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INTRODUCTION Ever tried building a setup in GPL? Ever done it successfully? If so, read no further this guide is not for you! If you have attempted to build a car setup for GPL and have not felt comfortable with the car and have not improved your laptimes with that setup, then this guide is for you. Similarly, if you have taken a downloaded setup from another driver in the community, with hopes that your slow lap times at that track with that car are a thing of the past, and have not improved upon or equalled your existing times, read on. The ways in which each player in the entire GPL community drives, are as different as our fingerprints. As a result it would be impossible to apply someone else’s setup to your own driving style with absolute success. Some improvement maybe, but not unquestioned confidence-inspiring success! This is because we all drive these cars differently, and it has been proven that there is no single driving style template or recipe that guarantees domination. Some people like a loose setup - one that requires lightning reflexes and excellent and exact right-foot gas pedal modulation combined with unusually excellent hand-eye co-ordination. Loose setups require these skills to prevent oversteering excessively through almost all turns, simply because they allow the car to rotate and turn because of their mechanical dynamics. Other people prefer “pushy”, tight setups that are generally more stable. These setups require one to literally “throw” the car sideways early into the turns to achieve the required attitude of rotation or turn-in before reaching the turn’s apex, and then they can allow very aggressive throttle pumping combined with touching the brake pedal, and steering inputs to keep that rotation all the way through the turn. Very different, yes, but they can deliver the same exact lap time because they allow the driver to do certain things the same. Things like exit speed, brake point, turn-in points, mid-turn speed, etc., can all be exactly the same with two vastly differing driving styles, and two respectively different setup types. Yet again there are people who right-foot brake, and use a clutch, and those who left-foot brake, combined with throttle pedal. The variations go on. Setups in GPL are one of the hardest things to do successfully and confidently. The reason for this is that when changes to a setup are made they are not easily felt for the most part. Some “GPLers” use Force Feedback in their steering wheels, others don’t and yet others use joysticks, game pads, and even keyboards. All of these different types of controllers have widely differing input and feedback characteristics, and then any number of available brands of controllers in a single type also has widely differing input, feedback and latency characteristics. This guide will proceed on the assumption that the individual player is reasonably aware of those input and feedback characteristics on their own personal wheel or controller, and that the player knows to some limited extent when a setup is not correct for them. It is very helpful to be aware for example if one of the reasons you cannot get through a specific turn are because the car seems to push or understeer, and you are aware that the only way to keep the car inline with your chosen racing line is to back off and nudge the brake. If you can start to develop this awareness of what seems to be wrong with your car at any instant, then you will gain much from this guide. The other key assumption of this guide is that the readers of this guide are at a place in their GPL experience where they are close to their “maximum individual potential” using the default setups on the 11 original GPL tracks that shipped on the game’s CD or the very helpful Alison Hine setups that many people use when they are starting out. Because people, computers, controllers, tracks and cars are different, this level of expertise or “maximum individual potential” (which is quite commonly, but not always reflected by one’s GPLRank), is not the same for everyone. However, there are some basic principles that will apply and become successful tools in setting up one’s car, when applied the right way. I divide the elements that make up a setup into two groups - Active setup elements; and Passive setup elements. No one of these two groups is more important than the other and they need to be worked on together to achieve the right balance that works with one’s style of driving. Active setup elements include all the power-train related items Gear ratios, differential ramps, clutches, and brake-balance. These items all have something directly to do with overcoming inertia. The Passive elements react to the changes we want to make to the car’s state of motion or non-motion include shock bump and rebound, camber, toe-in, tire pressure, wheel spring-rates and roll-bar tightness. | ||||
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TYPES OF SETUPS There are three basic types of GPL setups: 1. Baseline setups 2. Qualifying setups 3. Race setups The latter two groups could be subdivided further within themselves, but this is really unnecessary. The essence of this guide will be in building a setup, or adapting a setup to be successful. This will become your Baseline setup. | ||||
