This is hypothetical but I'm trying to understand how to get the most out of a car (open wheeled). Lets say you've worked hard and are finally driving the correct line on the course but you're still too slow. There are no visible problem turns (car gets loose too tight ect). How do you start to tune the car for general speed increase.

Now obviously once one adjustment is made, the rest of the car will need adjustments to correct the problems caused by the first adjustment but I'm looking for the answer to where to start if your biggest problem is speed not handling.

My first guess would be lose some down force and then try and correct for other handling issues with other adjustments. Is this correct?

Depending on the car and track combination your downforce may or may not be right. Say your running at fern bay black, not really any long straights, high downforce is very rewarding when it comes to these type of tracks.

But if your at say Aston GP or Historic your downforce may well be to much. The easiest way to begin your changing of setups is to keep your front and rear downforce the same amount from each other as when you started, so if it begins at 4-10, allways make sure you add or take away the same amount from the front and rear, thus keeping the balance pretty much the same.

Another easy thing to get results from is the anti roll bars, in your case taking off downforce may leave the car feeling a little bit understeery, so removing antiroll from the front or adding to the rear would make your turn ins much better but may also make the car less stable, especcially in the slower bends.

You can very often get away with just removing some downforce, but a very good way of starting out with a setup is checking the WR and some of his apex speeds in comparison with yours, also check his straight line speed and ajust your setup achordingly.

Quote from jarmenia :

This is hypothetical but I'm trying to understand how to get the most out of a car (open wheeled). Lets say you've worked hard and are finally driving the correct line on the course but you're still too slow. There are no visible problem turns (car gets loose too tight ect). How do you start to tune the car for general speed increase.

Now obviously once one adjustment is made, the rest of the car will need adjustments to correct the problems caused by the first adjustment but I'm looking for the answer to where to start if your biggest problem is speed not handling.

My first guess would be lose some down force and then try and correct for other handling issues with other adjustments. Is this correct?

You also have to look that you are actually getting the most from the setup. Are you getting on the gas quick enough through the corner. Are you braking late enough etc.

First thing im doing is to see how many turns there are and in which direction most of them go. According to that i set up the camber. In combination with that some tire pressure adjustments are come in handy but thats not a must rather then a matter of taste or feel. Right after that i go over to the suspension which is for me the hardest thing to do since im not that deep into the technical stuff. I do know roughly what everything means but still, finding the balance is nothing im trying to archive with a mathematic formula or something. There is no wonder setup but only the setup that feels best for me and so i am going to find the best balance & performance for the entire track with the "drive & test" method . Then the transmission, most important for me is that i try to avoid shifting right before a turn. I hate doing this since its a waste of time. The rest is also a matter of feeling but also the info page in the setup is quite a useful tool (power / torque). Steering, over- or understeer, weight shifting, downforce, tire type & pressure, camber and suspension settings. Everything can be useful or break your neck. The question is how much are you willing to remove or reduce in order to have a better handling or saver ride.

Sometimes im doing big steps in a rather short period of time and sometimes im stuck with some settings because i need to know exactly what has changed and how it has an influence on the rest of the setup. Of course, when im online and aint got a setup for a given combo and i just want to have some quick races i just ask someone else for a trim. Learning from other peoples masterpieces always had a huge impact on my setups and sometimes there are settings i would have never believed that they would actually work out while using another variation of settings here and there in combination.

But anyway, im just a oval noob, what do i know

good luck, have fun and cya on track

Download WR replays then analyse them against your own replays. Get one of the replay analyser softwares to do that. One is called "LFS Replay Analyser" I think, do a search, you'll find it. There are a few others that can read the LFS data files.

Before you can use these analysers you need to create a lap data output file (file extension escapes me now, RTM) from the replays.

Load the WR data and your best lap and get the time difference display up, you'll see clearly where you loose time. Check also the throttle and breaking inputs, gear shifts, suspension travel, steering input, etc. etc.

