Yesterday I have watched Portland RL race. Indycar is definitely way more interesting than most other racing series, including F1. They surely keeps their formula to stay being a car, which I much appreciate. Also their organization and style feels more oldschool, more traditional, which I also think is great. I don't like extreme modernity of F1, because I don't like too much modernity, as it tends to always progress even if it is regress in not so measurable ways such as spirit, vibe, mood. Pretty nice commentary, and unique point of view by someone who can compare the two.
Spec series always produce better racing as the focus is more on the drivers. F1 has always been about technical development and, although we tend to look at the drivers' champion, the actual winner of the season is the winning constructor. Both have their strong points and hopefully the cost cap will allow for a more even level of competition on F1.
Had so much fun in Portland yesterday. Absolutely epic drive. I have a question about geometry changes in upgrades vs garage. If I save a setup, then next time I select other geometry settings in upgrades and then load previous setup in garage, does geometry getting reset to previous option since it is part of a setup too ? Anyway IMO it is not useful to have these geometry options in garage, unless you write them all down somewhere, to know what are changes for roll and pitch responsiveness from each. I enjoy exploring setup of indycar very much. I think STD ackerman feels best, but half of positive ackerman seems to take away tires screech and steering car feels more precise, probably less understeer. Although I never isolated any setting, as I did multiple changes everytime. To completely explore this car it would probably take a month or more. Changing arbs is a bit weird to me, for example when going softer the stiffness goes up and down, but I suppose they refers to bars stiffness, while attachment points may change and the anti roll effect should go softer with each click down. The new UI is absolutely fantastic for working with setups, it is simply beautiful. In Portland I tried to keep it more funky with tire pressures and aero. But finally just used min pressures and highish wings settings. I never managed to completely cure understeer. although I was shifting aero balance forwards, I didn't want to increase rear tires pressures, because of directly loosing overall grip, although increasing rear tires pressure significantly would help a lot achieving desired neutral handling. I didn't really like primaries that much relatively to alternates. But perhaps that particular test was flawed. I didn't feel much supposed consistency and durability, or difference in handling, most noticeably I was loosing time on braking with primaries, but perhaps my short testing was just too flawed, and too short. Probably differences would become very apparent over 10 laps or more, or maybe not. I did achieve pretty neutral and satisfying car, it felt very good and realistic, great fun. However, one thing kept bothering me. Like with GT3 car I have shared same opinion few years ago - mainly there seems to be too good, or not edgy enough longitudinal grip. It bugs me most under acceleration. With significant lateral force the tires will surely break traction with acceleration, and feel realistic. But with no lateral force, or little lateral force it feels like it doesn't matter how hard you'll try to spin up rears. When exiting slow turns such as Portland chicane or slow 90 degs T7 I have an anticipation that if I floor the throttle pedal rear end should swing away for a moment, but it just doesn't do that. Like 1:00:47, 1:05:25 flick there: It is little nit pick in overall amazing physics. To me this little detail is important. I don't mean that it should happen in every time, but at least if I specifically try to do it. Sometimes it must have to become oversteer, just means to end understeer by giving some stress to rears on purpose, but for some reason they still holds laterally. I did try to induce that behavior with choosing high antisquat and high roll center rear geometry, stiffening rear, hardening differential power.. Although I did not go to extremes, as obviously the car should still be fast and handle well. I did try alternates and primaries too. It is just something about low/mid speed straight accelerations that doesn't feel like rubber enough, I find it common with S397 tires. At least thats how my perception is. Amazing car, huge thanks !
It's a truly fabulous car, I wish I had a bit more time to play with it, maybe later this week. Tuning is half art, half science. It's the driver that makes it an art, its the science that complicates things. Relocating Ball Joint & Hinge points adds a whole new dimension over fixed geometry. Literally. As the geometry in rF is based on Pickup Points on Chassis & Spindles I am assuming the Wishbone and Toe Link lengths are altered to meet parked lengths and those lengths will be maintained to control movement. That's how Rigs of Rods works, and the apple may not have fallen far from the tree here. So when you swap setups they will be the same when parked regarding geometry. Trouble is when the rear changes Roll Centers (Z axis) the Toe Links alter the Toe Angle at a different rate. How that Toe Delta is managed in rF is a mystery. What's missing are some backend tools for setup training that includes animation of motion and forces but that gets into a whole different topic. RF2 provides an entire Front End as the ideal Training Tool to the Motorsports world. Come to think of it that was done 12 years ago.. Until Macromedia Flash became obsolete.
Portland is great, but I noticed the real pole time last year is 57.8111. My lap times would put me a few rows further back, lets say lol. What lap times are you guys doing?
I did 1min1second, probably could get down under one minute, into mid 59s. That would be about right since I am 2-3sec slower than aliens.
With the default setup except for using Primary tires I am getting about 1:03 on the medium track preset. If I use P2P I can get 1:02. I am matching the Ai at 95%.