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WHAT IS A BASELINE SETUP? A baseline setup is not a racing or qualifying setup for a specific track or circuit, so much as a comfortable player’s setup. By this, I mean a setup that is tuned to best serve the way you as an individual drive the car. This guide will even take into account these individual driving styles. When I first started GPL, everyone said, “Take the Alison Hine setups, they’re great for learning”. For many people this works. The way I drive however, didn’t allow me to feel confident enough to do much more than trundle around the tracks and learn their layout. I couldn’t get those setups to turn for anything. They were slow for me, and the braking points required to make them work made me lose too much time even back then, before I had a negative GPLRank. Other players have had great success with them, and yet others, have achieved negative GPLRank with the default Papyrus setups! I have read Nunnini’s theory of how to get a baseline setup and I disagree with it. It works on the assumption that all players will feel similar things and the differences come in the tracks. It is the people that matter here for getting the baseline setup, not the tracks. A baseline setup is not a static thing either, and it will change as your skill level changes. Believe it or not, this setup is really designed by you, for you, and is solely there to give you a car that will do exactly what you need it to do, based on what your limits are in this game. Generally a great baseline setup is just a little beyond our abilities anyway, and it will allow us to push our own skill level upwards. There are 7 baseline setups that we need to have - one for each car in GPL, and the tracks and race circuits are irrelevant in these setups. These 7 baseline setups will be very different, simply because of the differing handling characteristics of each car. They will however when perfectly created, deliver 7 cars that will be able to be modified for a particular track and be driven close to the limits on that track without feeling like they are about to fall off the track, all in a very similar manner. I say this because the cars will all be our own cars, driven by us in our own personal driving style, with our own individual baseline setups. Make sense yet? A successful baseline setup has to possess all of the necessary characteristics that will allow you to do certain things with them. These “things” (or maneuvers) are those on-track challenges that will present themselves on practically every single lap we complete on every single circuit in every car, with a couple of minor exceptions. We have to be able to achieve a baseline setup that works for us; even if it is a downloaded setup from a GPL alien (I should be so lucky!). Once our car can reasonably execute all of the NECESSARY maneuvers listed here in the 10 Commandments, with some predictability of success, are we ready to modify the car for a particular track and session (Qualifying or Racing). That post baseline-setup-tweaking is the easy part, and I will spend less time on that. THIS however is where the good foundation begins. | ||||
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THE 10 COMMANDMENTS OF A
PERFECT BASELINE SETUP Thou shalt:
A common theme runs through the list. CONTROL! Control is everything. It is oxygen. It is water. It is the very essence of this game, the life of this game. Remember when you first tried GPL and you thought, “Ice? I didn’t see the ice on the road!” “Has this car got tires on it?” “What’s up with the steering it’s not connected to the front wheels!” and of course the “I didn’t push the gas pedal THAT hard!” exclamation? It was all about control, but we didn’t know that. Now we do, and we know how mandatory it is to wield bushels of it. If we can at least help the car to be easier to control the easy part of the battle is won, and we can really start on the tough part – developing real skill, or being embarrassed by our lack thereof.
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1. Accelerating hard from a standing position
Like it or not, we all have to do this. It’s how races begin. Some cars are better at it than others, and most drivers are better at it than I am. Getting off the starting line is of a lesser importance than the other 9 commandments, and any setup compromise encountered should be altered to favor those nine commandments. The key elements in getting off the starting line are keeping the rear and front tires in firm contact with the asphalt. The front tires will be keeping the nose pointed in the right direction, and the rear tires will be providing the forward propulsion. The standing start, although unique, is not very different from powering out of a tight hairpin turn, and similar principle would apply. Several areas of the setup itself have a direct influence on a successful race-start. These are: the diff ramp angles, the number of clutches, the rear shocks’ bump settings and to a lesser degree, the front shocks’ rebound settings, tire pressures and the final ratio of 1st gear. In the more ideal world of drag racing this task would be relatively simple to set up primarily because a dragster only really has two functions: to look cool, and to accelerate from a standstill blindingly fast. Our cars on the other hand need to be able to do this, but also satisfy all 9 remaining commandments, equally or more efficiently. So these setup suggestions will always be a compromise between the ideal and what works for racing in GPL.
