I've noticed lately that all of the cars that I've been buying and tuning have been performing very well in online races. I've developed a method to tuning cars that's made it easy for me to stockpile a large collection of highly competitive cars for online racing without spending time tinkering with each setup.
It seems that all of my cars all handle great the first time I use them online. So I figured I'd share what's been working for me to help some people out and maybe get some suggestions at the same time. Corrections are definitely appreciated. Keep in mind this is aimed at online racing where the physics are more realistic and the grip seems slightly reduced. Cars tuned like this in GT Life will generally handle like tanks but online they handle great.
"The Method":
I start with a basic suspension and transmission setup and perfect the setup during practice before the host starts the race.
There are two words that you need to understand before you continue: Oversteer and understeer.
Oversteer is what causes you to spin out. When the back end of your car is sliding out during cornering, this is oversteer. A little oversteer makes for good handling but requires more skill to control the car.
Understeer happens when your car doesn't want to turn. It just slides in a straight line instead of turning. A little understeer makes a car easier and more stable to drive but doesn't turn corners as fast.
We will use the car's handling tendencies to determine what changes need to be made prior to a race.
Car Selection:
You have to start with a good car. In online racing, you'll often be working with a power limit so weight becomes extra important. If everyone's power is limited to 500HP, the lightest car is, with a good setup, going to be fastest. If a car you buy starts out weighing 1700kg, the absolute most it's going to get down to is 1300kg after weight reduction. So try to shop for cars starting at or close to 1300kg or less. Also keep in mind most race cars won't take further weight reduction.
Also, before you hit the tuning shop, head to GT Auto. Make sure your car has an oil change and *cringe* as much as I hate to do it put a wing on your car if it's going to end up over about 400HP. You'll need the downforce. Very few cars have tasteful wings (see Gallardo) and all the standard ones get the same set of park bench spoilers but it's worth it.
It's also important to mention that you should always buy racing soft tires. They will get you 7-10 good laps in an online race which is almost always more than long enough. It's not worth the loss in grip with medium tires in such short races. 95% of hosts don't run a tire restriction and with the stiffness of these settings, you need all the grip you can get. If you're forced to run lower class tires, you'll probably want to soften your suspension a bit to prevent loss of traction due to the reduced grip. Never run anything less than racing softs if you can help it. Tires make the single biggest difference to a car's performance.
Basic Settings:
Downforce: Max in most cases except race cars
Almost always max front downforce if available. If your car has a really strong wing (60) dial the rear setting down to maybe 45. More downforce equals more traction at high speeds. At low speeds, downforce doesn't help much which is why I only suggest adding a rear spoiler if the car is going to be fast.
Transmission: 280km/h (174mph?) is safe for most road courses
The transmission is the most important part of making your car go fast with whatever amount of power it has. By ensuring your car gets as close to possible to your transmission's top speed on the straightaways, your car will accelerate faster on it's way up to that top speed.
Drivetrain - Limited Slip Differential: Default settings
The way I see it this thing is used for inducing understeer. A higher initial torque setting means a stronger overall effect and the other two settings change how strongly the LSD works during acceleration or braking. Leave it default to start off with. More on adjusting this thing in the next section.
Drivetrain - Torque Sensing Center Differential: 40/60 or leave it default if higher
If your car is 4WD, you can and absolutely should buy this box. It allows you to adjust the percentage of power that goes to your rear wheels. More on this in the adjustments section.
Suspension - Ride Height: As low as it goes while being the same front and back
A lower ride height ensures the wheels move up and down less, increasing traction as well as improving a car's aerodynamics, making it able to achieve higher top speeds.
Suspension - Spring Rate: The highest both can get while being the same value
A stiffer suspension ensures that the tires are in contact with the track more. They don't bounce as high when they hit a bump in the road. The reason cars don't come with settings this high is because it doesn't make for a smooth, comfortable ride. I learned while tuning an Audi R8 that with the altered physics and grip when racing online compared to GT Life, cars take full advantage of very low, very stiff setups. It tends to maximize grip, keeping the tires from losing traction as much. See the explanation of the anti-roll bars to understand why stiff springs work.
Suspension - Damper (Extension): 10/10
Basically what the dampers do is control how much the springs can move. A stiffer damper will make the tire less likely to lose contact with the pavement due to the rapid movement of the springs. Most of the time the loss of traction due to stiff springs isn't an issue but on some of the rougher tracks like Deep Forest or Trial Mountain, it can cause your car to physically skip across the pavement like a stone over water. Even still this effect seems to be manageable and the effect of softening them seems to be worse than just letting the car bounce a bit.
