Formula C - Road America - Setup

[Ajay R]

Hey everyone.


I've seen a lot of great tips on Formula C in this forum and was hoping to get some help!


I've been stuck in round 3 of the Formula C US championship at Road America - Qualifying.

I manage to do 2:18-19's, while the AI (default 60) is able go 2-3 seconds faster than me with 2:15-16's.
Furthermore, even slightly going over the kerbs on this track almost always leads to a spin out.


Does anyone have a good setup at Road America that would be helpful?

I'm currently playing on the PS4, and have the front and rear downforce set to the max.

 

[Beezer215]

Good ol' Formula C. I don't know, it seems like the AI in Formula C cars is ramped up a little too much. I tried the "use wet tires", I messed with the LSD until I pulled my hair out. I just bit the bullet and turned the AI down a few notches which gave the most realistic results.
One thing in PC2 that can be annoying is that when setting the AI to "60", not every class of car reacts the same. Some classes you'll whip and others you'll struggle to get a P7.

Have you ran through a few different setups? Have you adjusted tire pressures? Messed with suspension? What are you currently running as a setup? There's a few things you can fix up to make it less painful.

 

[Ajay R]

I'm currently running this setup from YouTube but with the front and rear downforce increased all the way to 21.



I'm new to tuning and have only changed a few settings so far such as lowering tire pressures, adjusting DF, steering ratio, brake pressures and gear ratios.

With FC cars I've found good settings for those items, with the exception of this track.

Not sure what I'm missing!

 

[IfAndOr]

Furthermore, even slightly going over the kerbs on this track almost always leads to a spin out.

Yes I'm sure they are greased prior to every race!

If you're struggling with the kerbs at RA to help try turning on the traction control. I even tend to use the high setting just at that track. It's not cheating it's just helping.

 

[Ajay R]

Maybe I need to swallow my pride and do that haha.

I'll give it a few more shots then see how it goes!

 

[SGETI]

http://forum.projectcarsgame.com/sh...equests-for-Consoles(pictures)-Post-Patch-7-0

Try out this site for tunes. If you do not see what you want, just ask nicely and the thread owner will do his best to help you.

 

[Ajay R]

This is a great resource thanks!

 

[mattikake]

RA is truly broken for low ground clearance cars. It's a track I avoid at all costs. There's a fundamental physics flaw when it comes to riding kerbs in pc2. For some reason (assume the usual!) cars instantly bottom out on outside kerbs instead of increasing the cars roll angle. And this is only really present on kerbs, roll angle on tarmac is fine. Like the suspension bumps up but the floor doesn't follow it. This drastically reduces tyre grip = spin to the outside of a corner or get sucked off the track if it's a rumble strip.

Inside kerbs are the reverse and seem to roll the car dramatically and instantly overloads the outside wheel contact patch = spin to the inside of a corner.

So a work around is to raise ride height by suspension setup, tyre pressures etc. Fast bump dampers have little effect because softening will make outside kerbs even more deadly and stiffening them will make the inside kerbs more deadly. Lose lose.

The problem with high df cars is you need low ride height for their ground effect and balance to work. So you will be slower doing this but safer. The other option is to avoid the kerbs like the plague as the guy does in the above video. Or avoid the track altogether!

 

[Ajay R]

Thanks for the explanation and it's good to know that I'm not crazy when I think this track is tough!

I did end up winning this event by avoiding kerbs and setting the gear ratios to get a higher top speed in the long full throttle section. That's where the AI got 2-3 seconds on me.

 

[Bealdor]

RA is truly broken for low ground clearance cars. It's a track I avoid at all costs. There's a fundamental physics flaw when it comes to riding kerbs in pc2. For some reason (assume the usual!) cars instantly bottom out on outside kerbs instead of increasing the cars roll angle.

The only thing that's fundamentally flawed is your understanding of high speed damping. There's no magical bottoming out when driving over kerbs ingame, neither inside nor outside.

And this is only really present on kerbs, roll angle on tarmac is fine. Like the suspension bumps up but the floor doesn't follow it. This drastically reduces tyre grip = spin to the outside of a corner or get sucked off the track if it's a rumble strip.

Yeah, that's the whole point of high speed damping. Absorbing the surface irregularities without unsettling the chassis. Contrary to what you wrote, this actually improves grip because it reduces contact patch load variation. Setting up high speed damping effectively (including correct transition speeds) is crucial if you want to attack the kerbs aggressively.

I recommend to read up about the concept of transmissibility to understand the difference between low speed and high speed damping.

Inside kerbs are the reverse and seem to roll the car dramatically and instantly overloads the outside wheel contact patch = spin to the inside of a corner.

