Looking for some help

hi guys, i just signed up here because i’m an happy assetto corsa ps4 owner! I’m from italy (sorry for my English) and i’m 35. I got gt sport and a Thrustmaster t150, after one month i decided to give a try on assetto corsa and it was love at first sight!! I just need some help about cars setup because i’m not good at all! Too many parameters to modify and too many numbers make me confused, so i’d like to know where should I begin from? I mean, the most common parts to set depending of car attitude, i hope someone can help me to get better at this game

 

There are tutorials on youtube, the detail of setups changes are not exactly the same depending on the game so try to look for one for Assetto Corsa.

I'm not good but I can give you tips about the first things I change. Once you have a basic setup you can change other things and come back on things you touched, but it's better to change one setting at a time and then drive a bit. For me the most important setting when you start is the anti roll bar but you first will have other basic values to change.

The 2 first basic thing are the tyre pressure and the gearbox. Open the tyre app, drive a few laps and look at the tyre pressures in psi. If it's mostly red the pressure is too high, if it's blue it's too low. Modify the pressure in the setup menu and drive a few laps until it's mostly green. Pressure and temperature are linked but it seems more important to focus on tyre pressure in Assetto Corsa. For the gear box ratios, usually you try to reach the max speed on the track with the highest rpms in the max gear. So if you have 6 gears, you can scale all the ratios so that you're in the red in 6th gear at the end of the fastest straight in the track. Keep a small margin to keep accelerating in case you want to overtake.

Then for the bump stops (suspensions advanced) put them to the highest values, so this way you won't touch the bumpstops. Bumpstops are for very specific cases that you can't fix otherwise, but if you lower them and you touch the bumpstops in any other case you will lose your car. So put them to the max and forget about them.

The brake balance is very important but it depends a bit on the setup so try to get it roughly to a good value and modify it again later to a better value. Low values means rear wheels brake more and higher values means the front wheels brake more. Deactivate the ABS and do a lap, and in the harder brake point brake very hard and in the replay look at which wheels were the first to lock. When the brake balance is too much on the front you'll lock the front wheels but the car will stay straight, while if the balance is too much on the rear the car will spin when braking because rear wheels will lock first. Usually by default the brake balance is too much on the front because it's more forgiving if you brake too hard. So drive a lap and brake hard at the hardest brake point, the best brake balance is when all 4 wheels lock at the same time and you don't lose the rear.

Then when adjusting other settings, remember to always readjust the camber and toe values so that they keep plausible values (read the realtime values not the values you put), read the tips telling what toe values should be but usually it is between -0.10 and 0 but close to 0.0 for the front and between 0 and 0.10 for the rear. So every time you change a value in other settings, modify the toe and camber to keep the same values you had.

For the ride height, you'll have more grip with a higher car but it won't be as fast and precise as will a low ride height. Usually you try to have it as low as possible and in the end if you don't manage to get more grip you can raise the rear a bit or both.

For the aero, the important setting is the rear aero because it's what will give you higher top speed, then the front aero will not slow you but it will give you grip when turning so it will change the behavior of the car. So try to get the rear aero as low as possible until the car spins in an uncontrollable way. Other settings can also make the car spin but if the aero gets too low you'll spin faster so you'll understand that it needs to be higher. Higher rear aero also makes the car harder to turn so if you put higher rear aero you will probably need to help the car turn with other settings (like softer front suspensions).

So very important settings are the anti roll bar and springs. Overall, an idea is it's a balance between the front and the rear, if you stiffen the front it's like softening the rear. Usually in Assetto Corsa, for most cars it's better to have the lowest rear springs possible and low front springs, just 1 or 2 clicks to the right. Then the most important setting in Assetto Corsa for the handling is the anti roll bars, that's what you should spend time on. Usually it's better if values stay in the same range (like 3 front 2 rear or 6 front 5 rear). Higher values are better for tracks with long and fast turns like Barcelona and lower values are better for tracks with slower turns, like most tracks in Assetto Corsa. Lower front will make you turn easier but it'll be less precise.

Then the dampers, compressions and rebounds are for tweaking the behaviour of the car. They won't directly make you faster but they will help you turn or accelerate. Here it's also a balance between the front and the rear, if you stiffen the front compression it's like softening the rear rebound. Overall, softening the front compression will make you turn easier when braking and softening the rear compression will give you more grip when reaccelerating but higher rear compression is faster. So it's a balance. But try to get other settings right first because then you'll spend too much time redoing compressions and rebounds everytime you change something else.

