Setup Guide for Beginners

Hm, this may be useful for v3

Setup is going from beginners to advanced with each iteration

 

... here are other insights on anti-roll bars...
Italian: https://trinacriasimracing.wordpress.com/le-barre-antirollio-nelle-auto-da-corsa/
English: https://trinacriasimracing.wordpress.com/the-anti-roll-bars-in-racing-cars/

 

Much appreciated your work!!

 

Thank you so much Skaven! I opened a discussion topic to talk about Ferrari on ACC, give tips and solve some doubts of community. If you want, join us
https://www.assettocorsa.net/forum/index.php?threads/ferrari-driver-expert-open-discussion.70065/

 

You are welcome

 

I've lost about 1-3 sec per lap on all the tracks since the update
So if someone finds a pile of speed bunched up beside the tracks with an AMR logo attached to them, please send it to Kunos or even better assettocorsa.net so I can retrive them when I join the servers again

 

you'll find your speed piles in the M4s
just like my soft AMG dampening

 

Thanks then I know where to look
Before the update I could run nearly all tracks with only slight adjusments to a single setup and still be competitive (atleast to my standard)
Have the game after the last big update been tuned to be more setup dependant for each track and car.. or ?

 

Came back to 1.8.10 after a long break... generally get along fine with the Aggressive Setup on the McLaren 720, but it's a bit oversteery - more precisely, tends to lose the tail on entry, sometimes apex and exit. Exaggerared maybe by Donington and it's uphill/downhill brake zones.

What is the simplest, basic control to balance oversteer/understeer across all corners and corner states? The ARBs?

 

I have found a few things that gave me almost 2 seconds in all tracks. And I would like to share it with you guys.
Of course, this is subjective.
The main goal of this procedure is to decouple setup adjustments in order to not go crazy with random changes.

First of all, you gotta find your best mechanical grip.
Let me explain:
If you watch a replay of your car running and you notice is has a lot of bouncing forward to backwards or it starts bouncing left to right on and on while it goes, it means your mechanical grip is wasted in these movements.
I am currently using the McLaren 650s and what I did was to try to have the front and rear damper travel graph in motec to be overlapped.
In order to do this, I used soft front springs, but high front bumpstop range, and stiffer rear springs with almost minimum rear bumpstop gap.
In this way the damper movement is overlapped and the car has movements only in heave, roll and pitch, without resonating amplifying bouncing all the time. The bumpstops engage at the same point in roll front and rear.
If you use the FFT and PSD graphs, you will see almost identical energy is spread among the four dampers.

After I do that, I tune aero.
First of all I check the ride heights on the straights just before breaking marks.
The car has to be flat or in rake, so that your front tires are ready to turn while you brake, and also to have lots of aero load on the front.
{In order to do this, check you compression travel in the pits, or wherever there is a flat plane on track while the car is stopped, then add these values to your instantaneous damper travels and also add you static ride heights. You will get instantaneous ride heights wheel by wheel. You can subtract the rears to the fronts to get rake amount in millimeters. You can devide it for the car wheelbase and apply the atan function to get the rake angle. You will find maths for motec on the internet. But remember that when you changes spring rates, your steady compression in mm changes, so you will have to adjust your offsets}
Now, I don't know this, but I think every car may have a different rake angle to be the best in one track and maybe another in another track, also because bop and track layout change. On the 650s in Silverstone, having the car flat before breaking makes it neutral, stable and it turns!!!
But stiffen you bumpstop rates for stability. Don't be afraid to set them super stiff!
After you do this, be sure you don't bottom out and adjust your ride heights and fast dampers in order to absorb all bumps and kerbs for the better.
Be sure the car doesn't scratch the ground if it jumps.
The bumps have to be absorbed quickly, so very soft fast dampers values may work, find the hardest that absorbs the most critical bumps or jump well.
If the car is just too low, rise it up, but try to keep the same aero balance value you were comfortable with.
Don't be afraid to use less wing to maintain the same rake angle!
When you will become more experienced with this step, you will be able to find the combination of springs, dampers and ride heights that allows to run the car as low as possible. To get this ability takes time.

Once you got great mechanical and aero balance tune arbs and cambers.
Tuning camber is just like tuning arbs: you can change the balance of grip mid corner, by using relatively more or less camber on the front. As an example, if you are using -4 front and and -3.5 rear (the maximum for this car) and you want, let's say, more front grip mid corner, you can also reduce absolute rear camber, like -4 front and -3 rear.
This depends on the balance you are looking for.
Again it is basically the same as tuning arbs balance.

