Traveling to an F1 race, GPTOURS
Author Unknown
  • The two(ride height and suspension travel) are actually quite different. Ride height shows how far off the ground the bottom of the car is. This doesn't take the plank into account. Therefore you need to get this set so that it is as close to 10mm at the lowest point on the circuit (usually when you are braking from high speed to enter a slow corner such as the hair pin at Magny Cours, or steering through an extremely quick corner such as Curva Grande at Monza). [The plank thickness is 10mm]


  • Suspension travel shows how much movement is left in the suspension before the car goes onto the bump rubbers [packers]. If the graph is at 5mm that means that the suspension can compress another 5mm before it hits the bump rubbers, if it is at the bottom of the graph the car is on the bump rubbers. You should be looking at suspension travel for setting the depths of your packers. [Set packers so that your replay data will show 0mm suspension travel on the fast straights.]


  • If springs are set softly then the chasis of the car will roll and pitch a lot. This means that generally the ride height would need to be set higher than with stiffer springs because as one part of the car dives down it can rub the plank. It also means that the handling of the car becomes less responsive to changes in direction and coming off the throttle and onto the brakes etc because the chassis takes longer to get back to its neutral state. The advantage is that you get better grip as the tyres stay on the road more over the bumps. Also you get less tyre wear under braking and steering because it is the springs that tend to take the load rather than the tyres.


  • So for spring: soft = better grip, less tyre wear, higher ride height, less responsive chassis, stiff = responsive chassis, lower ride height, poor grip, increased tyre wear.


  • I am not sure about dampers, but they seem to be very similar to springs in the sort of results you get from them.


  • Anti roll bars are also very similar in operation. the stiffer you set them the more they resist chassis movement. So once again stiffer settings mean better response at the expense of grip and tyre wear. as the name suggests they only affect roll and so their settings shouldn't make any difference under braking/acceleration.


  • Changing the brake balance will alter how the brakes are applied to each of the four wheels. If you are having a problem with locking the fronts under heavy braking then move the brake balance further to the rear, so brakes are applied to the rear wheels before they are to the front. This will also create more oversteer at turn in (if you are still on the brakes). Similarly if you move brake balance to the front you tend to get understeer at turn in.


  • My general advice is to only change one thing at a time, then go out and drive some laps, plus look at your telemetry to see how the change has affected the car. Then if it has done what you wanted it to you could try increasing the change. If it hasn't worked then you could try changing the setting in the opposite direction (for example if you made the front springs softer and found it didn't help try making them stiffer than they were originally). Also when assessing changes you need to use tyres that are similar conditions and similar fuel loads as these can greatly alter the handling of the car. This takes a long time, but overall you tend to get better results.
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