I drive the FXR car. I have been reading about using more aggressive settings for my car when I am qualifying so I created two profiles, one for Qualify and one for Race. My times are pretty good, about 5 seconds behind WR pace. I have used the analyzer to see what needs to be improved and I think it my settings.
What is considered more aggressive - more or less tire pressure?
more or less cam settings?
more or less down force in front or back?
and any other 'aggressive' settings you may think of would be helpful.
Thanks

Less tyre pressure = more grip, but slower in straight line and quicker tyre wear.

Camber - pass

Downforce - more wing = quicker in corners, slower in straight line, vice versa for less.

Agressive settings = low pressures + low wing.

If you have a solid race setup that works, you can try to improve on it by looking at the stopwatch. But at the moment there are only a couple of things you can generally adjust to be faster over one lap than racelength.

Tyre compound / pressure: Softest compound you can manage over one lap. You can try to fine tune the heating process by adjusting tyre pressures (or driving like mad before your timed lap). Lower pressures will give more grip and will heat up the tyres more quickly.

Camber: You can adjust the cambers purely on the cornering speeds (laptime), you don't have to worry about even tyre wear or even temperatures that much. Usually, a bit more camber than what's in your race setup.

Downforce: On some tracks, you might be able to accomplish a faster time by running higher downforce. In a race, high downforce might be a disadvantage because people running lower downforce can pass you on the straights. On the other hand, with low downforce you could get the higher speeds on straights and if you get lucky, get through the twisty bits unharmed. It all depends on the track that's used and the qualifying method (if you're allowed one quali lap you might want to aim for a safe result (higher downforce) instead of going off the track trying to push 110% (lower downforce).

Brakes: You can also try using higher braking forces and/or more rear biased brake balance during qualifying. If you can concentrate enough for one fast lap, there's some fractions of a second found here. Because over a race distance the overall time counts, brakes are setup a bit on the safe side.

If you have more than one try during qualifying, you can also try driving using more aggressive racing lines. Cutting the inside corners a bit more and going wider at the exit could result in a better laptime but can prove too hard to do over a race period.

Of course some time might be found from changing the suspension, transmission ratios etc. but they are very specific details should only be tampered with once there's no time to be found anywhere else


So overall, in qualifying you'll concentrate on making the best out of one lap, the car doesn't have to be that comfortable to drive, just get through that one single lap as quickly as possible. In a race, you'll want to make the most out of the race distance, with less emphasis on a single laptime.

Thanks Huru,
That's pretty much what I wanted to find out. I am using the gearing and suspension that the WR holder is using but the rest I have had to figure out on my own. This is my first racing simulation so I didn't know what to tweak.
I will now try to make some changes for qualifying based on your suggestions.
much appreciated.

Quote from RipYOUaNEW1 :

I drive the FXR car. I have been reading about using more aggressive settings for my car when I am qualifying so I created two profiles, one for Qualify and one for Race. My times are pretty good, about 5 seconds behind WR pace. I have used the analyzer to see what needs to be improved and I think it my settings.
What is considered more aggressive - more or less tire pressure?
more or less cam settings?
more or less down force in front or back?
and any other 'aggressive' settings you may think of would be helpful.
Thanks

Less tyre pressure can give more grip up to a point, and will increase tyre wear, and give you a lower top speed.

Negative camber will increase grip, and positive camber will decrease grip, however this can affect tyre wear and top speed slightly.

The more downforce you have, the faster you can go round high speed corners, however your top speed will be lower and your acceleration will be slower.

I'd suggest you work on learning the car and track because 5 seconds off the WR pace is not "good" I'm afriad.

Anything else I can help you with give us a shout.

thanks S14,
The negative camber tip I will try shortly.
I though 5 secs was OK but guess not.
I'll post a better score with these tips I'm getting.

Drivers are also often sacrificing a bit of stability of their setup for qualifying to squeeze out the last millisecond the car can give in those short qualifying runs...

Negative camber is not a "dial more traction in"-value... Camber is the angle at which the tyres are tilted to the in- or outside... With high negative camber, only the inside of the tyre will touch the road... When the car corners, it will lean to the outside and more of the tread will touch the road... Too positive camber and the tyres will let go sooner, too negative and the inside will be roasted and the outside ice cold - leaving you with no traction too...

thanks bbman.
Thanks to everyone so far, I have tried a few different settings based on your tips and have taken 1.5 seconds off my time. I am now 4 secs off WR pace. (I am using the FXR car on the WE international track).
What do the colors of the tires represent?
I turn on the tires view using the F9 key.
I know the 3 pads on each have 5 variations from dark blue to bright red and that's obvious, we want it to the green or one shade off either way.
But the tires themselves are changing color also thru varying shades.
My question is what do I want for the desired color there and if I keep going to the extreme (blowing the tire), what setting should I adjust to help prevent it?

http://en.lfsmanual.net/wiki/Display#F9_F10_F11_F12

If your tyres get too hot, there's a variety of causes - many involve the driver: you brake or steer too much, spins and slides, the inside tyres are spinning in the corner and so on... It's hard to say without knowing what causes it, and unfortunately there is no general solution for it...

