Hi everyone, this is my genuine plea for helping me understand where I'm going wrong with driving. I'm a complete beginner in LFS.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jjuluDaPqi8tCVG-9KnTyu_6pcMTbimk/view?usp=sharing

The attached replay is on mouse+keyboard but frankly I've tried a controller and run into the same puzzling issue sometimes. Pardon the quality of the driving I know it's bad. I'm running into a horrific understeer issue that I can't intuitively understand and do not know driving techniques to resolve it. I don't experience anything similar in real life driving.

The turn after the long straight on laps 1 and 2 demonstrate it well. Here is my best attempt at understanding it:
Lap 1 - Turn after the long straight:
Brake just after the 100 sign (too late), try to take the turn at 110 kmh (too fast), after lifting off of the brakes with the wheels turned to the right slightly (too early), the front wheels briefly grip and rotate the car.

I understand it until here.

The wheels quickly lose grip. All 4 wheels start sliding. The rotation continues due to the sharp initial turn, so the drift gets worse even though the steering wheel is straight. The result is an absolutely absurd understeer into the gravel.

The same story just before the bridge, and on lap 2. Trust me I know the entire thing looks like a dogs dinner, but one thing at a time.

The question: what is the actual cause and what do I do to fix it? I know I made mistakes but I experience the same problem even on reasonable turns. Unless the front wheels are made of lubed up ice cubes, there must be something I'm missing. I obviously can't trail-brake on keyboard, and it does not seem like it matters how gently I turn in.

I'm not looking for car setup tips, this is a driving/physics ignorance on my part.

Hi,

First of all, i know you said you're not looking for setup tips, but it kinda looks like you're using the default setup and defaults in this game are garbage to be honest. The car setup is a big part of your struggles.

Try looking here, i would suggest some of the setups classified as sprint
https://www.lfs.net/files/setups/XFG/BL00


One of your issues is that you're locking tyres instantly under braking, which suggests too high of a brake pressure, which hampers your braking and turn-in and makes the car behave erraticaly when you release brakes.

Furthermore the car understeers heavily on power with this setup, which is kind of expected with FWD cars, but you try to compensate with cranking up the steering lock which only makes the problem worse as you slide the front wheels across the surface again.

You're also in the wrong gear most of the time, if you're using auto gears, switch to manual + autoclutch, it allows you to use engine braking and maintain better control over the car in corners, when it doesn't suddenly dowhshift halfway through a turn.

This might be a good reference in terms of driving and inputs, the vid is from a (at the time) mouse player



btw, you're also carrying way too much fuel, which is a dead weight

Hi, thanks a lot!

The reason I said I'm not looking for setups is that I'm sure the same principles apply to good setups too. It feels premature to start changing stuff and potentially hiding symptoms of poor driving. I also don't really care about lap times, just good driving techniques.

Adjusting the brake pressure is fair enough of course, as the car has no ABS and i can't control it manually on kbd.

Ok watch video, avoid lockups, countersteer quicker, use engine breaking. Got it, will try.

Quote from johneysvk :

Hi...

Ok the dropping the brakes from 800 all the way to 620 and dialing back the bias helped a ton with entry stability. Changing the gears manually is at least more predictable. Dropped the time to consistent mid 1:38.

The linked setups seem insane however. Tons of camber and a locked diff on a FWD?! The car spins its tires and won't take a turn unless under power. Unfortunately, not the driving experience I'm after...

Is there something gentler, more suitable for a beginner? I added just a bit of camber on the front, removed it from the back, softened the front and made the rear harder. The car can finally take a corner.

Possibly with some practice I get below 1:37 but the 1:34 in traffic from the clip you linked?! Witchcraft!

The thing about the 'pro' setup is, that the desired (fastest) way to get around the corner with FWD is (in simplified terms) to throw the rear of the car around to make the car rotate and use the powered front wheels to pull the car out of the 'controlled spin' and onto the following straight.

In racing you want to use as little steering input as possible. Because the more you steer, the less traction you get for acceleration/braking. Hence why pro drivers induce a bit of oversteer and use the FWD to straighten it out of corner.

This is why I hate FWD, it's so unintriguing to drive that there is almost no point, if I was OP I'd switch to XRG or FBM and learn to drive that