After all your steady state adjustments are set, you can tune slow dampers and toe as you prefer. There are lots of infos you can easily find on the internet. And for the most, depends on your driving stile.
Same for steering ratio and caster.

The last step is to tune your pressures.
Now this is a bit counter intuitive, so follow me carefully.
Basically at the very start of your setup procedure, you should first adjust your pressures to be in the optimal window. But is it really optimal? And when should you check on track? Are you sure they have to be 27.7 in the finish line? Of course not!
I was struggling replicating abbey as a famous alien did ( it's the new F1 turn 1, the long esse, Silverstone).
This guy had a minimum speed of 209 kmh there, while I had 200kmh minimum speed.
So basically I started checking my pressures just before that corner, instead of checking them of the finish line. Then I set them to be almost equal there (just .2 psi more on the front, same left/right) and BAM! 208kmh minimum speed! Consistently.
They stay within the 27.4 28.2 window during the lap, not the optimal for sure, but I gained 2 tenth only in that corner and as a lucky strike, I gained another 3 tenth in the last two corners, lmao.
This means that it is important to find the critical points in the tracks for each of the setup adjustments. I haven't tried yet, but I this checking pressures just before Schumacher S in Nurburgring may work as well.

Now, the procedure is over, but being a procedure, it never ends. So repeat all again over and over until you find that extra grip you were looking for.

Consider that I am still not sure if you should optimize pressures as the first step, while adjusting camber, or at the end as I mentioned in this post.
Consider also that a particular track may require a specific mechanical behaviour that I may just be ignoring in this post. But this works 100% without any doubt, for me.
The car is always neutral, stable and reacts predictably without fighting me, tire wear is better, degradation has had a substantial improvement and overall my consistency has improved.

Please let me know if this works for you.

Thank you!

 

I forgot to mention braking performance and differential. Also guys forgive my misspellings .
Let's always take Silverstone as a reference.


The main reason I change preload differential setting is to fix traction in the slowest corner. Although this setting has also effects on the behaviour of the car during the whole lap.
I set it only after tuning all steady state adjustments (springs, aero, bars and camber), when I tune slow dampers, starting to reduce TC click after click.
{In Motec i2 pro, you can use the difference between wheel_ speed channels of the rear tires to see when there are important inequalities in grip for those tires. In this channel, you will quickly see if you have a peak and where, if you are spinning only in slow corners, or not. If you are just spinning everywhere, whatever your preload setting is, maybe there is something wrong with steady state adjustments. So you have to go back in the process.}
Always in Silverstone, I check it after the airpin before the back straight, because it is basically the hardest acceleration before a long straight and also the only one in first gear for me.
As you know The lowest you set it, the safer it should be, the higher you set it, the more absolute potential power you might be able to release. But if you spin, of course, it's all wasted.
At first, I play a lot with it, changing like 4 or 5 clicks at a time until I get in a "confortable zone". So I try to find the highest value in this zone the allows me to get on the throttle, let's say all of a sudden, without any significant oversteer that forces me to lift off a bit. So that I feel I am in a zone where I can still increase it or decrease it by just one or two clicks, without changing the behaviour that much, losing confidence.
Then, the rest comes. Preload has also an influence on car's behaviour in the transition from braking to coasting. The lower you set it, the less understeer you should get in this transient, but remember it is not the only setup adjustment that can alter the behaviour in this transition phase, which is why I want to first tune it for the best tracion in the slowest corner. In this phase, I adjust one, two clicks at most and then I just move over.
I am not saying this is always the way to go, this is the way I go, in Silverstone. Having this "trust" in that only first gear acceleration counts, moreover, I consistenly gained four tenth, from the airpin to the overpass in the middle of the backstraight, by just making it easier to go on throttle. Someone who's better then me may want to have more power in other part of the track maybe, cause they have this inner traction control in their ankles, but the principle is the same. They just have different thresholds. But, if we go in Monza, speed is even more important, since it's all stop and go and stop and go, so maybe there you may prefer to have a different mechanical balance that allows you to throw more power out of the corners. So, as always, track layout commands.