1.1 Active
settings 1.2 Passive
settings IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT STANDING STARTS: Standing starts such as at the beginning of a race take up a very short time-span in the grand scheme of the race. Therefore do not weigh standing start setting parameters as very important when other significantly more vital could be compromised. In other words, pursuing the ideal standing start settings at the expense of good controllable handling elsewhere is foolish. | ||||
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2. Controlled Accelerating Slide
The controlled accelerating slide will also to a degree include part of the discussion on negotiating hairpin turns, simply because half of the process of negotiating a hairpin is accelerating out of it. If all the tracks in GPL were very high speed Ovals, like Grenzlandring or Michigan , etc., this commandment would not really be necessary. The fact is that they are in the minority and the original 11 Papy tracks are ALL filled with turns and corners that require this capability in the cars’ setup, and the skill within the driver to exploit that setup’s ability. The central theme in any hot-lapping discussion will contain strong encouragement to exit every turn as fast as possible. Exit Speed, Exit Speed, and Exit Speed! This is what gives you great lap times. A perfect example of where this occurs is the right-hand kink, immediately after the Nouveau Monde Hairpin at Rouen . You have just slipped into 3 rd gear before entry and are accelerating as hard as possible, and the tendency is for the rear to step out wildly out of control. Accelerating out of a turn can be hairy at best, and downright out of control most other times. It requires and intimate feel for the gas pedal, and an ability to modulate that gas pedal carefully but confidently. If the setup is not perfectly tuned for this maneuver though, all you’ll end up with is a snaking “fishtailer” that loses you precious seconds at every turn. Not to mention a greatly lowered speed on the straight section that follows the turn. If you choose to, it is possible to gently “squeeze” the gas and get no wheelspin at all, and get out of the turn safely, albeit slower than if you kept the engine revs on the boil and the rear tires at the absolute limit of the adhesion. The latter however is the secret to greater exit speed and requires some careful setup tweaks. The default Papy setups will cause one to generally plough into the Armco/sand/grass/fence/curb on the opposite side of the track to the turn’s apex, and requires some looseness to be built in to fix this. Some alien setups on the other hand will send you spinning on the first touch of the gas in the turn, and you’ll have completed several donuts before even reaching the apex. Not at all good, and it will require some tightness to be built in, to fix this tendency. Here’s my take on it: If you keep the engine on the boil, and the tires in the limit of their adhesion, the most important thing that dictates whether your car maintains your chosen line through the turn is the front end of the car. Once you’ve setup the rear end to accelerate out of a turn at its potential best in theory (not too difficult actually), it will amount to nothing if the front end of the car bites into the asphalt and suddenly causes “snap oversteer”. This happened to me too much (about 90% of the time) for the longest period, and I always thought that adjusting the rear end to grip more, would fix this - but it doesn’t. So in desperation I started playing with the front end, and found that if I built a little “wash” or controllable slide into the front end, then the front wheels wouldn’t grip so hard and force the back to pass them on the outside of the turn. What started to happen was that the front end would follow the rear end’s slide a little, and keep the car facing in the desired direction. (its called four-wheel-drift… where have I seen that before…?) Furthermore, I could make little sawing movements with the wheel, knowing that the front wheels would bite into the asphalt, but rather gently exert my requests for a direction change. This would allow me to keep jabbing at the gas without fear of losing it, and hence allow me to exit the turn in control of the car, AND at a higher speed. The area of compromise then is in making sure that the front tire slide is not so excessive that too much speed gets scrubbed off AND still give sufficient bite to the front tires to allow me to keep the front end pointing where I need it to point - hence the word “Compromise”. Here’s what I would do: 2.1 Active settings 2.2 Passive
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3. Controlled Decelerating Slide
