wow i really should start to use afs more or rather at all
btw do you talk about yourself in 3rd person often ? and would you mind if i refer to you as julius from now on ?
Setup for bumps and kerbs is all about the relationship between front bump and rear bump, front rebound and rear rebound. Do some experimentation and you'll see what I mean. I can get my sets to understeer or oversteer over bumps depending on what I need. Usually I set the car to understeer very slightly over kerbs.
While Biggie's analysis is ofcourse 100% correct, there's so much more than knowing the theory. From that analysis you can mainly learn a) smoother/different lines and b) early on the throttle.
However, trying to copy the "start throttle here" points is complete nonsense. For the early throttle to work, you have to set the car into the corner in a very specific way - I'm sure that's second nature for Biggie, but not for us struggling with getting below 1:50.
The thing is, if you go on the throttle the car starts to understeer, which means you should be in an oversteer situation when starting to apply throttle to make up for it. If you're not oversteering before the early accelleration, this will mostly result in a unpleasant smack to the wall, or extremely slow exit if we were able to prevent the former.
Then for some corners, not enough throttle is killer, especially after the first split. In that double 90° you need to apply throttle so you don't waste time, but if not enough, you will understeer and go extremely slow, or too much and you'll oversteer all over the place, in both cases messing up the entry through the left-right combo. What you need is just enough throttle to keep you in a slight oversteer state, so you're fast AND you make the corner.
If you watch Biggie's replay you'll see that he is slightly oversteering BEFORE each corner, keeping that oversteer through the corner and slowly going back to normal on corner exit. So if you want to be fast in Biggie's throttle-early way, then the first thing to learn is reliably getting in the correct state on corner ENTRY. You always hear corner exit is the most important, and it is speed-wise, but from the technique point of view corner entry is much more vital, as a sucky and unprepared corner entry prohibits a good corner exit.
The only thing left that I notice when I'm driving, is that I often steer too much and too long. During apex/corner exit, the only active steering should be done by your right foot. This is especially apparent if you understeer a bit, making the corner relatively nice up until apex, where you start unwinding the wheel and... suddenly the fronts start to grip. We all know the result from that.
The slight oversteer is present, well, more neutral steer where possible, throughout the entire corner with the very best drivers, this is because tyres develop their maximum traction at roughly a 10% slip angle (huge generalisation alert), so if you want to get the maximum cornering and acceleration/braking force from them, you have to slip them ever so slightly all the time you're changing speed/direction.
This looks like "floating/oversteering" round the corner, but you will probably find the slip is roughly equal on all four wheels, and the car doesn't look like it's pointing where it should be, but actually it maximises the G forces available from the car. After a while driving like this, it feels exactly right though, and anything else looks like underworking the tyres.
You will find that Biggie's traction circle is nigh on perfect, especially with the car being set up as well as it always is.
It's hard because it depends what your settings are to start with. But I'll try. If you are experiencing oversteer when you touch the kerbs you can try adding front bump, rebound or both. If that doesn't help or you lose too much front end grip then try reducing the amount of rear bump/rebound. But remember, reducing rear rebound has the same effect as adding front bump, well kinda anyway. It reduces the amount of lift off oversteer.
Basically you want the front to understeer slightly over kerbs so you can keep your lines nice and clean. So it's transient settings you need to work on, i.e. dampers. So you need a bit more damping at the front than at the rear most of the time.
However, I have been in situations where increasing rear rebound has actually had the opposite to expected effect and reduced power on oversteer (RWD ofcourse). This was probably because the car was under damped at the back to start with.
It would seem you haven't heard about it yet, but that was the other half of my split personality writing the article. The other (biggie-) half and the author half are only barely acquainted. Hope that explains why the author half used the third person perspective. Of course this must be the biggie half writing at this post at the moment.
You're welcome! I didn't quite anticipate that kind "impact" on you but I'm glad it turned out to be like this
I really liked doing it though, and it even taught me something too. I think it was really a helpful and efficient way to show you some of the theories about the ideal line which would have been hard to express with words.
AFS is really an awesome tool. It can really help in getting an understanding for what's fast and what isn't. Split times can be totally inconclusive sometimes... however, looking at the speedo at the apex will give you a good indication of how you're doing even WHILE you're still racing.
