F1 car setup

[kensaundm31]

Wow, Dave that's exactly right. Brake hard/turn in, get on the power early.

I tried the trailbraking thing and went .5 faster but I think that was more to do with the fact that I increased the brake pressure to 100% from 75 and concentrated on trying to go faster instead of just evaluating setup changes. It's going to take a while to learn effective trail-braking.

Could you show me what the braking graph looks like for a trail braker, and also the friction circle.

I have to say I still don't quite understand how you can read all that from a bunch of dots, I'll read up on it I guess.

[DaveKillens]

Belatti describes the circle effectively. What you want to see is to push the area at 1-2 O'clock and 10-11 O'clock out more.

This trail braking is a difficult skill to master. In Schumacher's post - 2006 Monza interview, he mentioned that he had worked hard on his trail braking. So if one of the VERY best has to work at it, it ain't easy. But it's quicker.

[kensaundm31]

Oh and thanks for the extra info belati I've saved the page and will try to get all three of my braincells to understand it!

[DaveKillens]

A little off topic rant.

I've been sim racing for a very, very long time. I'm not an alien, but I've enjoyed a few scraps of success here and there. I'm a very firm believer in mastering driving before turning to setup for increased speed. Offline racing, lots and lots of it is required. Then you can learn more online. Watch the really fast guys (aliens), and try to figure out how they get through sections so quickly.

A traction circle is a diagnostic tool. It displays what the car is capable of doing under braking, acceleration, cornering, and any combination of these inputs. It also shows how close the driver is coming to the car's potential. There are many tools, and the friction circle is just one. Now, if I could only do this........

[mep]

I don't know what driving aids you use, but I use
automatic shifting and found out a very game specific driving technique.

The Pc shifts down the gears during braking, but in many corners
I prefere one lower gear. So I manualy shift down one additional gear
and push the throttle.
Now I accelerate with higher revs, which means that the engine has
more power and is reving up faster.

Another technique I use is to turn of traction control.
You can push a button, as long as it is pushed traction control is of.
At the end of very tight first gear corners your revs are absolutelly down
and it takes long time to rev up.
I push the button for 1sec or half a sec and push the throttle,
so the revs go up faster and the car oversteers a bit and is forced to turn in.

This makes a very typical noise, I once thought that I heard such a noise
at a Schumacher onboard view.
Maybe he also used this technique?

Can you tell me if you also try one of these techniques?
Can someone writte something about my friction circle?
It's very V-shaped in the lower area and looks more symetrical.

[DaveKillens]

Mep, your friction circle isn't much different than kensaundm31's, except that a keyboard places restrictions on how many things you can do. All I can do is strongly suggest you digest as much as possible on traction circles, and most importantly, learn to interpret to your personal satisfaction. But for instance, the bottom half of the circle (actually more rectangluar) is clearly defined. That is acceleration, and the traction control places very specific limits. With traction control, and under acceleration, you can only push the traction circle so far.
My heart goes out to you, because although you try very hard, and spend a lot of effort, a keyboard can never come close to what you can do with a wheel and pedals. Please, any way you can, get a wheel.

[Belatti]

After playing like 14 years with Keyboard, from F1GP through GP2, GP3 till GP4, I bought a Wheel a couple of months ago. And guess what: I SUCK!
I suck so much I don´t even wanna race. I know how to setup the car, but now I have problems to setup the steering wheel (sensibility, steering help and other stuff)

I have never raced an online race in a sim, and maybe I´m not quick enough to beat aliens in hotlaps, but I´m sure that in a 100% race distances I´m damn good, with my keyboard + manual shifting (helps me to brake very late while turning inside a curve, GPxs dont have traction circle but I guess mine its OK ) I have a pace enought to finish 2 laps ahead of computer controlled cars in ace level (GP1&GP2) and 1 lap ahead (GP3&GP4).

The secret to overcome the lack of analogic input the wheel brings is to "machine-gun" keys while braking and cornering

PD: Dave, with that pic you gave life to my morning!





I wish there was nowadays a F1 driver with only a 10% of what Gilles had!