Suspension - Damper (Compression): 8/8
The in-game encyclopedia says to set the extension stiffer than the compression and this seems to give better handling than just going 10/10 all around in most cars.
Suspension - Anti-Roll Bar: 7/7
Keeps the suspension rigid. If you've driven any of the cheapest cars with no upgrades, you'll notice that when you turn a corner the car visibly leans when cornering. This leaning causes the tires on the inside (left side in a left turn and vise versa) to lift up, losing grip and reducing traction. The closer you can keep all four tires to 100% grip, the better a car's handling will be.
Alignment - Camber Angle: 2.0/2.0
Tires with camber maintain more grip when cornering. It can be useful for controlling understeer and oversteer by adjusting which tires get more grip. Too much camber affects braking and sometimes cornering.
Alignment - Toe Angle: -0.20/0.20. If the car is 4WD, use -0.20/-0.20 instead
Negative on the front increases steering response. Positive on the front increases understeer. Negative on the back causes oversteer. Positive on the back causes understeer and increases stability in a straight line.
Brakes: 6/5
While brake balance can be used to create oversteer (good for drifting) making changes to them tends to make the car more unstable than changing suspension settings instead. When the car brakes, more weight shifts to the front tires, thus making the front tires more effective during braking. However, setting the rear brakes to be stronger than the front can make the rear tires more likely to lock up and lose traction during cornering which can be useful.
Now you're ready to join a lobby:
The way to be constantly competitive in online racing is to always have a viable car for any situation. Most rooms run some sort of power limit and some hosts will change to a different limit on a whim. When you know what that limit is, choose a car that is anywhere from 50-100HP over the limit. Up to 200HP can be shaved if a car is turbocharged. Go into the tuning page and start reverting parts to the stock versions. Start with the exhaust page first, then move to the intake page then the engine page last. If a car is turbocharged, reverting to the stock turbo can remove a lot of HP if needed. This ensures that you are able to run as close as possible to the horsepower limit. Mix and match pieces to get even closer to the limit. The reason I remove parts in that order is that you lose the least amount of torque from exhaust pieces.
Adjustments:
Now take some practice laps and get a feel for the car. Does the back end slide out during the corner? That's oversteer. Does the car tend to want to go in a straight line going into a corner? That's understeer. We'll change different settings depending how the car handles.
If the car oversteers, there are a few things we can adjust to make it more stable. The first thing to look at is the LSD in the drivetrain section. If the back end wants to slide out really bad max this out 60/60/60. If it's just a bit and you're having some difficulty exiting corners, just increase it a little bit to something like 30/50/20.
If that doesn't do enough, we want to look at the suspension settings. A stiffer front suspension and a softer rear suspension will encourage understeer. Raise the front end of the car up by 10mm (-30 up to -20), soften the rear springs by 2.0kgf/mm and change the dampers to 9/7 on the rear. Leave the front at 10/8. Change the toe on your front tires back to 0.00 or if necessary, increase the toe into the positive on the front to encourage understeer. Increasing the top speed of your transmission can also reduce the amount of wheel spin when accelerating out of a corner.
If the car understeers it's alot easier to work with. First swap your LSD for the stock one. I feel this thing creates understeer so it's not necessary if the car already understeers.
Then we'll pretty much do the opposite set of changes to the suspension than we did before. A softer front suspension and a stiffer rear encourages oversteer. So raise the ride height up 10mm in the rear (-30 to -20), remove 2.0kgf/mm from the front springs, lower the dampers to 9/7 in the front and leave them at 10/8 in the rear. Also set the camber on the rear of the car to 0.5 and set the rear toe to -0.20 instead of 0.20. Reducing the down force on the rear of the car in the body/chassis section can also further increase oversteer. Changing your brakes to 5/5 or even 5/6 can create some oversteer during braking but only as a last resort.
Most 4WD cars will tend to understeer when applying power exiting corners. The Torque Sensing Center Differential allows you to send more power the rear tires, creating oversteer instead. Sending more power to the rear wheels will allow you to step on the gas sooner when exiting corners. Most cars can get away with 25/75 comfortably. If a car is still slow coming out of the corners, this setting can go as high as 90% to the rear but work in 5% steps until the car feels good.
If you know a track is going to be very rough and bumpy like Nurburgring Nordeschleife, Trial Mountain or Deep Forest you'll need to raise your ride height and soften your spring rate and dampers slightly. While most tracks are smooth enough that your car will stay planted, the extremely rough road on these tracks can cause your tires to bounce when your suspension is this stiff. And when your tires lose contact with the road you lose traction. If you've ever done the final kart challenge on Autumn Ring Mini, this is the best analog to this effect.
