Camber Testing by Motor City Hamilton

If you have read my advanced tuning guide you may have noticed that I ranked camber pretty low on potential for tuning speed and lap time gains. I just haven’t been able to find much difference in speed between wide ranges of settings. I do think that I feel a difference in grip or stability which seems to produce more consistent lap times, but not speed.

I have also read many differing theories about camber in GT5. “Low camber provides more grip.” “Camber causes tire wear.” “Lower camber shortens stopping distances.” I have yet to see any valid test results posted to support these theories. If I have missed some key test results, please post a link in this thread and I will stand corrected. Nomis3613 has made an effort, but I would call it a good start. Here is a link to his test results.

https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showthread.php?t=223328
https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showthread.php?t=201492

The thing that bothers me about the low camber theories is that they seem to be optimizing camber for the straights and the braking zones. In real life racing, that’s not the role of camber. Camber is used to get a flat contact patch in the corners. There is far more surface area around a road course in the corners than in the straights. G-forces against the tires are also far greater mid-corner than when driving on straights or in braking zones. Tires aren’t rocks… they will form to the road when the car is going straight. Stand on a soccer ball – this is the affect I am talking about. A tire with a large amount of negative camber can handle the g-forces the tire will see in straight line torque and braking. Look at the photo below and you will see a good shot at mid corner camber behavior. Notice how the outside tires are standing almost straight up and there is a nice full contact patch across most of the front and rear tires, yet a bit of air can be seen under the inside front tire. This is optimized camber… in the real world.



I know, I know… GT5 is not real life and PD may not have programmed tuning to match the real world. So, with these thoughts in mind, I wanted to build a repeatable test and post some first results. As I have time, I will add to this thread with additional cars and tire compounds. Below is the methodology that I used for this first test.

Top Gear Test Track, online, fuel & tire wear on, grip reduction real, sport soft tires. The Top Gear Test Track has so many good markers across the track that it makes for perfect grip comparisons. Plus, I like this track and know it very well, so there was no learning curve involved that would affect lap times. I also chose a car that has been tuned to my driving style and has a nice, fast balanced online tune. The car is the Honda S2000 ’06 from the premium dealership with 450PP – I will post full tune later tonight. I ran five laps with each camber setting looking for the fastest overall lap time as well as speed in MPH at six different sector locations. I ran seven different camber settings ranging from zero/zero to 3.5/3.5. I kept front/rear the same in an effort to keep the front/rear balance of the car the exact same through the test. I ran the settings in random order (i.e., 2.0 then 1.0 then 3.5 then 0.0, etc.) in an online race against myself and simply saved the replays for later analysis. This turned out to be a good way to test because I didn’t really know how the results were playing out until the final analysis of watching the replays. I think that kept bias out of the results.




Sector one: After Crooner Curve in the short straight next to the line of cones there is a yellow line with a red airport marker to the left reading 25-07.


Sector two: Chicago Corner at the white line that crosses the track right at the apex.


Sector three: After Hammerhead measured at the first yellow stripe across the track as the corner is unwinding. There is a red airport sign that can be read if driving the track in the opposite direction that shows 07.


Sector four: After Wilson Bend into the Follow-Through next to the line of cones there is a yellow line with a red airport marker way to the left reading 25-07.


Sector five: After Bentley Bend and down the longest straight at the 100 meter braking marker.


Sector six: After Bacharach Bend and Gambon Corner I measured at the start/finish stripe.

Results (best MPH at each sector and fastest lap):


Hmmm… seemingly this was a colossal waste of time. All times within 0.9 seconds of each other. No real pattern developed meaning I don’t see a bell curve across the camber range. The MPH ranges do indicate that some camber settings can provide a small gain is some corners, but be behind in others. Also, the data did not show what I was feeling in the car. Lower settings definitely slid around more and produced more red tires when pushed just a little over the edge. With 0.0 I turned three tires red in Bacharach Bend where 2.0 was only the outside front. I was also less consistent with settings 2.0 and below. The sweet spot for me was 2.5 and 3.0, based on feel, but I am not happy with such small lap times and MPH gains.

So what have I proven? In my mind, the only thing that I have proven is that more testing is needed from the GTP tuning community before we truly know which camber settings are best. This was a very controlled test with one car on one compound of tire at a lower PP level. Maybe we would see more gains with harder tires, more power, something? I am open to suggestions.