[DaveKillens]

Of all the racing sims I have, GP4 is the most frustrating in setting up the wheel and other inputs. In fact, I rarely touch that game because of those reasons. For my F1 fix, I rely on EA's F1 2002. Much, much easier to setup the wheel.
I also suggest Live For Speed .. http://www.lfs.net/

Yea, Gilles was very special. He didn't win many races, but without a doubt, the most exciting and entertaining driver I have ever witnessed. Most younger fans never experienced Gilles, but of all those pictures showing him throwing his Ferrari sideways, it was no accident. He did that consistently lap after lap, and the fans used to collect at certain corners just to see him go fast and crazy.

[mep]

The secret to overcome the lack of analogic input the wheel brings is to "machine-gun" keys while braking and cornering

I more try to find that point where the electric circiut is short before beeing closed and tremble around this point.

Your coment DaveKillens brought me on the idear to reduce the traction control on low,
and after a few laps I was getting used to it.
I was only 0,4 seconds slower than with full traction control,
but I got that car behaviour like in your pics.
A quickly oversteering car at the exit of low speed corners.
And it really makes great fun tho drive it, especially when you are still
competitive to the other drivers.
But you have to be full concentrated every time you touch the throttle.

I didn't see a different in friction circles with low traction control.
But the friction circle in Malysia is a bit more rounded in the upper area.
I will post it maybe later.

DaveKillens, If you also drive F12002 than you may post a friction circle where
the effect of trail braking is more visible.

[DaveKillens]

Oh heck, I just posted the pic of Gilles to remind myself of how much fun racing is supposed to be. But despite that, loose is fast. If the car continually understeers, then it's just not working to it's full grip potential.

[mep]

Friction graph from
Malaysia:




and Monza:


Notice that the X and Y-achsis are not equal in size.
Any comments?

[bazanaius]

Cheers for everyone putting up real friction circles - after reading about them for years I've never seen a real one! Although these might not be realistic (e.g. keyboard users) it still helps my understanding alot!

What car is Gilles in in those photos? That nose it crazy!

B

[kensaundm31]

What is '3rd spring and damper' Huh???

I have no concept of what this is. Can someone enlighten me please.



(p.s. bazanaius I don't use a keyboard)

[mep]

You understand it better when you use the program.
There you can mark special parts of the track or special points of the circle
and you will understand why specific points are located at their place.
This goes hand in hand with the track layout. As you can see the
friction graphs are different on different tracks.

Has anyone some links where the reading of friction graphs is explained?

[Jersey Tom]

To save myself a lot of typing, this briefly illustrates the 3rd spring. http://www.optimumg.com/documents/techt ... _Tip_6.pdf

Just like the ARB is there to provide additional roll stiffness while not changing ride stiffness (though it is coupled with single wheel bump).. a 3rd spring, aka ride spring, aka "pitch spring" (but not really) is there to be activated in ride and pitch but not in roll.

Helpful for high downforce cars, you can use 3rd spring to prevent the suspension from totally compressing on itself. Or if in worst case scenario you can use 3rd spring packers to absolutely limit the amount of compression.

If your diffuser works really well at high camber angle / lots of chassis pitch you can do some trick stuff with 3rd spring to that end.

Regarding G-G plots ("friction" plots).. its a metric for determining how well your driver is pushing the car. How close to the limit. In a perfect world, you operate at the limit of the tires at all times. They can produce all longitudinal force, all lateral force, or some combination of the two. The vector sum of those orthogonal accelerations is a measure of the total acceleration of the vehicle. Lets you show how well you are trailbraking and accelerating out of a turn.

A perfect corner would be a half circle. Starting at (0,0) you would slam hard on the brakes to (0,MaxBrakingAcceleration). As you turn in you gradually add steering while letting off the brakes. You go around the outside arc of the friction circle to (MaxLatAcceleration,0), while on the apex. At the apex all your car should be doing is max, all out pure cornering. From there you unwind the steering while getting on the gas to sweep around to (0,MaxDriveAcceleration). At all points you are using the maximum accelerative potential of the tires.

If your G-G plot is more of a cross ("+") rather than a circle ("o") it indicates you only use the brakes in a straight line, and can be trailbraking harder and getting on the gas earlier.

Realistically its not likely that you're going to really use the whole friction circle/ellipse/blob. But you can get somewhere between a diamond and a circle and that's pretty quick.