I try not to use traction control unless a car absolutely needs it to maintain control because it robs you of speed when cornering. It will help you on starts but it will also slow your car down a bit during hard cornering. It keeps your wheels from freely spinning (burning out). You also shouldn't need any of the other assists and you should practice with them off because you will eventually be faster with them off. A slow start can be made up for but the ability to carry more speed into corners means that you're less likely to get bumped or punted off the track by all the bad drivers out there.
Start with the changes indicated and if they aren't enough, keep working in that general direction. The idea with tuning is to get an idea of how all the little changes affect the car. For the most part to change the car the way you want it, all of the sliders will go in the same directions to correct what's giving you problems.
Control Suggestions For Controllers:
Use your L2/R2 as brake and gas. You can get much finer control of the pedals than using square and X. Change your gear shifting to right stick up and right stick down. Some people prefer to use square and X for shifting instead. If you're comfortable using the right joystick for brake/gas then keep doing what you're doing but if you're still using square and X I strongly suggest you change.
Also, driving in manual mode instead of automatic is highly recommended. There are a couple things you can do with a standard that you can't with an automatic. If your car is too powerful or the track is wet, you can control excessive wheel spin by shifting up sooner. In an automatic you have to be gentle on the throttle to control spinny tires but in a standard you can shift up at 4000RPM instead of 8000RPM thus keeping the car out of the power band until you're back up to speed and can safely run to 8000RPM again. This is especially useful when exiting corners on certain cars. If you're having alot of trouble with spinning out when getting back on the gas, one solution can be to shift up a gear before you accelerate hard. I've also noticed automatics can sometimes change gears at bad times during cornering causing loss in traction in the middle of a turn.
Conclusion:
I hope you've found this article helpful and any constructive criticism is appreciated. Using this method I've been able to spend alot more time racing and alot less time tuning. Most of the cars in my favorites list have a basic, effective tuning setup that I tweak on a race-by-race level. I have dozens of cars I can run effectively at any horsepower limit. Rather than having one or two babies which will limit my options for what lobbies I can compete well in, I'm always ready to race.
This is a general guide to give you a basic understanding of the tuning page and online competition. I wouldn't call this a cookie cutter build (because this isn't World of Warcraft, for one) but rather a good starting point to learn from. If you're interested in mastering tuning in GT5, Scaff has written a 75 page guide on everything tuning.
It seems that all of my cars all handle great the first time I use them online. So I figured I'd share what's been working for me to help some people out and maybe get some suggestions at the same time. Corrections are definitely appreciated. Keep in mind this is aimed at online racing where the physics are more realistic and the grip seems slightly reduced. Cars tuned like this in GT Life will generally handle like tanks but online they handle great.
"The Method":
I start with a basic suspension and transmission setup and perfect the setup during practice before the host starts the race.
There are two words that you need to understand before you continue: Oversteer and understeer.
Oversteer is what causes you to spin out. When the back end of your car is sliding out during cornering, this is oversteer. A little oversteer makes for good handling but requires more skill to control the car.
Understeer happens when your car doesn't want to turn. It just slides in a straight line instead of turning. A little understeer makes a car easier and more stable to drive but doesn't turn corners as fast.
We will use the car's handling tendencies to determine what changes need to be made prior to a race.
Car Selection:
You have to start with a good car. In online racing, you'll often be working with a power limit so weight becomes extra important. If everyone's power is limited to 500HP, the lightest car is, with a good setup, going to be fastest. If a car you buy starts out weighing 1700kg, the absolute most it's going to get down to is 1300kg after weight reduction. So try to shop for cars starting at or close to 1300kg or less. Also keep in mind most race cars won't take further weight reduction.
Also, before you hit the tuning shop, head to GT Auto. Make sure your car has an oil change and *cringe* as much as I hate to do it put a wing on your car if it's going to end up over about 400HP. You'll need the downforce. Very few cars have tasteful wings (see Gallardo) and all the standard ones get the same set of park bench spoilers but it's worth it.
It's also important to mention that you should always buy racing soft tires. They will get you 7-10 good laps in an online race which is almost always more than long enough. It's not worth the loss in grip with medium tires in such short races. 95% of hosts don't run a tire restriction and with the stiffness of these settings, you need all the grip you can get. If you're forced to run lower class tires, you'll probably want to soften your suspension a bit to prevent loss of traction due to the reduced grip. Never run anything less than racing softs if you can help it. Tires make the single biggest difference to a car's performance.