As I think a little more deeply about this test, I do come to one conclusion that I can stand firm upon. PD did a lousy job of programming camber in GT5. It is such an important setting in the real world yet seems to matter so little in GT5. They provide no tools to help optimize camber. I would love to have tire temps across the tire as I do in real life. I am beginning to believe that the reason that GT5 has such a lack of tools available to optimize camber is that it truly is just a blip in the physics model. Because of this, I will continue to offer the advice to newbies, that if you want to get fast quick in GT5, learn to tune the LSD.

"I do come to one conclusion that I can stand firm upon. PD did a lousy job of programming camber in GT5. It is such an important setting in the real world yet seems to matter so little in GT5". I sooooo agree with this. Camber is a big time adjustment in the real world and in GT5 its not that big of deal.. Run 2.0/2.0 or 2.5/2.5 camber in almost anything and it will be close to as fast as your going to make it with camber tuneing. I think TOE has a bigger affect on handeling and thats just plum crazy..

Probably an unconclusive comment on my part, but seeing how we have Camber settings from 0-10, would range 0-5 adjust +positive , and 5-10 adjust -negative cambers?

again, smack me upside the head, but on many cars I drive on the nur, when I add camber to the front (in 0-3 range), it understeers more. (as if adding POSITIVE camber to the front) I tend to keep my in-game front at 0 camber.

http://www.roversd1.nl/sd1web/suspension.html

9 tenths on a track that small is nothing to scoff at.

Not to knock or discourage what your doing here but I think the major flaw in testing is that everyone keeps trying to single out one part of the suspension tune and either prove its value or lack thereof.

If your going to single out just one aspect of the suspension then you should expect to see only minor differences overall in your performance.

The suspension needs to work together as a whole to get the best performance. This means getting as close to the perfect match of all the tuning element as possible for a given car and the tires you have on it.

If you have a car with fairly soft springs, dampers, and low roll bar settings then a higher camber will show a slight increase in cornering grip. Stiffen the rest of the suspension and less camber will be needed.

With your picture you showed how camber works in real life, but getting that proper degree of camber also involved tuning the rest of the cars suspension to match. I dare saw if you increased the roll bar stiffness on that car you would probably find that slightly less camber was needed. The real life tuners made sure to match all the components of the suspension to achieve the desired result, they didn't just say hey let's give it X camber and leave the rest of the suspension at factory defaults as they're fine and camber is the only really important part of the tune for handling.

As Adrenaline said getting a 9tenths improvement in lap times is fairly significant on a short track, now if you find the perfect blend of all the suspension settings you may find several seconds improvement. Each individual part may not make much difference but the whole can be significantly better when gotten right.

Just my thoughts now carry on with your regularly scheduled programming.

I tend to agree with Desperado in the post above this ^^

However my hat goes off to you for having made a good attempt at deciphering Gt5's physics, I do think that 1 second on Top gear test track is quite a large difference,

these type of tests certainly should be helping in opening people new to tunings eyes to the inherent complexity involved in wheel alignment and suspension tuning as a whole.

I think the longest winded way would be most accurate, but how would we accurately figure out how to do that?, so many variables involved, anyone in here from a car manufacturer or a formula one race engineer?

too many aspects to consider, stroke of the suspension, caster, toe, spring rates, dampening, anti roll bars, tyre compound, Camber, weight distribution, aerodynamics of the vehicle (downforce)

I know we can get it close to right in testing one car for one purpose, however documenting that and the minute changes that needed to be made is more work than I would wish upon anyone, when we could be smashing more laps of nurburgring in the black of night!!

Thanks for taking this on Hami:tup:

What sticks out most from the numbers you provided is the lap time difference between 0.0 and 2.0 camber. Although all the corner speeds are identical but for crooner curve which is only 1 mph less on the 2.0 setting, somehow the 2.0 lap ends up a half second slower. Statistically that gap can't have just come from the extra acceleration on one corner so it must have come from braking if the numbers are accurate and/or from the different camber rates providing more or less consistency in cornering, braking and laptimes. The difference between 2.0 and 2.5 is also significant in that 2.0 is 1 mph slower exiting 3 corners and yet is almost a second slower in the total lap. That seems like an awfully big difference given only 1 mph gain in speed in three corners. It must be coming from somewhere else as well.

