but... in the xrt and BF1 in particular, im still getting that dreaded low speed oversteer on T1 at blackwood for example? is it my sets now need adjusting or do tire pressures now need adjusting from before??
also, in the XFR at AS club, on both chicanes im getting massive four wheel drifts, it feels like the tires are made of jelly and lack any stiffness and feel like the car floats around corners.
I would start by increasing the tyre pressures, they seem to need a lot more pressure than they used too, and deform a massive amount if the pressure isnt right.
I'm still a demo racer but get the similar feeling with the xf gti.
Feels completely different...This car also floats around the corners, waiting for the nose to turn as if it were a rwd...
What setup are you using?, pre-patch S setups will not work the same as they did in the old version, not only do the tyres need more pressure, but also require a lot more camber than before.
yeah i nearly had to double the pressures to get the XFR to be stable through the flat out chicane at AS club. it feels like im drving on 145/60 €40 tyres illepall
i think they distort too much with the mod, especially on the XFR when it has racing slicks
Its a bit more realistic than before, I didnt like seeing race setups using stupidly low pressures, that wouldnt work IRL.
Give it some time untill some new setups are available, or use the RACE_S setup and modify it to your driving style.
Camber? well, before the patch I had my FXO, KY Nat set and was running about 0.6 Deg camber on the front, now I am looking at almost double that to get the same results, 1-1.2 Deg.
The FZR set I use at Westhill works superbly after the patch. I've been running Westhill the last 3 nights and on Thursday, I had knocked the rear ARB down a bit to get it just a little less oversteer. In patch S/T, I put the ARB back and the first 5 laps knocked 3 seconds off with 3 PB's and a 4th under prev. PB, but not new from the first 3. I haven't tried much else as I really didn't have a good set from patch T for the BF1 (hehe). Did a little in FOX at SO Long and thought the patch Q set worked well there too.
First off guess the level of downforce you need based on the circuit characteristics, the slower the course the more downforce. You dont need to get it perfect to begin with, just in the ball park. Adjust gear ratios so that you hit high revs 6th gear at the fastest part of the trac and then start work on the suspension.
Over/under steer on long corners should be addressed with castor angle. Castor adjusts the wheelbase of the vehicle, a bigger caster pushes the front wheel forwards and induces understeer, a lower angle gives you oversteer and a more resistant steering wheel (higher FF). If you are getting either effect on long or fast corners adjust your castor to suite.
If you are getting over/under steer on short and slow corners try adjust the front wing or steering angle.
Check camber settings are right by looking at the tyre loading on the outside wheels on the most critical bends (those which you loose most time on or have greatest difficulty taking).
Toe in is a quick fix for incorrect suspension geometry which results in oversteer/understeer. All my sets have a toe of 0 on both front and rear because it scrubs speed and causes unecessary tyre wear - but if you cannot find the grip toe in can be used as a remedy. Toe out is not much use unless you are into drift so avoid it.
You can tell if your tyre pressures are right by monitoring temperature over the distance you want to race.
Now check how competetive you are to ascertain if you need to adjust wing settings (if your too slow on the fast bits you've too much downforce, if your too slow on the slow bits you've not enough) and when you've got the wings right adjust your gear ratios.
If you use your ears for guaging your speed adjust 3rd gear low revs to be the speed of the slowest corner and 6th gear high revs to be the speed of the fastest part of the track. 1st and 2nd are just for launch.
Other gears should be evenly spaced at first, then adjust them so that you can raise/lower your speed in certain bends without adjusting the engine note you expect to hear.
Good post by Becky. I disagree with some of it, and have a little different philosophy on an area or two. All that really matters in the end is that people can set up the car to make it easy for them to drive and be as fast as they can be at the same time. Having said that, a few comments on bits and pieces:
That approach works fine. My philosophy is a bit different in that I base the initial wing setup more on average cornering speed and time spent cornering at a speed where downforce is highly beneficial versus time on high speed straights.
