Can you tune your car to reduce tyre wear?

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RavenWire

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Hi all,

First post so please be gentle!

I've noticed on some cars that if I brake going into a corner turning slightly (sometimes happens without braking) the outside front tyre heats up rapidly. Is there any way to tune the car to cut this down? I can drive around the track more carefully to avoid it but this affects my lap times.

I'm a bit hit and miss when it comes to tuning so it may be my set up (currently trying to tune an M3 - all mods that don't increase power).

Thanks for your help in advance :)
 
Welcome!

The best thing that I found out was to try to get all of your braking done in a straight line. When your front tires start to get hot (red), it means that they are losing traction caused by skidding. I'm no expert but the old saying of "slow in, fast out" does apply to this game. It may seem that you are losing time but you are gaining it. It took me a really long time to grasp this concept. You can also find a lot of helpful tuning ideas in these forums. I hope this helps. If anybody else has a better solution, or my reasoning is off please correct.
 
As far as tuning, in the real world your camber and toe settings will definitely affect wear and grip. The more toe to dial in in either direction, you will wear more in the straights. With too little or too much camber, you will increase wear in the corners. I'm not sure if GT5's tire model is this sophisticated though.

Aside from tuning, get your braking done in a straight line and trail brake properly by feathering off the brake as to turn in, keeping the front tires within their available friction. Also, depending on your gaming principles, you could bump up the ABS. A modern M3 would have good ABS anyway.
 
^Very good advice. Furthermore if you learn the track(s) properly you'll naturally find the best driving lines. And the best driving lines are the ones that usually take you around the turns in the widest arc possible which would result in less tire wear. If you truly want to drive smoothly don't jump up to a very high horsepower car yet. Learn how to be fast with less first.
 
Dial down your brake bias, I can run with 9/8 and have bad tyre wear on the rear, put it to 9/5 and my rear tyres will last longer, so adjust your brake bias based on how your tyres are lasting during the race. If you are halfway through a stint, and your rear tyres are wearing faster than the front, then dial down the rear brake bias, same for the opposite way round, this way you can have some control over tyre wear.

also ensure there is as little wheel spin as possible as thatll wear the tyres faster aswell. that will usually get you a good distance out of your tyres.

as for tuning, I suppose you could make the camber and toe neutral as mentioned above, but whether it'll work in GT5 or not I don't know, in real life it would. you could also try softening the suspension slightly, that should help a bit (again whether GT5 would cover that I don't know)

hope that helps.
 
If PD haven't changed anything fundamental, everything that makes your car slower will reduce tyre wear. Or the other way round: camber will give you a considerable boost in corner speed, but you'll shred your tyres.

You could, in addition, try to manipulate the stiffness of the springs and/or the anti roll bars. Or just try a harder tyre compound, though I'm not sure if GT5 models the wear like GT4 did, so the difference could be very small from tyre compound alone.

But there's only little you can do tuning wise, execpt avoiding extreme settings. It's a trade-off between speed and distance. I would go usually for speed though ;-) And a harder tyre compound, but there are so very few long distance races, I think it hardly matters.
 
Tweaking the LSD to reduce spinning up a wheel on entry/exit can help a lot.
 
more ABS means more tire life, (same for TCS which can no longer be adjusted up as tires wear out 👎). Test it, up brake power to 10, tires turn red when stopping from 200+mph, then, up ABS till no red tire under heavy braking.
 
Thanks for the help guys, first thing I'll do is look at my driving style - I am quite aggressive and tend to brake late to take plenty but not too much speed into the corner.

I'd like you're opinion on my settings if thats OK, just to see if theres anything majorly wrong:

Brakes: 2/8

LSD 10/5/5

Suspension

Height -12/-7
Spring Rate 11.2/11.0
Dampers (Ext) 4/4
Dampers (Com) 4/3
Anti Roll 3/2
Camber 1.5/1.0
Toe -0.10/0.20

Hig - didn't expect to see someone else from Warrington on here on my first post lol
 
lol! Hello there then :D

Firstly, what car is this for? This probably would not suit a heavier car at all, where-as a light car may let you get away with it.

For my liking (might just be me) there is too much camber, I'd run with around 0.6 if it where me.

With the LSD, that should be fine if you can control the wheel spin, do consider using the std. diff though, that can be a good addition some times.

I'd also have negative camber on the front -0.10 is my preference.

For your dampers, your extension should generally be more than your compression, so maybe 3 compression on the front aswell.

It is quite a soft set-up, so you'll have a lot of body roll, which might still wear the tyres with all the leaning, tbh, it is quite difficult to judge though, maybe slightly firmer anti roll bars would be a good idea? You'll have to just try running with the set up and see how you get on.

I generally run endurances with the same set up I use for any other race and my tyre wear usually gives me at least 20 laps (barring the Nurburgring where I get about 3 laps in my ZR-1 RM lol!) As long as I adjust the brake bias my tyre wear is fine.