You can fiddle with the setup forever, but these analysis sessions tell you how the WR was driven. You may find that the WR has very different breaking points, or gets on the throttle much earlier, etc. etc. You're sure to learn something about your lines by studying this data. Regarding car settings, the "LFS Replay Analyser" will tell you most of those as well. The ones it doesn't tell you can work out yourself.

Go on, do it.

Gearing. Single most influential factor IMHO. That and of course any downforce settings as has been mentioned. All the other stuff is icing on the cake. Your not going to make up the time lost by loosing 5-10mph down the straight by fiddling with camber settings and gaining an extra 1-2mph in the corners.

Generally speaking once the suspention is set up on a car, so the car is handling pretty well then the track to track changes needed are (relatively speaking) tweaks. So you got to start from the core basics.

a) Supension is basically right for the car.
b) Gearing is correct for the track.
c) Down force is correct for the track.

Those will give you your basic speed around the track, then you look at tweaking (in no particular order as they'll be inter-related):

d) Brakes
e) Camber
f) Tyre pressures
g) Suspension (particularly arb settings)


Then you go back to the basics and see how you might need to change them, eg getting a little bit more drive out of the corner after doing d) to g) might require you to readjust your top gear down the straight.

Thanks for the help guys. I have been using LFS Analyzer and for the most part I'm still working on getting the right line consistently based on what the WR holder does. Once I get that done I'll start looking at all your suggestions on increasing speed. I'm currently driving on Westhill International with the FBM and basically I'm driving around in 6th gear with my foot to the floor for the whole track except for the sharp corner before the long straight with the Start/Finish line on it. I'm still using the default setup by the way.

Gearing won't find you much time. If you're vaguely right, you might find 0.2 seconds. Sadly, what you really want is the 2mph in the corner, because then you carry that 2mph down the straight.

Gearing is the first thing you set, and rarely requires much adjustment after that, unless you are really fine tuning each corner using the crazy adjustment resolution available in LFS.

Quote from delray25 :

Download WR replays then analyse them against your own replays. Get one of the replay analyser softwares to do that. One is called "LFS Replay Analyser" I think, do a search, you'll find it. There are a few others that can read the LFS data files.

Before you can use these analysers you need to create a lap data output file (file extension escapes me now, RTM) from the replays.

.raf
@topic: As the others already said, downforce, but not too much or too different. And dont change more than downforce at the same time. change downforce, drive some laps, change it if its not ok, change another thing if its ok, and so on

When adjusting downforce, you may need to adjust ride height, especially if you're starting off very low and adding downforce. In this case, you need to raise the ride height, and since the ride height changed and you're going to get more body roll both from the increased ride height and increased corner speed, you may also need to add some camber.

Give me enough questions and my upcoming guide may end up being fragmented all over the setups forum.

Thanks for all the replies guys. The setup guides I've read are very detailed in what all the different settings do but for someone like me that doesn't really know where to start this type of advice is very helpful.

I do my (rather pathetic) setups this way:
Decide how many laps do you do on that setup. 2 for hotlapping, about 10 for short races and even 50 for endurance.

1. Adjusting right amount of fuel
2. Deciding which tyres I would use (Soft for hotlapping, hard for longer ones)
3. Adjusting camber. I drive as many laps as possible (Meaning: Out of fuel or I crash ) and look F9. I add or reduce camber and then do it all over again until I get equally balanced tyre temperatures. The middle one can be changed by increasing/reducing tyre pressure.
4. Adjusting final gear ratio (I have never touched individual gear ratios). If the track is slow (SO tracks, for example), I prefer low gear ratios and vice versa for fast tracks (Oval, for example). I guess and test it. I always use peace of paper to write down laptimes. Naturally, I will keep the fastest one.
5. Adjusting downforce. Just like gear ratio, depends on your speed. Using pen and paper & choosing the fastest one.
6. "Minor" settings like brake force.
7. Repeat the steps.

