Best tracks for tuning

[Torzilla]

I really only dabble in tuning. I have a '91 Civic that turned out to be a disaster and I don't drive anymore (I don't know why I don't just reset it to default), a '49 Beetle that will blow your doors off at 87hp, and a '90 G20 that I am currently working on. For the tracks I tune on I look for tight turns, long sweeping turns, and good straigts to slam on the breaks from high speed to see how it holds up. So I was wondering what tracks the experienced tuners like to use to get the most out of their cars? I was also contemplating making a tuning track in the track creator, but I procrastinate too much. What features would the experienced tuners put in a created tuner track?

Tor

 

[oppositelock]

Tsukuba for testing handling balance. It has several long constant radius corners of various speeds to evaluate steady state cornering. Any understeer or oversteer issues will be instantly obvious on this track.

Nordschelife for testing suspension compliance and everything else, really. There's a reason manufacturers test here. If it works here it will work anywhere.

SSR7 or La Sarthe w/o chicanes for setting gears.

 

[Rotary Junkie]

Tsukuba for testing handling balance. It has several long constant radius corners of various speeds to evaluate steady state cornering. Any understeer or oversteer issues will be instantly obvious on this track.

Eh, no.

Tsukuba's fastest corner is still well under 100mph in anything on road tires. If you tune the car's balance in there you'll get rather poor high-speed handling.

Nordschelife for testing suspension compliance and everything else, really. There's a reason manufacturers test here. If it works here it will work anywhere.

SSR7 or La Sarthe w/o chicanes for setting gears.

Nordscheliefe I can agree on for the most part though it seems to mask understeer a bit, SSR7 and Sarthe chicaneless for gearing are perfect.

 

[Sohvakettu]

Nordschleife for general tuning but i would imagine that the hard conditions there don't let you tune for the on the limit racing performance. For that some of the modern GP tracks would propably be better. In the end it all depends on what you are tuning the car for.

 

[oppositelock]

Eh, no.

Tsukuba's fastest corner is still well under 100mph in anything on road tires. If you tune the car's balance in there you'll get rather poor high-speed handling.

And if you tune the balance at a high speed track you'll get poor low speed handling. Handling problems are most dramatic at low speeds, so that's where to test. If a well balanced car turns to crap at high speeds it's probably due to aerodynamics.

 

[Blade2322]

I like to use the Nurburgring, Deep forest raceway, trial mountian and the High Speed Ring to test my cars.

 

[BlueShift]

I like to use the Nurburgring, Deep forest raceway, trial mountian and the High Speed Ring to test my cars.

This. I'd add any Cape Ring with the spiral, Rome for $$$ purposes and few hard corners, Le Mans/no chicane, and Suzuka for oversteering cars.

 

[Rotary Junkie]

And if you tune the balance at a high speed track you'll get poor low speed handling. Handling problems are most dramatic at low speeds, so that's where to test. If a well balanced car turns to crap at high speeds it's probably due to aerodynamics.

Low speeds require the car to be as loose as possible while still being controllable and not losing time on exit.

High speed cornering with a setup as fast as it can be at low speed will get extremely hairy. Do it the other way around and in the worst case you get slight understeer in very tight corners.

This. I'd add any Cape Ring with the spiral, Rome for $$$ purposes and few hard corners, Le Mans/no chicane, and Suzuka for oversteering cars.

Hmm, Cape Ring's spiral is something I've not taken into much consideration but it's the longest corner in game... I'm not consistent enough there to use it as a test track just yet though.

 

[budious]

I like to use the Nurburgring, Deep forest raceway, trial mountian and the High Speed Ring to test my cars.

About the same as me, was going to mention those four and also Grand Valley Speedway. I'd not say so much Nurburgring for incremental testing but as final verification on an almost finished tune, it's much too long for repeated fine tuning.

 

[Motor City Hami]

I start with High Speed Ring. Good mix of fast corners, mid speed and slow speed corners, but no hair pins or really hard braking zones. I then usually head to Grand Valley. If my setup works well on both of these tracks, it should be very close on almost all circuits.

The only changes I make track to track are transmission top speed and suspension for bumpy tracks like Nurburg full course. For this I will raise ride height and soften the springs/dampers a little.

