The Ferrari SF15-T power unit & driving advice.

What do you mean? If you're asking for more game content in form of Formula cars without KERS/ERS there's several Formula 1/2/3 cars already in the game. Check the Ferrari, Lotus and Tatuus brands.

 

OK, it's not the SF-15T, but I still thought this annotated onboard vid of Rosbergs Suzuka pole lap was interesting enough to post here. It really shows how high the cockpit workload is. Also the grip and turn in on these cars is beyond incredible. Watch him pitch the car in at Degner 1, amazing.... (47secs in )



PS... Suzuka remains a beast of a track, expensive licence or not a scanned version in AC would be dreamy... Sigh...

 

It's insane. I always find it amusing when they change BB from 55 for example to 55.5 or 56. Seriously, how much difference does that make?

 

It makes a difference, beleive me.

Well it depends, if for example 55 is the 'ideal' bias setting, ie. where in a straight line, both the fronts and rears are reaching their limits of traction at the same time, same amount, then just 1% over or under that is enough for it to not be balanced. However, if you are being ultra conservative and are at say 65% bias, then going up or down 1% will make very little difference, the fronts are still going to be locking well before the rears.

 

I bet the engineers also look at the data from the car and recommend using specific BB in a given braking zone, thus making braking as efficient as possible (in theory).

 

Yep definitely, there are a lot of variables as to what its the optimal BB, type of corner, surface, downfill/uphill, load transfer (different for harder stops than smaller stops) etc.

Its too much for me to think about when racing, I just don't have the mental capacity. I usually find what gives me the best stopping power in a straight line (usually moving BB rearwards a fair bit), then doing a lot of laps and maybe moving it forwards till I'm comfortable for all corners in a lap. Then in a long race, I might have to move it a small amount depending on tyre wear to a lesser extent fuel load.

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One thing I found interesting was on F1 steering wheels, they are actually able to not only adjust BB on the go (like we can), they can set presets to switch to - pretty useful is one sector requires one BB but the rest are better with another, means just 2 changes a lap rather than having to move up and down each 0.5%. Would be a nice feature for the SF15 in AC.

 

I find small brake balance changes make a big difference in AC though. If I can feel the difference between, say 55 and 56, it doesn't surprise me that someone who'll probably be this years WDC would be adjusting in samller increments.

 

There's one thing about the SF15-T which i find very weird and works differently than every other car in AC, it's not a bug nor i can affirm that it's unrealistic or anything like that.

But for whatever reason the rear ride height adjustment in this car works with units of 0.5 cm, every other race car with adjustable ride height have adjustments of 0.1, heck the front end of the SF15-T has 0.1 adjustments, but the rear has this "brutish" 0.5.
The F138? 0.1 units front and rear.

I find that somewhat weird and makes it hard to work with, specially given how sensitive it is to ride heights.

 

Was thinking about the fuel regs for the 2015 cars, and noticed this:

So from what I understand, that's 100kg of fuel (or 133.5 litres), from lights out to checkered flag. So that implies you are allowed to comsume more fuel on the way to the grid (plus formation lap), and then the in lap at the end. This would means a larger fuel tank than the 133 litres we have now.

Right now, we have a maximum of 133 litres, meaning for a full 52 laps of Silverstone (for example), we'd have less fuel to use per lap than real life to compensate for the outlap, formation lap and in-lap.

What I'm getting at is I think the fuel tank is too small Though I may be reading the regs incorrectly, so I stand to be corrected.

 

You are reading the regulations correctly. But no, I think the fuel tank capacity is correct. See they don't put 100kg of fuel in the car for every race. They calculate how much they actually need, and races like Monaco, they possibly only need like 90-95kg of fuel. Therefore 100kg tank is enough to cover the formation laps and cooldown laps. I think Russia is pretty much the only track where teams struggle with that 100kg.

It's not smart to put a larger fuel tank in the car than they actually need, because it eats away precious space inside the car. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that Mercedes have an even smaller tank than that, since their fuel effiency is very good.

 

Yeah, that makes total sense. I hadn't thought of that.

It seems though then that the SF15-T is perhaps not fuel efficient enough in AC - using a fuel consumption app, for most tracks it predicts that a full tank would last usually a few laps short of a full GP.

I'm sure IRL the teams have a lot more to work with in terms of engine maps/mixes etc. allowing them to run more efficiently than we can (although we have engine braking options).

I haven't experimented with lift-coasting to see how much of a difference that makes, though I don't remember hearing much about it last season, so it can't have been that prevalent.

 

With high engine brake, high MGU-K regen and therefore high amount of electric energy plus lift&coast you get to the point you can achieve the race distance with the 100kg fuel. Although Spa is one of the tracks that is always on the high side. i.e. Nürburgring has a lower fuel consumption.

Last year there still was a quite high rate of lift&coast still necessary, the SF15T more than the Mercedes powered cars.

 

Just an addition to my previous post. We don't even have different engine mappings for power, mixtures, etc. and those quite affect fuel consumption too.

 

Is it me or has it lost a lot of grip? High speed corners specially.

Ps:It's disappointing that thus far nothing has been done about it's tire pressures.

 

Could somebody explain what the wheel rate HF/HR is and what are those heave dampers? Are those additional physical dampers or are they identical with normal dampers, but add force?

 

HF stands for heave front and HR as you can probably guess(at least i hope so ) heave rear.

Heave springs are additional springs aimed at controlling the vertical movement of the car, to stop it from bottoming out with the downforce, it will also influence under braking and acceleration.
They can also be called third spring or center spring in case you want to search over the net and read more about it.

Heave dampers are just dampers attached to the heave springs.

 

Thank you a lot for the explanation! I thought so already, but wasn't quite sure. And no, i couldn't figure what the abbreviation stood for, but at least I got the idea right what it could be.

 

Have their been any changes since 1.10 as slower. Possibly out of practices but finding it much harder get good times(Brands, Barca, Monza)

 

Brake balance adjustments are pretty critical in these types of cars especially on a qualy lap. A .5 difference up or down can have a big effect when your very close to the cars limits on braking and this can change corner to corner and also during a stint as fuel drops or tyres wear.

Your wanting to get as much brake force in as possible without locking wheels and quite often you will also want to have a different balance for entry. Some corners it may be ideal to have a tiny rear lock to help rotate the car yet other corners the slightest rear lock will possibly be a big slide or even a spin. Some corners your prone to a big inside front lock also so you will move bias back to avoid this but other parts of track you can have more front brake with no worries about locking the inside front due to different loads on entry.

There are also diff settings that are usually adjustable in these types of cars where you will adjust diff coast or power settings on the fly for specific corners.

 

this is beautiful