Compatible cars

[CJSpencer77]

I wanted to start a thread that lists cars that are reasonably compatible with each other, so that if given a choice of 4 or 5 cars everyone wont simply choose one car. I run a league for 24 people, we have awesome members but one of the biggest problems we have is that we dont just want to do single series races, every week we are racing a different class of cars, sometimes it is everyone in one car, which works out great, the problem occurs when we open up the choice of car for a race to something for instance like Front engine, Rear wheel drive Japanese production road cars. If i do this everyone will turn up in a Lexus LFA, so it might have well been a single make race.
Seeing as PP simply does not work we have to test extensively to find out which cars will put very similar times in using a set PP or bhp/weight settings on a set track. So i wanted to start a thread where different players posted groups of cars with settings and the track that they had raced that were very closely matched. So to get the ball rolling ........

Track : Grand Valley
BHP : 404
Weight : 1150kg

Audi R8 4.2 FSI
BMW M3 CSL
Lotus Evora
Honda NSX Type R

These 4 cars are all very very close, within about 3 tenths of a second a lap
I tried loads of other cars to go with these settings but they were either too fast or slow, in my opinion .5 - .6 of a second difference a lap is too much. You need to make the lap time difference small enough from car to car so people will care more about driving thier fav car from any group.

 

[CJSpencer77]

Another Race we did that had 3 cars in it that were very similar was

Nurburgring GP/F
600 PP

RX7 LM
RX8 LM
XJ220 LM


All 3 of these cars were very similar at GP/F and 600pp. We also had the Fairlady Concept LM (which is normally very quick) and the Zonda LM but they were strangled at 600pp, i think both of these cars needed a higher pp or bhp to shine

 

[XDesperado67]

Check out the tuning forum. We are running shootouts there between tuners.
We had a 500PP FF competition there were 20 tuners that had something like a dozen different cars. 7 independent test drivers did hot laps on Grand Valley Speedway (the full track). Average lap times between the cars was just over 3 seconds difference between fastest and slowest. Average times for the test drivers was around 5 seconds difference so you could see that driver skill was at least as important as a well tuned car.
We are currently running a 525PP European car shootout. We have 19 tuners this time and testing by the independent drivers is taking place right now. For most of these cars they are in a similarly tight time grouping as the FF shootout. This time the track is Laguna Seca.
Both these shootouts used Sports Soft tires.
We will be having a 600PP shootout on most likely Race Hards coming up soon.
We are always looking for more tuners and/or test drivers to take part in our shootouts. These are fun events that show that a variety of cars, some surprising can be competitive given the right tuning.

 

[CJSpencer77]

Thx for the info, i my well have a look at these shoot outs, they sound like they could be as good for finding compatible cars as they sound fun. As you said in your reply that each drivers ability/style also comes into play when comparing times between cars, How myself and my Team mates do it is by only comparing each lap time in a different car with our own previous lap times and not each others, this way although our times may vary, usually the ratios of the gaps between cars are very close. Strangly though we quite often find it easier to match a group of cars for a race on Bhp/Weight than we do with PP which always strikes me as wierd seeing as this was the purpose of PP !!

 

[XDesperado67]

Thx for the info, i my well have a look at these shoot outs, they sound like they could be as good for finding compatible cars as they sound fun. As you said in your reply that each drivers ability/style also comes into play when comparing times between cars, How myself and my Team mates do it is by only comparing each lap time in a different car with our own previous lap times and not each others, this way although our times may vary usually the ratios of the gaps between cars are very close. Strangly though we quite often find it easier to match a group of cars for a race on Bhp/Weight than we do with PP which always strikes me as wierd seeing as this was the purpose of PP !!

HP and weight are the 2 main determinants of PP with torque, aerodynamics and age of car playing some role as well. Matching HP and weight should result in cars that are fairly close in PP. The problem with both your method and the PP method is all the other variables that come into play which show little or no effect on PP and unless regulated don't figure at all in a straight HP/Weight setting. Regardless of how you handle things some cars are always going to have an advantage so you look for ways to make the gaps in car performance as small as possible. The other thing that comes into play but doesn't get as much attention is the track/s cars will be running on. The best example of that is seen with things like running an underpowered car that corners exceptionally well in the Supercar seasonal races. You can win because of cornering on the twisty tight tracks like the Eifel track, while on the faster more open tracks you'll be lucky not to get lapped by the fastest AI cars. So when matching cars you need to not only take the cars overall performance, and the drivers skill into account but also the track/s you'll be racing on.

 

[CJSpencer77]

Yep we always take track into account (which is why i added the track with the car lists we have found to be close), obviously any one driver will be better or worse than another, but whether you use PP , or bhp/weight (we use both) quite often there will always be one car that is faster than the others by a margin that is so great that everyone will pick that car, so what was intended as a multiple car race ends up as a single series race. Myself and my league team members are testing cars so that we can put together groups of cars (on a set track) that are as close as possible in thier potential lap times, so players will pick the car that suits them best or is a favourite car of theirs instead of picking a car because its the quickest because the difference in potential lap times is so minimal, everyone in our league is a very good driver, the league isnt an open to join league, its by invite only, I know this sounds a bit elitist but it means we have awesome races and although some guys are obviously faster than others the 'difference' in our own lap times in different cars is virtually the same. You can state a group of cars and most experienced GT5 players could tell you what would work well on what track with what settings. For instance most NSX's have a much bigger advantage compared to other similar cars using PP than they do using BHP/Weight, if your in a production road car race around the 560pp mark then lots of people know the M3 CSL is one of the much quicker cars to be in (obviously they are only quicker/slower compared to other cars running with the same settings). The point of this thread was for people to post car lists with settings and tracks, that didnt have an outright winner in them, or equally a downright slower car in them. Im obviously not looking for all 6 guys in a race to go over the finish line side by side, but for the winner to have won because he ran the best race, not because he ran a better car to start with. Lol so that this post has some value in it, which PP/BHP/weight settings and car groups do you find come out very close together? Ive just finished putting our next seasons races together but its always handy to find compatible cars/settings for new races in upcoming seasons.