Setup Guide (Request)

M

Mike_06

Registered
Hello all,

So i'm having massive tyre wear issues with rfactor 2. (F1 2019 based cars)
I don't have any knowledge about the suspension settings or camber settings etc. I see some people drive the car so easily without much understeer, and they can take the tyres for many more laps than i can. I'm pretty sure it's because of my entire suspension/bump settings.

Does anyone have any setup guide for open-wheel cars? Especially about tyre temps and tyre sliding/understeer.

Edit: I also have Motec installed, but not sure if i can do anything with that.
 
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One thing i can tell you for sure is that tires tweaking should never ever be aimed for improving car balance but only aimed to obtain as best contact patch as possible. The easier way to check this out is by checking i/m/o tire temperatures (and if possible i/m/o tire wear which is not in rfactor 2) however to do it properly first of all you must drive properly in order to have proper values.

Another thing i can tell you for sure is that it is so easy, specially in virtual racing (aka sims), to induce understeer. Induced understeer is something that is completely on driver fault (not car fault) and is completely avoidable, failing to do so will force the car to drive below its potential limit. This can be done by being not smooth enough.
- If you move your steering wheel toooooooooo fast it will induce understeer (don't get me wrong, it is normal in chicane to turn the wheel fast but the question is how fast is enough?).
- If you try to go through a corner too fast, either entry or mid, you will induce understeer. This is why people say 'slow in fast out', because otherwise you will brake too hard too late, carry much more speed, turning the wheel more....which will create unbalance, will not give the car time enough to take its set and go beyond front tires grip available.
- If you turn the wheel past the optimum value (more correctly the tires past optimum slip angle) it will induce understeer.
- If you early apex you will induce understeer.

This can result in a snow ball where the driver induce the understeer, the understeer induce the driver to correct it, the driver might do it badly unbalancing the car even more leading either to more understeer or even lift oversteer. So before even thinking about whether or not the car has an issue you have to analyze whether or not you are making driving mistakes.

Obviously I cannot tell if this is the case and it is your fault. I can tell you my experience. I've been there, unable to go fast and asking the car even more in the attempt to go faster, making me even more inconsistent, destroying the tires and obviosly killing the the car potential limit. I thought it was the car/setup fault but i was simply lost into the oblivion. After a long pause and a few good readings i came to realize what i was doing wrong and as matter of fact my time and consistency improved A LOT in all sims (just for example in iracing, the combination mx-5 and limerock went from 00:59 high, which is already a decent time, to 00:57 high, which is a very good time). I was able to hold whatever racing line i wanted without any big problem, feel the car properly and all that just by reducing induced understeer.

Usually if know where you are aiming for and read the clues then you don't need MOTEC to tell whether or not you are inducing understeer.
 
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I kept it short for now, let me know if this might be your case and if it helps you and maybe i can elaborate things more, specially motec wise.
 

Shameless plug is shameless.

With camber, you want it set so that as much of the middle part of the car's tyre is on the ground as possible in the corners. Too much camber and you'll have no grip because the tyre can't roll onto its contact patch well enough. Same for too little.

It's a balancing act.
 
What I usually do for setup & tyre wear:
  1. Make a hotlap setup that suits my driving style and set the fastest lap I can.
  2. Use & modify this setup as a base for race.
  3. Start with adding fuel, do a few stint, make small changes to improve overall lap time consistency, until find a good balanced setting.
  4. More practice, even more practice, driving skill matters a lot.
A few things that reduce tyre wear:
  • avoid locking up tyre, lower braking pressure or adjust braking habit if necessary.
  • avoid sliding, balance oversteer and understeer, adjust driving habit if necessary.
  • less aggressive steering, gentle with throttle while turning.
  • less chamber (compare to qualify setup), try make tyre temperature more evenly spread
  • less toe, especially front wheel toe (close to zero, whether positive or negative), huge impact on front tyre wear in a long race.
For suspension, check some car setup, suspension tuning, troubleshooting guides, there are plenty on the web. Here is a few (shame a lot good websites lost over the years):
https://www.paradigmshiftracing.com/racing-basics/step-by-step-race-car-setup-guide
http://www.rapid-racer.com/suspension-tuning.php
http://www.intothered.dk/simracing/differential.html
 
Marc Brink said:
Forget Motec if you don't know exactly what you're doing, this is the best way to learn:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/728150/Virtual_Race_Car_Engineer_2018/

Motec is for advanced users.
Click to expand...

Yes and no. If someone gives you motec with no background information it will be useless....i've been there...... However with proper pages/plots set and some instruction about how to read them and what to look for it can be extremely helpful even for non advanced uses.

IMO the best benefit you can get from racing log are not whether or not you car is working but whether or not the driver is the problem. Then and only then you can start to see if the car it's showing some issues and dig to find where the problem might be, which for tires setups you don't need motec at all. Temperature and pressure shown in rFactor are quite enough to set both camber and pressure.

For example it is way more harder to tweak ride height, spring (more car frequency) and dampers without motec rather than with motec.
 
Just to elaborate a little more, fixing springs is not a matter of simple feeling the car soft or hard, it is a matter of providing the right spring frequency and ride height and both cannot be done properly without something such as motec. So a program like that can do little about this since it does not analyze any of the data.
 
Mate can i give you a bit of advice! More than a short paragraph and you have lost me. What you actually should have explained is its all to do with train braking. Look it up.
 
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