Yes, on street and race cars... though it shouldn't matter.
^^^ 👍
It might 'feel' better, but lap times deteriorate.
How do you figure? People who have been doing very well in time trials...ie winning have been using camber. Must be doing something. The fastest guys I race with use camber and five of them are in the top 20 of the lotus time trial. I sunk down the list as I stopped after the first day, because time trials make me anxious as hell to point that it ruins a few days for me, but am still in the top 100. Camber improved lap times with the correct lines and use of the racing groove where it needs to be. If you're running the same lines around a track that you always have with a different alignment, of course your times will go down. I also tested several zero camber setups, including weiders (who I race with very much) and I just couldn't beat my best time with them. And weiders 0/0 tune is very good. Very good. It is essentially the base of nearly all top lotus drivers' setups. By now, many have evolved into a completely unrecognizable tune, but that is still where we started from. All I'm going to say is use less than a degree. If your using camber and slowing down or having issues, it is entirely in your suspension setup. I kid you not, doing something as simple as upping a damper setting by one click can change everything. It can complete the tune and all of the sudden the car feels like a vacuum to the ground or it will want understeer off the track. Don't go straight to blaming it on camber. Springs are massive into this as well. Too hard and you'll slide around at low speed or you'll get a washboard/yaw effect. Too soft and you'll get gobs of low speed traction, but guarantee losses of grip at high speeds. I set every single one of my cars up no higher than 12mm from the lowest height possible. Stiffer springs for lower cars. I balance the chassis first. Springs are solely for supporting vehicle weight. Then I move onto toe and camber. Then I do dampers. Then I adjust springs to find sweet spots between high and low speed grip. Then I readjust dampers and toe for a few days until it is more or less perfect in my opinion. I generally stick to tuning cars that I will be doing online series with.
Ive said this before...i have no ego with my driving. Dont get me wrong, I F'ing HATE losing. But anytime i bring up an accomolishment or lap time of my own is to provide direct proof. I am modest as hell and believe egos come back to bight you. With that said my lotus uses camber and i am nearly always in then top three of our afternoon/nightly races, if I am not winning. I have good and bad nights. Sometimes I won't win one at all for a few days...but I'm always at the top. My is350 GT300 car with 630hp/600+ tq uses camber and I hang with or beat guys using LMPs and GT500s with the same power levels. Both of which are light than a gt300. My SLS GT3 uses it, but I've not competed with any top notch drivers using it yet in a series or with the daily/nightly crowd of Americans and Europeans that I race with (who are indeed top notch), so I can't honestly compare. My 908 uses camber and I do very well with that car. Very well.
The point I really want to make is that when you have worked with a car for months on end and tried so many combinations and setups...it is quite obvious to me and many others in the same boat that it helps. I don't tune a car for a day and go off using it for a little fun online, seasonals, etc. I use cars that I end up using to compete with for an extended period of time and break them down to a science if I can. People get so competetive, that you are left with no choice, but to test like it is going out of style. If your camber and toe settings aren't right, camber won't help. If your springs aren't set correctly, chamber won't help. If your dampers aren't set correctly, it won't help. If you don't know how to pair the diff up with rear toe, camber won't work well for you.
Idk how many times I have said this, but you can just add chamber and move the toe around. That is not how it works. Everything has to work in unison for camber to worm. This is what I've found. And when you hit the spot, the car is unbelievable. I had been ironing my gt300 car out the past few days. During the nurb seasonal, the front was washing a little much at high speeds through mid turn, but I didn't want to add more camber than I already had. Thought about it for a few minutes and set the front compression from 7 to 8 - I gained ten seconds per lap around the nurb. That is how much one setting can throw things off and one of the many things that can make you feel like camber does not work. It works for me at banked tracks, flat tracks, tracks with off camber turns - camber literally works everywhere for me. I don't use a single aid either...so my braking points are usually spot on for every turn, as are my lines. The lotus can be a challenge in the sense that at full power things are coming pretty quick, so I do make some mistakes sometimes.
People who think camber doesn't work are not setting the cars up correctly, then assuming it is camber causing it. Don't forgot that when you load negative cambered wheel, it toes out, too. So adjust your toe accordingly. I will never bother with a 0 camber setup again. Whatever approaches people were taking to set cars up in gt5 need to be forgotten about. Camber is not a magic traction maker like it was in gt5.
Stop powering through turns and start and carrying more speed into and through a turn. That is the main advantage to camber, you can carry far more speed into a turn with friction gains at the apex and with the correct amount of camber, toe and setup in general, you won't understeer on the way out.
People also don't like camber, because they have to turn in based on the alignment and tires, following a specific line and hitting grooves where you need to....or rather - must hit. You have to hit your turn in and braking points consistently, lean the car exactly the same every time, etc. They don't like camber, because they can't make mistakes suddenly and don't even realize that is part of the reason.
Tl;Dr camber is rewarding with the correct setup and driving. I'm really tired of seeing people say that it doesn't work, when we don't know much about/haven't seen their driving.
If you run train in seasonals, then I am a total idiot and eat all of my words...um, but yeah. Running out of ways to tell people as polite as possible that camber can help them. I even used camber in the rally seasonal and did pretty darn well.
Edit - sorry for all the typos, I am on my phone. Lap top crapped the bed.
Also, the ride height glitch is essentially non existent anymore. By merely changing ride height and nothing else in the setups, this is what I got:
Nose up 100%, rear down 100% - same top speed
Nose down 100%, rear up 100% - same top speed
Nose up 1mm from rear - ...+1 mph to top speed. One.
Nose down 1mm from rear - same top speed
Raising the nose one mill higher is simulating the nixing of low pressure zones under the car as you have more air coming in under the chassis and less sucking it out. Low pressure zones suck the car to the ground and create drag, so that explains the 1mph addition. It is not right, but not completely wrong either. Just like the camber. If it is working for an overwhelming majority of people more and more as we figure the new physics out...I would reevaluate exactly why you feel it doesn't work for you. Be careful saying it feels better and lowers lap times, then leaving it at that. Remember that is just for you and anyone else who feels as such. But most don't, so...
