WRS Week 11 Results!

[Tyre King]

@azr|el.RB26

That seems to follow the premis that if you have softer springs etc at the front, you will have better grip (within reason/limits), therefor the front of the car will turn better, and the inertia of the car will cause the rear to swing out (oversteer) when braking/coasting!

Basic physics state that if you stiffen the suspension up too much in relation to the weight of the car, the cornering forces applied will overcome the grip of the tyres- hense understeer, the same applies to softening things up too much too, but for other reasons( too much weight transfer due to too much body roll, etc,etc)

So it's a balancing act between the weight of the car, the grip supplied by the tyres and the suspension settings.
ie a lighter car requires softer suspension settings (especially springs) because there is less weight for them to overcome to keep the car off the ground, concurrently softer dampers are required because the springs are softer (therefor the damper's have less spring-bounce to overcome)
A heavier car requires harder springs because there is more body-weight to keep off the gound, and stronger dampers because the springs are stiffer!

Finding the balance point between weight,springs and dampers is further complicated by camber/castor angles, ride heights, and toe angles. But that is why most suspension tuning guys in ANY motorsport are paid fortunes for their services!

Now the exceptions to the general rules are guys like Hot and Holl Et Al, they seem to be able to defy what 'we' would call normal logic and reason, and can make the car's in this game do things/behave completely outside of what 'we' call normal! And hat's off to them, they have skills and ability that we mere mortal's can only wonder at.

In conclusion, the suspension settings/effects in the game are more or less correct to real life, however some of the driver's here are able to drive 'outside-of-the-box'

And I for one, am EXTREMELY jealous!

Neil

 

[Kent]

Regarding Tuning:

I saw this is a big subject for this thread as it should be. 👍

First off,
Springs...
My experience has brought me to feel that initial turn-in tends to be stronger when the front springs are low.
However, as the throttle is applied that oversteer seems to be replaced with understeer.
Just my take on it... Keep in mind, I in no way consider myself anything of a real world car tuning expert.

Next...
Camber!
My set up seems odd to some.

I also noticed that Kent ran moderate front camber and more rear. You would EXPECT understeer with this setup since 1.5 negative on the rear is not so extreme as to reduce turning grip. Also, with such moderate camber and soft springs, it would seem that you'd still roll over the tire, however the excellent Honda suspension geometry may have some effect... ;^)

Take a look at it from my view.

1) In stock position cars come with 0/0 camber.
Only after racing parts are installed do we see camber increases, and for each car the camber is uniformly increased to 1.0/.5 (semi race) and 2/1 (full custom).

2) Not every course is going to induce the stress necessary to move the tire into the 100% flat position.
(I would think long distance banking turns create the largest movement in camber)

3) Lower camber means more grip in the natural wheel position which translates to better braking and more turn-in under low lateral "G" loads.

With those 3 ideas put down, I say this:

Cote does not have many long banking turns.
However, Cote does have several quick input, low speed, sharp turns.

The 1.3 up front made my car turn-in amazingly.
The 1.5 in the rear made it so my amazing turn-in did not result in sliding or major drifting.

With those settings I was able to make the hardest parts of this track my fastest sections and furthermore, I was able to keep up with racers that clearly beat me last week. 👍

Just food for thought there.
Remember, I said I wasn't an experienced car tuner with a degree in physics.

 

[azr|el.RB26]

@azr|el.RB26

That seems to follow the premis that if you have softer springs etc at the front, you will have better grip (within reason/limits), therefor the front of the car will turn better, and the inertia of the car will cause the rear to swing out (oversteer) when braking/coasting!

Basic physics state that if you stiffen the suspension up too much in relation to the weight of the car, the cornering forces applied will overcome the grip of the tyres- hense understeer, the same applies to softening things up too much too, but for other reasons( too much weight transfer due to too much body roll, etc,etc)

So it's a balancing act between the weight of the car, the grip supplied by the tyres and the suspension settings.
ie a lighter car requires softer suspension settings (especially springs) because there is less weight for them to overcome to keep the car off the ground, concurrently softer dampers are required because the springs are softer (therefor the damper's have less spring-bounce to overcome)
A heavier car requires harder springs because there is more body-weight to keep off the gound, and stronger dampers because the springs are stiffer!

