Best Track For Testing

  • Thread starter Thread starter M3BIMMER 2012
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oh ok fair enough.. thanks! lol.
I did have another account before this, but I forgot password and email, so this is still me but new, if you get what I mean?
 
I am not a fan of "fake" tracks for testing. I find that Trial Mountain, Deep Forest and others just seem to have to much grip. A slippery beast like Laguna, Nurb GP/D, Suzuka East, Ascari etc. I would take any day over a made up track. If you want to learn to bring out the best in a vehicle or yourself, I'd go to the tracks that challenge you the most, rather than those you are most comfortable at.
 
I'm an aussie so I may be a little bias but I reckon bathurst is a great tester.
It's very undulating so if there's something wrong with your settings it will show.
Kinda like the nurb but you don't have to wait 8mins to find out if your tweaks have worked.

Bathhurst is one of my fav testing tracks also.Has a bit of everything and really test your cars high speed cornering ability.Also good for practicing trail braking in to corners which can really help improve lap times.
 
Haven't read through the entire thread so apologies if already mentioned. Suzuka is generally known as the ideal track for this kind of task. :)
 
I use Grand Valley East for offline test & tune sessions. It has a fairly long straight -- nothing like Fuji but long enough anyway. The end of that straight has a slight sweeper in a section where you must also decelerate, followed by a gentle hairpin, which can be a tricky section. And the left-right-right-left series (before the tunnel) is fairly tricky as well. The game may have better testing tracks but they are all 2-3 times longer than GVE and take much longer to log lap times for comparison.
 
OK my turn to reply this one. "As usual" I disagree with most people lol...

OK if You want to find out which car is the fastest to go into an online race room with, the Nring24H is the best. On the GP section it has some fierce braking and tight hairpins, even a double hairpin, and when You enter the Nordschleife section Your car needs to be good and fast to finish in a good time...However, the 24H isn`t a good track for setting up Your car; it is too long, will take forever, and one will most likely lose one`s focus on which setting to deal with...

So a good (the best) "tune up track" is, according to me, - Apricot Hill... Yes..

Because...This track is extremely demanding regarding the ideal drive line. The curves are set up in a way so that leaving the drive line (understeering outside it) completely ruins the driving. Allthough the track is wide, the ideal drive line is narrow, and one has to get those apexes spot-on. - If You miss just one apex, You miss the next and the next..

If You can keep Your car on the ideal line on several laps here, Your car is very well tuned up...If Your car suffers from understeer, Apricot Hill will highlight it immediatly, and the whole driving experience will be very annoying, especially here on Apricot Hill.

Also if You watch Your replay, it will look completely ridiculous if You leave the ideal line, more ridiculous to look at than on other tracks...(I mean watch the replay in "replay camera" mode)

Oh and it has a high speed straight with fierce braking and a tight tight righthand hairpin at the end also, about halfway round the track.

So all in all Apricot Hill is a very good place to set up Your suspension, brakes, LSD etc.. because of the ideal line that is so crucial to follow here...And because it`s so easy to feel whats wrong...

Just my humble opinion....
 
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Hi GTPlanet, I would like to test a load of 500pp cars and see which cars are faster than others, but im struggling to think of what track would be best to test on. it needs to be balanced, meaning long and short straights, fast and slow corners, and preferably not too-too long. any of you think you know what the best track for lap time testing is?
cheers
I use Cape Ring South. It has a little bit of everything in it and it's not a hard track to memorize.
 
I use Tsukuba for initial testing - to put together a short list of comparable cars (e.g. for a championship or to compare other peoples tunes as I'm not a good tuner). Then take those cars to another track such as Red Bull Mini, Brands Indy, Trial Mountain, Deep Forest, Laguna Seca - the most important thing is that you have to know the track well enough to be able to get consistent lap times. For testing top speed I use Route X and I also use that for acceleration testing - only occasionally as for that I use an assistant with a stopwatch to check the 0-100mph times (inexplicacable that GT6 doesn't contain the test facilities that were in GT5).

When you have finished testing in time trial mode try testing online. I use online time trial and test in short stints e.g. 6 minutes for each car (4 laps for each). I find my speed often varies from one day to the next so I try to test all the cars in one session and repeat the first cars as I tend to get slightly faster as the session progresses.

Happy Testing!
 
If your car performs well at Trial mountain, Deep Forest and Grand Valley Speedway then it will handle anything the other courses have to offer 👍
Definitely agree with this. Between those three tracks, you pretty much have everything covered for set ups. I'll also add that you should be very comfortable with the tracks before tuning. If you don't know every bump of the track, your times will vary too much, and your tuning experience will be very frustrating, as it'll be too hard to know whether changes you're making to the tune are making the car better or worse.
 
Whichever track you choose to do your tuning / testing on I recommend you do it in an open lobby (locked to you only if you wish) because the physics are alot better online.
 
It doesn't matter if the physics are better online (by the way how can you prove this?) As long as you know the track and how to optimally drive whatever car you're testing based on its drivetrain characteristics, your times will be consistent enough to be comparable and competitive.
 
It doesn't matter if the physics are better online (by the way how can you prove this?) As long as you know the track and how to optimally drive whatever car you're testing based on its drivetrain characteristics, your times will be consistent enough to be comparable and competitive.

Cars do feel slightly different online compared to offline, not sure if it's to do with the tyre wear (which i have on) as it feels more real, there seems to be slightly more grip available offline thats all, thats just my opinion.

I'm not knocking your experience SusukaStar, that's just how it feels to me, so i setup online.
 
