If the FZR was indeed hit too hard by the penalties I'd like to suggest to remove some weight (please suggest!) from it's weight penalty and increase it's fuel capacity by a certain amount (please suggest!).
The ideal situation would be where the FZR can take 0.1 or 0.2 a lap from the XRR with an empty tank, but looses 0.1 to 0.2 with a full tank.
There is quite some GTR practice going on. I didn't read the times, but I guess with those numbers you could make a good picture of the current empty-tank performance of the cars.

Vain

I think its weight is just fine. Nobody has realy put it to the full test though.

Driving the XRR is still pretty much the same as it always has been, so don't complain about tires or fuel. The FXR is still the same too, but should at least be able to keep up only a slight bit now... though the tires are still crap.

The FZR is FINE with +100kg, and possibly very even with the two other cars. All you need to do is sort out your setup a tiny bit, and then move the wieght ballast to the front or rear depending on how you've set the car up. I've found that the weight need to go towards the front a slight bit, and then the car feels fine. You also have to realize that you need to lower the downforce a few clicks on both ends because of the added weight... or else you just have too much drag added on.

The FZR is still very competitive, and +100kg is just enough to figure out if it is too little or too much. I've done some long endurance stints with a MoE setup I have, and it is the same in terms of tire wear and fuel usage (could do same amount of laps)... just the times were slightly slower --- the way it should be.

@ Clownpaint , dito !!

Quote from Tweaker :

I think its weight is just fine. Nobody has realy put it to the full test though.

Driving the XRR is still pretty much the same as it always has been, so don't complain about tires or fuel. The FXR is still the same too, but should at least be able to keep up only a slight bit now... though the tires are still crap.

The FZR is FINE with +100kg, and possibly very even with the two other cars. All you need to do is sort out your setup a tiny bit, and then move the wieght ballast to the front or rear depending on how you've set the car up. I've found that the weight need to go towards the front a slight bit, and then the car feels fine. You also have to realize that you need to lower the downforce a few clicks on both ends because of the added weight... or else you just have too much drag added on.

The FZR is still very competitive, and +100kg is just enough to figure out if it is too little or too much. I've done some long endurance stints with a MoE setup I have, and it is the same in terms of tire wear and fuel usage (could do same amount of laps)... just the times were slightly slower --- the way it should be.

more weight => more downforce needed , so if +100Kg you put less downforce you will be very very slower.
adding so much weight seems a bit crazy for the fzr, and why, in a same class of race cars, the AWD would be the lightest ?
I think the FZR should have a slight penalty on its hp, but not a weight penalty...
And xrr et fxr have the exactly same spec for their engine, wich seems not very appropriate like one is an in-line-4 and the other a flat-4...there is a way to compensate the slight disadvantage of the fxr with the torque band for example...

For what its worth:

I've spent considerable time with the GTR class sets on oval. From what I have done, the XRR is only a few hundredths faster than the FZR so they are pretty close. The fXR on the other hand is 6 tenths or more slower per lap. Whether it should be or not is beside the point. It is.

Certainly more time can be shaved somewhere... but it looks to me like im down close to the best I can find in W21.

top speed is not affected a lot by the weight or the grip of the tires , so the oval is clearly a bad idea to tell wich car is the fastest or not (in most cases). It is better to take a track like Kyoto GP long, wich will tell you exactly wich car is the best for medium/fast track , and then you can find what is the tune to make the GTR cars competitive (ie : FZR could still the fastest, but with a XRR only 3-4 tenths slower and faster by some tenths than the FXR ; like this you should see the FXR faster on small tracks, and XRR competitive on the fast aston tracks...)

I really hope the weight of the FZR isn't increased by the current 100kg in Patch X. At the moment, it seems to be disadvantaged in comparison to the XRR in almost every respect.

Quote from Flotch :

top speed is not affected a lot by the weight or the grip of the tires , so the oval is clearly a bad idea to tell wich car is the fastest or not (in most cases). It is better to take a track like Kyoto GP long, wich will tell you exactly wich car is the best for medium/fast track , and then you can find what is the tune to make the GTR cars competitive (ie : FZR could still the fastest, but with a XRR only 3-4 tenths slower and faster by some tenths than the FXR ; like this you should see the FXR faster on small tracks, and XRR competitive on the fast aston tracks...)

So by that way of thinking if I add 10,000 pounds to my XRR, or run my tires with 3 pounds in them, it will still go around the oval just as fast as it does now. I think not. Weight does matter and so do tires.

Sorry, but the oval is obviously one of the least ideal places to test car balance, shortly followed by dragstrip, autocross area, BL carpark and skidpad. We don't go to rallyX courses to balance the TBO class either, do we? The goal is to balance them on average for all regular road tracks, or at least for the most driven ones. The oval is a far too specialised environment to draw any general conclusions from balance testing made there.

Quote from hammer it :

So by that way of thinking if I add 10,000 pounds to my XRR, or run my tires with 3 pounds in them, it will still go around the oval just as fast as it does now. I think not. Weight does matter and so do tires.

when I said : "not affected a lot", it means what it says , and we are talking about less than 10% of the weight (I think it is still too much, and not a good idea) and few centimeters wider tires beetween them...
i.e. : ufr and xfr are quite well balanced (with actual physics) on the LFS tracks, while if you only see the oval, there is no possible comparison beetween them, xfr's top seed been quite better, and lowering it to make them as competitive there would clearly kill the class at the advantage of the ufr.

what i dont understand is, why when only one GTR or TBO car is allowed, that there are those handicaps, too. maybe it would be sensefull only to activate these penalties, when there is more than one car allowed.