In conclusion, the suspension settings/effects in the game are more or less correct to real life, however some of the driver's here are able to drive 'outside-of-the-box'

And I for one, am EXTREMELY jealous!

Neil

I concur. GT4 has so far shown extreme sensitivity to small changes in suspension setups, and within the effective range of a suspension for a given car, it behaves fairly close to real life. I had a blast tuning this week and I hope that we use the same car again in Part II.

 

[Tyre King]

Remember, I said I wasn't an experienced car tuner with a degree in physics.

Neither am i experienced in suspension tuning in r/l, i do however have a degree in physics, and i am glad you have found your sense of humour again mate!

Neil

 

[holl01]

yo
dissapointing to fall short by .007, but i'm over it
congratulations hotboi
we had a good battle once again
i think, as u said b4, i would have probably won easily if i didnt give out my settings, but i like a challenge
bye

 

[Bauknin]

Darn just couldn't get a good time that was clean. 🤬 I hoped to do better for my first week, oh well

My time was pitiful. That could be because I was driving with a broken foot and using the VW Lupo.

 

[Kent]

Neither am i experienced in suspension tuning in r/l, i do however have a degree in physics, and i am glad you have found your sense of humour again mate!

Neil

What can I say?

Nice to see you have an interesting degree. 👍

Btw, Holl01.
You know... Some times the competition part of this series is what teaches more than anything else.

Posting a setup is generous.
However, I wonder how many people using your set up saw the reasons behind it?
How many people learned from your set up instead of just mimicing it?

Lose a race to someone, then have them teach you about why that set up was good...
You'll never forget a lesson like that.


Then again, you guys are the ones being all of us.

To each his own.

 

[MinorShunt]

Congrats to all the competitors and for the well deserved promotions. 👍
It will be great to race with MR8 and Puck again! I expect a couple more familiar faces in the next couple weeks?

Here's my sorry replay with the semi-respectable T2, and a really sucky T3 as I suspected.

Words and skills fail me when looking at the times of the top 4 or 5 drivers Again.....and no Kent beating time for me this week either! Nice finish sir. Sincerely hope you stick with our little gang. I always read your posts with great interest.

So what are we doin' now?

Oh yeah. TEAMS!!

 

[Kolyana]

CFM, I need to ask a question regarding "DLRgain" before I can do the unofficial D3 leaderboard.

He was in D3 last week (wk 10) right? I think he came third, or something. Anyway, I'm assuming that's when you demoted him down to D3 upon his request. So he raced there and got third, then raced again and got first ... but you've promoted him to D2 before - it seems - his win could count ... like you promoted him half way through last week or something.

This confuses me, because normally when someone is promoted, they get the boost after the win/podium is scored and then they start racing in the higher division the following week. By what you have above, DLR was in D3 this last week, but you've moved him and his time to D2 effective immediately? Like he never won D3?

Is that right?

 

[mkay]

Oh damn! 1st place. Too bad.... I don't have the thing to import the lap on the PC.

What am I gonna do?

 

[tuff240]

we had a good battle once again
i think, as u said b4, i would have probably won easily if i didnt give out my settings, but i like a challenge

Reminds me of when I first started racing electric RC touring cars. If my friend set-up my car, I could easlily beet him in a race. If I set-up my car, it was a duel to the finish line everytime.

holl01 went to full stiffness on the springs (almost) after I mentioned it seemed to stick better the stiffer it got. He also slammed it like I had it. Maybe it was all just coincidence and I had nothing to do with it, but it makes me feel better to have possibly influenced one of the top drivers here.
Even if it wasn't with my driving.

Congratulations to all the podium spots in each division. Well done all of you!

 

[SHigSpeed]

Regarding Tuning:

I saw this is a big subject for this thread as it should be. 👍

First off,
Springs...
My experience has brought me to feel that initial turn-in tends to be stronger when the front springs are low.
However, as the throttle is applied that oversteer seems to be replaced with understeer.
Just my take on it... Keep in mind, I in no way consider myself anything of a real world car tuning expert.

Well, in RL, softening front springs will actually reduce initial turn-in, however it will also increase front roll compliance so there will be the need for increased static camber as you lose camber as the car rolls. With that said, the rears will have to do more work since the end with the stiffer springs is stressed more and that will generate more slip angle out back which SHOULD result in more oversteer.

