nomis3613
Premium
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------------------
THE WAFFLE
------------------
Aims
This guide is aimed at people who are familiar with Gran Turismo 3 or tuning settings in other racing games and want to get maximum performance from their cars on the road tracks. Sorry to sound elitist, but it's not a beginners guide, but people new to GT3 tuning may need to start with more simple guides before they can understand some of the stuff in this one.
Method
While there are some excellent GT3 tuning guides on the net, this one was made by testing each setting in a way that isolated its effects (ie specific straight-line testing of the effects of camber on power-down (straight line acceleration). The method used was to carefully read the scrolling text in the settings menus, then do specific testing to check their claims and fill in the gaps. Many other guides describe real-world tuning effects, which may or may not be relevant to GT3. I started with the scrolling text because they are (hopefully!) written by someone who knows how GT3 physics works.
The specific testing was done in a way so that improvement could be measured with numbers (ie max speed at high speed ring for aero testing, 0-400m for camber vs straight line acceleration testing) and not lap times usually, so that driver inconsistency could be removed. Tests were repeated until a trend emerged (lordy, the braking tests were difficult!!! have you ever tried to hold 250km/h in a Speed 12, then brake at EXACTLY the 600m line of the 0-1000m test?? This took lots and lots of repeat runs to figure out a trend for each setting.
Like most guides, I have broken it up by going through each setting. However, I have also bolded the main effect of each setting in the text, so if you have a particular problem, you can skim through the text looking at the words in bold (kinda like cross-referencing). The first paragraph in each section is a summary of how to tune that setting, then the next paragraphs go a bit deeper into discussion.
COMMENT ON TUNING OVERALL
I strongly believe that in GT3, the amount of mechanical grip and braking power is set for a car, and there is nothing you can do to change it. So why bother tuning? Well, the balance of understeer/oversteer can certainly be changed through tuning, as can trade-offs like steering response vs loss of grip later in turns (front toe-out). But as for the steady-state overall cornering grip, if the car is balanced, there are no other tuning settings (aside from downforce) that will increase this grip. I started this guide in the search for settings that would maximise grip (eg "the car is balanced and drives nicely but if I softened the springs and stiffened the stabilisers, would this give more grip?", "does lower ride height give more grip?"). But these "magic tuning combinations" do not exist, which makes tuning simpler. Once you are happy with how a car reacts on a certain track, then you have the best settings for that track. That is it. Easy!
A small general point is that GT3 works on ratios, hence if you want to increase something both front and rear but keep the balance the same, then increase each of the values by say 20% (not by 5 clicks each).
Tyre Wear
This has not been tested much. Each tyre wear test would take at least 5 laps, so it's very time consuming. Also, driving style will effect tyre wear so the results are often not consistent. However, I personally believe that most settings (except for TCS) do not effect tyre wear rates. The percieved difference in tyre wear due after changing settings is because your are going slower or faster through the turns, hence using less or more tyres (but of course your lap time has decreased or increased). Tyre wear is greatly effected by driving style, so think smooth smooth smooth!
Please Contribute
I actually encourage you to criticise my guide. Where you have a better understanding of something, please send me details of the car, settings and track, and I will test it then revise the guide. Please try to come up with as specific a situation as specific as possible, because saying “more rebound at the front in car X at track Y increases understeer”. Different drivers have different styles leading to different effects of tuning, so we need to find a way to test the effect in a controlled, measureable environment. However, there are sooo many possibilities for tuning in GT3, so I welcome your ideas, which will help us understand tuning better and get the most out of our cars!!
TBC
Although most of the principles apply to all vehicles, this guide has been based on RWD cars. Checking the theories on other drivetrains and tyres is on the To Do list.
-----------------------
THE GUIDE
-----------------------
Spring rate
In theory, softer springs would give more grip (coz of better weight transfer), with the trade-off being slower reactions and more body roll. But I couldn't find any difference in in steady state grip (so the scrolling text about "stiffened springs...cornering performance improved” is perhaps just referring to more responsive handling). So adjust the overall stiffness based on how smooth or sharp you like the handling to feel overall.