Here's some telemetry data I recorded just now with the R18 (2016) @Road America that doesn't support your claims at all.
First, riding over the inside and outside kerbs in turn 3:

You can see, the suspension isn't bottoming out and the chassis doesn't get unsettled, although my ride height is quite low with 53/70 mm.

Same thing happens in turn 5:

Since we can rule out that bottoming out or excessive body roll is the cause for that "sucking" effect of the kerbs, the only plausible cause that's left is actually a grip delta between tarmac and kerbs.
And to counter that you need to open your differential more. That's what I'm doing and I don't experience that effect at all. See the differential graph below:

You can see, once I hit the inside kerb the differentials opens because the kerb has less grip. If my diff would stay locked, too much torque would be transferred to the outside wheel which would turn the car towards the kerb (the "sucking" effect everyone complains about).

I think the only real culprit here is that the grip level of the kerbs is a bit too low in PCARS 2, which exaggerates the effect.
But it's not that this effect doesn't happen in real life.

So a work around is to raise ride height by suspension setup, tyre pressures etc. Fast bump dampers have little effect because softening will make outside kerbs even more deadly and stiffening them will make the inside kerbs more deadly. Lose lose.

The problem with high df cars is you need low ride height for their ground effect and balance to work. So you will be slower doing this but safer. The other option is to avoid the kerbs like the plague as the guy does in the above video. Or avoid the track altogether!

Yeah, if you wanna ride the bigger kerbs aggressively you'll need to raise ride height. That's why you should avoid those in high DF cars.

 

[Sloppy Shades]

http://forum.projectcarsgame.com/sh...-Tunes-(G29)&p=1513687&viewfull=1#post1513687

I found that the ai drive particularly fast even with good tuning here so I had to lower the ai to 50/50 to make it competitive. There is no shame in lowering the ai for some races and raising it for others particularly when the ai can beat TT leader board times in qualifying

 

[Beezer215]

That's what I did as well. It gives the most realistic results without having some wacky tune or using wet tyres.
They should have moderated the AI's ability in these cars better.

 

[mattikake]

The only thing that's fundamentally flawed is your understanding of high speed damping. There's no magical bottoming out when driving over kerbs ingame, neither inside nor outside.



Yeah, that's the whole point of high speed damping. Absorbing the surface irregularities without unsettling the chassis. Contrary to what you wrote, this actually improves grip because it reduces contact patch load variation. Setting up high speed damping effectively (including correct transition speeds) is crucial if you want to attack the kerbs aggressively.

I recommend to read up about the concept of transmissibility to understand the difference between low speed and high speed damping.



Here's some telemetry data I recorded just now with the R18 (2016) @Road America that doesn't support your claims at all.
First, riding over the inside and outside kerbs in turn 3:

View attachment 858296

You can see, the suspension isn't bottoming out and the chassis doesn't get unsettled, although my ride height is quite low with 53/70 mm.

Same thing happens in turn 5:

View attachment 858298

Since we can rule out that bottoming out or excessive body roll is the cause for that "sucking" effect of the kerbs, the only plausible cause that's left is actually a grip delta between tarmac and kerbs.
And to counter that you need to open your differential more. That's what I'm doing and I don't experience that effect at all. See the differential graph below:

View attachment 858299

You can see, once I hit the inside kerb the differentials opens because the kerb has less grip. If my diff would stay locked, too much torque would be transferred to the outside wheel which would turn the car towards the kerb (the "sucking" effect everyone complains about).

I think the only real culprit here is that the grip level of the kerbs is a bit too low in PCARS 2, which exaggerates the effect.
But it's not that this effect doesn't happen in real life.



Yeah, if you wanna ride the bigger kerbs aggressively you'll need to raise ride height. That's why you should avoid those in high DF cars.

Only just seen this.

Stuff well said. Maybe I should've said I'm on ps4. Looks like you're on pc? They are not the same sim by far. I've played both and the pc version is only the same game in name. It's so much better it's almost impossible to list all the differences.

Either way a car running 20-30mm or so higher than an FC is not the same experience by a margin.

My experience is the cars bottom out. You know this because you get the "scoring" sound of the underside of the car running on the kerbs. It's deliberate and reported by the game. Once that happens you have no control. But my point was, this doesn't happen in real life. The car would have to be ridiculously soft. A stiffer car should pitch much more aggressively in the roll angle, not that the suspension should rebound up.

I've just estimated this; In my 35 years of watching f1, f2, f3, f4, fe, dtm, btcc, gt5, gt4, gt3, gte, lmp1, lmp2, v8sc, indycar, karts, f Renault, f first, f ford etc. etc... I must've seen over 100,000 laps, roughly 1,000,000 corners x 20+ avg cars = around 20,000,000 instances of cars of racing irl, personally and on tv... Yet I have NEVER seen a car lose outside rear traction because the inside front rode a kerb. Never.