On a real car, increasing the front spring rate (or front swaybar or increasing front rebound damping) will initially sharpen turn-in, but at a cost of reduced ultimate grip.

What I'm trying to find out (and what I finally seemed to find in my last laps at Cote) is how to dial in lift throttle oversteer like in a real car. On a well balanced car, you drive through a corner on the gas. What that does is transfer weight to the rear to enhance lateral traction and drive traction (on a RWD car like the S2k). At the limit, if you release the gas, what will happen is weight is transferred to the front tires, increasing the front end's ability to steer while reducing the lateral traction in the rear and inducing a nice oversteer/drift. For me to achieve this sort of behavior in the S2K this week I needed to run a front biased spring rate balance and max out the rear swaybar and run a moderate to soft front bar. The front biased spring rate is wrong in RL and some say wrong in the game... True? Hmmm....

Alternatively, since a tire can only deliver so much tractive force in a vector sum of accelerative/braking/turning (within its "friction circle), that same car in the situation above can induce power oversteer but adding more gas and increasing the demand for drive traction at the sacrifice of lateral traction. (As an aside, since there is no drive force in the rear of an FWD car, the only hope or any drift or oversteer in an FWD car is to "trail brake" or carry the braking into the corner to artificially lighten the rear end and cause it to break free. Some properly set up FWD cars with the right LSD CAN hold a drift pretty well once initiated which is fun and dramatic for sure, but not necessarily fast...).

Just my experience. What I DO know is that for the first few weeks of GT4 playing, when tuning I had a HECK of a time trying to tune balance into cars and ONLY after the SRT-4 race at NY when the setups started being posted did someone chime in "to get better front grip, increase front spring". I said, "that's dumb!!", until I tried it and sure enough it worked.

SWAYBARS: These do seem to follow normal tuning philosophies so I have nothing to add here...

Next...
Camber!
My set up seems odd to some.


Take a look at it from my view.

1) In stock position cars come with 0/0 camber.
Only after racing parts are installed do we see camber increases, and for each car the camber is uniformly increased to 1.0/.5 (semi race) and 2/1 (full custom).

2) Not every course is going to induce the stress necessary to move the tire into the 100% flat position.
(I would think long distance banking turns create the largest movement in camber)

3) Lower camber means more grip in the natural wheel position which translates to better braking and more turn-in under low lateral "G" loads.

Number 2 there... Banked turns (positive banking that is) would actually reduce camber movement due to body roll since some of the lateral acceleration is "exchanged" for "downforce". You'll get compressive loads which would INCREASE camber though so if you brake in a banked turn, you'll have less contact patch, but that's an odd case - plus you'll have a greater "downforce" acting on the smaller contact patch so things may even out. Flat corners or especially adversely cambered roads (*bad* banking) on the other hand would definitely create more camber movement. As for stresses necessary to move the tire, it's actually more of a function of the tire compound rather than the course. A stickier tire will give more grip which will lean a car over more than a harder tire. That's why to maximize cornering grip on a car with race tires you need more camber. The same high camber number on a street tired car will definitely not grip enough to flatten the tire contact patch.

3) Agree wholeheartedly about braking with vertical tires. However, under low lateral G loads, ultimate grip is obviously not attained so you MAY get more sub max G's for a given steering wheel input with low camber setting, however for tuning, this shouldn't be a consideration since MAX G's is what translates into low lalptimes. (Oh, and of course that driving skillz thing...)

With those 3 ideas put down, I say this:

Cote does not have many long banking turns.
However, Cote does have several quick input, low speed, sharp turns.

The 1.3 up front made my car turn-in amazingly.
The 1.5 in the rear made it so my amazing turn-in did not result in sliding or major drifting.

With those settings I was able to make the hardest parts of this track my fastest sections and furthermore, I was able to keep up with racers that clearly beat me last week. 👍

Okay, so here it gets interesting. If you read above, I don't feel that the banking or length of the corner is important, HOWEVER:
The Honda S2K does have a brilliant suspension with a great (I'm ASSUMING) camber curve. What this means is that for every degree of body roll, you lose very little camber relative to the road. This requires less static camber than a car with a strut style suspension which loses a LOT more camber under roll. Also, it may have a lot of caster which translates into camber as you turn the steering wheel. I'm not sure if this would have been modeled by PD or not.