This is a good start but as Desperado says I believe through testing with suspension settings and camber might be necessary to determine significant differences and also to determine if PD did indeed model the two variables together, camber and suspension stiffness.

The attempt to objectively test camber settings is worthwhile and appreciated. Thanks for trying it. If I were to try this, I might set up the test to be performed in B spec to see how much camber affects tire wear. I.e., it may be possible to get a few more laps on a set of soft tires before pitting at, say, the Tsukuba 9 Hours with optimized camber. As others have noted, this result would likely vary from car to car and also with other settings in the suspension/LSD system.

Respectfully submitted,
Steve

Johnnypenso

Thanks for taking this on Hami:tup:
Although all the corner speeds are identical but for crooner curve which is only 1 mph less

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I posted the best corner speed from the 5 laps. The top corner speed could have come from a lap with a slower overall lap time. I was trying to reduce the affect of driver inconsistancy by showing the best that the car could do in each sector. I recorded each lap, but only posted the best. I can say for sure, the different camber settings did not affect braking distance one bit. I did not have to change my braking points with each camber change. I was very aggressive on the brakes too.

Maybe I sould have recorded speed and sector time? That way I could have shown the theoretical best possible lap time. The good real world data loggers do this very well.

Dotini

If I were to try this, I might set up the test to be performed in B spec to see how much camber affects tire wear.

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Tire wear of high camber settings is another common belief that I see posted quite a bit. I don't do alot of enduros, so I'll leave that to someone else to test and prove out. The typical online race is 3 to 5 laps and the seasonals have all been the same.

XDesperado67

I think the major flaw in testing is that everyone keeps trying to single out one part of the suspension tune and either prove its value or lack thereof.

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Hermanvongerman

I tend to agree with Desperado in the post above this ^^

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I hear what you are saying, but how else can we structure tests but to attempt to isolate variables. I took a tune that I liked online and looked to isolate camber. Here is the tune that I used for the test.

https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showthread.php?p=6711382#post6711382

Motor City Hami

I hear what you are saying, but how else can we structure tests but to attempt to isolate variables. I took a tune that I liked online and looked to isolate camber. Here is the tune that I used for the test.

https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showthread.php?p=6711382#post6711382

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Not saying the testing is pointless or invalid.

Just saying that expectations should be tempered, and that an we need to keep an open mind as to the worth and merit of various elements.

Look at the threads in the seasonal forums where the various drivers are competing for the fastest lap times on the time trials. Making an adjustment to the suspension that can get you even another 10th of a second can be a major boost in your standings.

At the top its those 10ths the drivers are all looking for not seconds.

Anyways good start so far and looking forward to more information we can use to improve our tuning.👍👍

Motor City Hami

I hear what you are saying, but how else can we structure tests but to attempt to isolate variables. I took a tune that I liked online and looked to isolate camber. Here is the tune that I used for the test.

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If I were going to do this, and I would if I had the time, I would not use a tune at all. Take a stock car, put on the FCS, break it in, then run your baseline and adjust your variables. In this case while the tune is consistent for each test it may be "hiding" any potential gains to be had due to adjustments made elsewhere.

Thanks (to you and others) for taking the time to run all these different tests. I enjoy reading these kinds of things.

I do see value in using your one off tune to test camber subjectively, and actually just looking at the tune believe the tune is sound,

however, still of the belief if we change the setting to have more camber we need to establish what other setting needs to come into play to make it work more effectively.

Wheel alignment is such a huge thing in reality, that if we make even .01 degree of change it is noticeable, make 1 full degree of change and you really will see the difference, however you will need to adjust toe etc etc to be able to make the tyre still be in effective contact with the road throughout the stroke of the suspension.

More than happy to help in testing various settings and maybe posting results, it could take us an eternity..........your on my Friends list right?

I do really appreciate the effort you have put in to make GTplanets tuning community a better place, keep it up Hami!!!!!!

I am having fun with this test method. I am consistent enough at this track and the lap times are short enough to do lots of testing.