At Blackwood in the BF1, for example, I started out with the default setup (not even the race setup) and then started lowering downforce to take advantage of that great big, long straight. My lap times stayed about the same or got a touch worse. Then it dawned on me that I spend a lot more time in high speed corners than on the straight, so cranked the downforce up to full. The result was that I lost maybe 10-15mph at the end of the straight, but could crank through most of the rest of the turns so much faster I gained a lot of time.
Most people that were a good deal many car lengths behind me at the beginning of the straight pass me going into the last corner, but I pass them by the exit and by the next corner have already more than made up what I lost on the straight. All the next corners are very fast too right up to the start/finish line, so off I go... The speeds on the straights there are so low that the top speed is probably the same, or even a bit less because I can accelerate off the corners harder and brake later.
In the BF1 and maybe most other tracks I'd suggest people just use maximum downforce to start with. Then keep lowering it a bit at a time and see if your lap times drop. Once they stop dropping it's time to leave the wings alone or ramp it back up just a tad for easier car control.
Another reason I like to use higher downforce settings at most places compared to other drivers is that it's usually easier to contend with traffic. When somebody is clearly going to try and overtake me on the inside going into a corner, I'll back off a little bit at the last minute since they're going to have a bad line and very rarely will wind up anywhere near the apex. Then, as they brake too late and go wide, I cut in behind and can clip the apex with early throttle. Having a bit of extra downforce there in combination with the other guy's tendency to botch the corner a little bit really helps, and most of the time I wind up easily in front of them and widening the gap all the way to the next turn. A lot of times this works so well that I have to stab the brakes in order not to hit them on the exit if they kept the inside a bit better than I anticipated.
On high speed corners I use the wings primarily for this. Wing downforce works with speed^2, so of course double your speed and the wings produce four times the impact on under/oversteer as they do in the slow corners, so I use the wings for high speed tuning and use other stuff for low speed. Of course, if there are no wings then...
Not sure what you meant by castor angle effecting wheelbase here. Caster will effect the point of intersection of the steering axis with the ground, which increases along the wheelbase direction (increasing the steering feedback as you pointed out, which is caused by the increase in this "mechanical trail"), but the wheelbase isn't actually effected by this unless castor was adjusted by moving the suspension arms in a pro-dive direction. (Instead of having level arms, you incline them so the fronts are higher than the rears so as the wheels go up and down they also travel a bit forward/backward: Your wheelbase is then changing all the time while driving.) This probably isn't what you're doing in LFS though when you adjust caster.
Increasing caster should generally have the opposite effect you described though, provided the suspension is modelled "right enough," which I suspect is the case in LFS. Caster does primarily two things:
1) It causes the tires to camber when steered. In LFS, peak grip is at 0 dynamic camber, so if you're mid-corner and on the Shift-L display you have anything other than 0 camber, you aren't working the tire to its full potential. However, in LFS you have heat effects here to deal with so need to make a compromise so you don't overheat the tires.
2) It increases weight transfer diagonally across the chassis when steered because one wheel lifts up and the other drops down. In a turn, the inside front is forced down and the outside front raises. This causes increased loading on the inside front and subsequently the outside rear. I.e., you have less weight transfer at the front and more at the rear, similar to what you get if you stiffen the rear/soften the front springs or anti-rollbars, but the amount that you're stiffening/softening things is connected directly to the steering wheel in this case, so it's a tiny bit different.
So... Increasing caster in LFS could very well result in either increased understeer or oversteer (surprise surprise, just as in reality it's all down to how that particular set of tires works). I personally don't muck around with caster in LFS very often unless playing on the skidpad, but if you keep these things in mind perhaps it'll be helpful.
I just use wings for fast corners. Personally I think there are better ways to deal with the slow ones where mechanical grip dominates.
Ok, think I'll skip the rest of my already overly long commentary. It's Saturday night and play time has arrived
I actually had just a little bit of the front end plowing through the middle to exit of a few turns. I stiffened the rear up a bit to loosen it a little. But, I'm not forcing the back end around with the throttle like I did with patch Q.
Interesting guide Becky, although if you dont mind me saying so, it gives away your Karting heritage. Big cars have springs and dampers that come in handy for balance tuning too
illepall 
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