Help me improve in a Mazda MX-5 Cup at Brands Hatch

Hi there

Last year I started racing a Mazda MX-5 in real life. Being a rookie, I'm abysmally slow.

So I thought the long winter season would be a good opportunity to pick up sim racing and improve my skills in front of the screen. I picked up a Logitech G25 wheel, gear and pedal set and (naturally) Assetto Corsa as well as the Japanese car pack.

The last 14 days I've been training at the Brands Hatch GP circuit in a Mazda MX-5 Cup. The lap record stands at 1:39.962 and experienced sim racers seem to be able to do 1:43 pretty consistently.

My first mile stone was to break the 1:50 barrier (yes, I know that's slow). Today I finally managed it with my two best runs yet:



Obviously there is plenty of room for improvement at all turns. But the most obvious ones seem to be Surtees and Clark Curve. I know I'm doing something wrong here, but I don't know what.

Any advice you could give me?

My next milestone is to do consistent 1:45 laps with the default setup. After that I will start to fiddle with tyre pressure, suspension setup etc.

Thanks!

Holger

 

The main thing I would advise is to work on the smoothness of your inputs. The throttle and brake and steering are not on and off switches. Try to smooth out the inputs to help the balance of the car.

Also you are not using the whole track or the ideal lines to many corners. Try to use the full width of the track to give you better turn in. The maximum grip a tyre can deliver is something you can't change but if you change the angles you approach some corners you will ensure that you carry more speed in that load.

Finally in a car like the mx5 cup car try to keep as much speed as possible as it takes time to get back up to speed. So try to only scrub off the speed you have to, that may mean less braking.

 

I'm not an alien level driver, or really even close to it, but see if this doesn't help you get a bit more up to speed.
I'm using default setup with no changes. Hope this helps.

 

I would recommend setting up the wheel correctly, everyone has a personal preference but some settings will seriously impact your ability to drive comfortably. Push to centre, spring and dropping the steering ratio are my pet hates (steering ratio is all done automatically by AC per car). It can also help if you set the pedal axis sensitivity to zero, they are 50% default (logitech profiler, click on the brake/accelerator pedal - axis properties), that gives me far more feel from the brake and throttle.

Then you can use LUT to get more feel from the road and less dead zone, gyro or not to gyro, FF skip steps and other blah blah blah. My settings are in the little tabs, but obviously each to their own needs and desires.

Good luck.

 

Thank you very much for your replies and your advice. They are really valuable to me!

@myimac: You are absolutely right. My fastest laps are when I try to keep a smooth flow. Actually I thought I had moved beyond on/off throttle and brakes, but evidently not.

@Michael: Thank you very much. Hot lap videoes are invaluable. Now I don't want to presume to offer advise, but I've seen a AC Brands Hatch hotlap video, where the driver exits Surtees fast enough for the upshift to 5th to occur 50-100 yards before the bridge. So if you are looking for that last 0,5 sec or so, Surtees may be the key.

@Horus: I thought about adding some deadzone to the wheel, but apart from that I am pretty content with the standard setup. Since simracing is new to me, the hardest thing is having to rely on visual inputs and FFB instead of the real life forces you'd experience in racing. So at this point I'd rather get used to the whole simracing experience before I make any major setup changes.

Thanks again! When I finally manage 2 consecutive 1:45's I'll post a video of my rookie effort.

 

Hello Holger,

you might try and find a reasonably fast lap on youtube and "chase" it. It looks as if in quite some cases you don't know where the limit is - your driving quite a bit below it.

Also, try turning on the ideal line until you've learned it by heart. There's some degrees of freedom on how different racers approach a turn but your lines are pretty unfortunate, at times.

Have fun!

 

The reason I say look into it now is that you are new to sim racing. If you wait too long you will find you will have to relearn or undo bad practice. The main things to avoid are easily found in threads about FFB, look them up sooner than later. Honestly it can make seconds of time on track or save you weeks of relearning.

P.S. You don't need to add a deadzone to the G25, you need to remove it.

 

Thanks! I wish it would be possible to download a "ghost" from a hot lap and chase it. But videos definitely are the next best thing.