Quote from bLaCk VaMpIrE :

what i dont understand is, why when only one GTR or TBO car is allowed, that there are those handicaps, too. maybe it would be sensefull only to activate these penalties, when there is more than one car allowed.

http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=417040#post417040

You should better get used to the current handicaps, as they will be removed as handicap and re-added as permanent car change as soon as patch Y comes around. That's the reason this thread is called "Temporary car balancing discussion", which also explains why implementing such code would be nonsense.

What I was trying to say initially is that the 2 gtr's are pretty matched and the FXR is slow in comparison - on the oval. Thats it.

Certainly there will be differences on every track. I wonder if a car handicap could be built into the track code so that when gtr's are run on oval, the FXR would have 20 more horsepower and when run on as1 the car that is disadvantaged there would have whatever was determined to make it close to the others.... see what I mean? Maybe we should just call it good enough and run what works for each of us. I mean, we could pick this thing apart forever and not come to an agreement....... Either that or introduce the COT class

imo, if the RB4 had a slight power increase (about 2-3%), the XRT lost a little weight, and the FXO got a VERY slight power gain (1-2%) then i reckon the TBO group would be about even. BUt obviously, to get it even requires "trial and error". Hope this can get sorted though, the TBO and GTR group seem's like it has got worse, not better

Frenchy

TBO is about perfect now.
The RB4 is the best deal on tarmac tracks since it starts well, isn't too difficult to drive and does decent times, but the margins to TBO and FXO are really close. The FXO doesn't work properly in 5 minute races due to it's problems off the line, but once at race pace it's up there with the other cars. A FWD just won't win a 5-minute race. That's a drive-train issue.

I won't say much about GTR class though. I'm not good enough with it to make a statement.

Vain

Quote from hammer it :

Certainly there will be differences on every track. I wonder if a car handicap could be built into the track code so that when gtr's are run on oval, the FXR would have 20 more horsepower and when run on as1 the car that is disadvantaged there would have whatever was determined to make it close to the others.... see what I mean?

iirc scawen already posted that htis wont happen
the reason is simply that this would completely eliminate the point of having different cars in the first place

Quote from Shotglass :

iirc scawen already posted that htis wont happen
the reason is simply that this would completely eliminate the point of having different cars in the first place

Thats what this thread is all about though, balancing out the cars to make them more even. I agree, if they are all the same then we would only need one car.... let the differences be... thats ok with me!

Quote from hammer it :

Thats what this thread is all about though, balancing out the cars to make them more even. I agree, if they are all the same then we would only need one car.... let the differences be... thats ok with me!

no the point is to balance them in a way that theay are even _on average_ thus making every car competitive in a league environment _not_ to make them even on every single track

Read through the thread but didn't see an answer, sorry if it is not applicable/appropriate to current thread.

Is the ability to penalize weight/power of a car temporary to the test patch?

Our team was floating the idea of implementing Reward Ballast in our upcoming team's series, and the idea of having mixed class GTR races (current and ~300hp) has been mentioned.

As for the current balancing, I agree that I would rather see a smaller weight pentalty with slight power modification than the current 100kg FZR weight. The car is still fast, it just feels sluggish with the weight. Keep the quickness of the FZR and modify the others.

In Racecar Engineering I was reading about the new British GT3 series. The 911 GT3 (whichever race version) was the baseline. All cars faster would be slowed, and slower cars could lose weight/add power. I think the pre-patched FZR should be the baseline...

Thanks,

Stu

No, I think the handicap system itself will stay, so everybody will still be able to select a voluntary handicap. Even the global handicaps will probably stay activated, they will just be set to 0 for the time being.

Today I first tried W24 test patch and was stunned by the new car balancing.
I have small amount of experience, but... Maybe there is just a bit too much weight on FXO.
Let me put it this way:
Pre W17: FXO: 209HP/ton, RB4: 201HP/ton, XRT: 206HP/ton
With W24: FXO: 193HP/ton, RB4: 201HP/ton, XRT: 198HP/ton
And this does not include 3% air intake restriction on FXO!
RB4 is now the strongest car to drive!
I agree it is the easiest to drive and should be penalized for that, but this much? RB4 isn't that much heavier to drive, and now it has the best HP/ton ratio.
And also adding weight isn't the right way for balancing. With extra weight car uses more fuel, wears more tires, driver has to break earlier, acceleration is slower and overall handling is ruined. Putting thiner tires would do pretty much the same except fuel usage.
My thoughts: all cars should have pretty much the same HP/ton ration. Maybe 2HP difference but should be limited by another way than adding weight. XRT should be the strongest and with that adding that small advantage because it is the hardest to drive. RB4 should be in the middle and FXO should have smallest HP/ton ration because it is the easiest to drive. How to do that and not to use extra weight? Don't know. You say how...

FWD have less power lost in transmission, so having a power to weight ratio lower than the other two is not a big drama (in theory).
But, as I already said it, I'm not a big fan of adding weight...especially if the new FXO (for the next incompatible patch) has narrower tires

Well, surely the weight handicap will be lowered once the narrower tyres are introduced, no?

Quote from AndroidXP :

Well, surely the weight handicap will be lowered once the narrower tyres are introduced, no?

Yes and no. The temporary handicaps will be removed, but FXO will gain some permanent weight. After a while the handicaps will be re-added if needed.