What's your method for testing your cars?

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McZachenF1138

McZachenF1138

Out is the Daytona, in is the Stealth TT
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sxezach
Like, what track do you use?
Do you go for top speed runs?
Do you see how long it takes to brake? Or brake from certain speeds?
Do you measure 0-62/100 times?
Or do you simply see how fast it is around a certain track?

I wanna know!

Me personally, I go to The Top Gear Test Track in practice mode, get turned around as fast as I can, sprint to the other end of the airstrip, brake as late as possible, make a U-turn around the left-most cones at Hammerhead, sprint all the way back to the other end, and if I can get across the finish line in under a minute, I consider that a seriously fast car.
 
Usually around deep forest or trial mountain or grand valley or suzuka in an a spec race. Usually against some faster cars.
 
Every car I have has been out on Grand Valley Speedway (I can't get enough of that track), and then a run on SSR7.
 
laptimes at tsubuka and autumn ring, nordschliefe takes too long to see if what I did was better/worse. Who cares about top speed, laptimes all that matters. Well, and handling. If I can barely hold onto the thing and it's fast, I'll dial in a bit more understeer and call it a day.
 
I use Laguna and one of Trial/Grand and one of the courses I designed.
Take it out stock set a hot lap
add tranny suspension run and adjust, run hot lap.
tweak
add engine intake exhaust if needed hot lap
then to see if it's a good all around tune I head to Germany and the 'ring.
then send it to zero_speed at CKR to see if it works...

HTH
Indy
 
1) Nurburgring GP/F.
2) Sometimes I record the highest speed I reach on the track, but not the top speed.
3) Yep. I don't record how long it takes (commonly 62-0 mph), though.
4) I measure it by 0-62 mph.
5) Yes.
 
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1. Custom track, Eiger Nordwand, High Speed Ring or Nurburgring Nordschleife.
2. No.
3. No.
4. No.
5. Yes.
 
I usually test on the Top Gear Test Track then refine my cars on Monza or Cote D'Azur. If I'm using a very powerful car (900hp+), I will do top speed runs at La Sarthe.

I do roughly check the 0-62/100 times at the same time I do brake testing. This is a useful way of getting a feel for a strange car (such as in a shuffle room) so that you don't cause an accident at turn 1 in the race.
 
1.Grand Valley Speedway
2.I set the transmission so it JUST doesn't hit the limiter down the straight at la sarthe before heading to GVS
3.Nope.
4.Nope.
5.That's exactly what I do
 
I test every car at the Ring, sometimes I do the Top Gear Track, also I look for acceleration and cornering speed, not really top speed
 
1: I use Tsukuba (low speed), Grand Valley(high speed) and Nordschleife (endurance/balance)
Or if I;m gonna drive an endurance with friends, I practise the track we're gonna drive on (duh...)

2: Depends on what race I'm gonna drive. Personally I find balance under braking and cornering a LOT more important than top speed. Although if we gonna drive on LeMans NoChicane I just get the fastest thing there is...
But normally: drivability, balance under brake/accelerate, cornering speed, then top speed is the order I find most important in a car.

3: Yep.
'how long it needs to brake' says a lot about balance under braking. I normally use a very balanced car under braking, and I win 90% of my races because of that (if I win).
Better balance in braking means less tire wear, better turn in (and as a result better exit) and most important: more consistent laptimes. Better do 10 laps of 3:10:789 thans doe 9 laps of 3:09:000 then crash into a wall at 150mph and do a 4:00:000.

4: No never, couldn't care less.

5: Ultimately.. yes that is the goal. I check a few cars, if 2 or 3 cars are really close in laptimes, I pick the one that is easiest to drive. And voila.


Your way of testing is eehmm.. 'interesting'.
Basically you do a 180, sprint, 180 again and sprint again.
Imho thats not the best way to test if a car is fast around track X, but on the other hand maybe driving fast laptimes in online races is not your goal :)

So my question is: what exactly are you testing for?
Do you do lots of dragraces or something?
 
Usually online of Nordschleife Track Day lobbies. Get a fully modded car, take a lap, see time, tune, set lap, repeat, repeat, gets worse: retune, keep, 60-0 braking distance at straight and grip test at Karussell.
 
McZachenF138
Like, what track do you use?
Do you go for top speed runs?
Do you see how long it takes to brake? Or brake from certain speeds?
Do you measure 0-62/100 times?
Or do you simply see how fast it is around a certain track?

I wanna know!

Me personally, I go to The Top Gear Test Track in practice mode, get turned around as fast as I can, sprint to the other end of the airstrip, brake as late as possible, make a U-turn around the left-most cones at Hammerhead, sprint all the way back to the other end, and if I can get across the finish line in under a minute, I consider that a seriously fast car.
Click to expand...