It's not so much about reaction, most of it is anticipation, improvisation talent (when you deviate from your usual line) and a some kind of... let me call it... "mental connection" to the car. Pushing a sim car to its limits can only work well if you're not bothered by making control inputs and how they affect the virtual car. You should be perfectly familiar with the perception of speed and have an understanding of the current state your car is in (weight transfer, tire slip, etc.).
Talking about myself, when I've been driving for some time it's almost as if I'm not turning a wheel anymore, as if I'm not pressing the pedals anymore... I'm ONE with the car and I've learned to anticipate what it'll do next, so I can catch slides even before they occur. It also works a lot in combination with sound.
That's the point when you can REALLY start to push the limits - as opposed to when you have the feeling of having to fight your car. If that's the case, you're more preoccupied with the techiques of driving itself rather than concentrating on the essentials of driving fast. Could I take this corner a little faster? Could I brake a little later? Where would it be smart to back off a little to gain a bigger advantage at a later part of the track? It's all those little nuances you only have time to think about when driving itself doesn't bother you too much.
That's also why I spend a great deal of time making a setup pleasant to me, so that I don't have to concentrate on fighting the deficiencies of my setup all the time.
I know what you mean, that corner is really tricky because of the bumps and the following part. It's necessary to turn quite hard while driving over a few nasty bumps and this sometimes just exceeds the rear right tire grip. However, you should try to focus on what I demonstrated in my analysis. Try to keep step on the throttle as early as possible and STAY on it. That means you'll have to take a relatively straight line not to lose the rear end. The "long bend" and the following straight are essential for good lap times, so you should adjust your lines according to it.
Might be. I'm not so sure myself, you also took a slightly different line. Still, the lower tire pressures should ultimately make you SLOWER on the straight, not faster. So it's quite likely that the clutch has a part in it.
I know that all too well. I remember a time back in S1 when I was fighting to enter new seconds with the RB4. On SO4 I remember doing each and every time from 1:57.1x down to 1:57.00 (some even several times), but never could get a 1:56.xx - even though I had splits for 1:56.7x. Grr....
You should really try my new set again. Because of your low pressures and your relatively low camber settings, the tires deform quite a lot during cornering. You should aim for keeping the contact patch even during the corner. Imo, you're clearly running too little camber. More camber helps you deal with extreme situations a little when the car is "tilted" even more because of clipping a curb. You can think of driving over inside curbs as adding "more positive camber to the outside wheels".
Let me quote this:
You have to get kind of outta control. But just barely. That's the so called limit
If you observe closely, my "drifting" or sliding in the first split is never excessive and doesn't cause me to lose speed. In fact that's just the limit of traction which looks (and sounds) like I was sliding and losing time, which I am not.
The "slide" in approach to the 2nd 90° right hander just before the end of split one is used to 1.) decrease speed progressively 2.) keep the weight shifted in a proper way not to overload the front tires 3.) be able to position the car precisely for acceleration out of the corner.
That's the big advantage of RWD's, you can steer them quite nicely with the throttle. I suppose you could do okay without this technique, but I'm sure you'd need quite a different setup and would still be a little slower overall.
I may add what were my initial thoughts when watching your replay: "gentle", "calm", "tamed" and "respectful". While the car would surely love you for being so gentle with it, the clock would slap you all over the place and question you why you didn't push the car a little harder
Try to think of your car as a...... an annoying politician or something. Someone's butt you'd really love to kick
If that's any help... imo, you need to show a bit more aggressiveness.
This would indicate that you're not using a setup that suits you too well. I have a way of making my setups suit my driving style, not changing my driving style to suit the setups. I'm quite sure you'd do better with a less understeering set, because I found it quite understeering when I tried it too.
So, back to your original statement: If you're scared of bumps at the exit, you could always try lowering the ARBs' stiffness because they appear to worsen the effects of one-sided bumps. Then you might try a lower diff power setting, since this makes the car a little more forgiving on throttle. A little more rear toe-in might help too. And of course using higher pressures at the front than in the rear. This will help giving you more precision during turn in and will give the rear tires more overall grip (since the pressures are lower than those in the front tires).
