Full disclosure before I start - I am part of the NGMT team, but only had 2 hours testing on these new physics before released, the rest of the team put the hard work and miles with them. For people struggling with tyres we did our first 3 BVTCC races at Donington (following BTCC rules) with these cars on Friday. I had a couple of different experiences in 2 of the 3 races. Race 2 - I went too hard, too quickly before the tyres truly warmed up, got a great start up to 3rd but eventually dropped down to 7th by the end. My pushing too hard on the first lap overheated the tyres and they lost their edge meaning I didn't have as much grip as others around me. Fastest lap 1:09.199 with my times dropping to 1:10.5 for the last 3 laps where I was still pushing hard to keep position. The tyres were still much better Race 3 - I took my time to warm the tyres over 2 laps, after that grip was consistent for the whole race which I won. My fastest lap was a 1:09.080 with lap times at the end in the 1:10.0 range. Although I wasn't pushing hard at the end and had time in hand. This does correlate to the real BTCC where you hear about them being told not to push the tyres too hard or use kerbs on the opening couple of laps until the tyres are up to temperature and pressure and I felt on Friday I experienced that with the new physics. One thing to note is that I had 42kg in race 2 and 24kg in race 3, this gap doesn't make a huge amount of difference in these cars, certainly not 0.5 seconds per lap difference but could be the 0.1 in the fastest lap
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@WSVR @StrawmanAndy I'm getting better with the new version of the mod, definitly i have to use a lot of rear toe-in to stabilize the car on corner entry. I'm here to show you our Brazilian BTCC league videos... First race we are with the old mod (Silverstone), other races with the new version (Oulton Park, Brands Hatch), My current concern is about the Race performance, seems that the Subaru is better on keeping the pace in 20 min races.
That would make sense. the FWD cars will tend t burn through their front tyres quicker as they are accelerating, braking and turning on them, whereas the subaru uses all the tyres more equally, resulting in less wear.
Only reason it did that in the real series was the fact its engine was mounted so low down so it behaved more like a 4wd car on the stability side which is why it had such a big advantage.
We're keeping an eye on pace between FWD and RWD. I know WSVR ran at Doni for the first round and the FWD seemed a lot stronger, but it's not a RWD friendly circuit so was hard to full gauge where the pace stood. But yeah, RWD strength is keeping the tyres in better condition over a distance. It's a balance to make sure RWD isn't too good and also not too slow over a lap. Keep us informed, I'm collecting data from all events/runs etc, and considering small changes in 1.0. We do feel 0.99 is closer between the two types of cars. Don't know if it's 100% perfectly balance, but then in real life it seems they struggle to get RWD and FWD perfectly on par, so maybe we're being too realistic
Another thing I notice, is how the car's behavior changes a lot between circuits, i never got so much change in other mods, for your understand: (I don't know if it was because of an update to rFactor2, but personally I liked it). In the first race (Silverstone), I just couldn't use the break pressure more than 60%, because the wheels were locking so easily, immediately when we started to practice for the next race (Oulton Park), I realized that I can use the maximum value (80%) and there was no brake locking. Now, with the latest version, I notice a big change in wing configurations between Outlon Park, Brands Hatch and Donington, In Oulton and Brands I couldn't use less than +3, but in Donington I'm using 0 and I can easily maintain the car on the track. About the data, if you want our races data, it's open for everyone... http://www.racerclube.com.br/sistema/php/index.php?dataarray[dest]=resevent&dataarray[IDseason]=24&dataarray[IDrace]=155 The export button (E) is in the lower right corner.
I think the change per track is natural. Was the same in the older mod, different styles of track suited different setups. The brake pressure is depending what speeds you're having to brake from. Some people like higher force, some like less. Equally depends on the track model, there's some variation between the range of different tracks out there. And rear wing, yes, you'll need to play around per track. But we prefer this. We didn't like how the minimum wing could be run everywhere. Now we have a wing that can be tailored for a range of circuits. BVTCC has shown Doni could be less but Brands needed a tad more. But the two tracks are similar with high speed, but the steps of wings did help with the balance of the car.
You're totally right, it didn't make sense to use the lowest wing on all tracks, many other mods on rFactor2 have this same problem.