Ford GT, don't use soft tires

[panjandrum]

I suppose I could have put this in any one of the other Ford GT threads, but I thought it was an important enough tip to get a new thread:

As in GT4, the Ford GT in GT5P hates soft tires. The dramatic and uncontrollable snap oversteer (followed by uncontrollable snap-back when you try to counter steer) comes in to play if you use a tire softer than R1. Stick with S3 or R1 tires and the car magically becomes more manageable (except you have to be even more gentle on the throttle). I wasted a lot of hours trying to tune the GT in GT4 before I realized it simply wouldn't work with anything softer than R1s, and I finally tested this today in GT5P and the problem remains.

To test this, take the GT out and put R3s on it. Go to HSR and just lift off in the first turn a little. The rear of the car tries to step out on you very quickly. If you are careful and get back on the throttle properly, you'll find that the car then tends to jerk back straight in a frightening way. Very strange. Now go try that again with R1s or S3s. Much more manageable, yes? It actually starts to feel like a properly balanced MR car.

So, what I would do, would be to start with the assumption that R1s will be the softest tire you will use, and then try to tune from there (although, other than the tire-spin, the car doesn't really need tuning once you use the correct tires).

Note that so far I've only tested this on the road-going Ford GT, not LM concept.

Edit: I have now tested this is the LM concept as well and it does the same thing, but to a lesser extent and at higher speeds. Try it on the Daytona oval. You don't even have to lift off to see this. Take it out with R3s and just leave the hammer down through the wider of the turns. Notice that bizarre left-right oscillation? In the tighter corner you'll have to gently release the gas somewhat to make the turn, which can make this oscillation worse. Now, run the same lap with R1s instead. It is still there, but vastly reduced.

Although this was not a problem I saw with any car in GT4 except the Ford GT, I have noticed similar but much reduced behavior out of a few other cars in GT5P.

This is all with no aids, no assists, etc (as usual).

 

[Chadwicksracing]

I like your feedback Panjandrum. I have been testing the test car extensively over the past few weeks and I don't have a real problem with the rear end coming out on me with R3 tires. This is at Daytona mind you. I have my setup tuned where I can hold the gas 100% through every corner. Except when exceeding speeds of 199 MPH and when there is traffic. When I do lift the rear likes to step out, but it is easy to manage, like you said. The trick is to never let off the gas in the corner. You see I have come to the conclusion that the reason why the rear end likes to step out is due to the shift of weight in the car. The GT is just a highly powered car that when you do hit the gas a lot of force and effort goes into the rear of the car. What you can do? Well you can make the bump in the rear higher, and that should counter act for the suddent shift of wieght.

I believe it was you that told me about the two different tire combos with the GT. Well at Suzuka I bought a special GT car for that track. So with R3 tires on both ends, the car is simply unmanagable and hard to contain. After that I change to R2 in front and R3 in the rear the problem just up and dissapeared! The car is now balanced like you said. Before I was running 2.12 laps, now it runs 2.09! That is how Earth is able to be so fast in that car at Suzuka! Well I don't know what I am saying anymore, so I will just stop typing.

 

[panjandrum]

CWR - You run the LM concept at Daytona, don't you? It doesn't suffer from this problem nearly as badly as the road going GT, but it does still happen. You may have to go back to a stock setup to see this in action as it looks like your tuning has eliminated it.

Do you use a controller or a wheel? I don't know if this would even happen with a controller, but with the G25 it is extremely pronounced.

I've been driving a road-version around London a bit today, and it is behaving very nicely with just R1 tires and taller gearing to help reduce tire-spin.

 

[wrcsti]

Well said CWR. I have my own opinion though. It's an american car, deal with it.

 

[Chadwicksracing]

CWR - You run the LM concept at Daytona, don't you? It doesn't suffer from this problem nearly as badly as the road going GT, but it does still happen. You may have to go back to a stock setup to see this in action as it looks like your tuning has eliminated it.

Do you use a controller or a wheel? I don't know if this would even happen with a controller, but with the G25 it is extremely pronounced.

I've been driving a road-version around London a bit today, and it is behaving very nicely with just R1 tires and taller gearing to help reduce tire-spin.