Braking performance is another extremely important matter. Getting this right can change completely the way you feel driving the car. I use the BRAKE channel and the ABS channel together with the wheel_speed channel and the brake_temps within the same worksheet to try to understand what's happening or why I'm locking, for instance.
Let's split braking zones in the track between straight braking ones and turn ins.
I want to stay just below or right at lower boundary of the optimal temperature window, at least before that most critical straight braking zone. I open or close brake ducts accordingly. In the chicane of the second sector, back in Silverstone, I feel like I can brake later, if I am in the optimal range during all that long straight braking zone, before turn in. Same for the first airpin after abbey.
Placebo, is it you? Again? I hope not.
Note that one of the reasons why you may be locking, may be that you are getting into the optimal zone in turn in, while for another reason you are also already losing grip. So the brakes will ask for more longitudinal grip, while, instead, you just lost overall grip. Then you lock and so on.
So braking balance comes into account.
Braking balance can be brought rearwards a lot by stiffening your front bumpstop rates. Here, when you are locking, the wheel_speed channel will show it. Having set all the rest already, you want the fronts to lock just before the rears, but you just want to avoid locking. Now. When you turn in, braking, front slow dampers and rear slow rebounds play an important role as well as arbs, spring and aero, depending on the layout of the corner you are approaching and the way you want to approach it. When the braking zone is short and you immidiately turn in, in general, the balance depends entirely, or just a lot more, on aero, springs and arbs. When instead there is a long (looong) turn in, in which you traibrake for a longer time, like in the second to last corner in Silverstone, or last sector in Paul Ricard, then, dampers count more.
I never sacrifice the fact the car has to be flat or in a good rake angle before a braking zone, just to use a more rearwarded bb: you will have less front grip and less rear grip, it makes no sense to me. So when I tune aero, while I'm driving, I also adjust the braking balance to be safe, at this stage, in those "more steady state corners", together with bumstop rates. Note that bumpstop rates, though, influence roll stiffness, so, again, this is another trade off to consider. Later, when I tune dampers and preload, and even later when I change toe settings, I will always try to stay as close as possible to the value I got during the aero process. If I realize I have to go backwards by a lot, then I try stiffening even more the rates, if I have margine, but not by much, and however if I screw up the overall balance by doing so, I stop immidiately and go back. But since you can adjust the bb one the run, try to do this instead. This works well for me as a general approach.
If aero is more important, it's just more important.
Locking is a mess. Different ABS values will give you completely different behaviours, but I don't know anything else about it. I just use ABS at 1 if I can, more if I can't. Although I have been playing with a gamepad long ago and I remember you can avoid locking by lowering braking pressure in the setup menu and let me tell you that not locking gives you better laptimes and consistency. Now. Let me clarify. Never reduce brake pressure: ABS is a smarter way to do the same thing dynamically and more efficiently. I'm saying that I think you can gain time and consistency, by finding the one that fits you the most, at least. Maybe, having ABS working when you enter or exit the optimal temperature range is the way to go, but I'm just guessing. To honest, getting better at braking is the way to go. When it comes to driver prefence settings, better drivers will be just be better. Maybe electronics are just not good enough to fit anyone's issues . But knowing how ABS works, when it should work and why, I think is an advantage. I will study all this and hopefully, Sir Placebo won't come around.

 

You can use ARB's, you can use Wheelrate, preload differential, rear height and rear wing, toe, check the guide, it may have some answers for you, at the bottom you have the "cheat sheet"

 

This also may help:

 

I had overlooked that... needed more time to process the Guide. Now that I have finally managed to understand most of it, it's really, really great!

Thanks for the effort, it adds a lot to the game. Would be neat if this could be integrated into the UI.

 

Check this one out:

 

Since lately there has been a lot of talk about toe ...
https://trinacriasimracing.wordpress.com/how-toe-angle-affects-handling-in-motorsport-and-acc/
https://trinacriasimracing.wordpress.com/la-convergenza/

 

Here you will find more information about camber:
https://trinacriasimracing.wordpres...acing-cars-and-on-assetto-corsa-competizione/
https://trinacriasimracing.wordpress.com/la-campanatura-o-angolo-di-inclinazione-della-ruota/

 

Thanks Alex, all helpful links

 

Very helpful for the more theory inclined.

 

Skaven,
Thank you very much for this fantastic guide. As a newcomer to ACC, it is a must.