And you're absolutely right. I should stop chasing hot lap times and concentrate on my lines instead. Guess I'm just impatient.

 

Okay, that's a very fair point. I'll look into the G25 threads and make a few changes. It's of course better to get it right from the start instead of having to relearn stuff.

Thanks!

 

A quick(ish) cheat sheet.

Logitech Wheel Settings

There are some that use Damper and others that don't, but most agree with:-

Logitech Profiler
Global Device Settings
Overall Effects Strength between 70-107%
Spring Effects Strength = 0%
Damper Effects Strength = 0% - 50% (this is controlled by AC and supposedly is only used to fix low speed issues)
Enable Centring spring IS A MASSIVE NO NO! Only a few use it but it is just wrong in so many ways. But people are people.
Report Combined Pedals unticked. (It is for pedals that use the same axis)
Degrees of Rotation = 900° (AC will adjust it per car)
Allow Game to Adjust Settings = YES

In Game
Gain = 70-100% (As strong or weak as you like it but usually between - Clipping is something you have to find per car per track)
Filter I have 0% but then I am unsure what this really does.
Kerb/Road/Slip = 0% (Add strength to what is already given, so I like the raw FFB from the game without amplification).

Wheel Rotation
This makes the game wheel match your wheel very close if not perfectly.
*:\My_Documents\Assetto Corsa\cfg\controllers\savedsetups\'Your Saved G25 File'.ini & *:\My_Documents\Assetto Corsa\cfg\Controls.ini

[STEER]
JOY=0
AXLE=0
SCALE=0.7435897435897436
LOCK=1170
FF_GAIN=0.93
FILTER_FF=0
STEER_GAMMA=1
STEER_FILTER=0
SPEED_SENSITIVITY=0
MIN=0
MAX=0
DEBOUNCING_MS=0

Wheel ini Assetto Corsa
*:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\assettocorsa\system\cfg\assetto_corsa.ini

There are a few things in here Dev Apps, Allow Free Camera, Mirrors Far plane (1000 seems to work great things don't just vanish in the near distance), Soft Lock (again some like it some don't - I don't)
'1' means on '0' means off

[FF_EXPERIMENTAL]
ENABLE_GYRO=1 (Some like it some don't. Default is 0)
DAMPER_MIN_LEVEL=0.0
DAMPER_GAIN=1.0 ; Set to 0 for Logitech g920

LUT why and how.

https://www.assettocorsa.net/forum/i...tor-for-ac-version-0-15-now-with-graph.31699/


There are loads of ini files that can be changed, some for the best and some will break the game. If you have a great audio card then you can change how many channels, if your GPU is great then you can add extra/amplify features. If you would like a larger map then you can etc etc. If you do change any remember to make a backup of the original.

Have fun and make the game your own.

 

I've always wondered, what exactly does the sensivity setting do? Does it influence linearity, or even resolution? I can't really find a lot about this online, except recommendations for specefic games.

 

The only thing I found is that I have a far more responsive pedal. Tried it at 0% then 100% and found 0% works best for me. But the same as you on what it is, I have looked and found nothing of use so far. Maybe a clever boffin on the forum will be able to shed light on this subject for both of us.

 

That's really helpful of you! Thanks.

I made all the alterations (including LUT) and did a few 1:47'ish laps with loads of botched apexes etc. Honestly, I couldn't really put my finger on any major changes (that's probably my problem right there). The in-game steering wheel also doesn't seem to be aligned with my G25; that's not a game breaker, but it makes me wonder if I missed something along the way.

You wrote that some people don't like the gyro effect. What does it do? Because I enabled it so it may be the easiest way to see if the settings are correct.

 

Right, so I reached the next milestone: Two consecutive laps below 1:45.



There's still a long way to go, so I reach out to you for yet more help in my new search for two laps below 1:43. As you can see, I made som obvious mistakes in both laps. Please ignore those. What I'm looking for is advice about which corners I should focus on. I'm struggling with the entry to Surtees and the right apex and Clark is giving me a bit of problems as well.