Wnt down to 1:00:07 today. I couldn't put up clean lap, probably would have done 0.2-0.4s quicker. Will surely get 1s quicker in a week if I'll keep driving. I probably will, because it is AWESOME ! I also use Portland restriction from upgrades, but I have no idea what it does for a car. Also went a gear higher with setup today. Ultimately almost got rid of understeer, but it felt like there just is fundamental understeer in it, that is impossible to get fully away, but I got absolute most of it out. Then started balancing car for it to be drivable and fast, and got tiny bit understeer back. Still good, and actually so much far from original car setup. I learned that major factor in this "lack of lateral fall of of rears while accelerating" apparently for the large part was due to rather weak diff power. Going higher helps to spin them up nicely for more effective exits, but it also makes the car harder to rotate, thus more likely to understeer mid-turn untill rears spin. I used 119inch wheelbase setting, due more weight on front, and in setup I learned that weight distribution was adjustable and adjusted it as much forward as I could. The front arbs I chose the lowest aka "detached". Lower diff coasting power also helps to rotate car easier, it becomes quite tricky under hard braking/downshifting, but I use classic trick to compensate that by softening rear rebound, it keeps rears planted better for split seco while it also shift a bit more load forward and helps reduce understeer. Then adjust rear arbs. Ackerman 50%. Used smaller toe angles. Less front camber, since it seemed to me that I just don't use all of it while practicing at Portland. Overall I got pretty impressive and immersive handling, very neutral although it was still hard not to experience understeer, and I tried to do my best as a driver. Some of that was due to failing to do proper trail braking, but also just as much was that the thing just wouldn't turn-in more, still... My setup was very alive, and I could do a lot of car rotation by throttle. Indycar is great.
That's some in depth testing! I most played with springs & ARB, got the 1.01.2 but beyond that I just hit a point where driving in deeper just gives me understeer so bad its like hitting oil. I must try some of your suggestions tomorrow
@Sim_Player Understeer makes me unhappy if too much, I am happier about oversteer, but I am the most happy with neutral steer, alternating between oversteer and understeer. I am pretty sure that big emphasis on understeer is pretty much safety measure for all the less skilled people not to get overwhelmed by the handling. I just wish when the real life pro race has happened, they have had more aggressive setups. I agree that weight distribution forward can create more understeer. But I disagree that it is going to be a case at all times. Pretty sure that if correlation to various parameters would be plotted it wouldn't be linear. Focusing on low speeds since then aero is not as significant. Depending on tires, chassis geometry and row of other things... there probably would be an ideal percentage of weight distribution of a car for every given moment. It comes down to tire load sensitivity, basically a car/axis that has less load sensitive tires and is capable to maintain more equal tire loads left vs right while cornering, should be capable to reach higher cornering forces, before loosing traction, loosing to inertia and not being able to maintain turning radius anymore. And then it is just a matter which end of a car will loose traction first. The arbs deal is interesting, I guess we just don't know what "detached" really means, in rF2 it means base value, and it still could be reasonable and not 0, plus springs stiffness, plus dampers, plus geometrical roll compliance. It does sound about right that stiffer arb should force the outer wheel to submit tire for bigger camber alignment utilization. But it also means unloading inner wheel more and faster, which in terms of load sensitivity isn't great, so it must be balance of these two. I think you shouldn't set up car with goal of utilizing camber, but rather set up camber with a purpose to utilize tire tread optimally.
Looking at how many collisions happened with cars going straight during 2021, I would say that a level of understeer seems to be a characteristic of the IR18. Obviously, not as high as on the base setup, but something that will crop up driving on the limit. I watched an onboard lap around Indy road course and there was a lot of lift and coast action with careful throttle deployment exiting turns.
don't know where to ask ... does the ai ever use the alternative tyre? can you somehow make them use them? this is a great car ... but difficult ... lots to learn thank you
Yes, probably. But it should be possible to have it down to tiny amount. Of course at high speed could be manipulated with aero, at low speeds it is more tricky. Sure Indianapolis road course has lots of tight and one tight long turn, it will surely be lots of coasting. Somehow I think USA tracks in general are heavy on coasting, good example is Laguna Seca, probably #1 track in the world in terms of good coasting technique. Understeer seems pretty minimal in there, well perhaps it just takes driving skill, I think a setup which I came up with yesterday delivered similar driving, can't wait to test it in Indianapolis road track:
Well, I did not remember which on-board it was, and it was this one. As you can see, Grosjean lifts and coasts on a lot of turns, taking his time to go back into the throttle as the car understeers, washing out, every time he does it, which does not mean that the potential for oversteer is not imminent. I believe it is. My impression is that the front does not "bite" very decisively so the IR has to be driven like a pendulum, rather than as a "tight, high downforce car". If this is the case, I believe that S397 did a really good job, as that is the impression I got from the car in-game. Note: I believe I already mentioned this, but Grosjean was super happy with the car on rF2 and loved it and most criticism from other drivers - I believe - came out of the base setup being very conservative (and or, iR fanboyism, particularly Palou).
He is just being a nice guy lol But I don't deny, I think it is epic car. Default setup not really my taste, still fun though. I don't really care about default setups anyway. Yes there are couple of understeer moments, but it is not gigantic understeer. I probably have it like that in my current setup. All I want to say is that there is rather lengthy way to go setup wise in terms to minimize understeer, but it still remains. Perhaps it is true to life after all, but I also think that it could possibly have just a little bit lack of turn-in. Default setup aside, I give this car 9.2/10, possibly one of highest scores in my list from simracing. Also default setup - probably correct decision.