Basic Settings:
Downforce: Max in most cases except race cars
Almost always max front downforce if available. If your car has a really strong wing (60) dial the rear setting down to maybe 45. More downforce equals more traction at high speeds. At low speeds, downforce doesn't help much which is why I only suggest adding a rear spoiler if the car is going to be fast.
Transmission: 280km/h (174mph?) is safe for most road courses
The transmission is the most important part of making your car go fast with whatever amount of power it has. By ensuring your car gets as close to possible to your transmission's top speed on the straightaways, your car will accelerate faster on it's way up to that top speed.
Drivetrain - Limited Slip Differential: Default settings
The way I see it this thing is used for inducing understeer. A higher initial torque setting means a stronger overall effect and the other two settings change how strongly the LSD works during acceleration or braking. Leave it default to start off with. More on adjusting this thing in the next section.
Drivetrain - Torque Sensing Center Differential: 40/60 or leave it default if higher
If your car is 4WD, you can and absolutely should buy this box. It allows you to adjust the percentage of power that goes to your rear wheels. More on this in the adjustments section.
Suspension - Ride Height: As low as it goes while being the same front and back
A lower ride height ensures the wheels move up and down less, increasing traction as well as improving a car's aerodynamics, making it able to achieve higher top speeds.
Suspension - Spring Rate: The highest both can get while being the same value
A stiffer suspension ensures that the tires are in contact with the track more. They don't bounce as high when they hit a bump in the road. The reason cars don't come with settings this high is because it doesn't make for a smooth, comfortable ride. I learned while tuning an Audi R8 that with the altered physics and grip when racing online compared to GT Life, cars take full advantage of very low, very stiff setups. It tends to maximize grip, keeping the tires from losing traction as much. See the explanation of the anti-roll bars to understand why stiff springs work.
Suspension - Damper (Extension): 10/10
Basically what the dampers do is control how much the springs can move. A stiffer damper will make the tire less likely to lose contact with the pavement due to the rapid movement of the springs. Most of the time the loss of traction due to stiff springs isn't an issue but on some of the rougher tracks like Deep Forest or Trial Mountain, it can cause your car to physically skip across the pavement like a stone over water. Even still this effect seems to be manageable and the effect of softening them seems to be worse than just letting the car bounce a bit.
Suspension - Damper (Compression): 8/8
The in-game encyclopedia says to set the extension stiffer than the compression and this seems to give better handling than just going 10/10 all around in most cars.
Suspension - Anti-Roll Bar: 7/7
Keeps the suspension rigid. If you've driven any of the cheapest cars with no upgrades, you'll notice that when you turn a corner the car visibly leans when cornering. This leaning causes the tires on the inside (left side in a left turn and vise versa) to lift up, losing grip and reducing traction. The closer you can keep all four tires to 100% grip, the better a car's handling will be.
Alignment - Camber Angle: 2.0/2.0
Tires with camber maintain more grip when cornering. It can be useful for controlling understeer and oversteer by adjusting which tires get more grip. Too much camber affects braking and sometimes cornering.
Alignment - Toe Angle: -0.20/0.20. If the car is 4WD, use -0.20/-0.20 instead
Negative on the front increases steering response. Positive on the front increases understeer. Negative on the back causes oversteer. Positive on the back causes understeer and increases stability in a straight line.
Brakes: 6/5
While brake balance can be used to create oversteer (good for drifting) making changes to them tends to make the car more unstable than changing suspension settings instead. When the car brakes, more weight shifts to the front tires, thus making the front tires more effective during braking. However, setting the rear brakes to be stronger than the front can make the rear tires more likely to lock up and lose traction during cornering which can be useful.
Now you're ready to join a lobby:
The way to be constantly competitive in online racing is to always have a viable car for any situation. Most rooms run some sort of power limit and some hosts will change to a different limit on a whim. When you know what that limit is, choose a car that is anywhere from 50-100HP over the limit. Up to 200HP can be shaved if a car is turbocharged. Go into the tuning page and start reverting parts to the stock versions. Start with the exhaust page first, then move to the intake page then the engine page last. If a car is turbocharged, reverting to the stock turbo can remove a lot of HP if needed. This ensures that you are able to run as close as possible to the horsepower limit. Mix and match pieces to get even closer to the limit. The reason I remove parts in that order is that you lose the least amount of torque from exhaust pieces.
Adjustments:
Now take some practice laps and get a feel for the car. Does the back end slide out during the corner? That's oversteer. Does the car tend to want to go in a straight line going into a corner? That's understeer. We'll change different settings depending how the car handles.
