GR2 vs road cars @ Sardegna

[PlanetJanet]

Hi all,

Apologies if this has been asked before but I'm doing a lot of Sardegna grinding with a lot of different cars, keeping track of fastest lap times and total race time.

One thing I've noticed is that pimped up road cars are always faster over a single lap than the GR2 cars. For example, I can get a 1.33 lap with a Berlinetta, a low 1.34 in a Corvette and similar in an F40 with engine swap. My fastest lap in a GR2 car is somewhere in the 1.35s, I think with the Merc CLK LM. The theme is absolutely consistent; the road cars have significantly worse brakes, lower downforce and slower cornering speed, but significantly more power/top speed.

Two questions result from this for me:

1. Is the game biased towards pure power / top speed? I.e., is it almost always faster to tune for top speed, even on a relatively twisty track like Sardegna?
2. Am I doing the GR2 cars wrong? They're so easy to drive and brilliant on fuel but feel massively lacklustre on the straights. Should I be tuning them for speed as much as possible?

Interested in your thoughts rather than a definitive answer per se.

Cheers

 

[XSquareStickIt]

I don't have definitive answers, so it's a good thing you're not looking for those

I assume you're talking about the WTC800 event at Sardegna A, the 15 lap "grind race"? The CLK isn't that good of a car for Gr.2; I can get around a 1:34 average lap with an Audi RS5 DTM on hard tyres and a slight power detune, and I'm not that good of a driver. Does require holding down DRS for almost the whole race, though, which does suck.

In terms of single lap pace, I think the vast majority of tracks in GT7 favour cars with power over handling, because they're so wide, smooth, and long to facilitate battle with Gr.3 to Gr.1 races. Courses that are narrow and winding in the likes of Citta di Aria and Horse Thief Mile, tracks that really emphasise trust in the car and being easy to place, are sorely lacking in GT7 in my opinion. Even Sard A has two long straights that drown out any cornering advantage. I'm sure if you brought Gr.3 cars with BoP there, the GT-R GT3 would destroy the FT-1 Gr.3, because the former is power heavy and the latter is handling focused.

I also think this is why tuned road cars have the one lap pace advantage over racing cars, because they don't come with that much downforce by default. I also notice that road cars drink fuel significantly faster than racecars (go figure...), and so they may have to pit more for fuel. Me personally, I prefer the race cars because they mostly work out of the box. The road cars are a money and time sink to get to work properly, and even then, I always get the feeling they don't drive as good as the racecars.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[Nakano219]

I'd definitely consider Sardegna A a power and traction track rather than a handling one, personally - there's three long power zones, and only two medium-to-fast or long corners (the long left at the start of sector 2 and the tricky fast left in the final sector). Every other corner is either easy flat or slow-speed enough that traction out of them is more important than corner speed through them.

 

[PlanetJanet]

Thanks for the input, appreciate it!

Yes, sorry, I'm talking about the WTC 800 race. Is there any sensible way to get the speed up on the GR2 cars or is it simply the case that they are built for corner speed rather than top end? I've fiddled about with gear ratios and removing downforce but they still lag behind a bit.

I just assumed they would be faster so I'm interested to see that they aren't. Much quicker in terms of total race time of course, since you can 1 stop with most of them fairly easily whereas that Berlinetta barely does 3 laps on FM6, but I also like to mess around with online lobbies where fuel and tyres are often irrelevant, so one lap speed still interests me.

 

[rlx]

I'd definitely consider Sardegna A a power and traction track rather than a handling one, personally - there's three long power zones, and only two medium-to-fast or long corners (the long left at the start of sector 2 and the tricky fast left in the final sector). Every other corner is either easy flat or slow-speed enough that traction out of them is more important than corner speed through them.

Yes, I agree. I'd call it an acceleration track, but that's pretty much the same thing. Top speed doesn't matter, there are no fast corners, it's all about how fast you get out of the corners.

If what you do at Sardegna is mostly racing the WTC800 event, then the road cars don't seem to be very competitive, mostly because of their fuel consumption. They're also not necessarily faster: I can do 1:34 in the CLK, but I don't come anywhere near in the Valkyrie, which seems to lack traction out of corners. The only thing faster than the CLK, excluding the Escudo, would be a detuned Gr.1 car, for example either of the Mazdas. I would guess that this is partly due to their downforce advantage, being able to take faster lines through corners, but I haven't done a proper side-by-side comparison.

For me, the track that exhibits the behavior you're describing is rather La Sarthe. There are lots of road cars that top 400 kph (Chiron, Veyron, Aventador, Veneno, Huayra, Enzo, F12, F8, at least 4 Corvettes, etc.), but none of the race cars do. I can do sub 3:20 times in a Formula 1 or Group 1 car, also in the Valkyrie, since they have an advantage in the last, curvy sector, but I'm still fastest in the Chiron, which also requires the least skill.

Yes, sorry, I'm talking about the WTC 800 race. Is there any sensible way to get the speed up on the GR2 cars or is it simply the case that they are built for corner speed rather than top end? I've fiddled about with gear ratios and removing downforce but they still lag behind a bit.

I just assumed they would be faster so I'm interested to see that they aren't. Much quicker in terms of total race time of course, since you can 1 stop with most of them fairly easily whereas that Berlinetta barely does 3 laps on FM6, but I also like to mess around with online lobbies where fuel and tyres are often irrelevant, so one lap speed still interests me.

