Mclaren f1 gtr - teach me how to tune this beast @_@

Howdy everyone, Nick here.

Listen, I'm struggling with the McLaren F1 GTR, and was hoping to get some feedback from those who have got this car dialed in. If you have found a good tune I hope you can share the file with me as well.

First, I am using a G27, and have calibrated it and set up the Gains and Minimum Force and Car Gain using the Anti Clipping Tool.

I have been driving it the past few days trying to get it tuned to my liking but I am failing. I was driving the car on Spielberg and Paul Ricard at 29 degrees with a Green track surface.

Out of the box, with the default setup and Medium Tires, the rear end was constantly sliding out a bit after letting off the gas or brakes in turn entry. Eventually I realized the Damper Bump on the Rear needed to be turned down.

I ended up having to take it all the way to 0 for it to feel much better. I ended up turning down by 2-3 the FST Bump, Rebound, & FST Rebound which improved the rear end feel slightly as well.

It still didn't feel good enough however. Now, instead of the rear end begin to slide after letting off the brakes or gas, It is sliding while barely applying brakes (5%) during turn entry/trail braking. I watched a replay to check and see how much I was applying the brakes.

I tried:
Taking the rear spring stiffness down
Giving the rear more negative camber
Giving the rear less negative camber
Decreasing rear tire pressure
Moving Brake Bias Forward

But I just can't get it feeling good. I hope someone knows what I am doing wrong here. I have similar issues with the E30 DTM and Gr. A, so I figure there is something I am not setting up properly.

Tuning gurus please lend me a hand to tame this beast.

Thanks -Nick

 

Do you make sure that you allways push your pedals to the max before starting the sim? As in opposition to the wheel, they can´t calibrate themselves (The thing the wheel does when it spins around when plugging it in).

Also try using a flatter brake gamma curve, live 1.8 or 1.5, helps a lot with cars that don´t feature ABS.

I tried this car yesterday and after getting used to it for a couple of minutes (ok, couple of walls... ), I could take it around the green Nords quite nicely. Stock setup, and definitively no alien here.

 

Replay pls.

No need from yt, game replay will do because, maybe it`s not due to car setup so to clear that out first.

 

Yes I do. It is absolutely not a hardware issue. It's definitely not me getting on the brakes too hard.

 

First impression is that it maybe a rear lock problem due to engine trying to slow down rear wheels too much. Do you blip the throttle during downshifts? It helps a lot in keeping the car stable up to turn-in.
May I ask which kind of laptimes are you around? (roughly). Asking because I am curious to try it myself (G27 here too) but I wouldn't like to mislead you with wrong hints before trying

 

I had a good setup for it, but its probably outdated now

From what i recall, the biggest thing to make the car better/easier was to keep the rear more planted, and limitng the car on the front so.

stiffer arb + springs at the front
softer arb (minimum maybe?) + springs at the rear
high diff coast
very low diff power
not huge amount of rake
lots of downforce
hard tires are best if your stint is longer than 20min

and thats it.

If you look at the tires grip graph, the fronts always reach their end before the fronts, that what i was looking for, keep it understeery, predictable and planted.



http://race2play.com/schedule/show_event/17186

 

Rear lock, possibly. I do blip the throttle during down shifts. However that is not relevant as I am in the proper gear for the turn 2-3 seconds before the rear loses traction.

I am at work, so I can't look up my times and don't remember them. I might have only made 1 clean lap if that.

Some good suggestions, thank you.

stiffer arb + springs at the front.
Will try.

softer arb (minimum maybe?) + springs at the rear
No ARB adjustment on the rear on the F1. It is usually the first thing I do on the GT3 cars. Softer springs didn't seem to help.

high diff coast.
Will try.

very low diff power.
This doesn't apply as I'm not losing traction with power on. But I would actually do the opposite if I was losing traction with power on. Add more diff.

not huge amount of rake.
Will check.

lots of downforce.
Will be the last thing I try.

Didn't know the Dev app shows the suspension geometry. Pretty cool.

 

An example of why this can actually help is the Skip Barber training cars. These cars when letting off the throttle and in braking does the same thing, only 50x more. Off throttle oversteer is a very common thing with cars that have higher rear weight distribution, and, the best remedy against it (with cars that are limited by tuning options) is to give slight throttle inputs to settle the rear end. A more open Power locking differential will give you the option of using throttle as a way of balancing mid engined cars. Tuning the geometry of suspension and dampers can help some, however weight distribution must be considered, especially when the F1 GTR gets a lot of it's best handling when utilizing that tail happy nature of being off throttle. Try TOO hard to tune out it's characteristic, and you'll be left with a stable car (one would hope), but a slower one. To lower the power lock is to give yourself an option to still use the F1 GTR personality without being frustrated by it's weight distribution characteristic. Skip Barber cars must be driven this way IRL because there's only so much you can tweak (and probably significantly less than most sims).

 

No replay?

Ok, why I asked for it?
To see your driving style and try to figure out what is "car adjusted to your liking" ... also Salzburgring, uphill and downhill braking zones ...

So far I can give you only one imaginary advice to start searching for solution on front end of car as you already tried a lot of stuff on rear end and it didn't help.
After all it is about car ballance.

 

Hi Animal Ed. Very good point. Sorry for not replying to you earlier and thanks for being willing to help me.

I'm at work so I will not be able to upload a replay until about 8 hours from now.

Thanks

 

Ahh. Ok, that makes sense. Thank you.

