It's my fealing that since patch T the mechanical grip (the grip offered by the tyres) was balanced for the BF1, with the same tyres used on the other slick cars.

To me the Fox now has so much mechanical grip that I no longer enjoy the car like I used to. For instance: When following another car at speed we used to feel the loss of downforce at the front. Now we have so much mechanical grip that it isn't noticeable, although apparently the code is still in there.

Most setups i've looked at have no downforce on the Fox, because aerodynamic grip isn't needed on a car that has so much mechanical grip that the only way you can use it all is to forget to brake.

I get the impression that the R2/R3/R4 tyres where balanced for the BF1 when it was introduced, but other slick cars dont have a budget bigger than Africa, and use much cruder technology for tyres.

Am I wrong, or is mechanical grip too high in LFS?

Yes it is too high.

I have noticed this alot too.

yeah, the downforce on most cars in most setups in nearly non existant

I had a look at all my fox setups, most had downforce around about 1/3 or 1/2 of maximum. As cadet was the highest of the 10 or so tracks I'd set it up for, and it was about 2/3.

Quote from djgizmo68 :

yeah, the downforce on most cars in most setups in nearly non existant

I can't agree with this...

The big GTRs have a lot of mechanical grip too, no idea if too much. I remember when I was testing the new patch with my old setup right after the imcomp patch was released and managed to roll the XRR on almost flat surface on a slow corner. Although I have a feeling that it is down to tires not being enough load sensitive and the fact that something in the CoG calculation is a bit wrong. I get that feeling from the my experience that even the FO8 is quite easy to roll

Quote from Hyperactive :

The big GTRs have a lot of mechanical grip too, no idea if too much. I remember when I was testing the new patch with my old setup right after the imcomp patch was released and managed to roll the XRR on almost flat surface on a slow corner. Although I have a feeling that it is down to tires not being enough load sensitive and the fact that something in the CoG calculation is a bit wrong. I get that feeling from the my experience that even the FO8 is quite easy to roll

AFAIK, the CoG was lowered in lots of cars in the more recent physics patches, yet the cars still have a strange nature to rollover and I am almost 100% sure that it really has nothing to do with the CoG, but just the tire physics. The tires are always the issues in this game, and if you notice that when the car gets a little bit up on two wheels, the bite of the sidewall on the tires is incredibly high, thus it just carries a lot of the weight over the top and snaps really abruptly.

MRT is the best example of all this, and most of the slick cars. Because the slicks were modified in such a way that they have more bite at such limits, but I think it is all wrong, and it makes rollovers far more prevalent than it should be... even for the sake of just touching a kerb at slow speed :doh:

Another problem is that when you are driving on two wheels slightly, there is this heavy bite point I am speaking of, but then once you pass it, it suddenly just 'turns off' and the car easily tips over... kind of like a sailboat capsizing.

On the subject of grip in some of these cars... yes I think most of the cars have far too much grip, but I think it is all down to tire sizes and compounds in the game. BF1 needs special tires still... they are just not proper F1 tires imo. But that would maybe even mean the car could be faster, because the tires need to handle heavy loads and not slide so damned much! As for road cars, those are a bit too grippy also. But remember in a lot of earlier versions of S2, some cars were pulling incredible amounts of lateral g-forces, and at the moment they are considerably closer to real values. Still a bit too much I'd say, but definitely need to be nerfed of some grip.

In due time, we should be pulling a tiny bit less G's than we have now, and have a nice feel of the car on or off the limit.

Speaking of needing 20K tires to achieve F-1 like grip levels, I remember some tire tests done on go kart tires (aka tires commonmly used for karts, F-SAE, etc) revealed that their properties were remarkably similiar to full nlown F-1 tires. Both tyre types have similiarly high friction coefficients, with load sensitivity and slip angle charactersitics very similiar as well.

Well i've not driven an F1 recently so i'm not sure whether the mechanical grip is too high there either ... It's been a while since a drove for the Renault F1 team.


...as a driver delivering something to their factory...

I've driven for HondaF1.



Oh, bugger. I mean I've driven PAST Honda F1. My bad.

The ability their capable of this season I do not blame you for driving past them.

Quote from tristancliffe :

I've driven for HondaF1.