I don't dare to touch suspension settings very much, as I don't have clear picture what those does. Thats why my settings aren't good ones (Decent for my daily fun-driving, but not for racing).

I hope this gave you some kind of insight. Only real hint I can give you is that you use pen and paper for taking notes. I record every change I make, so I can always backtrack if I find a dead-end.

The thing is Jarmenia, that you probably haven't got the line down.
Everyone here is rambling on about setup changes etc., things that could definitely gain you some time, yes, but it isn't necessarily what's going to make you a better driver.

You say you have the line, but first of all, ask yourself if you have the timing? Are you braking as late as possible? Are you minimizing your free roll? Are you getting on the throttle as fast as possible and as much as possible after every single corner? Are you getting the best out of yourself?

This very question is primary. Every thing else comes second. You need to be pushing yourself to the absolute limit to be pushing the setup to the absolute limit. If you're not doing that, small setup changes are going to do very little for you.

Obviously the paradox here is that you are never getting the best out of yourself - there's always room to push more, concentrate harder. But the key point here is that you are probably not pushing yourself hard enough just yet to be worrying about setups.

Training is the key to getting better of course, but I have a few links that might help you:

http://www.virtualracersedge.com/driving_tips.htm
A series of driving tips.

http://www.virtualracersedge.com/physics_of_racing.htm
"The Physics of Racing" is a very famous series of articles from a software engineer and sparetime racer. It's very heavy on math, but the first couple of chapters are still essential to any driver.

These two links are here to help you with the same thing. You might know how to drive the car, but do you know why that is correct, or maybe why it is incorrect? These links are going to tell you this.

And finally when you want to start making your own setups and setup tweaks, here is one guide to get you started:

http://www3.sympatico.ca/cbarnett/SetupMatrix.html

Hope this is of help to you and other people here.

Quote from evans :

The thing is Jarmenia, that you probably haven't got the line down.
Everyone here is rambling on about setup changes etc., things that could definitely gain you some time, yes, but it isn't necessarily what's going to make you a better driver.

You say you have the line, but first of all, ask yourself if you have the timing? Are you braking as late as possible? Are you minimizing your free roll? Are you getting on the throttle as fast as possible and as much as possible after every single corner? Are you getting the best out of yourself?

This very question is primary. Every thing else comes second. You need to be pushing yourself to the absolute limit to be pushing the setup to the absolute limit. If you're not doing that, small setup changes are going to do very little for you.

Obviously the paradox here is that you are never getting the best out of yourself - there's always room to push more, concentrate harder. But the key point here is that you are probably not pushing yourself hard enough just yet to be worrying about setups.

Training is the key to getting better of course, but I have a few links that might help you:

http://www.virtualracersedge.com/driving_tips.htm
A series of driving tips.

http://www.virtualracersedge.com/physics_of_racing.htm
"The Physics of Racing" is a very famous series of articles from a software engineer and sparetime racer. It's very heavy on math, but the first couple of chapters are still essential to any driver.

These two links are here to help you with the same thing. You might know how to drive the car, but do you know why that is correct, or maybe why it is incorrect? These links are going to tell you this.

And finally when you want to start making your own setups and setup tweaks, here is one guide to get you started:

http://www3.sympatico.ca/cbarnett/SetupMatrix.html

Hope this is of help to you and other people here.

Thanks for the great info. I know I don't have the line down yet so I'm not making any real tweaks to the setup. I asked this more for the time that I do start drivig more consistently around the ideal line.

Kind of a follow up question, are the default setups pretty good? Should I be able to whip the pro AI using a default setup? How close should I be to the WR with the default setups? Obviously the answer is going to very based on car and track but I'm looking more for a generality.

I'm not sure if the AI cars use the default setup or not, but you can force them to use the same setup as you somewhere in the options. If the AI cars are running faster than you it should be easy to see where you're losing time. If you're running equal times then you're definitely losing speed somewhere as the AI usually takes it easy through chicanes and other places where humans usually go full throttle.