1. Whatever track I'm about to race on, if I'm just trying a tune setup, I'll run on 1 of 3 tracks
High speed: le sarthe
Technical: Monaco
All round: Nurburgring nordschlief
2. Le sarthe (no chicanes)
3. I go for braking for corners, max speed around certain corners, such as the Porsche curves, arnage/indianapolis, indy's corners, and carousel.
4. I do 0-100-200-300-400*-max km/h(*if possible)
5. See #1
 
Lap time around Eiger, then Tsukuba until I get a good to my standard lap on both of them, then a one lap Nür Nordschleif, follow by top gear track (again until I got a perfect lap)and finish it all with a top speed run at SSR7.
I do this with my car stock (oil changed) then fully modified them, race with it some, then repeat the test session.

:)
 
I use lap times. 0 to X or braking or whatever are less important to me than the time it takes to complete a circuit on a track.
 
Compartively (one car to another) to see if they have the same or near same performance for racing I use HSR. Why? It's got everything you need for a comparative test: High speed straight, low speed S and high speed corner.

For Tuning the track I'm racing on. However, Fuji F is one of the best tracks around for tuning because of the many tight turns of varying degrees. Suzuka is another that'll tell you exactly what your car is doing or not doing.
 
McZachenF138
Like, what track do you use?
Do you go for top speed runs?
Do you see how long it takes to brake? Or brake from certain speeds?
Do you measure 0-62/100 times?
Or do you simply see how fast it is around a certain track?
Click to expand...

Top speed? pointless
Braking? pointless
0-60 etc? pointless

Speed around track? more like it. This is a good starting point, aslong as you use a variety of tracks that will 'test' the car out and you have similiar cars you can compare the 'test' car against. Then.....

The most important thing in testing a car is - your FRIENDS.

Why??

Simple.

The very best way to test oyur car is to run race distances and practice races against your friends (of similiar speed and skill) to see how your car performs during the race.

At the start, when tyres are cold, how long in takes for tyres to warm up, are they warming up at same rate?

The, are the tyres wearing out, if so how soon, are the fronts or the rears wearing out before one of the others?

Are any of the tyres going 'red' at any stage of the race?

How does the car feel when 'battling' someone and meaning you're not always taking the perfect racing line - is the car balanced enough to be able to make sake overtakes?

How is top speed affected by slipstreaming a friend - this can make a huge difference on some tracks.

All of this info is vital to getting your car sorted to be balanced over 'race' distance. If the car isn't balanced, you wil loose so much more time over race distance than a car that is 0.5 - 1 sec a lap slower, but has great tyre management and 'balance'.

The fastest single lap is irrelevant - most races aren't time attack, they're races. The car needs to perform from start to finish, the only way you can do that is by running practice races - you can't race alone, you need some mates to help.

That's why friends are so important, especially those of a similiar speed and skill who race clean and understand the same principles.

Don't use free run, the physics are different between free run and a race, a car can be perfect in free run in an online lobby but be awful in race.

There is simply no substitute for having decent mates who'll run practice races with you, nothing is better, this is the best testing you can give your car - PERIOD.
 
Personally, I don't bother specific testing at all really. I normally just try 2 or 3 cars for a particular race. I assume the PP rating will tell me if it's likely to be quicker. So long as I'm enjoying the race I don't mind if there's another car or setting that'll shave 1 second off my race time.

I am planning on doing time trials on the top gear test track. But I keep putting it off on the hope that a future patch will include standing starts.
 
Lap times around Suzuka and SS11. Both have enough slow and fast corners and a speedy straight. ^^
If the car can't do the hairpins, back to adjusting suspension settings until they do.
If the car can't corner at a proper speed in the long corners, back to adjusting suspension/downforce where applicable.
Check gear ratios too.

Match up laptimes of cars of the around same PP and/or sometimes just bhp.

For testing what cars are nice to control for drifting I use Autumn Ring full course.
 
1. Always the next track in the series im in. If not I use GVS.
2. Yes, only to get the gearing right.
3.No
4.No
5.Yes
 
I have a series of tracks I test on and keep excel docs with all the relevant info (and used to update the laptime board in my sig).

1st test is Autumn Ring - tight and technical low speed direction changes.

2nd test is Monza (No Chicane) - High speed wide open throttle testing.

3rd test is Le Sarthe 2009 (Chicanes and Time &Weather) - Throws up the odd rain race for wet weather testing and its one of my favourites.

4th test is Nordeschleife - I used to do time&weather here too, but I wanted to do consistent laps to see what they were like against others so just changed it to regular dry track.

Very rarely do I do a top speed test, though I do wish there was an easy way of doing 0-100km/h and 100-0km/h testing and the 400m and 1000m tests would make a comeback :(


I have also started testing on a track from the track creator, I break it down into time periods ie 60's '90s 2005 onwards ect, using Calan_SVC recommended tyre for that car (as PD got it wrong most of the time). The track is also a evolution over time with minor changes over the years.
If your interested in the track idea, there is a thread in the track creator forum called Race Track Evolution.
 

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