Oh, bugger. I mean I've driven PAST Honda F1. My bad.

weve all driven on them all our lifes

In general, aren't good slick tires going to be grippier than the most expensive grooved ones?

I think what's basically killing the fun of driving the FOX is the body downforce.
At slow speeds the car is nice and fun. But even around Fe Gold the FOX gets so much downforce from the body alone that the engine can barely get the rear tyres loose.

Does anyone have numerical data of how much downforce such a chassis would cause?

Vain

Timo Glock drove the BF1 in LFS, and he said bumps and sliding is too severe.

Quote from Tweaker :

Tim Glock drove the BF1 in LFS, and he said bumps and sliding is too severe.

You mean Timo Glock? Where and in what event did that happen?

(or was that some kind of weird joke that I obviously didn't get)

http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=364660
im guessing vykos talked a little more extensively about timos comments on lfs in the betatester board

Quote from Tweaker :

Timo Glock drove the BF1 in LFS, and he said bumps and sliding is too severe.

Would you care to elaborate? Too severe as in sliding too easily/early or too much sliding overall as in: car should not be able to slide without completely loosing it?

That's all I heard on IRC

LFS has very very soft tires, in reality R1 type compounds would only ever be used on sprints and hillclimbs. Small single seater series don't allow separate qualifying compounds for cost reasons, in fact I'm not sure if any non-US big single seater formula allows them. In reality Formula Renaults would probably be deliberately limited to R3 type compounds to keep costs down.

In reality a Formula Renault chassis produces a lot of downforce but due to the harder tires it is needed. In F4 the battle is always getting heat into tires not keeping them cool and the downforce makes a huge difference if the cars were allowed to run on the stickiest hillclimb tires, which is basically what R1s are, then the wingless cars would be the fastest.

Quote from Jamexing :

Speaking of needing 20K tires to achieve F-1 like grip levels, I remember some tire tests done on go kart tires (aka tires commonmly used for karts, F-SAE, etc) revealed that their properties were remarkably similiar to full nlown F-1 tires. Both tyre types have similiarly high friction coefficients, with load sensitivity and slip angle charactersitics very similiar as well.

Firstly MRT tires are small car slicks, not kart tires, big difference. Figures from karts are fairly meaningless seeing as they have very little relation
to racing cars.

That really depends on what exact dimensions, construction and compound the MRT uses. The only way to know how tyres used for the real MRT is to do tyre tests (aka long and expensive operation).

However, FYI, if F1 was allowed to use the low profile tyres and larger wheels, Their mechanical grip levels would get so high that coupled with current levels of downforce, no human (save the use of G-suits, etc) would be able to handle their phenomneal performance. I remember Bridgestone engineers once said that if you maintain the current overall dimensions of F-1 tyres whilst lowering the sidewall profile and increasing the wheelsize to 15 inches, they're practially undrivable.

And did I mention that kart tyres behave very similiarly to F-1 tyres? Or is it just that F-1 cars don't count as race cars?

Quote from Jamexing :

I remember Bridgestone engineers once said that if you maintain the current overall dimensions of F-1 tyres whilst lowering the sidewall profile and increasing the wheelsize to 15 inches, they're practially undrivable.

without a tall sidewall f1s dont have much in the way of bump damping ... driving with a flatspot would be bliss in comparison

Quote from Jamexing :

And did I mention that kart tyres behave very similiarly to F-1 tyres? Or is it just that F-1 cars don't count as race cars?

I kind of get the feeling you're just having an argument for the sake of it, karts and F1 tire technology is vaguely similar in that there are four of them and neither has any real bump damping without them. The sidewalls of F1 cars play a very important part in their suspension. In this way current F1 cars are different from almost all other current single seaters in that they need high profile tires and are designed to use them. Low profile tires would as you say make them impossible to drive and in no way make them faster.

Well, without rethinking their suspension, anyway.

I'm sure they could make the cars drive fine with such wheels and tyres, should regulations permit it. No idea which solution is faster though, regulations are rarely made to keep speeds high though.

I drove with the XRR on 2 wheels and straight with 150 km/h. I guess the downforce with 150 km/h should be high enough to press the car faster back to the track. But thats just my thinking.

Quote from Bob Smith :

Well, without rethinking their suspension, anyway.

trouble is you cant without losing in downforce