For me, the Group 2 cars (especially the CLK and the 2008 NSX) occupy that sweet spot where you get competitive lap times on tracks that are not about top speed, but also great handling in corners and a pretty fun and relaxed overall driving experience. You can start to modify downforce and transmission, but they're not going to get substantially faster than they are stock.

 

[DextroCat]

The Group 2 cars are built to spec and are restricted by power so you’re going to get more power from modified road cars and thus better performance at a track like Sardegna. Race cars are typically lighter, more fuel efficient, have better brakes, have better grip, and havemuch more downforce than road cars and this is reflected by the higher PP but not necessarily better performance at Sardegna.

 

[shio]

They're also not necessarily faster: I can do 1:34 in the CLK, but I don't come anywhere near in the Valkyrie, which seems to lack traction out of corners.

The Valkyrie can get pretty close from my testing, I was getting 1:35s with it the other day. It's a high downforce car with adaptive aero, so the best way I've found to drive it is to take advantage of that by adding controlled throttle through every turn, you can push it surprisingly hard. I find it a lot of fun to drive, it took me a bit of practice to get a feel for it as I was having traction issues with it as well until I started taking advantage of that. It stays planted very well with good throttle control.

Also, be sure to use the overtake frequently on the high speed sections, it has regenerative charging when braking, and the overtake should last most of the race as a result, if you overuse it just ease off using it for a lap or two and it'll regen fairly quickly.

 

[BangsMcCoy]

Hi all,

Apologies if this has been asked before but I'm doing a lot of Sardegna grinding with a lot of different cars, keeping track of fastest lap times and total race time.

One thing I've noticed is that pimped up road cars are always faster over a single lap than the GR2 cars. For example, I can get a 1.33 lap with a Berlinetta, a low 1.34 in a Corvette and similar in an F40 with engine swap. My fastest lap in a GR2 car is somewhere in the 1.35s, I think with the Merc CLK LM. The theme is absolutely consistent; the road cars have significantly worse brakes, lower downforce and slower cornering speed, but significantly more power/top speed.

Two questions result from this for me:

1. Is the game biased towards pure power / top speed? I.e., is it almost always faster to tune for top speed, even on a relatively twisty track like Sardegna?
2. Am I doing the GR2 cars wrong? They're so easy to drive and brilliant on fuel but feel massively lacklustre on the straights. Should I be tuning them for speed as much as possible?

Interested in your thoughts rather than a definitive answer per se.

Cheers

In my experience, if your fastest lap times around Sardegna in Gr.2 cars is 1.35 then you are doing Gr.2 cars wrong. That is in line with my average lap time for Gr.2 cars and I’m definitely not the fastest around. My fastest lap times with Gr.2 cars here are in the 1.33 and low 1.34 range.

My suggestion would be to get the best of both worlds and use Gr.1 cars here. The times can vary considerably from car to car, but there are some Gr.1 cars I can easily log 1.33 laps on average and occasionally hit even faster and still only have to pit once, or in some cases no stop this race.

 

[peniu]

I would suggest to head over to this topic for Sardegna race. In the first post you can see that none road car comes close to race cars in terms of whole race pace. There are also some setup for cars.

The fastest cars for this event are gr. 1 cars that were part of group C in Le Mans, mainly due to downforce settings - you can set front downforce to very low value and squeeze a lot more power for given PP. More modern or fake gr. 1 cars usually have a lot higher minimal front downforce settings, which means less power. For these, adding ballast shifted towards the front helps to lower PP.

As you can see there, similarly set gr. 2 cars can get times around 24 minutes with 1 pit strategy.

 

[PlanetJanet]

I'm fairly new to the game so I think the only GR1 car I have is the Porsche 962. Nevertheless, I can see from above topic that it can go much faster than I've managed. I'm not the fastest driver but I hope I wouldn't be that much slower in equal machinery... So the trick is reduce front aero on these?

I'm managing low 25 min race time in the race cars, they're obviously better than road for the event itself, but as mentioned, I'm interested in one lap pace because I play a fair amount of online lobbies where people don't usually bother with fuel and tyre wear.

 

[peniu]

So the trick is reduce front aero on these?

Part of it actually. You set front downforce to minimum, rear downforce to max. Not sure specifically for 962, but in most of these cars you can also upgrade turbo. Then it comes down to playing with ballast (shifted to front) and power restrictor (do not use ECU even if it gives more hp on paper - you need to short shift these cars for one stopper and restrictor gives more power on lower revs) to get under 800 pp. In order to gain a bit more control of what is very understeery car set a suspension with high rake - low front and high rear. There is a very good @Turbodatsun setup for Nissan R92CP in the thread I linked that is a good starting point for pretty much all group C cars.

As for the pure one lap pace, when no tyre wear or fuel is an issue Suzuki Escudo is by far the fastest one at 800pp here. The only reason it is below group C cars on WTC800 on Sardegna is that it burns much more fuel. Although this might be bad option for you as it requires a bit of practice to avoid turbo lag on lower revs and only pops in legendary shop once in a while.

 

[PlanetJanet]

Awesome, thanks, that immediately knocked about 4 seconds per lap off my times with the Porsche. It's understeery as all hell though so some possible tweaks to be made.

 

[peniu]

Great to hear that! Other than playing with the setup, if you are on the controller, you can also set steering sensitivity higher to battle the understeer.