Setups are very complicated...

Oh thanks for that link BBMan, I didn't even know half of that stuff about the F9 menu.

RIP if you want to post a setup, I can have a go at tweaking it slightly for you if you'd like.

thanks guys. I am reading all that info and will now do some more tweaking.
I would post my setup but after today, I will be racing on a different track next week. I belong to a gaming clan and this is one of our games along with many others. We hold races weekly on different tracks. So this info your giving me is great so no matter what track I am on, I can make adjustments with some knowledge instead of just guessing.

Well it may be different in the GTR's, but I use the same setup on all tracks in my XFG - My knowledge of exactly what the car is going to do if I do <action> more than makes up for a 0.2 second advantage per lap - as long as it's driven perfectly.

Try to keep to one main setup with a few minor tweaks to downforce, tyre pressues, very slight camber adjustments, etc.

Quote from S14 DRIFT :

Try to keep to one main setup with a few minor tweaks to downforce, tyre pressues, very slight camber adjustments, etc.

Thanks

thanks again guys for the tips. in the race with my clan, I had the fastest qualifying time and got pole position but then my 'race' setup was still a bit too aggressive as my tires cooked up to fast and I lost control one too many times and fell to 6th place.
This week I am focusing more of the 'race' setup.
We are running Kyto Ring national this week. (FXR car)

I keep burning up my tires. I am running tire pressures over 24 psi and a camber that almost evenly wearing the tires. Any other suggestions to keep from wasting my tires?

Braking more gradually and less aggressive driving may be more helpful, even though this might slow down the laptimes. On the other hand, you could run a bit more tyre pressure all-round to see if that helps, too.

Hmm I'm not really into GTRs but as far as I know in a race they are better with fairly high tyre pressures - I could be talking rubbish though.

If you can't find a way to keep your tyres around optimum temperature it might be time to change their compound. R2s are softer (faster) but will overheat easily, complicating things. R3s are the mid-term, usually the best for races and last for a long time. R4s are so hard that it's almost impossible to reach a good temperature, so you might want to avoid this one.

You can also go with different compounds in front and rear tyres, and that - softer compounds on the rear tyres - seems to work pretty well with the FXR.

Keep in mind that tyres slightly over the optimum temperature at the first laps is a good thing. As they wear, you'll notice they start cooling down. On this subject you'll have to find a compromise in your driving style, setup options and race lenght (high pressures and agressive driving since the start? Keep it smooth at the first laps and push harder later when tyres allow? Is tyre wear even noticeable in that race?) that works better for you in each situation.

Either way, be sure to practice full race stints and test different things to have a better understanding on how things work in LFS (if you have the time, obviously).

Hope this helps.

Quote from S14 DRIFT :

Negative camber will increase grip, and positive camber will decrease grip, however this can affect tyre wear and top speed slightly.

Its the exact opposite, if ever. Actually, its not just something you'll play around with. It needs to be balanced (considering the wheel drive, engine position & centre of gravity, total car weight ect.) as well as optimised (direction of most of the turns at a track while also considering the angle, length, steepness and altitude variance of each turn, race length & fuel strategy). Camber is, at least according to my observations, besides tire pressure, suspension settings and aerodynamics, one of the most important values to keep the tempratures at a moderate level, especially in the long run.

Quote from RipYOUaNEW1 :

I keep burning up my tires. I am running tire pressures over 24 psi and a camber that almost evenly wearing the tires. Any other suggestions to keep from wasting my tires?

It depends where to your car balance biased. I mean, evaluate the three moments; entering the curve, middle of the curve and exiting. Decide that if your car understeers (car nose goes outside) or oversteers (car nose goes inside) while entering and exiting. And for the mid corner, check if your car balanced or slide outwards (in this case ARB - anti-roll bar adjustment maybe necessary, depends if the curve is fast one or slow) .The "curve" I mentioned is one that more important for you. Than refer to the setup guide; http://en.lfsmanual.net/wiki/Basic_Setup_Guide , section "Quick reference" and try to adjust as guide shows.

As above mentioned, for long race setups I recommend use slightly higher tire pressures. You may disadvantaged at the first laps but it will be pay in long term. Also you may use R2 instead of R1 and slightly lower pressures (or R3). For me, little slower but good balanced setup is better than aggressive & fast one.

Make small adjustments, make one adjustment at a time and test & try to understand if things goes on right way. If it become worst, try to opposite. I suggest you to save your initial setup separately (rename etc.) and create new file for every reasonable step, so you can go back.
Good luck.