The controlled decelerating slide is used in just about every turn in GPL except the very fastest turns like most of the turns at Grenzlandring, etc., where you are not decelerating but rather trying to maintain or increase your approach speed through the turn. Every other turn, from the very high speed Spa, to all the slow and twisty up-and-down turns at Zandvoort and Mosport involve deceleration that is carried out faster with an approaching slide. The best example I can think of where this is absolutely necessary is the left handed bend approaching the Nouveau Monde hairpin at Rouen . The car is loose and light from a very high speed approach, and you need to brake hard and maintain a tightening line to set yourself up for the entry into the hairpin. Trail-braking is used most often to do this. Setting up the car just right to do this is critical to maintain control during these approaches and will help your overall lap times incredibly. One of the driving keys to pulling off this maneuver successfully and consistently, turn after turn, is the ability to modulate the brake and throttle and keeping them so well balanced that you can make adjustments to tighten the line (or even loosen it up a touch) in mid-turn. With the right setup, and with both feet pressing to some degree on the gas and the brake simultaneously, all that’s needed to bring the nose around a little is a quick momentary lift of the gas pedal. Conversely, if you feel the back end starting to pass outside of its desired line and quick release of the brake pedal and sharp turning in of the wheel into the apex will get you pushing a bit more. But be ready to catch it all back again when the desired line is achieved. How it’s done: The turn is approached from the outside of the groove (usually), and a sideways slide is induced that aims the car slightly to the inside of the groove. This will make the car appear as though it is going to hit the apex early, however even though it is pointing inside of the apex, the car is still sliding on its previous line, which is outside or on the groove. As the speed scrubs off (careful not to scrub off too much by making the slide too tight), the tires will start to bite and change to direction of travel, bringing it in towards the apex. If I happen to time this all just right, the car will arrive slightly late at this point forcing me to come off the gas pedal momentarily and getting the nose turned in well, and ready to get on the gas to power away to a late apex, maximizing my exit speed. It takes a lot of practice to get this right, but Mexico ’s turn 1 is the best place of all to work on it. With the right setup there, the decelerating slide can be done without using the brake pedal at all, just the gears and engine compression. It’s very satisfying to complete the turn facing perfectly into both apexes of the little switchback, ready to power out on to the little straight. My setup technique: 3.1 Active settings 3.2 Passive
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4. Hard Straight-line Braking This is probably the easiest requirement to set one’s car up for. There are many instances where a simple aggressive braking procedure gone wrong can wreck a lap or a race. Braking in this way helps prepare us for learning to brake later and later, a skill that will eventually lower our lap time significantly. I cannot count the number of times that I was out braked heading down to turn one at the Nurburgring for example, simply because I could not brake extremely effectively in a very short space without a high risk of losing control. A good familiar setup however will become a catalyst in developing this skill. The basic principles that I am aware of are:
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5. Transitions Transitions are those points in a turn where the driver makes the conscious change from decelerating to accelerating. Every turn has a transition requirement, and these need to be able to be executed efficiently and “quietly” as possible to promote a fast exit. Transitions bring out the best or worst in your setup. If my setup is unfinished, I find that my car is not balanced at my transition point. I cannot quickly induce that little extra turn-in if I need to, or that little extra wash-away of the front if I’m turning in too early. This means that for me, my setup is not yet perfectly balanced. One perfect place for me to test my setup’s transition capability is Monza ’s Parabolica. It is very easy for me to see in Parabolica, if I am too early/late with my turn-in or too early/late with my “powering-out” onto the straight. A setup that is well balanced will allow me to make the necessary adjustments mid-turn, and get my line corrected. The setup for a good transition is a perfect combination of the decelerating sliding and accelerating sliding commandments. Remember that setup building in GPL is always a compromise, and only you can tell if the balance is right for your skill level and controller capabilities. One thing that does help get the feel of good balance is if your roll bar stiffness and wheel rates are a little stiff. Somewhere above 150 for front roll bar, above 140 for rear roll bar, and the wheel rates at least in the 70 for front, and 90for rear range. The stiffness of the car has a direct impact on what the driver/player feels, and the speed with which he feels it particularly for those players who use force feedback. Softer settings than those I have mentioned will retard what you feel and rob you of some of the potential you may have to feel whether your car is transitioning well. My essential rule here – The roll bars should NOT be more than one click apart for a nice tight seamless transition. More than this and there will develop a distinct “sloppiness” to the transition, which will rob you of precious time. Summary of setting up for
