Becoming a faster driver

I've been sim racing for a few months now and I feel confident that I can control the cars well (apart from massive oversteer) and I wanted to start doing setups to get me quicker and hopefully learn more about cars.

I've been messing around with the lotus exos s1 but that is a very complicated car to setup. I'm now wondering if there is a better option to learn to start setting up cars and if there is any tutorials that people who are still learning or have learned found helpful when when they were a little beginner crashing after every 3rd lap.

I couldn't find any posts on this sorry if it is a dupe

 

http://www.scribd.com/doc/49703556/MaiDireSetup-Ver-1-1-2-English

 

Excellent link. Thank you beany.

 

An old racing trick if you looping your car to often, is taping squash ball to the fire wall so you can still get full acceleration, but have to squeeze the last 5-10cm. Might be able to do something similar to your pedals.

 

I'd start with one of the road cars, they have less tweaking options than the out and out race cars. Maybe the X-Bow?

 

Have not driven the x-bow for a while but the front end was higher than the rear, drop the front end so its 1mm-2mm lower than the rear and its a different car.

 

I think I'm right in saying that good setup versus reasoanble default could maybe give you 1 more second ,

if you are 3-5-6 or even 10 seconds of the pace, it's not setup

 

Nope

*default setup

 

Must not of had my glasses on, thought it was 151 front, 150 rear, hanging out to get a bigger screen this 14 inch is killing me. Usually the first thing you have to fix with a car is the under steer the factory builds in as safety feature. Me bad will go back to my cave.

 

take a look at setupfu. I think it was about $20 (AUS). It is a little bit of back and forth, to and fro, but it really helped.
It is a third part setup engineer that works for almost any car and any sim. Be prepared to write down some notes when setting up your car as you have to go from sim to windows when entering data.

www.setupfu.com

Happy Racing

 

Surely that depends on the circuit and car. Seems that the road cars have a much smaller gap at the top, and the open wheelers, being more set-up dependent have a bigger space between them, and obviously a longer track there will be more time left on the table. Although I agree generally if you are over 3 seconds off the pace you are too slow.

 

This thread has some tips: https://www.assettocorsa.net/forum/index.php?threads/best-time-with-standard-setup.8249/

 

The funny thing is to be faster use more brake and less throttle. People that are too slow tend to outbreak themselves and then get on the gas too soon which slows them down.

Setup is important at the end for the last but and to get a car to suit your style. You should be able to run consistant laps no matter the setup its just with a poor one you will be slower. Once you can run a consistant pace then you should get an idea of where you could gain time beyond how you drive the car.

At that point you can start making setup changes but if you cant run laps consistantly within a few tenths then making a change you wont necessarily see if its made things better or worse.

No car is undriveable on the default setup but you can make them a little quicker. Learn the basics on tyres and alignment with a street car then move on to more advanced track day cars then a full on race car once you understand the basic setup options. You can do the same with a full race car but if you start with road cars uou can get an idea of where you are pace wise just within the available setup options.

To get the most out of a full on race car you need to tune each part as well as possible but even still if you have gearing and aero ok you should be able to drive within a few seconds of the faster guys.

 

Just reading about how the car works won´t teach you how to setup the car. First you need to understand - and assimilate in practice - vehicle dynamics, so you will be able to "read" the car behaviour and lastly (and that is the most difficult part) you got to find a way to change it to suit your needs.

You can´t make the car faster if you don´t know what is wrong with it. And to make things worse most of the time the car is fine and the problem is the driver (wich is the worst scenario as you create a problem that doesn´t exists in the car).

Its like when you drive a car of someone who doesn´t care about it. In the first 5 minutes you can point things like "steering misaligned, water temp too high, gears grinding, engine misfiring", its the same thing with setting up the car, you have to indentify those obvious flaws and have the tools (knowledge) to fix them.

Just by fixing those obvious things you will already have a good setup.

When i first try a car, the first thing that i look are brakes and diff. They´re simple to setup and have a huge impact on drivability. And its astouding as how many people simple doesn´t understand it and always rely on abs and tc.

And one last thing, very few people understand all the settings in the car. Most just understand some key areas and work on it. And they all do fine, you don´t need to try to understand everything. Just get the basics and assimilate them. The rest will come (or not ) with time.

 

this is still one of the best video about racing , old but man it's good!

 

My dad had a video a lot like that on vhs not to sure if was from his racing and crew chief days but had to be around that time, great video. Great now i got to go look for it. A huge thing he always said was to go fast you must go slow in the cockpit.

 

i've always been put off by the length and how old it is but I really should make time to watch it

 

Smooth imputs and patience are needed aswell.

 

This will be self-evident to most of you but bears repeating: the key to a fast lap is knowing which are the "important" corners on the track, i.e. those that lead onto the longest straights. You can drive the less important corners perfectly but you still won't see a pleasing lap time if you do not have a good exit speed at the important ones.