What this means is that for very high static camber settings (what you set in the settings menu), you may indeed be over-cambering for which you lose-lose braking and cornering because you CAN'T grip enough to lean the outisde tires flat and the inside tire ends up dragging on the inner edge doing no good to steer.

What I'd be curious to know is that if you used your settings with a 1.0 and 2.0 camber out back, what would you find? If 1.5 is perfect, you should get more oversteer in both cases, but with better acceleration with 1.0, and worse with 2.0.

Just food for thought there.
Remember, I said I wasn't an experienced car tuner with a degree in physics.

Well, I have degree in Mechanical Engineering, but not in vehicle dynamics so I can't profess to know all! :^)

Damper discussion anyone?

-Scott

 

[Kent]

Well, I have degree in Mechanical Engineering
-Scott

After reading the entire post, I can say for sure that this is the most important sentence frag.

Mind posting the settings you used for the week?

 

[tuff240]

Just my experience. What I DO know is that for the first few weeks of GT4 playing, when tuning I had a HECK of a time trying to tune balance into cars and ONLY after the SRT-4 race at NY when the setups started being posted did someone chime in "to get better front grip, increase front spring". I said, "that's dumb!!", until I tried it and sure enough it worked.

This might be true in a fwd car, but I still believe rwd cars react the way they should (or at least in that general direction).
With my set-up I increased front spring rate to get less oversteer. And yes, I tried it both ways.

My set-up while testing was using this as a base to work from:
Springs 13/14
Shocks: 6 all
Ride height: 55/55
Camber 2.5/1
Toe 0/0
Sways 6/6
LSD 5/10/5

With those settings I had more overesteer than I wanted and raised the front spring rate to 13.5 to find the right balance for me. This was the same .5 difference I maintained all the way to 18.5 F/19.0 R and it stayed the same balance wise but gained more traction overall in each increment from 13-19.
I did try going 12.5/14 and the oversteer only got worse. I didn't pursue it beyond that.

I DO NOT want to start another thread like that last one where I had to read 20 something pages to catch up then several more to try to maintain in contact with the discussion. There were several people there that came to different collusions. I'll stick with mine as it works for me. I just don't think it's good to go spouting that the spring rates are reversed when in fact that isn't ALWAYS the case.

 

[Androoos]

I am reading all of this discussion with great interest. I too am trying to put a good Mechanical Engineering degree to work while setting up these cars and I'm having a heck of a time with it.

I read during the SRT-4 WRS race about the springs being the opposite of what I believed, and I didn't bother to even try it. I just said to myself "that's wrong." And I proceeded to suck quite badly that week (my first week, but still...I should have been faster, but that stupid car wouldn't turn!!)

Anyway keep up the good discussion guys, if I feel the need to chime in, I will. But so far so good!

 

[Iceman]

Btw, Holl01.
You know... Some times the competition part of this series is what teaches more than anything else.

Posting a setup is generous.
However, I wonder how many people using your set up saw the reasons behind it?
How many people learned from your set up instead of just mimicing it?

Thats a good point Kent. Look at how much you learned about setting up a car this week holl . Would you have gotten that experience if I had handed them over to you? Probably not. No hard feelings, I certainly don't mean anything bad by this. You've obviously gained a good knowledge of tuning this week and your position shows that 👍

 

[VEXD]

I learned from Holl's settings, that he likes his cars loose.

This is a style i could adapt to, but when i inputted the settings into my S2000, i decided i felt like i was short cutting my way to a faster time, using a car i no longer felt totally in touch with?

I tried to give holl's settings my gear ratio, and that failed abismally, which is where id like to put in this comment: You can adjust springs and ride heights and camber all day, but if your gear ratio isnt in tune with them, the car wont work. You need the torque there when you want the suspension to react, otherwise you're driving a damp squib.

In the end, i resorted to the defaults, and added my gearbox, and ran a 1'28.2 to everyone's 1'27's. (with the exception of the two alien drivers) The car was usable as it was, and, although i was slower, i felt i had achieved my time through driving the wheels off of it, not tuning it to death.

I suppose its each to his own.

One thing......

I did try raising the front end to its maximum, and lowering the rear to the minimum ride height, and got an interesting response, not to mention the camera view!

