other cars on track my best lap time is 1:08,xxx. But online, with 30 other drivers and nearly the same conditions after a long training and qualifying session, yesterday I drove a 1:05,1 (same setup). Not only the time improved a lot, it almost feels like driving a different car ... I know it is beta and track conditions/weather can have an influence on laptimes, but 3 seconds difference? ... Just curious what you think about it, for me it somehow ruins the competition as with such large spreads in laptimes you simply cannot judge if a laptime was good or not. Maybe it's also the megane physics in general which seem to be more alpha than beta. Rear tires don't heat up from rolling, temparature almost "explodes" once you start sliding and cools down in a few seconds once you go straight again. It really feels strange, also the Formula Renault 3.5. Without traction control these cars are almost out of control everytime you hit the throttle. Or is it necessary to drive them with traction control? So there is smoke everywhere due to drivers accererating / braking all the time. I have been to a World Series by Renault weekend 3 times and have never seen the respective cars behave in the same way. Overall there is only one thing about the physics I like: Reaching higher speeds you can balance the car mid-corner and feel the limit better. But the low-speed grip is still ridiculously low.
Well, as you might know, track grip levels change a lot during a race weekend. So if you are alone and therefore the only car putting rubber to the racing line, a 3 seconds gap is nothing surprising i think. Look at F1 weekends, and compare Friday Practice times with Saturday Practice times... just the same thing. Honestly, the Renaults really dont suffer THAT much from power oversteer. If you see lots of smoke, its probably because people just miss braking points. The reason why you didn't see this at the real life World Series, is probably just that the drivers are real race drivers and can drive.
The time improvement'll be the racing line evolving and three seconds seems very reasonable. Over the course of this year's Hungarian Grand Prix the fastest lap from FP1 was a 1:23.3 and in qualifying they hit a 1:19.8 and these are many of the world's best drivers in a sport with very fine margins. As for the fRenaults... I've not yet found one car I need TC to drive for with my wheel/pedals or anything more than low TC with the keyboard; you're probably just pushing too hard.
I think the difference ist too big too. There's just no reason to go out first in qualifying session, because those who driver after you are much quicker. Well, I doubt there were running on low fuel in FP1 ...
well, again...watch a F1 race and you'll see that they just do that This is one reason why they introduced the 3-session Qualifying thing. It forces you to drive, even if the track is ****.
That's true of motorsport in general. With long qualifying sessions cars tend to avoid early running unless they need serious sponsor coverage time, fear a sudden change of weather or need to do more setup work. Not sure if you remember back when F1 had the two hour-long qualifying sessions on friday and saturday but unless there was a wet Q2 Q1 times were largely meaningless bankers and the first half of either session saw a very empty track. And they were running many fuel strategies in FP1 but low fuel was almost certain run at least once or twice.
The line forms very quickly and the differences are big, because that's how it's set right now (didn't they even mention the accelerated rate of the rubber groove forming in a faq somewhere). Until they're finished with it (everything is based on the tyre model) I'm not going to be thinking about it too much.