Minor setup changes with major results

Disclaimer: I'm just a console peasant playing with a dualshock4 so any opinions I have on how cars feel and handle should be seen in that light.


So about the Porsche Cayman GT4.

Normally I don't drive it very often because, completely opposite expectations, it felt soft, lazy and understeered. If you hadn't pre-loaded the suspension you'd drift a meter wide from suspension travel alone.

Now I don't get into setups very much, because frankly it's too damn complicated. And the GT4 being a roadcar I didn't think it had a lot of options anyway. But then I looked, noticed you could change the ride-height and ooooh boy...

Brought it down from 20 to 0 and by Walter Röhrls sweaty armpits, it completely transformed the car. It now felt like a mini Carrera GT, like a GT3 RS with the engine in the proper place. (911s are in my top 3 fav cars ever but you know it's true.)
And still compliant too, you can still absolutely slam it over kerbs and such and come out the other side alive.

Fiddled with the anti-rollbar a bit and it's even better, sharper, now. But that could be personal preference.

So here's my thread premise:
Do you have any experiences like this where a super simple change in a car's setup made a massive improvement on the way it handles?

 

Yes, the tuned AE86 for me. Since they fixed live axle. If I load one of my setups from before the fix the car feels completely broken, the rear is all over the place all the time. If I stick with a setup much closer to stock the car really comes alive and starts to feel more like it did before the fix. It showed in lap times as well, on the server (97% grip) I was doing 1:03.5's at RBR National with my old setup and then when I used something more similar to default I was doing low 1:02's right away. The Alfa Romeo GTA is another good example, with stock setup it wallows around and lifts a front wheel sometimes, with some setup changes it feels much more planted.

 

Rather from my experience making car mods. Up to a certain point I normally give the physics a try myself, and many small numbers can have huge effects. Some single digit degrees of caster can make a car undriveable shaky or feel numb like a forklift. Vehicle height can have a huge influence on how your suspension arms move, 10° more lock on the diff can be the difference between understeer and oversteer.

 

The Lola T70 mod is a bit like that, lower the front end or raise the rear just a little and it will tend much more towards oversteer.

 

The main one for me is brake bias, just one tick (1% forward) and it can completely change from oversteery mess in braking zones to perfectly settled.

 

I hardly ever change the setup, except on moby dick. Make the front springs a little bit softer, and the rear a little bit firmer. This removes much of the oversteer.

With some more effort I'm sure the setup can be improved a lot, but this 10 second change already transforms the car from an undrivable understeering monster into a a proper racecar.

 

The craziest things for me are ride height changes on LMP1/LMP2/Formula cars (though Kunos LMPs aren't as sensitive as what I've worked on). 5 mm at the front can be the difference between a high downforce and a low downforce setup...