Italotracks
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Thats true don't rush to make conclusions. I have just posted my initial thoughts. It could be that my car physics aren't performing well enough in this track. Or it also could be bit of both. To me this just ignites further interest in my car as well as in the track.
Today I have done 1'41'7 in Monaco, and then 2'16'7 in Posillipo with same setup. maybe will do second faster next time. I have set this laptime with very low fuel, rubbered track and ambient temp at around 34C. But it was incredibly difficult. I think I can still do faster, and also perhaps could use stronger damping to stabilize car better through bumps and sudden twitches that D50 does, D50 is super sensitive to setup changes. I have configured my tires in a way that they would have pretty good sliding friction at low speeds, this is how it can do such fast laptime in Monaco, compared to Ascari I probably shouldn't hope to go faster, even if I don't have any risks going so fast. Worth to mention that I have configured my tires to have minimal grip gain from groove, which perhaps isn't correct, but if I would improve it, it would make me too fast everywhere and still too slow in Naples. D50 is not too slow in Monaco, Monza, SPA, Pescara, Zandvoort, Nurburgring haven't tried Aintree. Speaking of groove, even with minimal effect on grip, it feels rather significant on this track when I fail to keep car on the groove, I loose plenty of time and confidence in car.
I don't know any car in simracing that has been "validated". But it is exactly what is being done right now. Perhaps I have slight freedom to improve grip of tires befor it becomes way too fast elsewhere, but it won't be enough.
As for the track. I believe it is really accurate on macro level. Can't judge many smaller details because I have no references, no photos and no videos of many places fro mraces back then, can only look at google street view now. Maybe on some spot it was possible to apex differently, maybe curbs could have been lowered at few locations allowing greater speeds. As I said before, perhaps tarmac had slight better roughness, and sliding produced less loss of grip. I would also question possibilities of road camber being little too small here and there, although with methods used it shouldn't be wrong as that is on macro level.
I have looked at Monaco tarmac roughness params in TDF, they are standard, so no better or worse than Napoli. I think Nordschleife has some more roughness dialed in.
@Italotracks What other laptimes we can use to validate your track providing correct pace ? I know you mentioned EVE F2, but I suppose there were no real life laptimes with similar car there, or was there ?
Thanks for your message!
You've obviously spent a lot of time and care with your Lancia D50 to get it towards accurate laptimes at several other tracks, and if your driving is of a good enough standard to get near real world times at those circuits then it would be wrong of me to suggest there's another 8-9 seconds for you to find.
Asphalt is a mysterious thing. I remember from Martin Brundle's autobiography a section regarding testing at Magny Cours, teams didn't like to use the track because laptimes would be all over the place, sometimes getting worse as the session progressed, and not rubbering up as predictably as other tracks did, making setup work a very moving goalpost.
Reading the following from the Motorsport review of the 1957 Naples GP suggests that it is a track that evolves in a very exaggerated way compared to others.
Wth races crowding on top of each other, Naples suffered from the lack of factory support from Maserati, just as Pau had lacked Ferrari support the week before, but in spite of this there were sufficient private owners to fill the field. The circuit of Posillipo, on the heights overlooking the bay of Naples, remains unchanged each year, being a pure street race, with innumerable corners and continually-changing gradients; in fact no part of the 4.1-kilometre circuit is on level ground, even the start being on an uphill gradient.
The Ferrari team was out in full force as soon as practice started, with Collins in a Lancia/Ferrari with swing-axle rear and Hawthorn in the one with Ferrari front suspension, and Musso in the 1½-litre Formula II car. It has been a bone of contention with drivers that the lap record for the Posillipo circuit remains to the credit of Ascari driving a 1953 Formula II Ferrari 2-litre, with a time of 2 min. 7.7 sec., and though many have tried to improve on this time, using current Formula 1 cars nobody had succeeded. The power/weight ratio and handling of the old 2-litre Ferrari, together with Ascari’s ability, plus the fact that he was trying hard to make up time after a pit stop, resulted in freak conditions that were absolutely right for the circuit, with the resultant record time. Since then cars have had a lot more power and it has been difficult to approach Ascari’s time on this twisty circuit, for the surplus of power over that required has been more than the drivers could cope with.
It was Collins who set the pace, soon lapping around the 2 min. 10 sec. mark, the new independent rear suspension proving to be very good on the tight corners. Musso was lapping consistently with the Formula II car and getting down to 2 min. 14 sec., while poor Hawthorn was feeling very put out as he could not better 2 min. 17 sec. It appeared that the swing-axle car was far superior to the de Dion rear end, judging by the times, for Hawthorn has not lost any of his ability to drive, yet all was not well, for Lewis-Evans was lapping faster than Hawthorn, in spite of the Connaught not being right on carburation. No one was taking this first practice period very seriously, most of them finding the way round the twisty circuit first of all, and Gould, Halford and Volonterio were having a quiet look round. Unfortunately for Halford a half-shaft broke, so that he had to spend the Saturday practice period waiting for a new shaft to be collected from Modena. Before the Friday practice ended Hawthorn tried the swing-axle car, to see if it was really as good as Collins thought, but after only one lap he stopped, for his knees were firmly wedged under the rim of the steering wheel, making dicing impossible.
TLDR: It took the 1957 F1 cars ages to beat a lap record set four years earlier by Ascari in a F2 car, but then during the race Hawthorn set a lap of 2:05.6 - some 12 seconds faster than he had managed in practice.
I knew this information already, but when I made the track for AMS1 I had a very good 250F that I could compare laptimes with and I found that the grip in that sim is commensurate with the cars and other tracks, so I didn't have to make any changes.
In AC I remember now that I did indeed have to revise the grip upwards because the AC 250F is an absolute dog, but it was the only yardstick that ran there for me to compare laptimes with.
It appears that in rF2 that the track evolution, yielding accurate times for Monaco, Pescara etc is not enough for Naples, which appeared in real life to go from 'super low' grip to 'super high' grip, compared to Monaco perhaps going from 'super low' grip to 'regular' grip.
So what's the solution?
In AMS the .tdf has this line which would really help with this situation:
Dry=0.9632 DryStep=0.000108 DryMax=1.0128
I can in AMS control how quickly the track evolves, and to what extent, up to a very high DryMax value if necessary.
In rF2 sadly ( as well as having to package the whole thing again, rather than just giving you all a new .tdf to drop into the folder) the tdf looks like this...
/ Roads
[FEEDBACK]
Wear=1.00 Dry=1.00 Wet=0.84 Roughness=(0.5,0.25) Resistance=0 BumpAmp=RoadBumpAmp BumpWavelen=RoadBumpLen Legal=true Spring=0 Damper=0 CollFrict=0.4 Sparks=1 Scraping=1 Sound=dry
In rF2 there isn't this functionality. I don't believe there's a way to control track evolution on a track by track basis, so all I can really do is crudely hack it upwards by let's say 10% grip, to Dry=1.1.
Would that be a fair or desirable solution to achieve closer laptimes?