transitions: | ||||
6. Maintaining a Constant Speed in fast turns
High speed turns always were tough for me. Mainly because I was using more “pushy” setups, that were very stable. Then I started to use looser setups and it almost made the problem worse because I would get out of shape and start oversteering when I touched the gas mid turn in the long right-hander coming into Malmedie at Spa, Mexico's final turn or Curva Grande at Monza . Even Ascari at Monza would slow me down for this reason. Shifting to a looser power side on my diffs helped this. I now use 30/xx/x settings which allow me to maintain instantly inducible rotation of the car almost at will. The key here is a balanced car that gives good feedback AND control in the middle of a 160 mph turn. If you have completed Commandment 5, and do not feel this, you need to go back to Commandment 2 and try again, until you feel that balance. It will be that much more difficult if you don’t have force feedback, but you still get the feedback cues that will tell you if your car is balanced or not through the audio and visual messages you receive from GPL. This isn’t a cop-out because I don’t feel like typing any more. You have to have balance to maintain that mid-turn speed. If that balance is missing, then something was not setup correctly prior to this point. If however your car is balanced in a high speed turn and you are pushing or oversteering still, then refer to the Symptoms and Solutions guide at the end of the discussion. | ||||
7. Change Direction or Speed in a Turn Changing direction or speed in mid-turn is a racing thing really. Hot lapping will not really require this ability too often. My intention for bringing this one into the commandments is to cultivate online racing as it is only really in online racing (and racing against AI, I suspect) that you will need to change speed or direction in a turn. Unless of course you were trying to put your cigarette out before reaching Parabolica, and didn’t make it. When some one else crosses your intended path you have a choice: change you speed (usually a sharp decrease of speed), or change your direction (read: swerve madly!) This can also happen, and often does to me, that I’m in a race and suddenly I am on top of Parabolica - all out of shape! No one else crossed my path, I just lapsed in concentration. Now, whatever the reason, I have to alter my car’s path! Do I slam on brakes or swerve? Here’s what I do: I decide at that exact moment, which of the two evasive maneuvers I can do with the least risk, KNOWING THAT MY CAR IS IDEALLY SET UP TO HANDLE BOTH! Having carefully followed commandments 1 through 6, I can proceed with whichever I am personally more capable of doing, as permitted by my GPL skill. To perform an efficient evasive maneuver, my car must be capable of braking hard and in control, transitioning predictably albeit very quickly, and recover from being suddenly unsettled. Most of these conditions require some degree of suspension and unsprung stiffness, but not at the expense of road feel. Having set your car up to this point, performing evasive maneuver is really a skill development process. Not much more can be built into a setup than what has been covered so far. Simply learn to know what your car is feeling like when you perform sudden movements, and be comfortable with the position you’ll be in when you recover your momentum. Mostly, try to anticipate these incidents. | ||||
8. Negotiate Hairpin Turns
Hairpin turns are frightening at best, but when they are immediately preceded by tricky, flat, tightening curve, (read: Rouen’s Nouveau Monde) this is the most difficult hairpin in GPL. It requires one to brake hard early on in the preceding lefthander, shift down two gears, release the brake, and get gently on the gas to keep the back from stepping out. This can only be done with a very well-balanced baseline setup. I.E. READ THE 3RD COMMANDMENT AGAIN! Then, tighten up the rear rebound slightly, by decreasing it a notch. If it is already set to 1, then try Rouen with an xx/45/x coast side ramp angle, and a slightly higher rebound setting at the back, maybe a 3, with 1 clutch (no more than 2 clutches). All other hairpins are straightforward hard sliding decelerating turns followed by hard acceleration maneuvers, and require much practice and almost perfect balance. | ||||