I'm not sure which set you're using at the moment, but I'm sure I could apply some appropriate tweaks for you if you could tell me exactly what bothers you about this set. Which corners? Under braking, acceleration, coasting... whatever. Just try to explain as thoroughly as possible.
I agree. You'd have to use the exact same set I used. Even then you might discover that you find that set unbearable. To each his own, but ultimately you'd have to find a set that suits you perfectly. It's only then that you can truly start chasing the limits.
Sooo, this turned out to be quite a bunch of text. I hope you can draw some conclusions from it. Take my advice, think about it, but please do also consider very critically what the others suggest. This is all just my way of driving and making setups. You might find you're someone to go fast in a totally different way.
Great thread Some great advice here! I'm going to have to give this combo a go and see if I can't learn a thing or two as well (which I'm certain I can). I'm also at the stage of being fast but not being able to push that last bit and be right on the edge. I'm too scared....
I'm here already . Nice comfy soft walls, good lightning, steering wheel, net connection and computer. And all the time in the world to chase teh WRs. I am not sure about being tied up, never tried it before. Always prepared to try new stuff though
Well, I think the key here is to learn new stuff and replace the old stuff with it. The hardest part for me has been to try to keep my concentration and to avoid making the mistakes I usually make which make me slower. It is a bit strange but when I try to think and put my mind into avoiding mistakes I get good corner entry, good mid corner and good corner exit. But. Once I am not fully thinking about the next corner I just do all the stuff I'm used to do. And lose a lot time. And it doesn't help that my wheel sometimes ignores my downshifts so I must look at the gear indicator while trying to slow down, so many laps ruined by that, grr.
A bit surprizing but I'm pretty sure that my bad habits come from GPL. I am totally lacking the mid corner part which makes me lose the most time. And I think it is because I "learned" that you need to be "fluid" with your controls to get the best time. Of course I then try to be extra fluid but I still end being too agressive... I just brake into corner, immediatelly put my foot on the accelerator instead of throwing the car into the corner. So basically I'm still holding the brakes when I should be neutral, which results lower speeds after enering into the corners. And the car points in the wrong direction because of this so no good corner exit then... This is most pronounced in the last corner where I still brake earlier than you and generally lose a lot time because I drive the corner wrong.
The hardest part so far has been the midcorner stuff. I'm a bit amazed how much I have lost there because I thought the biggest issue with my driving was that I was being too agressive. [yoda mode]to learn some new stuff you need to be willing to learn. To be willing means that you need to accept that some, or even most if not all, you thought you know is wrong. And what is wrng needs to be replaced. And that replacing can't be done in few laps, not in few days either. It may take 1000 years but there is only you slowing down[/ym]
Don't just quit on me now, dammit. That first time you posted was pretty hard for me to break, but now after some practise I'm easily getting under it all the time. Just keep practising and learning and you will get under 1:50 too. Defenately not easy but defenately possible. Even for you
I've said it before, I'll say it again. Excellent thread this!
I hope you get a WR kev. That would inspire many of us slightly slower drivers on to greater things.
I was reading this thread yesterday. Now there is nothing really new to me in here but just because you know something doesn't necassarily mean you put it all in practice. I've been really struggling to even reach my own standard of 1.5 secs off WR for KY Nat Rev in the FOX.
I was lapping around 1:41.5s (even though my PB is 1:41 dead) or even worse. My frustration built and I just pushed harder and was missing apexes all over the place. My times were terrible. I worked on getting the power on early but my times only improved marginally. Then I started to think about something I've read in this thread. It went something like "corner entry is all about getting the car in the right poistion for corner exit and power on early." All of a sudden my laps times fell by about half a second. Then I banged in a 1:40.44 beating my PB (which stood for a while) by half a second.
I'm sure I'd have just carried on pushing too hard at corner entry had I not read this thread. So thanks to all the contributors, especially Biggie for his AFS analysis - I know how long it takes to do all that stuff.
I'm a bit scared how fast he could drive with auto clutch. If he can shift fast and consistantly with his clutch, I'm sure that he may win some time in short run. But one mistake and...
. Nice comfy soft walls, good lightning, steering wheel, net connection and computer. And all the time in the world to chase teh WRs. I am not sure about being tied up, never tried it before. Always prepared to try new stuff though 