Although, it still seems I would do the opposite. Whenever I have had trouble controlling a slide under power, I always increased the Diff Power. Increasing Diff Power gave more control during a power slide, but the negative aspect is the car is less willing to rotate under power leading to a slower speed through the turn.

 

add more front rebound

 

It's a trade-off. While it's easier to "control" a slide under power with higher lock, hence why drift cars are locked, it's also more likely to happen in the first place. A lower diff will require much more power, more steering input (dependent on actual current speed vs downforce vs longitudinal center of gravity) and even a flick if necessary. The loss of grip can be more sudden, however it takes much more to get it to loose that grip. Not an exact definition, and I'm not the best at describing differentials.

With a lower power diff, you can counteract the F1's off throttle traction loss with very slight inputs of throttle, depending on how low the preload is set (if it can be set, or is low enough to begin with). Not an exact science, and also much harder to explain the use of it at 170 mph lol.

Now if it's a death wiggle, where OTO sends you into multiple counter steering fights, then you would need to first practice counter steering on a preemptive stance, where you predict how quickly it's willing to break loose under braking and coast, and try preemptively (like this word ) using less counter steer to avoid it, or less steering input after the initial turn-in. From there, setting up the car to your taste can reap benefits.

 

Sadly you can't adjust the F1's diff, and I don't trust using trailing throttle with it given it seems to like to just let go irretrievably at random moments. Seems to have moments of terminal understeer too, what a wierd car I do enjoy trying to keep hold of it but I can't say I'm terribly fast in it yet. Certainly a change from chucking GT3 cars around.

 

Oh...OOPS!!! I forgot you can't adjust it. ;oainwerog;vainmwrega. It's been a while since I messed with the F1. oh well...at least it makes sense....
If you've ever tried the Skip Barber in rfactor 2 or iracing, then trailing throttle is more of a muscle memory, and helps a lot.
Well then, increasing rebound in the front could help, increasing front ARB, and also treating the car like it's old. (not to be offensive by saying that, it's just old ) I tend to REALLY take it easy for a couple laps until it warms up slowly. I've really only went on Nords with the F1 GTR, and that is a full on sweat party after a lap or two. It definitely takes a bit longer to get warmed up and the packers to settle. It's tough too, because there's setups for running cold for stability, and then setups that will only help once warmed up really well.

 

I find it easier to drive at Nords than Spa, for some reason ( may be because I find Nords is a bit less technical ) although yeah, keeping it on the road there is fairly stressful I'm just driving it like I was relearning GPL, has that ice-skating tiptoe feeling. I tend not to downshift until I really need to, that also helps a bit.

 

Ok, I had some good tuning tonight. Finally I am getting to a good place with the F1 GTR. And what I am learning I really hope I can apply to the E30 DTM and Gr. A as well as some other cars.

Real quickly here is a link to a folder on my G drive. There are 2 replay files both at the Mod track Spielberg. "F1 Trail Braking" which is me driving with the default setup just for a few minutes. The very first 2 turns of the replay you can see the back end come out under light trail braking.

The "F1 Spielberg Best 2" is when I finally got it tuned and could make some good laps.

Also are pics of the settings which I changed. Pic of the default setup, and a pic of how I changed it.

Thoughts and feedback welcomed.

https://drive.google.com/folderview...VxcHE3bzc2NFlsWUV4MXNTcGNzemFzYXM&usp=sharing

 

Same for me, the eassiest track for this car is Nordschleife.

 

The McLaren has a very large amount of engine braking in AC, which is why it's very difficult when not on the throttle (not entirely convinced at that being incredibly accurate for this particular car, but Kunos tends to know better than I do).

Off-throttle oversteer is not necessarily a characteristic of weight distribution....It's something much more related to the geometry/setup of the suspension and the amount of engine braking generated while off-throttle.

 

Ok, I tried and made an idea, and having your replay was super useful.
First of all: really sorry but I had to do this test with palettes (just downloaded the correct version of Spielberg and re-did some laps, but right now I have parents sleeping just below my pedals, and a wooden floor, and really can't make much noise.
I will repeat tomorrow with H shifter).
With green track and default setup (apart from using the shortest gear-set available) after some tries I got a 1.33, let's consider it a work in progress, being the replay lap full of mistakes

The difference I can see from the replay you posted is mainly in driving tips, and consider that these are only my opinions, so pls feel free to ignore them all at once:

- F1GTR isn't our everyday car, no need to use high revs in short gears. This car has lots of torque, and you can happily let away high revs in shorter gears. Acceleration in 1st and 2nd gear is very dirty, wheels spin and you loose lots of time.
The acceleration you get in 3rd gear and up is way cleaner, so maybe you don't use some of the car's power, but you will be using all of its torque and have a smooth way out the turn. Big gain in speed!
Should you want to have a look at my lap, at T2 (after missing the apex like a complete noob, lol) I even do short-shifting from 2nd to 3rd because the lap before I had a wheelspin and lost something. Not much, but in the replay lap I was 2 tenths faster there.

- braking: don't brake too late/too hard UNLESS you are super super confident doing that. It is the same problem of acceleration, but reversed: it is way faster to brake a bit longer and a bit softer keeping the cat settled, than stepping on brakes and have the car go around, or having problems at turn in. I know very few guys able to brake hard and short AND be fast. It is a thing to practice a lot, and not everyone has the gift (eg: I can't brake hard and be fast in simulators even after EVES of practicing).

in the end: my lap is literally full of mistakes, will try to do a better one with H shifter, but anyways, there's lots of time you can gain from simply finding your personal sweet spot with the car, but you have to listen to it and find a compromise between what you would like to do, and what the car and you can do together to be as fast as possible