If the car oversteers, there are a few things we can adjust to make it more stable. The first thing to look at is the LSD in the drivetrain section. If the back end wants to slide out really bad max this out 60/60/60. If it's just a bit and you're having some difficulty exiting corners, just increase it a little bit to something like 30/50/20.
If that doesn't do enough, we want to look at the suspension settings. A stiffer front suspension and a softer rear suspension will encourage understeer. Raise the front end of the car up by 10mm (-30 up to -20), soften the rear springs by 2.0kgf/mm and change the dampers to 9/7 on the rear. Leave the front at 10/8. Change the toe on your front tires back to 0.00 or if necessary, increase the toe into the positive on the front to encourage understeer. Increasing the top speed of your transmission can also reduce the amount of wheel spin when accelerating out of a corner.
If the car understeers it's alot easier to work with. First swap your LSD for the stock one. I feel this thing creates understeer so it's not necessary if the car already understeers.
Then we'll pretty much do the opposite set of changes to the suspension than we did before. A softer front suspension and a stiffer rear encourages oversteer. So raise the ride height up 10mm in the rear (-30 to -20), remove 2.0kgf/mm from the front springs, lower the dampers to 9/7 in the front and leave them at 10/8 in the rear. Also set the camber on the rear of the car to 0.5 and set the rear toe to -0.20 instead of 0.20. Reducing the down force on the rear of the car in the body/chassis section can also further increase oversteer. Changing your brakes to 5/5 or even 5/6 can create some oversteer during braking but only as a last resort.
Most 4WD cars will tend to understeer when applying power exiting corners. The Torque Sensing Center Differential allows you to send more power the rear tires, creating oversteer instead. Sending more power to the rear wheels will allow you to step on the gas sooner when exiting corners. Most cars can get away with 25/75 comfortably. If a car is still slow coming out of the corners, this setting can go as high as 90% to the rear but work in 5% steps until the car feels good.
If you know a track is going to be very rough and bumpy like Nurburgring Nordeschleife, Trial Mountain or Deep Forest you'll need to raise your ride height and soften your spring rate and dampers slightly. While most tracks are smooth enough that your car will stay planted, the extremely rough road on these tracks can cause your tires to bounce when your suspension is this stiff. And when your tires lose contact with the road you lose traction. If you've ever done the final kart challenge on Autumn Ring Mini, this is the best analog to this effect.
I try not to use traction control unless a car absolutely needs it to maintain control because it robs you of speed when cornering. It will help you on starts but it will also slow your car down a bit during hard cornering. It keeps your wheels from freely spinning (burning out). You also shouldn't need any of the other assists and you should practice with them off because you will eventually be faster with them off. A slow start can be made up for but the ability to carry more speed into corners means that you're less likely to get bumped or punted off the track by all the bad drivers out there.
Start with the changes indicated and if they aren't enough, keep working in that general direction. The idea with tuning is to get an idea of how all the little changes affect the car. For the most part to change the car the way you want it, all of the sliders will go in the same directions to correct what's giving you problems.
Control Suggestions For Controllers:
Use your L2/R2 as brake and gas. You can get much finer control of the pedals than using square and X. Change your gear shifting to right stick up and right stick down. Some people prefer to use square and X for shifting instead. If you're comfortable using the right joystick for brake/gas then keep doing what you're doing but if you're still using square and X I strongly suggest you change.
Also, driving in manual mode instead of automatic is highly recommended. There are a couple things you can do with a standard that you can't with an automatic. If your car is too powerful or the track is wet, you can control excessive wheel spin by shifting up sooner. In an automatic you have to be gentle on the throttle to control spinny tires but in a standard you can shift up at 4000RPM instead of 8000RPM thus keeping the car out of the power band until you're back up to speed and can safely run to 8000RPM again. This is especially useful when exiting corners on certain cars. If you're having alot of trouble with spinning out when getting back on the gas, one solution can be to shift up a gear before you accelerate hard. I've also noticed automatics can sometimes change gears at bad times during cornering causing loss in traction in the middle of a turn.
Conclusion:
I hope you've found this article helpful and any constructive criticism is appreciated. Using this method I've been able to spend alot more time racing and alot less time tuning. Most of the cars in my favorites list have a basic, effective tuning setup that I tweak on a race-by-race level. I have dozens of cars I can run effectively at any horsepower limit. Rather than having one or two babies which will limit my options for what lobbies I can compete well in, I'm always ready to race.
This is a general guide to give you a basic understanding of the tuning page and online competition. I wouldn't call this a cookie cutter build (because this isn't World of Warcraft, for one) but rather a good starting point to learn from. If you're interested in mastering tuning in GT5, Scaff has written a 75 page guide on everything tuning.
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