Stiffer front or softer rear can be used to reduce oversteer (and the opposite for understeer) but it is better to try to fix the balance using camber and ride height before messing with spring rates.
With regard to setting the front/rear rates, there are 2 theories in GT3 land: set according to the car's weight distribution, or increase spring rate whenever ride height is lowered (which could be at the front or rear only). Either method seems to work, and will produce similar results (because of the simplifications in the GT3 physics).
Ride Height
Lower ride height will cause less yaw and pitch. For less understeer, make the front ride height higher than the rear (10mm higher max), and use the opposite settings to reduce oversteer.
Overall grip is unaffected by ride height settings , but if the car makes you feel seasick or feels too rigid, then decrease or increase the ride height respectively.
Altering the cars weight balance by using different front/rear ride heights is a good way to change the overall balance of the car slightly. This is recommended as the second thing to adjust (after camber) to cure oversteer or understeer.
While moving the weight forward by raising the rear will reduce steady-state oversteer, it has been found (thanks, Parnelli!) that this will actually increase the chance of spinning when you start to turn with hard braking (entry to a hairpin). Brake balance and dampers can be used to reduce this effect.
One last thing, when experimenting with low ride, stiff springs but soft dampers; the car would drift though corners with shuddering noises (ie screee....eee....eee....eee...eech instead of a smooth, constant slide). This could be GT3s way of saying that the wheel is rubbing the guard or the suspension is fully compressed (both bad), but it could also just be a result of the dampers being too soft for the springs and ride height.
Damper Bound / Rebound
Start with bounds at 4, rebounds at 8. Reduce front bound and rear rebound in equal amounts if the car wants to spin when braking. Do the opposite if it won't turn when braking. Reduce front rebound and rear rebound in equal amounts to reduce power oversteer. Do the opposite to reduce exit understeer. Then adjust all of the dampers equally to tune how the car responds to bumps/kerbs. If it feels too "floaty" stiffen everything equally. If the car bounces around, soften everything equally.
Dampers are quite complex! They effect weight transfer during braking + accel, response to bumps, and weight transfer in cornering. You may find that the overall understeer/oversteer has changed once you change damper settings. Use the camber or stabilisers to fix the balance.
Camber Angle
Set front and rear to 1.5 as a starting point. Increase (but not past 4.5) the front to reduce understeer, ditto for the rear re oversteer.
Unlike real life, GT3 just compares the front and rear camber angles to determine how much understeer/oversteer you have. There is no optimal camber angle for maximum grip. Within the above range, camber angle will not reduce braking, in fact below 1 degree, straight line acceleration on racing tyres will decrease!
Camber angle is the best way to fix oversteer and understeer because there are no side effects.
There is a theory that high rear camber causes snap oversteer, but I did not find this effect within sensible camber angles.
Different tyres respond differently to camber. For example, on Sport Tyres reducing front camber from 1.5 deg to 1.0 will actually reduce understeer. Sport Tyres seem to prefer lower camber angles than Super Hard racing tyres (where the peak seems to be up near 3 deg)
If GT3 is like real life, camber angle should effect tyre wear. But like I said at the start, I doubt that effects of suspension settings on tyre wear are modelled in GT3.
Toe Angle
More negative front toe means steering is less responsive, but less understeer at corner exit (max -1.5 deg). More negative rear toe (max 1.0 deg) means less understeer at corner entry.
In theory, positive rear toe could be used to reduce power oversteer for RWD cars, but I'd be looking into the general balance of the car before fiddling with this.
The effect of toe on straight line acceleration/braking is negligable, just tune it to get the handling you want and don't worry about any decrease in straight line power/braking.
Use rear toe carefully, too much will suddenly make the car very oversteery but negative rear toe is especially useful in FWD cars.