 

[Tedehur]

CFM, I need to ask a question regarding "DLRgain" before I can do the unofficial D3 leaderboard.

He was in D3 last week (wk 10) right? I think he came third, or something. Anyway, I'm assuming that's when you demoted him down to D3 upon his request. So he raced there and got third, then raced again and got first ... but you've promoted him to D2 before - it seems - his win could count ... like you promoted him half way through last week or something.

This confuses me, because normally when someone is promoted, they get the boost after the win/podium is scored and then they start racing in the higher division the following week. By what you have above, DLR was in D3 this last week, but you've moved him and his time to D2 effective immediately? Like he never won D3?

Is that right?

There has already been one case of an 'instant promotion' :
Alpine was racing in div 2 and was suddenly promoted to div 1 at the same time the results for week 3 were posted.
I had considered he had been promoted at the end of week 2, and I had granted him div 1 points. As far as I'm concerned, if the name of the racer appears in the results as div 2, then he's div 2, regardless of anything else.

 

[holl01]

i watched hotbois video and the only places where he lost time was the left hairpin after t1 (u shouldnt hav used the handbrake) and the 2nd last corner (where i think u got a bit too exited and forgot too brake!) other than that, the time was excellent, TOP JOB mate

 

[CFM]

CFM, I need to ask a question regarding "DLRgain" before I can do the unofficial D3 leaderboard.

He was in D3 last week (wk 10) right? I think he came third, or something. Anyway, I'm assuming that's when you demoted him down to D3 upon his request. So he raced there and got third, then raced again and got first ... but you've promoted him to D2 before - it seems - his win could count ... like you promoted him half way through last week or something.

This confuses me, because normally when someone is promoted, they get the boost after the win/podium is scored and then they start racing in the higher division the following week. By what you have above, DLR was in D3 this last week, but you've moved him and his time to D2 effective immediately? Like he never won D3?

Is that right?

Consider that the promotion occurred after the week 10 results. I felt for week 11 that since he placed 12th overall out of 74 racers, D3 was not the best place for him to be. He qualified for D2 but asked to be moved down after some low end D2 results so I moved him for a bit with the understanding that he would be bumped up again when I felt that his times were no longer appropriate for D3. As for Alpine's promotion in week 2, that was a bit of a newbie mistake on my part since I had just begun running the WRS. After that everyone starts their new division at the begining of the next week's race.

 

[SHigSpeed]

I learned from Holl's settings, that he likes his cars loose.

That's funny! I didn't actually think that it was that loose, however I did leave TCS at 1 so maybe that's the difference... One thing that's important is that the car is definitely loose on slack throttle (while coasting) and that's what I REALLY like. This is the behavior I want. Just a bit of stabilizing throttle really plants the rear end.

Kent, I'll post my settings when I get a chance. Maybe I'll get a chance to grab them when I go home for lunch...

tuff240, I don't want to say that springs are ALWAYS reversed, just in my experience it seems like they are. Until NY in the SRT-4, I had a mental belief that they were correct, and just changed my driving style or other settings to adjust. But once I started treating the springs as reversed, tuning actually "made sense" so I an just reporting my findings. I don't mean to preach as if I wrote the code and therefore I have absolute knowledge of the relationships...

I think this is a valuable discussion though, so I'm going to keep pursuing it.

DAMPERS:

So, classic tuning techniques say:

Compression damping - Main purpose is to control unsprung weight, e.g. wheel/tire weight, brake caliper and rotor, hub, and half the control arms weight. The lighter the wheel/tire and all the other stuff, the less compression damping you need. You let the springs deliver the suspension force, the damper just prevents the unsprung mass' inertia from allowing the tire to leave the ground. SOP tuning is such that you increase bump damping until you get skittering, loss of traction in a turn when you hit a bump, or it becomes painful. You CAN adjust bump damping to adjust balance if you're limited in your choice of springs rate (as in certain classes of racing) however this is not the best way to go.

