Hi, as promised, I've created this post to share the way we at ARI racing setup our F3 cars so all drivers in the league can submit their experience in setting up their cars, and the people who are a bit lost in finding the performance can learn and be more competitive. First, I want to start explaining how I look for a setup that suites me more. This is going to be a bit of a long post: - First of all. I get the aid of the following tools; The Motec Plugin http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.php/3336-rFactor-2-Motec-Plugin alongside the Motec I2 PRO http://www.motec.com/filedownload.php/mi2_pro_1.19.0021.exe?docid=2409 (correct me please if I'm wrong as I am not at home to check if this is the correct link for the application). Also. very important, the Setup Developer from the people of Race2Play (You will have to look for a proper download link as they are no longer hosting it) And finally, paper and pencil for taking notes. - I Start a private practice session with 20 AI cars which will help rubber the track. As the track gets rubbered I start doing laps with the default setup. This first laps just have two purposes. Learn the track (find the propper racing line) and start adjusting gears. - Adjusting the gears to get the most of the car. This means: setting the 5th gear to be close to the limiter in the fastest part of the track. If the track has a very long straight where we think we can catch another car's slipstream it's important to leave a couple of a houndred revs available so we don't get to the limiter too early when trying to overtake that car. The rest of the gears depend much on the layout of the track. If the track has mainly low speed corners, we want a short relation of gears between 2nd, 3rd (and maybe 4th) so we get the best acceleration at low speeds. If the track has mainly high speed corners, we want a short relation between 3rd, 4th and 5th gear (where the car will be the most time in the lap). Normally, in a standard track I look for a second gear that perfectly fits the slowest corner of the track, and the adjust 3rd and 4th according to what I've explained before. As the setup of the car is being made and the car behaves better and faster we might need to do some slight adjustments in the gears. - At this point I also adjust the brake balance of the car. Normally, on a rubbered track the default configuration works well for me. If, as in Mills outer loop C, we have several brakings while turning I may need to move it a bit more to the front to avoid losing the rear of the car in those tricky brakings. - When I think I am close enough to have a good learning of the propper track line I start working on the rest of the car. I always work assimetrically, so I disable the symetrical option in the suspension setting screen. - This F3 car in mostly every track can go to its lowest riding height and have no risk of bottoming out. So I remove all posible packers, lower the car to its minimun and use soft suspension (I have a tendency of starting with a value of 9 in all 4 springs. The springs value is something I'm still experimenting with to see whether softer is better or not). Then I go for a couple of laps. When starting driving, in the top left of the screen the Motec icon appears. By default it is disabled everytime you start rfactor2. To enable it for this session you must wait for the icon to dissapear, then press Ctrl+M to enable it (you'll hear the sound saying it is enabled). After this laps I go to the Motec Telemetry Monitor and check the ride heights and suspension heights of the car. Most probably I'll see the car is high enough even at it's lowest setting possible. According to the Setup Developer Tool the back of the car must be slightly higher than the front. So I check in the telemetry monitor the ride height on the straights. Probably at this point the back will be lower than the front by a little, so I increase the rear of the car's height to make it a bit higher than the front. - At this moment I start adjusting the anti-roll bars according to my driving. This will help seing the way the car behaves in the midle of the curve (the behaviour of the car at the entry and exit of the curves is something I do later using the "toe" and "damper" guide the Setup Developer tool provides). To my liking, the default settings of the anti-roll bars are very conservative and understeery. I start softening the front bar to it's minimun (without detaching it), Taking a few laps and if the car remains understeery start hardening the rear bar. I Keep this procedure until the car feels neutral or with a little controlable understeering. Remember this refers to the midle of the curve's behaviour. - Now I'm supposed to have a car I'm confortable with, so it's time to work with camber to help get the most of the tyres. I start lowering the tyre pressure to its minimun as at the moment, in rfactor2, these tyres get hotter in the middle even at their lowest pressure. Then do 4-5 quick laps, taking the precaution of not blocking the front tyres when braking. Then, check for the tyre temperatures at the Telemetry monitor. Normally I use the temperatures of the last lap at the finish line. In the Setup Developer Tool you can indicate the tyre temperatures, inner, center and outer. Also set the desired optimal temps, I set 85-95ºC here. When filling the temperature fields the application will tell each wheel if it needs more or less negative camber, more or less air pressure and a softer or harder compound (nothing we can do here as we only have a single compound to deal with). This step can take its time as it's always: 1-taking 4 to 5 laps, 2-checking the temps, 3-making adjustments and repeating the 3 steps till the developer tools says we have all 4 wheel camber properly adjusted. - Now, going to front caster. As the developer tool suggests, I start removing 1 degree of front camber and adding 2 degrees of front caster. In theory this helps to have the front tyres' surface more flat and so helping the car braking better and steering better, but not sacrificing the benefits the camber provides while the car is turning. At this moment caster will be close to its maximun, so if you feel you need to keep reducing camber (may be still in quite a high angle) and adding caster there's no much amount available. - We are close to the end. We only need to correct the entry/exit understeer/oversteer. The developer tool is a great help in this. We tell it our feelings with the car and it'll tell us which changes to do in the bumps/rebounds/front toe in/rear toe out until we feel the car enters the curves fine and exits with only a little powersteering. - The car is almost finished and we just have to calculate the fuel for the race.With our car completely set up it's time to do 4-5 laps. Then, at the telemetry monitor check the fuel consumption per lap. I keep the lap that took the most fuel. If the races are for the usual 20 minutes, I calculate the number of laps that can be done assuming the fastest lap I've achieved. Then multiply those laps by the amount of fuel burnt and increase a couple of liters to be safer. The car should be finished by now. If I want to make sure, the best is to simulate a 20min race in a rubbered track with no other cars to see if I have to add or remove an extra fuel and to check the difference in car behavoiur as the fuel is burnt. Well, if I haven't missed any step, this is the way I set up my car. It'll be great if other drivers share their way of doing it, and mostly I hope I can help other drivers in setting up their cars. Regards.
Update, the Motec application I use is the I2 PRO http://www.motec.com/filedownload.php/mi2_pro_1.19.0021.exe?docid=2409 I update the original post with this link
correct. You'll find at race 2 play I'm pretty sure. Great post btw, I hope to add to this when I have time
I've been searching the internet, but all sites link to the race2play site that doesn't host it anymore. Would be much appreciated if you could upload or send via PM!
It's been withdrawn everywhere that I have searched. It's copyrighted until 2017. Looks like it is totally illegal for me to do (anything) about it. big copyright at bottom of programs 1st page. hmmmmm.
Unfortunately the Race2Play Setup Developer program has been discontinued. Race2Play does still maintain the exclusive rights to distribute the program. Any distribution otherwise would be in violation of the Copyright. It wont be long before there will be news of another option.