Then the differentials are also very important but it's usually something you change in the end. The power differential is for reaccelerating, if you put it low it will be easier to turn when reaccelerating but with higher values you'll be faster but you'll slide more. The braking differential helps stabilise the car when braking, it's important to help you brake but don't put it too high, try to put it just when you feel it helps you.

Then toe and camber are important but it's important to have something decent, especially with toe. If your toe isn't right it will really change the behaviour of the car because it's what straightens the car when you brake and reaccelerate. Camber will change the tyre temperatures and can make you a bit faster (not much), in theory it's important, but if you just try to find values that are faster it will be ok. There's a big margin of ok values, so you will probably end up with something ok without going into details. If you want to be more precise, look at the inner, middle and outer temperatures while driving and change the camber values to change the difference of temperatures between these. If you're in a race car, the tyres deforms more than in a street car or an old car so the difference should be higher in a race car, I don't remember values but the difference is something like 10-15 degrees between inner and outer temperatures. But again, just look at what makes you faster while having plausible values and you'll be ok.

All in all I hope it helps. What's important when driving to tweak the setup is to look at apps to see if the car slides a bit in particular places (which means the setup should probably be a bit softer) and to understand if you're losing grip in the front or the rear wheels. It's not always easy but it's very important because if you think the rear slides while you're losing the front you'll make the wrong changes in the setup. If you're interrested you should try to watch videos about setups in Assetto Corsa because they will talk about what it does in a real car so it will help you understand how it can help in your setup.

 

Omg i feel numb..you said you aren’t good at it, wow.. you look great at!! I’d say it’s too much for me, i wanted to know just few things about, for example i pick a car and a track, i hit the track pushing my car to max and i try to realize what attitude can’t let me be enough fast. For example what should I modify if I realize the car understeers? What if it oversteers? What if it’s slow entering a corner? What if it’s slow exiting a corner?

 

The anti roll bar settings will help you with the understeer and oversteer and it will also make you faster. It's an important setting. About entering and exiting a corner it's rather compressions and rebounds, but it will help tweaking the behaviour it won't make you faster, and it's not that important. You should really change the tyre pressure when driving a car because it's not always at the good value, you'll lose grip and understeer or oversteer, and wrong pressures also makes you lose time. And edit gear ratios too because obviously it's the main thing that effects speed. Brake balance is also important but it's more something that you do alone in single player because it's hard to do it in multiplayer with other people around.

 

@chuky wow what a wall ps: ayy less of a wall, but it's sooo hard haha

In general for any car in AC - in order of importance:
- Firstly make sure pressures are ok, open tyre app, drive a lap or 2 and look at color of the pressure numbers, blue = add more pressure to that wheel in setup, red = subtract, till you get green-ish for the majority of the lap.
- Choose tyre compound, look at tyre app , if your tyres are more blue take softer, if overheating consider harder tyres or drive less aggresively. (hypercar road tyres are ~ semislicks, "I" tyres are basically slicks). Then check pressures again.
- Take look at the electronics of the car, does it have traction control - if so increasing it's value or disabling it = more acceleration but less stability at corner exit.

- If it's a street car increase negative camber at front (often you want max negative). If car is not too stable and understeery increase rear as well. If car is too stable add negative toe rear (look at the live values on the right to know in which direction to change the slider) If car has spring or anti roll bar setting, soften front for less understeer.

- If it's a race car cambers and toe are often close to optimal so you should focus on aerodynamics - try different wing angles - more front = less rear = more oversteer. If even with max setting you lack front downforce you can try lowering the front ride height a bit. And ofc for faster tracks you want less wing overall.
- General balance you set by changing anti roll bars - softer front = stiffer rear = more oversteer, you can use springs for that too but be careful when changing rear springs or ride height as it can mess up alignment, aerodynamics and how suspension works in unpredictable way.