 

[kuyaglen]

Suzuka:

-long straights..........Check
-sweeping turns..........Check
-highspeed corners..........Check
-heavy breaking zones........Check

 

[NMRacing]

I test all cars on a combination looking for specific things

Cape Ring... general brake testing, cambered corners braking, highspeed corner handling, lsd tuning

Trial mountain.. Dampers, general handling

Tsukuba.. Dampers post trial mountain (often shows up a damper set to stiff)

Cote D'Azur to check LSD/handling and set minimum gear ratio

Nurburg to set max gear ratio

 

[Mic_Col]

This. I'd add any Cape Ring with the spiral,

Yes that's the place I use to get suspension right. Also do this with any aero turned off.

Get the car in the spiral and push the speed higher and higher until either:

1. the rear starts to turn ( or snap ) around.
2. the front of the car looses grip and understeers up the banking.

Once I get a feel for the cars weakness or weight distribution problem I can start to work on it, make more trips thru the spiral and get a feel for the results of the changes I make and tune in the settings.

 

[Slurm]

Indy road is the perfect track for me. Very simple, technical turns of all speeds. Probably too big for low powered road cars, however.

The main things are - how consistently can you lap the circuit, and how well does the layout challenge your set up...

 

[tagscuderia]

I use Suzuka for set-up, it is Honda's bespoke test track after all. I normally confirm/sign-off by running Fuji (Toyota's track) but that's it. Those 2 cover nearly everything so if it runs well on both, you're done.

 

[kprawny1]

I use Nordschleife, Monza and Nurburgring GP/F.

 

[Anxyous]

Grand Valley Speedway is good when it comes to cornering at high / accelerating speeds.

 

[Rotary Junkie]

Suzuka:

-long straights..........Check
-sweeping turns..........Check
-highspeed corners..........Check
-heavy breaking zones........Check
-elevation change........Nope
-surface irregularities of any kind........Nope
-low-speed corners........Three.

Fixed that for ya.

 

[BlueShift]

Hmm, Cape Ring's spiral is something I've not taken into much consideration but it's the longest corner in game... I'm not consistent enough there to use it as a test track just yet though.

It's very easy to see if your car hold more km/h or not depending on your Aero/SR/RH/camber/dampers settings...

If you try that, you will rejoin me on the "Extension < Compression" side.
Differences are like 10% of the speed, it's huge.

 

[Rotary Junkie]

It's very easy to see if your car hold more km/h or not depending on your Aero/SR/RH/camber/dampers settings...

If you try that, you will rejoin me on the "Extension < Compression" side.
Differences are like 10% of the speed, it's huge.

Hmmmmmm, I will indeed do some testing there then.

If the gains are as large as you say I will be shocked... But also very happy as it would mean a much, much faster car overall.

Edit: Although, that corner is banked quite a bit... This will mean the camber settings for the absolute fastest cornering speed through it will be somewhat high for flatter corners.

 

[Bluez_Freak]

Deep forest for me.

Shorter tracks like this give consistency in laptimes and therefore the "rights" and "wrongs" of the setup become more obvious.

I really doubt many know Nordschleiffe so well to be able to figure out best setups by laptimes. It's very difficult to be 100% consistent on such long tracks unless you are a pro.

 

[Rotary Junkie]

Deep forest for me.

Shorter tracks like this give consistency in laptimes and therefore the "rights" and "wrongs" of the setup become more obvious.

I really doubt many know Nordschleiffe so well to be able to figure out best setups by laptimes. It's very difficult to be 100% consistent on such long tracks unless you are a pro.

Deep Forest I noticed has huge amounts of time variation based solely on small line adjustments, particularly to T1 where I've lopped up to .8sec off from a VERY small line adjustment.

Then again I don't spam it enough and I love Trial more so...

 

[p-coletray]

Do a poll, nordschleife will win the overall. Its the longest track, most diverse eveything. Or do a poll and disclude it, just to see what comes in 2nd.

 

[87lc2]

I use Nurb GP/D & F. They really seem to get an excellent baseline tune that I have to change little track-to-track.

 

[Lusitano]

Nurburgring V, we have here the GP track and the original Nordschleife, all in one. For other reasons Tsukuba.

 

[GLOBETRAHTER]

How do you tune suspension? Like is there a way to tell if your bottoming out like u can on forza? BTW , I use grand valley speedway, trial mountain for testing and monza now for lap times along with tsukuba circuit

 

[Torzilla]

bump