Tested a little more with the same car and took some of your suggestions. Switched to sport hard tires and changed suspension settings/brake settings back to default. I still kept the custom transmission settings and custom LSD settings. I tried the car with the stock LSD, but it's just not balanced enough to be consistent. Besides, with my beliefs that the LSD is the "super tune" there is no way that I would tune a car without a custom LSD. Might as well just join rooms with no tuning if I can't install the LSD. So, LSD back on and tuned for sport hard tires. Default suspension and braking and off to set the baseline.

Ran a few camber settings and am seeing a bit bigger gap on the sport hards vs. the sport softs. Haven't begun to evaluate the results... still trying more camber settings.

Stay tuned.

Hami,
You have put a lot of effort into the testing and the write-up, many thanks for sharing your hard work.

(please don't consider any of what I'm saying to be criticisms, it's much easier to jump in with a reply poking holes in someone's method, than it is to actually do the testing and post the results for everyone's benefit! So I really appreciate what you have done)

Motor City Hami

I kept front/rear the same in an effort to keep the front/rear balance of the car the exact same through the test.

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Totally understandable. Just wondering, did you feel any balance changes?

Just something to keep in mind- the optimum camber angle is perhaps related to weight over that axle (I think it is mentioned in the manual). So 2.5 might be the best angle for the front and 2.0 the best for the rear (just example numbers). Therefore the test results would favour whichever of these two setups had the chassis balance which best suited the driver/track.

Motor City Hami

I ran the settings in random order (i.e., 2.0 then 1.0 then 3.5 then 0.0, etc.) in an online race against myself and simply saved the replays for later analysis. This turned out to be a good way to test because I didn’t really know how the results were playing out until the final analysis of watching the replays.

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👍👍👍 I've always thought that blind testing would be a great way to go. Good stuff for going to the effort to make it happen.

Motor City Hami

Results (best MPH at each sector and fastest lap):

Hmmm… seemingly this was a colossal waste of time.

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No way! Don't be so harsh on yourself!!

Your result of 0 / 0 being the fastest of all settings up to 2 / 2 is at odds with my test results, so I found it surprising, but remember that Neptune's existance was written off as an "error" in the analysis of Uranus' orbit...
The only result I would question is the big drop of 0.9s from 2 degrees to 2.5, I wonder if the chassis balance changed at 2.5 and just happened to suit the conditions a lot better.
(I notice you tested with tyre and fuel wear on. They are important things to consider, but for initial "hot lap" testing, you might find the results more consistent if these are turned off)

Motor City Hami

So what have I proven? In my mind, the only thing that I have proven is that more testing is needed from the GTP tuning community before we truly know which camber settings are best.

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Every little bit helps.

If I may rant for a bit (and this isn't directed at you, Hami), people have different ideas of what is "best". Some people look for lap time at all costs, and others prefer a consistent, forgiving tune. Also "best" will depend on the driver / car / rest of the setup / online vs offline / etc etc. Personally, I think the quest is for improved understand of how the setting works and it's interaction with other settings.</ tangential rant>

Motor City Hami

Maybe we would see more gains with harder tires, more power, something? I am open to suggestions.

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I think testing different drivetrains is the most worthwhile. And I wouldn't bother with more power, for these reasons: traction is best measured at the dragstrip, more power means LSD settings have greater influence, and if wheelspin starts appearing then it is difficult to get consistent and repeatable results.

Motor City Hami

I am beginning to believe that the reason that GT5 has such a lack of tools available to optimize camber is that it truly is just a blip in the physics model

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Indeed. Gran Turismo's origin is as an arcade game, so it probably isn't meant for the hardcore geekery that we put it through here on the GT-P tuning forum!
I have similar conspiracy theories about why GT5's data logger is now just pretty lines on a page, instead of being a useful tool to extract numerical data, like it was for GT4. Woops, another rant...sorry...

Motor City Hami

I can say for sure, the different camber settings did not affect braking distance one bit.

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Totally agree, some testing of camber vs braking (up to 4 degrees) found exactly the same thing.

A suggestion: try making a really short course maker track (Tokyo Bay Kart would be ideal) on which you can quickly compare lateral G-acceleration with different camber settings from the data logger in practice mode.

A couple of things I would like to add about camber and suspension.

First: suspension has what is known as a Camber Rate, which is the change in camber with a given suspension compression. This is not adjustable on most car but is something that goes hand and hand with camber for Le Man and F1 teams.

Second: camber is mostly used to counter tire deformation. Body roll is handled mostly by the camber rate.