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Want fast lap times? Learn to attack Esses rather than driving through them. Esses are those portions of a track with a series of consecutive and close, left and right turns. The most notorious examples are the “rhythm section” at Mexico , the Casino portion of Monaco , and much of Nurburgring, Mosport and Zandvoort. This Commandment is really a development of the Transitions discussion. The rule of thumb for me is to stiffen up the roll bars a little. On a track like Mexico , which is flat I run 180 at the front and 170 at the rear. This keeps the responsiveness and feedback nice and tight, although it makes for a slightly loose car elsewhere, but I learned to drive around those flaws by lowering the rear rebound to 1 or at the most 2. Front rebound I keep at 2. Having the tightly reactive setup will allow you to anticipate the consecutive following turns a little earlier, more cleanly, and more confidently. Tracks that require a little more ride height like Nurburgring, Mosport and Zandvoort are a little trickier to get that tight feel. The longer suspension travel at those tracks will make the cars seem a little “floaty”, but the feel is maintained to a degree by my low shock rebound settings at the front and rear for those tracks. I am still having trouble getting my tired grey cells to spew out a good baseline setup for the Ring and Solitude though, so I’ll keep this as version 1.0, and update it from time to time as the enlightenment slowly sinks in. | ||||
10. Wheel-off-Pavement Recovery
This happens almost every time I race. Whether by cause of pushing a little too hard or because of traffic (from behind or lapped traffic), I will invariably find my self partially or completely off the pavement. Getting back onto the pavement and completing that lap semi-competitively is always a challenge. The stiffer setups that I use seem to promote recovery quite well thus far. One of the secrets for a seasoned off-roader like me is to not swerve unusually heavily in an attempt to regain control. Pointing the steering wheel in roughly the direction of movement of the car as a whole certainly helps as does gentle throttle and brake pressure. Once again this is all aided by lower bump and rebound setting that will add a little grip, mixed in with the high(ish) roll bar stiffness up front which takes the edge off of the error that caused the excursion in the first place. | ||||
QUALIFYING SETUPS
Now that we have an idea of how to get a baseline setup (yes, it’s only an idea…, some people have been doing GPL for 3 years remember), its time to convert those setups for qualifying. Qualifying setups are created in an attempt to extract the maximum potential possible from the car for a short time usually 2 5 laps in the short circuits and 1 3 laps in the longer circuits. If those setups are driven at or close to their maximum potential for longer periods than those mentioned here, the tires usually overheat and reach unusable temperature exceeding 240 degrees. When this temperature rises beyond this level, the car becomes progressively disabled, and the handling characteristics become unpredictable and unusable. The car literally loses grip on those tires that are overheated. It is therefore generally necessary to “dial back” the Qualifying setup to obtain one for races that last several laps more than what is in your qualifying setup. This adjustment will remove some of the car’s outright abilities if driven in a race exactly the same way as in the qualifying setup, and may make a difference of as much as half a second or more, but will tend to be a little more stable and long-lasting. Building a qualifying setup out of a reasonable Baseline setup is not as difficult as it seems. The track’s attributes need to be taken into account now more than they were during the Baseline setup construction. Qualifying setups are built for speed, and responsiveness, and to get more of these out of my Baseline setup requires some work on several fronts. Tires. (Read: contact with the road) In general, the tires are going to be set up in such a way as to give a sharper feel, and slightly higher speed. To do this, the tire pressures will be set 1 2 clicks higher than race settings. Another item that requires repeating is the camber settings. Always do a couple of laps at your best speed, then stop and check the tire temperatures inside, middle and outside and make the necessary adjustments. For example: if the outside is hotter than the inside, give negative camber and vice versa. This is a clear indicator if the contact patch of the tire is bearing the vertical load of the car evenly across the tire’s surface when combined with your own driving style. If it is not minute but significant amounts of outright grip are lost, affecting cornering adhesion and hence speed. Springs. Springs can be tightened up a click to add that little extra bit of responsiveness, although this is mostly necessary at the very fast tracks like Monza , Spa, etc. Shocks. Shocks