 

Looks good, Holger. You can still improve all by yourself:

• analyze your laps - when you see that you're far away from the outside curbs on exit you could have been quicker.
  
• If you see such a turn, identify your "slow" braking and turn-in points.
  
• During the next laps, focus on that turn and push the braking point further and experiment with the turn-in point until you come out of the turn on or very close to the outside curb.

 

There's a lot of driving technique improvements you can do, but for now the main problems that I can see in your driving are:
1.A lot of overbraking in a low-powered momentum car, you really should be a lot smoother with the brakes, basically just feather them unless you're going for a hairpin turn.

2.Too much steering angle, again, this is a very precise car on hard slicks, you're going to have to be much smoother, and aggressive in the same time.Now, that sounds stupid, I know .Let me explain, you want to steer the car by weight-shift, longitudinal and lateral.Say you want to enter Hawthorn bend (4th of 5th gear turn), you're doing it pretty well right now, but not loading the tyres enough, doing this repeteadly in your laps means you won't warm them up, you want to "throw" the car slightly into the corner with a bit of braking so you get more weight on the front wheels, and then a quick jab of the steering wheel and just hold it there, the car will carry on right through, I hope this is more obvious in the videos, my explanations might need improvement .

3.Abrupt and slow gearchanges.You really need quick heel'n'toe in this, also, you are changing too many gears for such a momentum cars, it kind of gets hung up due to its low-power.You will see how I use the higher gears to keep the speed up, the gear ratios are pretty okey as well, so you can take most 2nd gear corners in 3rd.

I will post two videos, the first one is a clean lap, not very fast, but should give you an idea on how to position the car on the track and what inputs to use to drive cleanly.The second lap is faster, with much more on the limit driving and more aggressive inputs, I hope it's obvious enough in the video to be of use to you .I'll also post a video from Skip Barber Racing that I think is pretty good for anyone to learn from, explains quite beautifuly how you're supposed to drive a car on the limit .

Clean lap:
Fast lap:
Skip:

 

@Berry nice lap

I also tried it and it seems the miata is little bit quicker then half year ago. So the record mentioned in first post isn't near the limit. I also managed a 39:5 in the delta (lost it in last corner ) after a few laps, so low 39s are not far and I think 38s laps are also not impossible.

 

Absolutely possible, this was done more of a demonstration for @Butzisquared to help him improve, I went quite wide and lost the edge on a lot of the corners.This was also on a stock setup, I'd say even 1:37's should be possible, but it requires significantly more work than the 5-6 clean laps I put in .

 

Gents,

That’s some great and very helpful advice right there. Big thanks especially to @Berry for those videos, I did a few runs trying to do the same lines, and I can definitely see how there’s room for improvement.

So to sum it up:

- Analyze lap exits to dial in braking and turn-in points.

- Feather that brake. I’m really struggling with that part to be honest. I just can’t seem to find the “feel”. But I guess it will come with more practice.

- Watch the steering angle. I get the explanation and I will focus more on weight-shifting. I know I’ve done it right a few times, but the consistency just isn’t there yet.

- Gear changes … well, honestly I’m not doing heel’n’toe. The G25 setup just doesn’t work for me, so I ticked one driver aid: Auto-blip for downshifts. All other are of course off.

As I said: I truly appreciate all the help. I’m sure that in a few months, when the racing season finally starts again, all this will come in very handy.

In the Danish Youngtimer Cup I’m up against E36’s with 210+ bhp so being smooth and able to carry speed through corners is definitely the way forwards.

 

Afaik you can't use auto blip with manual shifting, because AC can't guess if you shift up or down. So this won't help you. Using paddles could help getting the right line/speed, but could be hard to switch back to manual shifting after that.

So best could be:
Just doing your braking a little bit earlier, get your entry speed right, chose calmly the right gear, get the car in a good entry position. Also with earlier braking you should see some seconds drop and the confidence will rise so the later braking will come automatically lap after lap.

And don't underestimate the setup, although there isn't much you can change. Only getting tyre temperature and pressure right makes this car very stable and predictable.