Fine tuning corner entry only (no impact on general balance): for more understeer/stability => coast differential increase, lower ABS setting, brake balance forward, more rear camber (you might need to soften rear antiroll bar (ARB) alongside camber change to keep car balance, but not always), more downforce, more rear toe-in coupled with small rear ARB stiffening, rise the front a bit (changes how splitter behaves). For oversteer use opposite setting.
Fine tuning corner exit only: - for more understeer/stability => lower traction control setting, more downforce, less rear camber coupled with softer rear ARB, change power differential settings (keep it around 20-40% but do try other values, can go both ways), change gear ratios - increase speed at given gear (or decrease enough so that you are using higher gear in given corner), change rear toe coupled with rear ARB change (more negative toe + softer ARB, or reverse) can go both ways, you have to experiment.
Remember that some issues can't be helped normally, like a diffuser stalling at low speed or track having unusual camber in given corner. The above ideas work for general tendencies, fixing some specific case needs a lot of knowledge or more often than not plainly different driver approach.

Lastly, each car in AC has a character to it, don't try to immediately modify it to suit your driving. Take your time and get to understand it - cars are often fast by exploiting something and it shows in their handling, if you try to force your driving on it by setup you might be missing out on it. And most default racecar setups can go up to 1s off the fastest laps when pressures/compounds/basic aerodynamics and gearing is set correctly, rest is in the driver.

 

A small thing, is in general you have many choices at first for the setup because you can start with an idea and then balance the car with other settings, but there are a few tracks with a special corner that requires something in particular. For example on Spa, the goal is to make a setup that allows you to pass flat out in Eau Rouge/the Raidillon and Blanchimont because it makes you gain a lot of time if you don't release the accelerator, and then tweak the setup.

In general, I noticed that good drivers can drive any setup and make a good time, they don't gain as much time with the setup. Also good drivers seem to have setups that are not that safe, maybe it's because it's faster to always be on the limit even if you slide sometimes, rather than having a safe setup where you're not at the limit. When you make a setup you also learn it on the track and you get better, so it's a process of going back and forth making changes, getting better, taking more risks, making the setup less safe, learning to be more precise etc.

 

(Being a bit off topic here, as i agree on your answer to OP) Fast drivers don't slide thou. Everybody say "smooth driving makes you faster" which I'd actually say is opposite of reality, it's the act of driving really fast that makes the driver look smooth. That is, the ideal line requires smooth changes of throttle and brake and that means less stability problems, while smoother transitions are slower so more oversteery setup helps speeding them up to keep the car tightly to the line.
In this context, from the pov of a "faster" driver, fast setups are actually pretty safe as they allow to gently follow ideal line just under the limit, in contrast "safe" setups require more heavy handed pushes to keep near limit which risks a slide.

This is something that dawned on me recently when reading some of the stuff from https://www.paradigmshiftracing.com/ (there was recent post on these forums with video from their site regarding racing lines) they offer some great insight .

ps: oh we are in console section lol, just noticed. rip

 

For example i’ve been freaking out in the second career event: bmw z4 e89 at nurburgring.. considering i turned off traction control but i can handle other rwd and gt3 cars, but this car is almost impossible to handle, as soon as i touch the brake the car starts to slip, even the throttle is harder to handle compared to other rwd cars. Any advice?

 

Yeah, not sure how it is on console but firstly make sure you have good pressures (should be around 25 PSI in setup on the semislick tyre)

Now for oversteer during braking and corner entry you can:
- brake at maximum letting the car be stabilized by ABS, it might be a bit counterintuitive and it's a bad habit to learn, but treating brake pedal like on/off switch will help for this car in particular.
OR turn off ABS and let it be stabilized by front tyre locking (do try to avoid it by threshold braking).
- you can also increase rear camber significantly and add positive rear toe.

Beside that, Z4 has relatively little power so to be fast it needs to be nimble, and that is hard to control by nature. It's this car's flavor and what makes it fast ... if you are totally lost you can also overpressure front tyres to get rid of front grip (like 40 PSI), that will tame the car but also slow it down a bit.

 

i feel the car bouncing, my first thought was (correct me if i’m wrong), get dampers harder, but I realized that i can’t hit the dampers, the only part i can handle are tyres and suspensions

 

What we feel in sim as bouncing, would feel like a elongated crash in real car. I have no idea where in early career you can get the car to bounce but even having wide selection of dampers would not help.

