First time with Setup

I've been racing for a while with 410 hours at ACC.
I drive the Aston V8. Its very safe and forgiving.
I normally use the aggressive setup then change the tire pressures to get 28 on each after about 5 laps.
My normal lapping pace is 2:22 with a spread of around 0.5 secs.
Thought I would try out playing with setups at SPA today.

I've asked for advice before and haven't played with setups as most advice is don't play until you are 2-3 secs compared to fastest. Since 2:17's are fastest, then I'm 5 secs off.
On the other hand, I've been at this pace for a while and tried slightly different lines, braking earlier, later, more apex speed, earlier on throttle, etc, but cannot get faster than 2:21. I've watched alot of YouTube vids and compared my lines / speeds, and they all look similar (Aris' SPA from Friday easily doing 2:18's while chatting).
Maybe I've plateau'd and this is my actual driving ability pace, or I'm not practicing right.
I'm having alot of fun with the game against AI, online and CP races.

Anyway..

I went to Hotlap mode to see what my changes did.
I started off lapping at 2:22 - 2:23, which is normal for me.
I read the setup guide from Skaven to get pointers.

My driving gives me the impression that I understeer. Main reason for this is Motec indicating is and that I slide on entry to corners when trying to take them fast. If I make sure I slow enough down to avoid sliding, then I lose 0.5-1 second.

I took it slow, changing one thing at a time and drove 2 laps to see the change. As long as the 2 laps were close in timing, then they are valid.

I got down to 2:20.3 & 2:20.4 for my 2 laps with these changes:
Front Toe from -0.1 to -0.3 (both left and right)
Antiroll bar front from 3 to 1
Antiroll bar rear from 3 to 6
Wheel rate front from 145,000 to 165,000
Wheel rate rear from 155,000 to 175,000

After getting these times, I went back to my default setup and lapped in
2:21.3 & 2:21.4


Telemetry shows that I'm only faster in a couple of corners


I'm going to get round to watching the vids that Skaven mentioned, but reading is easier for me than watching, which is why I only started.

Are the changes that I made valid, or do they contradict each other?
I know that if it makes me faster by helping my driving style or just placebo, then its good as faster is faster.

 

I'm in the same position, lapping spa at 2:22.. with the LMS EVO. I'll try your changes and see how they go.

 

There is a good video, from which i will take how to make a setup, and put it in the Guide, it is called Let's make a custom setup, with Aristotelis, and it will help you better understand everything from the guide, implemented in the actual setup.



I will update the guide in the next few days with "setup" chapter, be sure to download it when it's up

It is a good thing you made progress, thou, well done. Spa is one of the hardest to master, i think. I may be wrong, but it is very hard for me too, i need to sqeeze a lot to even make it in 2:19's...

And with setup changes, be sure to do more than 2 laps.

 

I did my first 20min race yesterday with this setup and I got 2:21.1 - 2:21.9 throught, which is awesome for me.

It took around 1 hour of driving for me to get this, which is probably lucky.
I'm gonna watch Aris' vids make changes.


Side thing is that this is a setup for AMR Vantage V8 with my driving style.

 

Well, of course, if you don't have the mechanic, you must be one, for your car and your driving style, that is the imperative.

Listen to what Aris says, what to watch while testing the setup, there is bunch of little things you can try, and always, always do just one thing.

Basically, you have a problem, you may do Anti Roll Bar changes, but don't do ARB changes, plus toe, plus dampers, you will never know which one did better, and which one did worse for the car handling. And always check your tyre pressures, because they will change.

Change one thing, test the car for 4, 5 laps, try to be consistent, see what changes did. If it has gotten worse, go back to the previous setting, try something else, try again a few laps. If the change did good, leave it, or push it until you see worsening effect. Best way to make it better.

 

Skaven,

I procedurally went step by step, changing one thing to see if it made it better or worse. I only did 2 laps, but the laps needed to be close in time.
My mindset was to reduce turn-in understeer.
I started with Toe from -0.1 to -0.2, then to -0.3. Since -0.4 is max, I went to the next item on the guidelines to see what else I could do. This was ARB, which I changed, then since that went down close to min for front and max for rear, I went to dampers.

What I need to do is to estimate the benefit per change.
I was running out of time, which is why I didn't remove the toe after changing ARB and went straight to dampers, really just to see what they did.
At the end, I went back to the original to validate that I wasn't just getting better on the track.
Throughout all testing, the tire pressures were fine. I was hotlapping to try to remove the tires from the equation. I guess I'm not taking into consideration that if a setup change overheats my tires after 2 laps though.


I know that this is a long process and that I skipped a step, but I'll go back and rectify this.

I'll watch Aris' vid as that will be great and I'm sure I'll get more out of it since I've gone over a few things.

Thanks immensely for your guide. It helped me to at least find 3 items that I can play with instead of a huge number of variables and 'what to change'.
Cheers mate

 

No problem, glad it helped

Yeah, tyres temp constantly change....with changes in settings, so, be careful. At the end, that is the whole point, fast, good handling, optimal tyre temps. Have fun!

The video will help tremendously, too.