Stabiliser
Start with them at 2 or 3 and increase front and rear together only if there is too much body roll in corners (only after setting the spring rates and ride heights properly first). Use as little stabiliser strength as possible.
If reasonable camber and ride height tuning is not enough to fix the understeer or oversteer, then adjust the stabilisers in the same way you would the springs.
Stronger stabilisers make the car react worse to bumps, so minimise their strength where possible to avoid being thrown off the course when you hit a kerb!
Brake Balance
Increase front brake (or decrease rear) if the car wants to spin-out when braking. Decrease front (or increase rear) if the car will not turn while braking. While brake balance is just relative, keep both front and rear between 4 and 20.
There were a few surprise results when I tested brake balance settings:
- moving the brake balance towards the front does not reduce stopping distances! In fact, stopping distance seems to be unaffected by any suspension or brake settings.
- once past a certain strength, increasing the strength further will not cause any change to the handling at all.
- when front or rear is below 4, the car will skid when braking below 30km/h (whether this has any effect on races – except maybe pitstops – is doubtful).
Engine braking (downshift to the redline in each gear) decreases stopping distances by a couple of car lengths, so do it!
There is a theory that using Sports brakes does not reduce stopping distances on Hard Tyres. This is not the case for GT3, so Sports brakes are well worth getting!
LSD Initial
Set to midway. Increase if inside wheel spins when accelerating, decrease if steering becomes unresponsive. Increase if you have an MR car which keeps spinning out (add an equal amount of LSD Deceleration, too).
This has been debated on the internet, but I believe that when accelerating, the LSD effect is Initial + Acceleration. Therefore you set the accleration to max and the Initial to the minimum that will prevent wheelspin, so that the car maintains good steering response.
Another theory I tested is that setting Initial to the maximum or minimum means that LSD Accel and Decel have no effect, I do not think this is true.
LSD Acceleration
Set to maximum in a RWD car. Always (unless you are lacking power and want to power oversteer). In FWD, increase to remove wheelspin, but there will reduce if exit understeer increases.
Basically, I recommend setting up a RWD car with a locked diff to maximise power down (acceleration) when turning. LSD acceleration could be decreased to improve the steering response, but there are better ways to achieve the same thing.
LSD Deceleration
Set to minimum. Always. Well, except in MR cars that keep spinning out, where you should increase it until the car is stable enough.
Theoretically, a higher LSD Deceleration could be used to increase stability under braking, but why?? You'd be normally better off fixing stability with brake balance, toe angle or aerodynamics.
Gear Ratio
NEVER USE AUTO-SETTING. Here's how to do it properly:
1)Drive manual and use the analogue sticks for accleration/braking (if you don't already, go away and learn how to drive GT3 properly before doing anything else in your life!!)
2)Set TCS to 1
3)Set 1st and 2nd all the way left, 3rd 30% to the right (of the moveable range, not the overall position of the yellow bar on the line), 4th 60%, 5th and 6th 100% right.
4)Tune 6th for top gear: go to Grand Valley and adjust the Final setting until your top speed on the straight is at redline in top gear.
5)Find your “starting gear” (not 1st gear usually!!): go to machine test, 400m test. Hold the revs at redline in 1st gear and full throttle as soon as you start. If TCS is flashing the constantly until you change gear, start the test again in a higher gear. If TCS does not come on, start the test again in a lower gear. The correct starting gear is when TCS flashes at the start, but stops flashing about 1000 revs before the gear change. You may need to adjust the gear ratio of the “starting gear” to achieve this
6)Once you have found the “starting gear”, adjust all gears below it to fully left and evenly space the gears after it (ie 25%, 50%, 75%, 100%). This will put the gears as close together as possible and keep the engine in its power band.