Third: Caster is another setting to take into account when working with camber and basically replaces camber rate on the front axle.

There are several large holes here. So even if we assume that the physics are accurate it would be near impossible to know if the tuning of camber is accurate. For all we know GT might have several setting that adjust automagically to optimize the settings given.

The only way to figure out what is going on is to do these experiments, but answers will not come from resulting speeds or lap times. The data we need for this will be force on the tire surface, weight loading on the tire, and the tire temp. From info like that one could build a mathematical model that would predict the optimal camber for a given car or setup.

Unfortunately I have not been able to make any headway; even with knowing some vehicle dynamics equations. I have been able to reverse engineer spring rates, dampers, and anti-roll bars, but camber has been a pain. So has limited slip diffs but that's another story.

Great thread. Great replies.

Hami, I would be interested in helping you. Perhaps to help the "blind test" you could set up the car and I could drive it without knowing the changes. I'm fairly consistent on Cape Ring.

Although what you are doing is very cool. I for one can't understand why you would test camber on such a flat track. All you will get as a result are tires that heat up faster. Camber as you stated is designed to put the most contact patch on the ground in a corner. But I think you don't quite understand what kind of corners.try a track with more banks to the curves like deep forest where there are also off camber corners as well as nice banks. You can do without a lot of negative camber on flatter tracks.

Well done on this thread guys.. Thou i reckon Autumn Ring or Suzuka.. Plus i would just like to add that i never go above 2.0 on camber, i also think it is down to individual driving style.. I would say that my style is very l

#My style being loose with stiff springs an hardly any camber for best accel an decel because i use NO ABS.. I like the car to dance so getting the perfect balance is crucial, i would say that if you like your car soft an drive smooth you might want more camber..

canieaturchikn

Although what you are doing is very cool. I for one can't understand why you would test camber on such a flat track. All you will get as a result are tires that heat up faster. Camber as you stated is designed to put the most contact patch on the ground in a corner. But I think you don't quite understand what kind of corners.try a track with more banks to the curves like deep forest where there are also off camber corners as well as nice banks. You can do without a lot of negative camber on flatter tracks.

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I'm pretty sure he does. He is a friend of mine and has taught me a great deal about tuning. I have used all of his knowledge that he has handed down to me with great success. Oh, and did I mention that he also races in real life and is pretty good at it. So yes, I do think he is more than qualified to speak about tuning in this game.

Ive said it on another thread and i was getting yelled at: camber really doesnt seem to matter in this game.

kleefton

Ive said it on another thread and i was getting yelled at: camber really doesnt seem to matter in this game.

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You're going to get yelled at here too. I'll be easy on you tho as I know Adrenaline will be here with his witty comments. Camber does matter and does make a difference. Period. It can help or hurt your tune, just depends on how you use it. Alright Adrenaline, your turn.

kleefton

Ive said it on another thread and i was getting yelled at: camber really doesnt seem to matter in this game.

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The effects of camber are there but they are subtle. On most cars on most tracks they'll make a very small difference in lap times once you get into the ideal range and will more affect the overall balance of a car under multiple loads, like braking and lateral g's.

I think camber/toe are some of the most noticeable suspension changes you can make.

GTP_CargoRat

You're going to get yelled at here too. I'll be easy on you tho as I know Adrenaline will be here with his witty comments. Camber does matter and does make a difference. Period. It can help or hurt your tune, just depends on how you use it. Alright Adrenaline, your turn.

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Nah, I prefer when people think silly things like this. Just one more person in my rear view!

Adrenaline

Nah, I prefer when people think silly things like this. Just one more person in my rear view!

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Lol, I knew you would show up here. So true tho. Not sure where people get some of these silly ass ideas at but it sure is amusing at times.

@kleefton: I see why you were treated the way you were in that other thread. You were trying to argue with some of the best and most experienced tuners on these forums. Those guys have been testing, tuning, and racing forever and know exactly what they are talking about. Maybe you should listen to them, you might learn something. I have.

I actually do respect those guys and agree on a lot of things they say but im still entitled to my opinion and nothing that has been posted in this thread so far has changed my views about camber.

I will be doing some more camber testing using one of my best tunes; the Honda S2000 from the FITT 2000 Challenge. I will post results here.