Hi all, new to the forum and sim racing in general. I've had rFactor 2 for about four days and have been mostly driving the Spark F3 at Lime Rock, no aids but auto clutch. The first two days I tried to go "fast" and, as a result, I was sliding a lot and overheating the tires. But now that I'm aware of that, I became obsessed with keeping tire temperatures low and now I drive like an old lady. I have no idea how to get to a sensible middle ground. Should I avoid tire squealing altogether? What is a reasonable/desirable tire temperature? How many laps should my tires last on Lime Rock with a Spark F3? Some people mentioned on this forum that playing online makes a big difference and is essential to gain driving skills. Which online community would you recommend to a newbie? Thanks!
Hi and welcome! The old 60´s tyre last very long! In real life they´ve done several races with one tyre! So: You can´t avoid skidding/squealing all the time. What are your temperetures? However: Don´t fear of tyres (for now), That more comes into play with modern tyres.
Hi there and welcome to the family Good questions. General rule of thumb as to ideal tyre temps is sorta 70-80 degrees before braking points, you will always be roasting them more mid corner, that is normal.. you never want to go much above 110-120 degrees even mid corner, if you do generally any tyre melts and wears very quickly without giving any more grip. If you feel like you are roasting them too much without going too quickly, reduce your steering angle, odds are your slip angle is too high and therefore you are overdriving the tyres.. that will always result in higher temps. Ideal slip angle is when you get no more turning when you turn the steering wheel more, but you do lose turning if you turn the steering wheel less mid corner - aka just before you get understeer/oversteer. depending on the balance of the car. Mastering the slip angle is extremely important for tyre wear and will pay off in any even medium lengh race. I have won many races just based on the fact that i was able to wear my tyres at slower rate than opponents yet keeping the same pace.. which is all due to perfecting slip angles. Tyre squealing is normal and should not be avoided. Usually you want to have alteast 2-3 laps before you can consider your tyres ready.. Even when you HUD is telling you that the tyres are 70 degrees it does not mean that they are ready. the HUD is showing tyre surface temps, but there is also Carcass(core) temps which are not shown, these warm up slower than surface as its deep inside of the tyre. You want to make sure that the core and surface temps are as even as possible before you can call your tyres ready... that is why you need to give it about 2-3 laps despite the fact the HUD is already reporting 70-80 degrees. If your surface is hot but carcass is too cold, the tyres will loose temprature very quickly down the straights and will be too cold when you need them the most. Not sure about communities, i would recommend any day in the evening checking out what server is populated and joining it.. i personaly would recomment the ..<4ET> servers.. they seem to be populated very regularly. But if you do insist on sticking to Spark F3 try googling any rF2 historics leagues.. im sure there are lots of rF2 drivers who only do historics EDIT: as peterchen pointed out, historic tyres are very hard and slippery.. they last ages, what i said appplies more to the more modern stuff as that is what i enjoy
Yep, the best way to get the old cars working is by a little amount of sliding I find. They do last for literal ages compared to anything these days. It does mean they are low grip, bit the cars "drive" really well I find. As always, you just have to learn a bit of balance to your pace. Push hard for qualifying laps, ease up a bit in a race, keep temps steady as possible. But then knowing that you can lift your pace a bit mid race if need be, without going overboard. It's all stuff you'll pick up in time, and multiplayer racing will certainly be beneficial for that. Nothing beats real people racing, so try and find a good league when you feel a bit more "ready"
I just finished a practice session at Lime Rock with the Spark F3 and the tire temperatures were never above 110 (that at mid corner)... except during one or two spins. I can't remember what temperatures I got on my first attempts, though. I'm going to google F3 leagues after I practice some more. Thank you all for your feedback!
Well, if it comes to the tire, it`s really one of the most important point of your setup work...For optimal tire temps, there are a couple of settings needed. I want to paste this from a basic setup tutorial: too much camber: outside center inner 70 81 91 too little camber: outer center inner 90 80 71 too much tire pressure: outside center inner 80 88 80 too little tire pressure: outside center inner 90 70 90 with optimal settings you should reach: inner > center > outer (≤ 10°) Example for a proper temp. distribution: 90° (inner) 80° (center) 70° (outer) Beside the camber and pressure, there are more settings worth to look in, e.g. spring, toe (in/out), anti-roll bar...and much more. I attached a short guide, with more information about camber, caster and toe in/out. I hope this would help for the beginning... View attachment 20285
Hi Juergen, Thank you for your reply and the guide attached. Couldn't take a proper look at it yet. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I think you meant inner < center < outer Am I right?
Inner should be the hottest, then middle, then outer, but not by a huge spread. Depends on the track though, some tracks you may have issue with one side cambers, and there's not much you can do. If the center temp is too hot, you may be sliding a bit too much, or your pressures may be too high. Be thorough and make sure it is from pressures though, and not driving technique. Middle to low can be too low tyre pressure. Always do a decent test run between tweaks and always make it super consistent in your driving. Also, use of a datalogging software can be very helpful in seeing where the tyre pressure is stabilising, same with carcass and surface temps, etc.
Nope... i typed this wrong: 70° (inner) 80° (center) 90° (outer) should be like this: 90° (inner) 80° (center) 70° (outer)
No, no, no, no. I can see people are still stuck in rF1, iRacing and any other old sim kind of mentality. Yes this was the method for old sims. However real life and hardcore sims that try to replicate life doesn't work like that.
Yep, the problem is that rF2 measures tire surface temperatures, whereas rF1 was almost certainly not reporting surface temperatures and neither is AC. I reckon from telemetry software you can also get carcass temperatures displayed in rF2, which is more reflective of the "average" temperature of the tire.
