This is a video I did about a year ago using footage from the Absolute Beginners Racing Leagues.
Check out the link below

http://vimeo.com/5187183

Also Youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7Qw4nS1xiM

Let me know what you think.

Thanks for the suggestions, I realise we can't see the camber and the curbs and they could have a significant effect.

Quote from samjh :

Judging by the rubber marks, it seems most people tend to go shallow and run wide at the exit. A bit strange, but you'll find out why once you drive the track. Much will depend on the power of your kart. I suppose in less-powerful classes you could take the thing flat-out, and that might be why the rubber marks go shallow at turn-in and wide at exit.

I noticed the rubbered in lines too which run really wide on the exit, I don't think that's the line I would have naturally chosen

Quote from Becky Rose :

When it comes to the last corner just take whatever line gives you the highest engine note past a certain point just after the corner. Experiment and listen. That applies to any corner on any track that leads into a straight of reasonable length: Listen to your revs, or if you have an Alfano or equivellent check the revs that way, do so at a visual landmark like the end of a rumble strip, after the kart has settled from the corner exit.

Your ears are an important tool when racing.

Thanks for the tip. It sounds obvious now you've said it but I've never done that before. I'll definitely bear that one in mind.

So initially I'll probably stick with the rubbered in line and once the tyres are nice and warm I'll see if a later apex is going to give me better speed down the start/finish straight

Hey guys, I'm doing a bit of karting in a couple of weeks so I thought I'd check out the track beforehand (not that I'm overly competitive or anything )
I also thought it'd be useful to get some expert advice from the LFS forums
What line do you guys reckon would be the best line around the last corner onto the start finish straight? I'm thinking maybe quite a wide entry with late apex or is it gonna need a double apex? Picture of track attached.

Last edited by waj_uk, Tue, 8 Jul 2008 23:53.

Need a bit more info to help. Drive a few laps until the tyres get too hot then save the replay. When you watch the replay back put the camera in chase mode and watch in the force view (f).
You need to watch the force arrows between the front wheels and the road and see at which parts of the circuit they always go red, indicating that you have gone over the limit of grip.

Then its pretty much what Benji said above^^

If it's under braking: reduce the braking force and consider moving the brake balance towards the back a bit.

If its round the corner: Reduce understeer by changing the balance of roll stiffness between the front and rear. This can be done with the springs or ARBs. Also reduce the maximum steering lock both on the car setup and your own steering input.

If all the above are ok and its just the inner edge of the tyre getting too hot then its what Dan said: reduce the camber.

I personally don’t have an issue with running quite different damping rates on the front and rear if it means I can get closer to the neutral balance. Sometimes I go slightly above 100% if I’m willing to compromise the bump performance for the balance that I like.

As for where to start, I would suggest just trying out a few different levels of damping and see how it affects the car feel and your lap times. All the other suspension components including the tyres will have an effect on what level of damping will be best for your driving style, car and track combination.

Last edited by waj_uk, Thu, 1 May 2008 18:45.

With regards to the dampers and transient balance; I always try to start off setting this as neutral as possible. I find it's the best place to start as it means the car balance is nice and predictable throughout the whole corner. Bob's program is great for this as you can quickly tweak the dampers keeping a close eye on the displays that show the balance under various conditions. You can then adjust the dampers relative to each other to make sure damping is somewhere roughly in the range 50%-100%; for the spring rates you have chosen. These damping rates pretty much depend on your driving style and how bumpy the track is. The higher the damping the more responsive steering will feel but this will obviously mean that the car will bounce off bumps/curbs more and lose more grip over sudden dips

I might get onto your question now

Quote :

for things like dampening if you can increase the front rebound or decrease the back compression which do you do and how do you choose?

This would depend on how over or under damped it already is. If the front rebound is already near 100% I'd rather not increase it more so I would reduce the rear compression. If the rear compression is near 50% then I would look at increasing the front rebound.
These changes would give you more oversteer on the corner exit, but it will also give you more understeer on corner entry. That's the compromise.


If you want to use the dampers to increase understeer on the corner exit then you will probably bring back the oversteer problem you had going into the corner. Maybe in your case it would be better to to change the roll stiffness balance between the front and rear. Alternatively, a little toe in on the rear wheels would have a significant effect to increase the rear stability.


I hope it helps

Last edited by waj_uk, Wed, 30 Apr 2008 23:02.

No Problem. Thank you very much for the program. It looks like it'll be really useful. I just need to find the best way of using all that information I now have on tap.

Hi guys

I'm having some trouble sorting out the .OCX files on an XP64 machine. I've put all the files in system32 but when I run reg_system_xp.bat it says it can't find COMCTL32.OCX and COMDLG32.OCX

When I try and run the VHPA program I get "Component 'COMDLG32.OCX' or one of its dependencies not correctly registered:a file is missing or invalid"

Is there a different way of registering these files for XP64 than in XP?

Thanks for your help


EDIT
Problem solved. Put the files into syswow64 instead and it did the trick

Last edited by waj_uk, Sat, 19 Apr 2008 00:58. Reason : Problem solved

I did try as you suggest first, I ended all tasks and had no other programs running but the lag was still exactly the same. It's no biggie as I can just run it in a big window and its practically the same size as fullscreen anyway. It's just a bit of a strange one.

I've found that as long as I start LFS in windowed mode I can race online without the strange lag. If I switch to fullscreen then the lag comes back and just won't go away even if I go back to windowed mode. The only way to get rid of it is to restart LFS or change focus to a different program.

Hi guys, hoping someone can help. I'm getting really bad lag for the online gaming on LFS. Its very consistent and repetitive as in the game will run ok for a couple of seconds then lag for maybe 1 second and this will repeat very consistently.

I've also noticed that if I have LFS in windowed mode and have a different window selected such as firefox or openoffice writer then the lag goes away and I can see the race in the background running fairly smoothly.

I'm guessing that this has something to do with settings for my wireless card on my PC. If anyone has any ideas or knows of any guides could they point me in the right direction?

Cheers