7)If you are mostly using 2 or 3 gears on a track (ie 2nd, 3rd, 4th are mostly used, and 5th and 6th are only used on the main straight), it might help to put these gears close together (ie 3rd 30%, 4th 60%) and set 5th and 6th fully to the right. This will sacrifice some acceleration in 5th and 6th but keep your engine closer to peak power in 2nd, 3rd and 4th (ie the majority of the time)
8)The gear below your “starting gear” can be used for very low speed turns when power oversteer is required (ie hairpins)
9)The above instructions are hard to explain, but really easy in practice, so don't be scared!!
Downforce
Set both front and rear to maximum where possible. Decrease front downforce if car oversteers at high speed, decrease rear downforce if car understeers at high speed.
The difference between mechanical and aerodynamic grip needs to be understood. All of the suspension, brake and differential settings affect low and medium speed grip. For medium and high speed corners, aerodynamic grip becomes a bigger factor. So if a car handles nicely at low speed but understeers at through fast corners, you need to be looking at the downforce. High speed handling is also effected by other settings than downforce, but the best way is to tune the other settings for low and medium speed, then tweak high speed handling using aerodynamics.
The tradeoff between reduced speed and improved handling (ie the lift to drag ratio) heavily favours handling, so use as much overall downforce as possible when fixing oversteer or understeer at high speeds.
Changing ride height and spring rates has not caused any noticeable effects on aerodynamics and since it's not mentioned in the scrolling text, it's safe to assume GT3 doesn't include ground effects, aero compressing springs, etc; so the downforce can be adjusted independantly to everything else.
Active Stability Manager
0, at the very least while you're tuning your car.
ASM masks the handling of the car and generally introduces understeer. Try to drive without it. If you adjust settings with ASM on, you won't get the proper understanding of the effect of the changes, so turn it off when tuning.
TCS Controller
Can be used to control wheelspin in high power cars. Set to 0 and increase until you are happy with with amount of wheelspin during acceleration. Use as little TCS as possible, because a higher TCS setting will reduce acceleration (since the TCS more often detects slip and reduces engine power)
Wheelspin can sometimes be handy (especially in RWD), so having a low setting can help. Also, a higher TCS setting will slow your car down more when you run off the road, drive along a bumpy kerb, etc.
THE WAFFLE
------------------
Aims
This guide is aimed at people who are familiar with Gran Turismo 3 or tuning settings in other racing games and want to get maximum performance from their cars on the road tracks. Sorry to sound elitist, but it's not a beginners guide, but people new to GT3 tuning may need to start with more simple guides before they can understand some of the stuff in this one.
Method
While there are some excellent GT3 tuning guides on the net, this one was made by testing each setting in a way that isolated its effects (ie specific straight-line testing of the effects of camber on power-down (straight line acceleration). The method used was to carefully read the scrolling text in the settings menus, then do specific testing to check their claims and fill in the gaps. Many other guides describe real-world tuning effects, which may or may not be relevant to GT3. I started with the scrolling text because they are (hopefully!) written by someone who knows how GT3 physics works.
The specific testing was done in a way so that improvement could be measured with numbers (ie max speed at high speed ring for aero testing, 0-400m for camber vs straight line acceleration testing) and not lap times usually, so that driver inconsistency could be removed. Tests were repeated until a trend emerged (lordy, the braking tests were difficult!!! have you ever tried to hold 250km/h in a Speed 12, then brake at EXACTLY the 600m line of the 0-1000m test?? This took lots and lots of repeat runs to figure out a trend for each setting.
Like most guides, I have broken it up by going through each setting. However, I have also bolded the main effect of each setting in the text, so if you have a particular problem, you can skim through the text looking at the words in bold (kinda like cross-referencing). The first paragraph in each section is a summary of how to tune that setting, then the next paragraphs go a bit deeper into discussion.