Quote from jarmenia :

Thanks for the great info. I know I don't have the line down yet so I'm not making any real tweaks to the setup. I asked this more for the time that I do start drivig more consistently around the ideal line.

Kind of a follow up question, are the default setups pretty good? Should I be able to whip the pro AI using a default setup? How close should I be to the WR with the default setups? Obviously the answer is going to very based on car and track but I'm looking more for a generality.

Obivously it depends on your driving style, but I'd say the RACE_S set (I believe every Formula car still has one of these, right?) is a great place to start. I still remember the day of the BF1 release. I immediately took it to Blackwood and drove for an hour or something. With the RACE_S set I managed to do a 0:54.9s I think (granted that was way before the Y-patch, so do not compare this time to the current WR!), which is probably about 2.5s off the fastest WR before patch Y. And that was after one day of driving, so you can imagine where any further training would have got me.

In other words, yes, the default setups are raceable online.

evans, thanks for that link. I've never really attempted left foot braking either in real life or in LFS. I never realized the right foot was supposed to remain on the gas.

I always thought it was simply to minimize the transition from braking to acceleration. I never thought about keeping a turbo spooled up, etc.

Quote from jarmenia :

... Should I be able to whip the pro AI using a default setup? ...

Use your preferred setup and make sure the AI use the same.

Given that the AI and you now have the same setup, you should be able to whip the pro AI. If you can't, practice until you can.

Have you tried http://setupfield.teaminferno.hu/ for setups?

What's your preferred car/track combo?

There is no one "best" setup, I guess. Everyone has their own way of going around a track and needing to feel what the car does, or is going to do. A bit (or, rather, a lot) of experimenting with different sets will uncover your preferences.

Quote from tristancliffe :

Gearing won't find you much time. If you're vaguely right, you might find 0.2 seconds. Sadly, what you really want is the 2mph in the corner, because then you carry that 2mph down the straight.

Gearing is the first thing you set, and rarely requires much adjustment after that, unless you are really fine tuning each corner using the crazy adjustment resolution available in LFS.

That was exactly my point. I wasn't talking about fine tuning gearing, I was stating that gearing was a fundamental basic car set up for each track and therefore has to be set up "vaguely right" for each. eg. you wont carry that 2mph off the corner all the way down the straight if your gearing is completely out and you're redlining in top from half way down it when you could be pulling a higher ratio and ultimately higher top speed, (assuming of course the car has the power to run higher gearing that is).

Based on my experience on an AI-only server, the AI can be very picky about setup. In many cases the AI was actually faster with Race_S than my own setup.

Quote from delray25 :

Use your preferred setup and make sure the AI use the same.

Given that the AI and you now have the same setup, you should be able to whip the pro AI. If you can't, practice until you can.

Have you tried http://setupfield.teaminferno.hu/ for setups?

What's your preferred car/track combo?

There is no one "best" setup, I guess. Everyone has their own way of going around a track and needing to feel what the car does, or is going to do. A bit (or, rather, a lot) of experimenting with different sets will uncover your preferences.

Thanks for the link but I'm trying to refrain from getting other peoples setups as it just extends my ignorance as to how to tweak a setup to be exactly how I want it. I will however use them as general guides to see how other people approach a certain track.

Quote from Forbin :

Based on my experience on an AI-only server, the AI can be very picky about setup. In many cases the AI was actually faster with Race_S than my own setup.

So how did you tell them to use Race_S rather than the default setup?

Little bit off-topic, but what does "Race_S" stands for? Race Super?

Quote from jarmenia :

Thanks for the link but I'm trying to refrain from getting other peoples setups as it just extends my ignorance as to how to tweak a setup to be exactly how I want it. I will however use them as general guides to see how other people approach a certain track.

Check out this thread over at RSC

Quote from Gekkibi :

Little bit off-topic, but what does "Race_S" stands for? Race Super?

Standard?

I don't think there is a definite answer by one of the devs anywhere.