Unfortunely at the moment I am forced to use the sixaxsis controller.

Oh yes I do know what you are talking about. With the untuned Ford GT it does that alot, which is why I don't use it. But as it looks like 600PP races are in the schedule I will have to use the Ford GT and not the test car. And yes in the 700PP races I did have that problem elminated, because it was my main focus; that and getting it to turn properly. The reason why I beat the 650 HP viper is because of my tuning. lol Now as it looks like I will have to retune for all the tracks.. I say good luck! lol

Oh yes, R1 tires are going to be used in 600 pp races.. lol Well good Panjandrum, it looks like we know what we doing, so hopefully we can fix it and beat all of our competitors because it!

I also wonder how the M3 will play into my relm!

Well said CWR. I have my own opinion though. It's an american car, deal with it.

Thanks, and while your opinon is appreicated; I believe that in this game American cars are just as good as others. Given in real life an Aermican car will break down after 10,000 miles. lol With that said, the European cars and Japanese cars have their fair share of problems as well. I think the Ferrari's are sometimes rubbish, but as the race PP for expert as gone down to 600, those will come in handy. Thanks and see you out there!

 

[B24]

I have been running the gt lm at suzuka 750pp, r3 tires with times from 2.06-2.03 generally.
It has taken sometime to set it up and it is a tricky but rewarding car to drive.
I do use tc at 1,abs at 1, barely any downforce
I havent even tried other tires but may have a run tomorrow

 

[panjandrum]

I've been driving the Ford GT road car a lot more frequently now - with stock suspension settings but with various types of tires, and still the only place I see the car becoming an unmanageable menace is with R2 or R3 tires. These tires definitely cause some type of unbalancing of the car. Drive it on (for example) N3s and it has nice balance and poise.

I DO still get insane uncontrollable amounts of wheel-spin, but with the harder tires I find that I'm actually LESS likely to end up in a complete wipe-out. It may be that the LSD is coming into play here. LSDs can make cars very hard to manage in certain circumstances (causing both rear wheels to spin-up instead of just the inside wheel. This causes a complete lack of lateral traction at the rear of the car, and can cause sudden spins. A problem with LSDs in real life as well as in Gran Turismo).

In the end, I think a lot of the problems with this car are due to our pedals. They simply aren't good enough to manage the throttle of a beast like this properly without insane amounts of concentration and control. Barely blipping my G25 accelerator pedal gives me 50% throttle. Barely blipping an accelerator pedal in a real car gives you the amount of throttle you would expect (10% = about 10%, if you see what I mean). So you touch the gas, and you instantly have wheel-spin. Obviously this doesn't happen in the real GT or it wouldn't be a drivable car under normal conditions.

 

[The Grim Reaper]

I have just run this car for the first time in anger at Suzuka, and my personal findings are the R2, are the best for this car, after running from S1 to R3 five laps each.

A few other interesting pointers are that the car needs to be run with the weight set to its lowest otherwise it has a tendency to drift to the outside of corners when accelerating. I think this is probably the only car in the game that having a high traction setting helps, as I found that with little or no traction I was spending to much time concerntrating on control and my lap time grew, so I set it to 5 with the ASM on and I found the car alot easier to control and my times fell. Lastly shorten your gear ratios. 👍

My runs were completed with the SixAxis. I am a reasonable driver not the best but good enough. So take from the above what you will.

 

[P3nT4gR4m]

I find the opposite with GT and TCS - if I set it on at all I can't keep the damn thing on the track because it keeps cutting the throttle and giving me lift-oversteer when what I really need is some feather control.

 

[Roxa_p]

nice to hear there's stil someone that don't use tcs and asm.. i also drive assistfree.. only abs for the braking.. specially on the ford gt.µ
now what you said about the gt in gt4 and 5 is not completely true.. i had a perfect setting that i could do anything whit as i pleased.. gearing on this car is what needs to be adjusted. when you can make you car start in first gear whitout wheelspin you got a good setting to start whit. second see what speed you get in sharp corners if your first is to short set the second gear so that you don't need to shift in the corner.
i've putted a full setting i use on the car in gt5 on an other topic. look at car tunig & settings/ american tuners/ ford gt by eastley let me know what you think of it:tup:

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