COMMENT ON TUNING OVERALL
I strongly believe that in GT3, the amount of mechanical grip and braking power is set for a car, and there is nothing you can do to change it. So why bother tuning? Well, the balance of understeer/oversteer can certainly be changed through tuning, as can trade-offs like steering response vs loss of grip later in turns (front toe-out). But as for the steady-state overall cornering grip, if the car is balanced, there are no other tuning settings (aside from downforce) that will increase this grip. I started this guide in the search for settings that would maximise grip (eg "the car is balanced and drives nicely but if I softened the springs and stiffened the stabilisers, would this give more grip?", "does lower ride height give more grip?"). But these "magic tuning combinations" do not exist, which makes tuning simpler. Once you are happy with how a car reacts on a certain track, then you have the best settings for that track. That is it. Easy!
A small general point is that GT3 works on ratios, hence if you want to increase something both front and rear but keep the balance the same, then increase each of the values by say 20% (not by 5 clicks each).
Tyre Wear
This has not been tested much. Each tyre wear test would take at least 5 laps, so it's very time consuming. Also, driving style will effect tyre wear so the results are often not consistent. However, I personally believe that most settings (except for TCS) do not effect tyre wear rates. The percieved difference in tyre wear due after changing settings is because your are going slower or faster through the turns, hence using less or more tyres (but of course your lap time has decreased or increased). Tyre wear is greatly effected by driving style, so think smooth smooth smooth!
Please Contribute
I actually encourage you to criticise my guide. Where you have a better understanding of something, please send me details of the car, settings and track, and I will test it then revise the guide. Please try to come up with as specific a situation as specific as possible, because saying “more rebound at the front in car X at track Y increases understeer”. Different drivers have different styles leading to different effects of tuning, so we need to find a way to test the effect in a controlled, measureable environment. However, there are sooo many possibilities for tuning in GT3, so I welcome your ideas, which will help us understand tuning better and get the most out of our cars!!
TBC
Although most of the principles apply to all vehicles, this guide has been based on RWD cars. Checking the theories on other drivetrains and tyres is on the To Do list.
-----------------------
THE GUIDE
-----------------------
Spring rate
In theory, softer springs would give more grip (coz of better weight transfer), with the trade-off being slower reactions and more body roll. But I couldn't find any difference in in steady state grip (so the scrolling text about "stiffened springs...cornering performance improved” is perhaps just referring to more responsive handling). So adjust the overall stiffness based on how smooth or sharp you like the handling to feel overall.
Stiffer front or softer rear can be used to reduce oversteer (and the opposite for understeer) but it is better to try to fix the balance using camber and ride height before messing with spring rates.
With regard to setting the front/rear rates, there are 2 theories in GT3 land: set according to the car's weight distribution, or increase spring rate whenever ride height is lowered (which could be at the front or rear only). Either method seems to work, and will produce similar results (because of the simplifications in the GT3 physics).
Ride Height
Lower ride height will cause less yaw and pitch. For less understeer, make the front ride height higher than the rear (10mm higher max), and use the opposite settings to reduce oversteer.
Overall grip is unaffected by ride height settings , but if the car makes you feel seasick or feels too rigid, then decrease or increase the ride height respectively.
Altering the cars weight balance by using different front/rear ride heights is a good way to change the overall balance of the car slightly. This is recommended as the second thing to adjust (after camber) to cure oversteer or understeer.
While moving the weight forward by raising the rear will reduce steady-state oversteer, it has been found (thanks, Parnelli!) that this will actually increase the chance of spinning when you start to turn with hard braking (entry to a hairpin). Brake balance and dampers can be used to reduce this effect.
One last thing, when experimenting with low ride, stiff springs but soft dampers; the car would drift though corners with shuddering noises (ie screee....eee....eee....eee...eech instead of a smooth, constant slide). This could be GT3s way of saying that the wheel is rubbing the guard or the suspension is fully compressed (both bad), but it could also just be a result of the dampers being too soft for the springs and ride height.
Damper Bound / Rebound
Start with bounds at 4, rebounds at 8. Reduce front bound and rear rebound in equal amounts if the car wants to spin when braking. Do the opposite if it won't turn when braking. Reduce front rebound and rear rebound in equal amounts to reduce power oversteer. Do the opposite to reduce exit understeer. Then adjust all of the dampers equally to tune how the car responds to bumps/kerbs. If it feels too "floaty" stiffen everything equally. If the car bounces around, soften everything equally.