So yeh, just give it a run and see how you get on, but if you don't enjoy driving with that set up, just put it back to normal, go for it in the open stages and then chill out after your first pit stop, driving just a bit slower will give you better tyre wear with a normal set up than having a purpose done set up.

Brake balance is key though! (IMO)
 
This one is for an M3 - no mods that include power but everything else.

Roll bars might be a big help, I'll try and stiffen them up a bit first to to see if that helps, then stiffen the springs and reduce camber. I'm going to try the same with a C63 AMG and a Maserati GranTurismo as I'm hoping to get a few races together with my mates using those 3 cars as they are so similar in weight, power and they have the same FR layout. So if I can get this one right then I'll have a good base to work with.

I can't seem to get my head round tuning on this game at all lol
 
Ahh right ... I think they are relatively heavy cars so you will need a firmer set up than you have mentioned above. You need to watch your ride height aswell, being so low with such a high set up may cause some bottoming out if you're not careful.

I have sent you a rather lengthy message, some explanations and a suggested set up for you to try if you want to, I think that set up would suit a heavier car like what you are tuning. I have an M3 anda Maserati myself though so I shall have a play with an M3 and see what I can come up with for yah.

What tracks will you be racing?
 
Does the M3 have adjustable front and rear downforce? The glowing red tyre is from the tyre sliding across the tarmac. More front downforce could help prevent the tyre from sliding. Conversely however, on really fast cars too much downforce and stiff suspension will cause the inside front tyre to wear out.
 
The M3 has a non-adjustable front splitter and a choice of two rear wings. Even after lightening the car is quite heavy, so the set up I suggested included a slightly stiffer spring rate and stiffer dampers and Anti Roll Bar. Because the springs are only slightly stiffer the ride height is only lowered slightly, about 5mm or so. Rear toe angle was reduced from 0.20 to about half that and front toe was made slightly negative. Camber angle wasn't increased much either, about 0.6. I raced this set up and found it relatively good to drive. On the M3 though I found the front splitter and the rear wing did make a noticeable difference to how it handles. (Compared to some other cars I've added them too) (It had everything done to it barring the stuff that boosted power)
 
Good advice, pretty much what I was going to say as well lol.

And a HUGE +1 to everyone that suggested braking before you turn in, and here's some more advice I can give you. I went to the BMW performance driving school and that was the first thing they told us. It's all about the contact patch (how much rubber is hitting the road at any given moment), and if you think about it, not all that much rubber touches the ground at any given moment, so you need to balance it. Tires can't handle 2 tasks at once without under/oversteer, or in your case, tire degradation. Get all your braking done before you turn in, and don't touch the gas until you're ready to exit the corner, like at the apex. Every corner is different so learn the line and judge for yourself when you need to brake and when you can get back on the gas.

Hope that helped a bit more ;)
 
That is good advice don't get me wrong. But do consider learning trail braking and left foot braking aswell. I say this as I feel this has been the key to doing the AMG Academy, especially in the wet.

Also, I have driven the M3 with the set up I have given to him to try out and I found trail braking / left foot braking very useful around the Trial Mountain track we both are testing on.

RavenWire, if you want those replays I mentioned to you, you can see there how I used left foot braking in the M3, I think, judging from your driving style being similar to mine before I started including more advanced techniques, it would be very easy for you to pick up ;)
 
Sweet, well if you can get that to work (I know it's a lifesaver in the karts) then good on ya. I've used left foot braking before but that was mainly because I was tired of constantly switching feet ;) And for me the wet AMG trials I did my tactic and that worked for me, since it's all about managing the car's balance on the tires. I'll have to try that though.
 
I'm doing the AMG Wet trials atm ... I just find it easier to brake whilst still having some accelerator on, just makes the car a hell of a lot more stable ... but ... it depends on how you drive and how you find it easier, it is always worth a try though ... fancy sharing your tactic though?
 
Well basically just like I said earlier, drive so your tires are only doing one thing at a time. So brake before you turn in blah blah. But I think the main thing is that I brake in the normal racing line where it's slickest (I have ABS dialed up a bit) and then turn in the middle line, so I have the most grip while I'm turning. That's worked pretty well for me so far and I've got gold in everything except 2 events. And I've been lazy lately ;)
 
What tyres do you use?
 
The more negative camber you use the more wear will occur to your tires ON A STRAIGHT.
Also by playing around with the sway bar you can share the load between two wheels thus preventing one from overheating. Over loading the tires leads to wheelspin or skidding which is when your tires really lose their life.

Adjusting the diff is also a most effective method to tune out wheelspin thus wear.

There is a bunch more but this is what I think was missing from above that might help!

It is a balancing act, I aim to have my cars do at least four laps on a set of racing softs. A good compromise between grip and wear. By the time your tires wear down to about half way they become useless.
 
Umm... What's with the brake balance? 2 front and 8 back? that would be extremely unbalanced. (not that it really matters if you use ABS)
 
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