need to really remain as they were in the baseline setup, because they are one of the more important factors that affect your own feedback received from the car. I cannot make changes to my shocks without some speed sacrifice, because the handling changes too much for me to adjust my driving. This will probably apply to most people. Gearing. I am experimenting at the moment with slightly shortened final drive ratios for 2nd 3rd and 4th gears in my Qualifying setups for all cars except the Honda and BRM. This allows me to shift up earlier so that I can minimize my accelerating wheelspin. This is a personal preference though that suits my own driving style. Clutches. For qualifying, if the track and car type permits, I use a higher setting for the clutches that give more locking. If for example I am using 85/45/4 at Watkins Glen in my Baseline setup and my race car, I will increase it to 5. What this does is it gives me a little less stability (because I am only really starting to learn to modulate the throttle nicely), but it allows the lower slippage and greater locking to give me better forward propulsion. This is a slightly edgy and unstable way to drive, but if I get it right I do get slightly better speed out of turns and it’s only for qualifying and all I need is one really great lap to grab a good grid position. Using this setting for my race car may be possible one day if I ever reach “alien” status, and can gently feather the gas pedal very well all the time. | ||||
RACING SETUPS Racing setups are much easier to get close to perfect in my opinion. The most important ingredient is a low ego level. If I could successfully get myself to NOT use my qualifying setups for my races, I would finish a lot more races, and finish a lot more races well. The reason - my race setups are a little slower but far more stable than my qualifying setups. It is crazy to think that I could not finish well in a race with a race setup that will deliver me a consistent 0.25 – 0.5 sec loss (relative to my qualifying setup), lap in and lap out! However we all do it and it makes no sense. That’s the beauty of racing online though we are all just people and make irrational decisions. Anyone who has examined Greger Huttu’s complete setups pack will have discovered that his GH_LongGP, and GH_ShortGP setups are much easier to drive that his qualifying setups. Racing setups therefore should be created out
of your baseline setups, with one central theme in the backs of our minds:
“Can I finish the race with this car, and if there are incidents on the
track during this race (which there will be), will I be able to recover
from them, or better still avoid them because of my better control over
this more stable car?” If the answer is “yes!” then DON’T ALTER ANYTHING
IN YOUR BASELINE SETUP! If your answer is “no!” then your baseline setup
is not right. Start again, and rebuild it remembering all the time what
YOU feel in your setup, what works for the car you have chosen and lastly,
how you want the car to behave based on YOUR abilities and the track’s
requirements. | ||||
GENERAL NOTES THAT APPLY TO ALL CARS AND SETUPS. Toe-in. I have not gone into setting for toe-in very much in this discussion. This is on purpose. The reason is that I do not yet know what difference any changes make when I am inside my own KNOWN parameters. I have my toe-in setting as follows for practically every setup: Front is - 0.150 to -0.225 and Rear is +0.200 to +0.400. What I DO know about toe-in settings is that my car can get really out of shape easily if my front toe-in is set too close to 0.000 or positive. I also cannot maintain a very stable straight line high speed run with out my toe-in settings. Setting the rear toe-in to a close-to-zero positive number does however allow me to power slide fairly nicely most times, but the higher the rear toe number, the greater my ultimate acceleration grip, especially out of accelerating turns. Bump rubbers and Ride Height. Bump Rubbers and ride height are adjustments I make use of when I am bottoming out in certain places on a track. I personally like my cars to be as low-slung as possible (1.0 bump rubbers and 2.50 ride height), but this cannot always work. There are some places on certain tracks that require adjustment to raise the ride height of the car, such as L’Eau Rouge at Spa. The problem however is that rest of the entire Spa circuit really favors a “low and soft” setup. Raising the car with soft to medium shocks and springs will not give a very good feeling in many places and limit your outright speed potential (only slightly though). These items need a lot of tuning until you get a feeling that works for you and allows the fastest compromise. In other words, get used to driving some tracks with a less than perfect feeling and learn to drive around those setup flaws that are introduced because of certain challenges on a particular track. Tire temperatures. Tire temperatures are a little more important than tire pressures. Don’t