Dampers are quite complex! They effect weight transfer during braking + accel, response to bumps, and weight transfer in cornering. You may find that the overall understeer/oversteer has changed once you change damper settings. Use the camber or stabilisers to fix the balance.
Camber Angle
Set front and rear to 1.5 as a starting point. Increase (but not past 4.5) the front to reduce understeer, ditto for the rear re oversteer.
Unlike real life, GT3 just compares the front and rear camber angles to determine how much understeer/oversteer you have. There is no optimal camber angle for maximum grip. Within the above range, camber angle will not reduce braking, in fact below 1 degree, straight line acceleration on racing tyres will decrease!
Camber angle is the best way to fix oversteer and understeer because there are no side effects.
There is a theory that high rear camber causes snap oversteer, but I did not find this effect within sensible camber angles.
Different tyres respond differently to camber. For example, on Sport Tyres reducing front camber from 1.5 deg to 1.0 will actually reduce understeer. Sport Tyres seem to prefer lower camber angles than Super Hard racing tyres (where the peak seems to be up near 3 deg)
If GT3 is like real life, camber angle should effect tyre wear. But like I said at the start, I doubt that effects of suspension settings on tyre wear are modelled in GT3.
Toe Angle
More negative front toe means steering is less responsive, but less understeer at corner exit (max -1.5 deg). More negative rear toe (max 1.0 deg) means less understeer at corner entry.
In theory, positive rear toe could be used to reduce power oversteer for RWD cars, but I'd be looking into the general balance of the car before fiddling with this.
The effect of toe on straight line acceleration/braking is negligable, just tune it to get the handling you want and don't worry about any decrease in straight line power/braking.
Use rear toe carefully, too much will suddenly make the car very oversteery but negative rear toe is especially useful in FWD cars.
Stabiliser
Start with them at 2 or 3 and increase front and rear together only if there is too much body roll in corners (only after setting the spring rates and ride heights properly first). Use as little stabiliser strength as possible.
If reasonable camber and ride height tuning is not enough to fix the understeer or oversteer, then adjust the stabilisers in the same way you would the springs.
Stronger stabilisers make the car react worse to bumps, so minimise their strength where possible to avoid being thrown off the course when you hit a kerb!
Brake Balance
Increase front brake (or decrease rear) if the car wants to spin-out when braking. Decrease front (or increase rear) if the car will not turn while braking. While brake balance is just relative, keep both front and rear between 4 and 20.
There were a few surprise results when I tested brake balance settings:
- moving the brake balance towards the front does not reduce stopping distances! In fact, stopping distance seems to be unaffected by any suspension or brake settings.
- once past a certain strength, increasing the strength further will not cause any change to the handling at all.
- when front or rear is below 4, the car will skid when braking below 30km/h (whether this has any effect on races – except maybe pitstops – is doubtful).
Engine braking (downshift to the redline in each gear) decreases stopping distances by a couple of car lengths, so do it!
There is a theory that using Sports brakes does not reduce stopping distances on Hard Tyres. This is not the case for GT3, so Sports brakes are well worth getting!
LSD Initial
Set to midway. Increase if inside wheel spins when accelerating, decrease if steering becomes unresponsive. Increase if you have an MR car which keeps spinning out (add an equal amount of LSD Deceleration, too).
This has been debated on the internet, but I believe that when accelerating, the LSD effect is Initial + Acceleration. Therefore you set the accleration to max and the Initial to the minimum that will prevent wheelspin, so that the car maintains good steering response.
Another theory I tested is that setting Initial to the maximum or minimum means that LSD Accel and Decel have no effect, I do not think this is true.
LSD Acceleration
Set to maximum in a RWD car. Always (unless you are lacking power and want to power oversteer). In FWD, increase to remove wheelspin, but there will reduce if exit understeer increases.