Rebound damping - This is the main tuning "knob" of your dampers. This controls the body of your car after the springs are compressed and prevents pogoing or wallowing in response to a bump/steering input/crest. It also controls the rate at which your body rolls and the time it takes for the car to take a "set" once there is a steering input. The bare minimum of a damper in rebound is that once compressed, the car will rebound up and then just need to settle back down ever so slightly to static height. For racing, you generally don't ever go over center after a compression, i.e. the car squishes down and just comes up to static, no over extension. The greater the rebound damping in general, the tighter the car feels in transition. Too much, though, can lift the inside wheels on a quick transition and reduce overall traction acting like an instantaneously super stiff swaybar.

Now, damper tuning will do NOTHING for a car in a corner once the car has taken a "set" and the road is smooth. The only time that the dampers affect handling is in transition.

So, to get turn in oversteer, you increase rebound damping in the rear. Turn-in understeer, you reduce rear rebound damping. In essence, in RL, you adjust the rebound damping in the direction that you'd change spring rate.

Similarly, you can increase turn-in oversteer by softening the front rebound damping and reduce it by increasing rebound damping.

Now this is all in real life. What I want to know is if this holds true in the game. Like I said, I ran really light compression damping in this race, and I GUESS that the race parts and tires/wheels could be so light that I didn't require the unsprung mass control, but it seems odd that I could "get away" with it. I don't recall getting any odd loss of tire contact and riding/hitting the curbs were a no drama affair.

Discussion?

-Scott

 

[Tedehur]

As for Alpine's promotion in week 2, that was a bit of a newbie mistake on my part since I had just begun running the WRS. After that everyone starts their new division at the begining of the next week's race.

No prob at all for me. You're the guy in charge, so whatever you say is official and therefore legal WRSwise.

 

[mkay]

Hey! So what am I gonna do with the lap. I can't submit my time. Are you gonna disqualify me?

 

[KLR142]

Reminds me of when I first started racing electric RC touring cars. If my friend set-up my car, I could easlily beet him in a race. If I set-up my car, it was a duel to the finish line everytime.

holl01 went to full stiffness on the springs (almost) after I mentioned it seemed to stick better the stiffer it got. He also slammed it like I had it. Maybe it was all just coincidence and I had nothing to do with it, but it makes me feel better to have possibly influenced one of the top drivers here.
Even if it wasn't with my driving.

Congratulations to all the podium spots in each division. Well done all of you!

What was the setup that you had on tuesday night when I ran it last? I was too tired to put down a faster lap than my previous best, but I did stiffen the bound front damper's bound and rebound one notch each, and the rear damper's bound one notch. I liked it better that way, and did my braking setup too I think, with the rear brake one notch higher. Too bad I was too tired to keep anything together...

Although, with this damper speak right above this, I have learned about the rebound aspect and how it all works a bit more than I previously understood things. THANKS!

 

[Kolyana]

Hey! So what am I gonna do with the lap. I can't submit my time. Are you gonna disqualify me?

Can you get someone to visually check your time (like a racer who lives close) or cna you send your memory card to someone? No chance of getting a replay device like a maxdrive? (CFM has always said that if you're in the process of getting one, you're time will stand until it arrives and can be verified).

 

[TimBrad]

Hey! So what am I gonna do with the lap. I can't submit my time. Are you gonna disqualify me?

We'll hang you upside down by your nuts till you admit your real time

 

[tuff240]

We'll hang you upside down by your nuts till you admit your real time

LMFAO!!

 

[SHigSpeed]

Here are my settings from Cote...

Springs 19.1/16.4
Ride 55/55
Shocks Fr 2/4
Shocks Rr 2/7
Camber F 2.7
Camber R 1.0
Toe 0/0
Stab 4/7
BB 3/3

Tranny
1st 9.318
2nd 6.089
3rd 5.010
4th 4.076
5th 3.272
6th 2.726
Final 2.5

ASM 0/0
TCS 1

25/35 DF
LSD 5/5/5

With this gear ratio I used 3rd through 6th. Just banged the revlimiter in 3rd before braking at the entrance to the tunnel, used fourth through the sweeper at the top of the first hill, 3rd through the chicane after the tunnel and into 5th and back to fourth at the following left sweeper. Back down to third for the next right left, up to 5th and back to third for the last set of turns...

Discuss...

 

[CFM]

Hey! So what am I gonna do with the lap. I can't submit my time. Are you gonna disqualify me?

I'll send you a PM to see if we can work something out.

 

[Alpine3]

Here's my replay:

Lots of good suspension discussion here 👍