go in search of the holy grail of tire temperature setting at the expense of unusable tire pressures. Tire pressure should never really exceed 27 -30 psi, irrespective of whether you cannot reach a good working tire temperature (130 - 235 degrees). If you are constantly running in multi-lap races with tire temperatures of no more than 150 all round, then you are probably not maximizing the setup elsewhere (look at roll bars, wheel rates, etc), or you are probably going fast enough. Note: In recent months, I have found that changing my diff power side settings to looser 30/xx/x or 45/xx/x the car rotates much more easily, and my tire temps are way cooler. This is because I am not relying as much on inducing rear tire slip to help turn the car, this driving up the tire temperatures. Wheel camber. Wheel camber settings should be adjusted to maintain equal temperature across the surface. There is no correct setting for wheel camber for a specific car on a specific track, as this is dictated by the individual players themselves, and can only be successfully achieved after many, many consistent laps. You as the player will have to work this out for your self, and allow at least 3 laps of the shorter tack for them ties to get up to temperature (one lap at the Ring, Spa, Solitude, Jokimaa, etc., should suffice). Fuel quantities. In a racing setup, make sure that there is sufficient fuel for the race in laps, and then add 10 20% extra. Some cars are bigger gas guzzlers than others and need almost 20% extra laps worth of fuel to finish a race. Here’s my guide in this: Brabham, Ferrari, and Eagle, add 10%. Cooper, add 15%. Honda and BRM, add 20%. Cheats/Tips. I use a neat little program called GPL Race Engineer to help me with creating and optimizing setups. The part I really like most us the graphical/pictorial rendering of the torque and power outputs for the different cars. This combined with the clear indications of the gear ratios and their usable horsepower limits, helps me to optimize my gear ratios for a particular track. Try and get this handy little utility. Frame Rates. The greatest setup in GPL existence coupled with the most exceptional skill will amount to nothing in an online race, if the frame rates are not at 36FPS or very close. It is vital to make sure that the version of cars, tracks, sounds, etc are optimized on your system for online racing. | ||||
SOME SYMPTOMS AND THEIR
SOLUTIONS FOR CORNERING PROBLEMS Try one or more of these together until you get that feeling you are trying to obtain. Entry understeer Pushing or understeering on entry to the turn: Enter the turn slightly slower, and gently accelerate through the turn or at least maintain the entry speed all the way through. FACT: Entry speed is less important than exit speed, and if you can set your car’s attitude up better for exit by entering slow, you’ll outweigh that slight lack of entry speed, by a greater exit speed increase. Pushing or understeering on entry to the turn: Increase the rear shock rebound setting one or more notches. Pushing or understeering on entry to the turn: Increase the coast side ramp angle of the differential. Pushing or understeering on entry to the turn: Reduce the rear brake bias closer to 50% or even into the high 40’s. Pushing or understeering on entry to the turn: Decrease the front bump towards 1. Pushing or understeering on entry to the turn: Decrease the front roll bars by 10 - 30 lbs. Pushing or understeering on entry to the turn: Change the front toe setting to a more negative number. Entry oversteer Loose or oversteering on entry to the turn: Reduce the coast side ramp angle of the differential. Loose or oversteering on entry to the turn: Decrease the rear shock rebound settings to 2 or even 1. Loose or oversteering on entry to the turn: Increase the front shock bump setting by one notch. Loose or oversteering on entry to the turn: Increase the front roll bar stiffness by 10 - 30 lbs. Loose or oversteering on entry to the turn: Increase the rear brake bias higher than 50%. Exit understeer Pushing or understeering on exit from the turn: Decrease the front shock bump one notch. Pushing or understeering on exit from the turn: Stiffen the rear springs in increments of 5 lbs. Pushing or understeering on exit from the turn: Stiffen the rear roll bar by 10 - 20 lbs, and/or soften the front roll bar 10 - 20 lbs. Pushing or understeering on exit from the turn: Decrease the power side ramp angles of the differential. Try 45/xx or even 30/xx/x.
Exit oversteer Loose or oversteering on exit from the turn: Increase the front shocks rebound setting one notch. Loose or oversteering on exit from the turn: Decrease the rear shocks bump setting one notch. Loose or oversteering on exit from the turn: Increase the front roll bar stiffness by 10 - 30 lbs. Loose or oversteering on exit from the turn: Increase the power side ramp angles of the differential by one notch. | ||||
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Paul | ||||