Basically, I recommend setting up a RWD car with a locked diff to maximise power down (acceleration) when turning. LSD acceleration could be decreased to improve the steering response, but there are better ways to achieve the same thing.
LSD Deceleration
Set to minimum. Always. Well, except in MR cars that keep spinning out, where you should increase it until the car is stable enough.
Theoretically, a higher LSD Deceleration could be used to increase stability under braking, but why?? You'd be normally better off fixing stability with brake balance, toe angle or aerodynamics.
Gear Ratio
NEVER USE AUTO-SETTING. Here's how to do it properly:
1)Drive manual and use the analogue sticks for accleration/braking (if you don't already, go away and learn how to drive GT3 properly before doing anything else in your life!!)
2)Set TCS to 1
3)Set 1st and 2nd all the way left, 3rd 30% to the right (of the moveable range, not the overall position of the yellow bar on the line), 4th 60%, 5th and 6th 100% right.
4)Tune 6th for top gear: go to Grand Valley and adjust the Final setting until your top speed on the straight is at redline in top gear.
5)Find your “starting gear” (not 1st gear usually!!): go to machine test, 400m test. Hold the revs at redline in 1st gear and full throttle as soon as you start. If TCS is flashing the constantly until you change gear, start the test again in a higher gear. If TCS does not come on, start the test again in a lower gear. The correct starting gear is when TCS flashes at the start, but stops flashing about 1000 revs before the gear change. You may need to adjust the gear ratio of the “starting gear” to achieve this
6)Once you have found the “starting gear”, adjust all gears below it to fully left and evenly space the gears after it (ie 25%, 50%, 75%, 100%). This will put the gears as close together as possible and keep the engine in its power band.
7)If you are mostly using 2 or 3 gears on a track (ie 2nd, 3rd, 4th are mostly used, and 5th and 6th are only used on the main straight), it might help to put these gears close together (ie 3rd 30%, 4th 60%) and set 5th and 6th fully to the right. This will sacrifice some acceleration in 5th and 6th but keep your engine closer to peak power in 2nd, 3rd and 4th (ie the majority of the time)
8)The gear below your “starting gear” can be used for very low speed turns when power oversteer is required (ie hairpins)
9)The above instructions are hard to explain, but really easy in practice, so don't be scared!!
Downforce
Set both front and rear to maximum where possible. Decrease front downforce if car oversteers at high speed, decrease rear downforce if car understeers at high speed.
The difference between mechanical and aerodynamic grip needs to be understood. All of the suspension, brake and differential settings affect low and medium speed grip. For medium and high speed corners, aerodynamic grip becomes a bigger factor. So if a car handles nicely at low speed but understeers at through fast corners, you need to be looking at the downforce. High speed handling is also effected by other settings than downforce, but the best way is to tune the other settings for low and medium speed, then tweak high speed handling using aerodynamics.
The tradeoff between reduced speed and improved handling (ie the lift to drag ratio) heavily favours handling, so use as much overall downforce as possible when fixing oversteer or understeer at high speeds.
Changing ride height and spring rates has not caused any noticeable effects on aerodynamics and since it's not mentioned in the scrolling text, it's safe to assume GT3 doesn't include ground effects, aero compressing springs, etc; so the downforce can be adjusted independantly to everything else.
Active Stability Manager
0, at the very least while you're tuning your car.
ASM masks the handling of the car and generally introduces understeer. Try to drive without it. If you adjust settings with ASM on, you won't get the proper understanding of the effect of the changes, so turn it off when tuning.
TCS Controller
Can be used to control wheelspin in high power cars. Set to 0 and increase until you are happy with with amount of wheelspin during acceleration. Use as little TCS as possible, because a higher TCS setting will reduce acceleration (since the TCS more often detects slip and reduces engine power)
Wheelspin can sometimes be handy (especially in RWD), so having a low setting can help. Also, a higher TCS setting will slow your car down more when you run off the road, drive along a bumpy kerb, etc.
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