 

Ok maybe i explained a bad way, I don’t know how to say in English but the feeling is that as soon i touch the brake even on straight the front of the car starts skating.. i’m on the second event of the carrer. Anyway is there a guide that says what to modify when the car has a kind of attitude? For example: if the car oversteers at beginning of corner you gotta modify this..

 

What i got easily is about tyres pressure and gear ratio, what i find very hard is how fixing a bad attitude of the car, a kind of guide would help me out

 

I've already wrote every possible option you have to fix the car, if you do everything at once, it will tame it somewhat but it won't turn it into another car. Plus Nurburgring is notorious for having long entry corners so it compounds the issues and you can't change the corners either.

You have to fix your driving, that is you have to use both steering and brakes at the same time, don't wait for it to skate, steer it so it won't.

edit: there are some guides on the internet, but most of them are real trash, like completely wrong in places, so take everyting you find with a lot of salt. I saw one decent earlier, brb ill try to find it.

 

Oh i’m sorry, i saw you already wrote about, but i got a bit confused, please could you write it down a bit clearer? Something like:

Oversteer at corner: decrease this, or increase this
Oversteer at exit corner: decrease this or this

 

https://www.paradigmshiftracing.com/racing-basics/racecar-setup-flowchart
this is decent but not that helpful for AC.

This is ok-ish, brake balance is backwards, camber on exit can be backwards depending on car, front toe can be backwards depending on track.
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd....565/4C51B8A269E9BCAB619788E677CBD8B3A650D6BD/

Also don't listen to any damper adjustment in these kind of guides, not that they are wrong, but as i've mentioned earlier about bouncing and crashing - in sim (without hundreds of hours of experiance) you won't feel any difference other than dampers impairing grip which leaves the adjustment with as much accuracy as a coin toss.

 

Ok

For street cars only - treat understeer as negative oversteer and vice versa, so every option below can influence both oversteer and understeer.

Code:

Front camber:   more negative = oversteer , more cornering power
Rear camber:    more negative = understeer, stability

Rear toe:           more negative (not setup value, the live one on the right!!) = more ovesteer, more cornering power, less stability

Pressures:         more than optimal front = understeer, more stability
                   more than optimal rear = oversteer, less stability

Front springs and antirollbar:    less = oversteer
Rear springs and antirollbar:     less = understeer

 

That’s perfect!! So i gotta focus just on few things!! Thank you so much.. just one doubt: i watched a viperconcept’s videos where he fixed a car modifying dampers, but you recommend not to touch em..

 

There is pretty big difference in how car moves around (how it's driven) between fresh driver and experienced one. Effectively the handling contribution of dampers can be very different depending on driver skill. Therefore setting up dampers is more of a coin toss weather the change influences the car in the way driver wants it.

Don't get me wrong, It CAN be done, just that the underlying reasons on why it was written in the guide might be completely different to why it actually helped the driver.
More often than not the main contribution of dampers to stability, under or over steer will actually be plain grip gained/lost - it works exactly like you use tyre pressure or springs to control balance.

For the less experienced drivers it would work like this:
More bump damping over flat surface = less grip, if it's on front tyres = understeer, if it's on rear tyres = oversteer. Over bumpy surface more bump can help with grip if rebound is low.
Rebound is pretty important for traction - so over bumpy surface more rebound = less grip, but on flatter surfaces more rebound can give grip if bump is low.

Also dampers do have a best grip range for given track (or even part of it), where less or more damping (either bump or rebound) lowers grip, this range will change from car to car - some cars need more damping, some need less to achieve the same results. The only way to know how it will affect the car is to experiment.

 

First of all, b4 changing ANYTHING, ask yourself a few questions.
1. Do you really have the line nailed?
2. Can you drive consistent lap times over 20 to 50 laps?
What about your entry, mid corner and exit speeds?
3. If the above is to your satisfaction, ask yourself if you are comfortable with the overall handling.
Only then put time in to tune the basics, I.e. tyre pressures, gearing, camber and toe.
If you answer 1 and 2 negative DONT Touch the setup at all, otherwise it will confuse the hell out of you!
4. The advanced setup, chassis tuning and so forth is a black art only understood by Aliens...
On most public servers you will beat most competitors by sheer driving skills.
Setups is for beating the upper 3rd of the bunch

Learning to control the car in any condition is the most valuable tip I can give you!

Have fun.