Just practice getting sideways on the skidpad until you can recover slides and stay on your desired course (ie. stay in the lane of the skidpad you are in). Then once you're happy with that, try it on the track...
And about crashing...you might crash every 15 seconds with the LX6, that's because it's a tough beast to drive. This is not the case with the XR GT and you should not be crashing that thing much/at all. Just don't go too crazy, try and be smooth and go past the limits just a bit at a time.
Actually, it isn't. Unless there's a way to disable damage...
Perhaps it would be good for me to have some drifitng practice? I'm thinking about the doing the very basic 90, 180, figure eight etc. stuff on the parking lot in a "prepped" (locked diff, gavel tyres on the back) GT? That's how people practice sliding and recovery in real life.
Dont worry about drifting as such. The parking lot is just a nice wide area that you can throw the car around and learn the car handling.
Also before you start press F9. This will show your tire temps. They start at blue. Green is optimal temp and red is overcooked. It takes a while for the air inside the tire to heat as well. You will not have optimal heat and hence best grip until the tires are fully up to temp.
The other thing that gets people is sense of speed. The wider the field of view you have set the slower it will feel in the car. Try something around 65deg and see how you get on.
What most people starting LFS say is that it feels like ice. But if you keep an eye on your speed you will realise you are asking far more from your tires than you would IRL as your speeds will be higher.
BTW, the race_s sets are not too bad once you get used to them. Not the fastest but stable.
I agree with this for the most part but I have had to adjust roll bars and the diff settings (more locking on coast side for LSD) to get them stable for some of the cars...just something to keep an eye out for.
You'll find it much easier without the locked diff. Try clutch pack and keep the power locking below about 40 at first. Then you can increase the lock as you get better at catching the back.
Looked pretty good to me mate. Turning in nice and late which is good. Using most of the track although a few more inches are available here and there.
Your tyres were very cold though and didn't seem to heat up very quickly. What pressure are you running? Try 2-3 psi less.
Also, the car seems a bit too oversteery just at corner entry when you are off the throttle. Maybe a touch more front bump (1 or 2 clicks) might help. If that doesn't work then try 1 click of added front spring rate. Or even a click or two rear rebound but if it causes the back to step out over bumps and brows then you need less of it.
Reckon if you can sort out the corner entry oversteer without creating more understeer mid corner you should be able to do the fast chicane flat! You'll also be able to drive the car much more aggresssively to the apex. This will save you heaps of time.
Thanks. I'll try 0.2 bar less in the tires (I'm using metric units... BTW for amateur rallies I'm running 2.8 bar front and 3.0 rear in my 1100cc Renault 5). As for bump and rebound: the GT has only one shock adjustment...?
Basically what Gentlefoot said plus I'd like to see you drive a bit more agressively into the corners and getting out from them. Also other thing I noticed was that you didn't rev the engine quite high on some places. Currently in LFS you have a shift light (that red light that comes on when you're on higher revs) which tells you when to shift. It isn't a redline shift light, like those usually are on real cars, but it is indeed a shifting light that tells you when it is the best to change gear.
Also the XRG is quite low-powered car and the key to drive it fast (like I know) is to keep the speed up as it has quite poor acceleration
Maybe you could try the XRT when you feel ready for more power?
Aah yes, I'd forgotten the crappy dampers on that car. What you have to remember then is that as you add/remove bump you are also adding/removing about twice as much rebound.
Oh and those tyre pressures sound a bit high to me, in LFS at least. Try 2 bar and less.
I made a run with 2.2 bar in front and 2 in the back and the tires were warmed up nicely after 3 laps.
Hyperactive, what do you mean by being more aggressive? Slipping (not sliding) the tires more?
As for my real car, I'll probably reduce these pressures, I ran them so high because I had a really crappy suspension and it literary ATE front tyre sidewalls while cornering hard. Now I have had the shocks rebuilt, revalved, front lowered a bit and it handles like a different car .
On your real car, was it both sides of the tyre that took a battering or just the outside edge? If just the outside edge then you need more negative camber. Beware, running too high a tyre pressure causes 'crowning'. This causes you to wear away the middle of the tyre tread. Once you've done that the tyre will never perform right again, even at the correct pressure because the contact patch will have a hole in the middle, if you get what I mean. Because you have warn away the middle of it.
Hyperactive is referring the the same thing I did. You need to attack the corners more on entry. But at the moment you cannot because as you turn in aggressively it causes the back to step out. As I said before, cure the corner entry oversteer and you'll be able to drive more aggressively.
Seems a little bit better at corner entry. Looks like the overall balance of the car is still too much oversteer. Try adding 1 click of front ARB or maybe one click less at the back. Or maybe add a couple of clicks spring rate to the front.
Remember though, that as you stiffen one end it will result in less negative camber so eventually you'll need to add some.
Tyre pressures still look a little high to me.
Also, remember after you've changed the settings you'll need to adjust your driving style and lines slightly too.
I've read H. Watt's "Secrets of Solo Racing" book and I'm a convert to the "drive the way the car/track demands you to drive" philosophy. This is why I dind't want to change the default setups at first. Now I see that they were really bad though (in my opinion).
Certainly I can't get on with them but then I rarely seem to like other peoples sets either. I've always been determined to make my own and after months of practice I'm pretty good at it now. I do know a bit about suspension tuning IRL mind.
At the end of the day I'm always trying to get a fairly neutral set that has JUST enough oversteer at corner entry for me to get the nose to the apex. I always try and avoid power oversteer on the RWDs.
Just keep making changes and feeling the difference. When you have the set pretty good then do a few laps and you'll start to notice one or two places where the car isn't handling right. Then it's just a case of racking your brains to find a way of curing the problem without introducing another.
I often sit there staring at my settings for 10 minutes before I decide to reduce the diff power locking by one click or something like that. When the set is about right what you find is that the tinyest changes have a massive effect.
To illustrate this point, I changed my diff power locking setting for FOX BLGP from 42% to 43%, reduced rear bump by 1 click and reduced rear negative camber both sides by one click. I immedialety went from doing 1:09.9s to 1:09.4s! Quite unusual to get a gain that big though.
That's pretty fast mate. I can usually only get to within 2 seconds of a WR even after many laps and set changes. That's a race set mind - one where the tyres will last anything up to about 30 laps. I never bother going for outright 1 lap pace.
AS Club is quite a short circuit though. I can usually get to within 2 secs of a WR round there. Keep practicing mate. I can tell you got what it takes.
Wow - the car looks so easy to drive compared with the earlier replays. I'm pretty proud of myself too
You need to downchange earlier when braking for the first and last turns. That will mean you can brake later and it should save you 3 or 4 tenths in laptime. Also, try reducing the final drive slightly so that it is revving a bit higher in top on the start/finish straight. Actually it may be better to just reduce the ratio of your 5th gear. That way the other gears will be the same and it won't screw up your sense of speed.
And you can probably start experimenting with camber angles on the fronts. See if you can generate some oversteer by changing the front camber angles. If you do, you know you've added some front end grip. Try having less negative camber on front right compared with front left. This will help you round right handers but may create some understeer on left handers. That's fine on a track like this where most corners are right handers and the left handers aren't that important. It can be quite a subtle effect though so make sure you drive consistently so you can see the effect of changes in the lap/split times.
Read the Driving Tips guide in the sticky at the top of this section for some of my driving tips.
.