Not saying that it doesn't work. I'm saying that not the way to approach the tyre. In real life inner part of tyre is in contact with tarmac 99% of the time (1% left for times when tyre bounces off the track on bumps or curbs) so it gets hotter all the time due to rolling resistance. It's being cooled off by air/wind as you drive fast. While other parts of a tyre (tire if you prefer) doesn't get hotter. Air hitting rolling tire also heats up but no where near enough to the tire hot enough. So using inner part as a comparison outer and middle part is very cold so temp difference is very big and that's very good. You want that. Reduces rolling resistance so the car is able to go faster. When you check temps then you might think that for example 40/40/90 is bad but it's not. Then we go into cornering. Ideally you want as much rubber touching the tarmac as possible. Tire bends under load and car leans on the springy behaviour of a tire. When whole tire touches the tarmac under load it heats all on entire width and force is transmitted as far out as possible so most force you can find now on outer part of tire if it touches the tarmac (when tire is not overcambered). In utopia world you would want as close heat up on entire surface as possible but it's not possible because inner edge is already heated up on straights while the rest is heated up in corners only. Your mission is to get your working pressure to the level when shape of the tyre allows you to get biggest contact patch possible but even then temps aren't going to be 90/80/70 as you want to. I could ramble about it for ages but the easiest way is to imagine it yourself if you don't have analytical imagination try using thermal cams from onboards and there are some telemetry from real race cars on the internet (usually older but still applies).
Exactly, ideal camber is when your contact patch is even mid-corner when you are leaning on your tires the most. In all other situations the inners should be hotter, you can see exactly this behaviour when you are watching those thermal cam shost from F1 and that is also why you will see the inner edge a lot more worn at the end of their stint http://i.imgur.com/atgq1N3.jpg
You can translate it by yourself http://www.dtm.com/de/news/reifenkunde-am-norisring-wird-s-hei-2004-06-27.html
There has been some very good information shared here, and includes some of the most knowledgeable tuners in this community. I will add some personal observations. 1)Managing tyre temps is also often a case of managing the temp balance between front and rear to optimise grip and wear. The majority of cars ship with default set that has an understeer balance. The reason is that it's easier to drive thus allowing drivers of all standards to experience the car. Optimising the set will thus often involve moving the balance more to neutral. It's a personal preference how much understeer/oversteer is desired but a stock largely understeer balance will manifest in front tyres that slide and heat and wear much faster than the rears. If understeering you will be needing to move grip balance fwds. This will add grip, lower temp and wear to that end. You will know when the balance moves when you see temps going up at the other end and wear is more equal. The front outside tyre will still usually be the one wearing the most. The main tools are suspension (all speed corners)and aero (med and high speeds). Springs will alter the mid corner balance, dampers (slow bump/rebound where available) will impact the transitional phases of entry and exit. Sometimes once you have achieved a more neutral balance you may need a little diff lock to assist on exit. As a generalisation, top drivers can live with a little more oversteer. 2) When analysing temps across the tyre the old and very logical adage that the middle temp should be the average of the much hotter inside and cooler outside does not usually (depending on the exact tyre model used) apply. In many current examples including the latest cpm tyres you will find that the best grip occurs with a middle temp that is much higher than that average and indeed in some cases even higher than the inside temp. If you chase the theoretical numbers especially by using camber changes (which would see you lowering front camber to get the outside temp up) you will lose performance. My advice is to experiment with pressures and use the one that gives you the best grip. By all means observe the impact on the temperature spread but be led instead by performance rather than by chasing the numbers. The mid depth figures will be easier to observe as the surface temps will fluctuate wildly. Surface temps are possibly more helpful in seeing where you are getting excessive slip and wear, for example with inside front lock ups under brakes. Bottom line is that the greatest grip will offer the least wear. So its grip you chase. Tyre pressures in many cars will also be the final phase of fine tuning grip balance. Lowering one end may increase grip there. Raising them the reverse. Enjoy your RF2 tuning journey.
I'm fairly new, too. I raced back in the old days with the Jeff Crammond games and then got away from racing for a long time. I picked it up again in November 2015. On top of that, I'm a senior citizen and my reflexes, etc., are not what they used to be, so that needs to be taken into consideration,too. But I'm going to give you some different advice. My advice is to leave the setups alone until you get good enough. I found that I'd drive the same track over and over and over and I'd stop and make a change and run more laps and stop and make more changes and run more laps, more changes, more laps, more changes. Then for the hell of it I'd go back to the default settings and find that I could run as fast with the default setups as I could with my "expert fine-tuning." In the end, I think what this means is that unless you're good enough, making changes is akin to the carnival game whack-a-mole. I'm not very good. The problem is not with the car; the problem is with me. My lap to lap differential is all over the place. My best laps and worst laps are seconds apart. I've stopped running offline races (which I much prefer at this stage of inexperience) and started trying to get an understanding of my driving and my car. To that end, I'm spending time gathering info. I run 20-50 laps at a circuit with the default setups with 21 AI on the track and compare my best time against theirs at 85% AI (I'm running a Red Bull in the 2013 mod). The goal is to run every track with the default setup until I can post the best time. Then I'll move on to round 2 where I'll do the same thing against the AI at 90%, then a round at 95% and finally a round at 100%. In theory, after enough laps, I should be able to be knowledgeable enough about the track/car to "max" out its default setup. Then, I think, going to the garage and trying to improve car will make sense because I should be good enough so the changes can actually be measured and "poor driving" is removed as a variable. There is a huge amount for me to learn. As a side note, I've been driving a car for almost 50 years, and it's extremely difficult to overcome some on-street, real-world habits that are detrimental to running fast laps on a racetrack.