There is slightly less grip online, if you are tuning for online racing then the majority of the setup can be done offline (its just easier and more efficient) but the final spit and polish should be done in an online lobby to check that everything works as it should. Doing all the work online is a bit of a pain because you have to do an out-lap first so you end up running twice as many laps to find out if those changes worked, that combined with having to enter and remove your car from the track constantly whilst online can be a bit monotonous and distracting. 👍
 
Even within online rooms there are different levels of track grip.

  1. A room with Grip Reduction set to "Low" will be faster than one set to "Real".
  2. A room with Fuel/Tyre wear disabled will be faster than one without (from my recent testing the gap is between 1 and 2 seconds).
My current theory for the second one that that the additional weight of 100 Litres of fuel is not simulated when Fuel/Tyre wear is disabled, as you do get faster as the tank empties.

When I tune it's generally for a specific event or race, so I will do my testing on the circuit I am going to be racing on.
I generally do my initial tuning in a non-wear room (to remove that variable when analysing laptimes) before making minor tweaks after a Race Simulation.

If an event allows multiple tyre compounds I'll initially tune the car on a slower compound so that when I switch to the faster one I can confidently push the car harder.
For example, in the series I'm currently most active in, I build my tunes on RH and then use RS for the race itself.
 
I agree PJ, I myself test online at Suzuka, ( for the hope that PD might have modelled the grip lvl ) compared to a fake track, grip reduction real, tyre wear normal, if I add more power to a car I'll put the next step in tyres from stock on, if I don't add any power upgrades then I leave tyres stock.
So when like you say I enter a room with better tyre options & sim settings turned off I can push alot harder.
Also you can change car alot quicker online, you don't have to keep coming out of free run.
 
I like Grand Valley East mainly the long straight and ~1:00 minute lap time, gives a quick test. Real tracks like Laguna Seca have a short straight so the top speed is not tested, real GP tracks are good but too long at 2:30 or so. Autumn Ring is pretty good too with the big looping curve and the quick esses, reveals handling problems. The Nordschleife is too long at 7-8:00 mins and very repetitive, plus the long straight is at the end so you can't bail early.
 
I use Route X, Norschleife, Laguna Seca and Bathurst
 
For real tracks lately I test at Bathurst, on the rare occasion I test at fake tracks I use the full cape ring track.

I generally don't do fake tracks because for me the cars seem to drive different at fake tracks and real tracks, and my real track tunes that work very well at world circuits tend to be awful and unusually slippery at fake tracks
 
It depends to the car you have to test, overall the Nordschleife is my ideal test track followed by Suzuka, lately i like Sierra also.
For High speed cruising (cornering and braking) i use the SSR7, in GT6 i miss a real test ground for acceleration times (1/4 mile , 0÷400 , 0÷1000 , 0÷1 mile) .

I-R
 
You can easly compare a group of car on the Indianapolis road course.
Control your lap time sector by sector and you can see easly the difference on the top speed and fast section(first and last sector) or about handling and grip at low speed in the middle sector
 
I'm probably alone, but I always use Autodromo Nazionale Monza to try out brand new cars. It actually has a nice variety. On the long straights can get a great feel for acceleration and top end power. The tight chicanes at the end of the straights make a great test of braking and agility, and the medium-high speed wide corners are a test of grip and oversteer/understeer.

Circuit de la Sarthe is similar. If you select the no chicanes layout, Muslanne is easily long enough to max out most cars, and it makes an even better brake test as you have to go from 200mph to 45!

Circuito La Sierra is my favorite circuit and features a ton of long straights , thrilling corners, and hills where you can get quite a bit of air! (I once got 4 seconds of air time in a Nissan GT-R NISMO!) Its only flaw is that the lap time is so darn long, even longer than a lap at the 'Ring by a couple minutes!

I don't usually test at the Nurburgring Nordelsciefe, especially with a high-powered car. If the car has more than 550pp, I cannot get a clean lap time without going off or bumping a wall, or hitting a kerb and crashing.
 
For me, it depends on what car I am testing.

A rather low powered car would be tested at a smaller, somewhat less complex course.
I really don't see the need to test such car at Nurburgring where it will do every corner perfectly due to how slow it goes.
Examples: Madrid, Tokyo, Daytona Road Course (To some degree), Tsukuba, Cape Ring (Less complex variants), Eiger, and Grand Valley

Higher powered cars are more suited to more complex courses, along with some straights.
A more complex course really tests the car, it's accelerating and corner capabilities, and such.
Examples: Willow Springs, SSR5, Cote d'Azur, Matterhorn, Nurburgring, Grand Valley, Monza, Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, and Twin Ring Motegi.

Unless I'm testing for a specific course, I'd generally go for the above courses.

However, I generally don't go for Sierra. Sierra in my opinion is too complex and too long. To get back useful information on your tests would mean doing laps that would take several minutes, and doing multiples laps would take a long time.
I don't recommend using Sierra for testing.
 
I've always liked Streets of Willow. It has several places where a bad tune can get unsettled easily and it really tests a car's ability to put the power down out of slower corners. If you've got a setup that doesn't push into the corners in the first half and doesn't get skittish going through the turn 9-10-11 complex on Streets of Willow, chances are it'll be good anywhere.

Sure, Streets doesn't give your top speed a workout, but that's just a matter of swapping cogs. If you get the balance right the transmission's not difficult to adjust.
 
Whenever I tune a drift car, It's always at Tsukuba for some reason.
I tune my lower powered cars (to me, anything less than 350hp) at Streets of Willow. Good, small track with some tight corners and good for testing handling and acceleration. Anything else it's probably Laguna Seca or Nurburgring, or the Red Bull Ring. Sometimes I test at Sierra.
 
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