Generic Tuning advice needed

Hi, I'm in a casual hotlapping competition with friends. We give ourselves a month to get the fastest time on a car/track combo. We don't get that much time on the game so a month gives enough time to really get to have fun with a car and learn a track.

This month is the Ferrari 458 GT2 on Barcelona GP, both car and track are amazing.

I started off getting 2 mins plus times, but over the month I've got it down to 1.54.something. The fastest so far in the competition is less than a second from this 1.53.something. I know I can beat my ghost as most of the way through I'm ahead of it, but somehow I just can't repeat the closing stages from my best run. I'm now extremely consistent and pretty much get 1.55-1.54 on every run.

Now this is my conundrum, I set up a race weekend on hard mode with 15 opponents and started the qualifying sessions. Without doing a run myself I noticed that all the ai beat my time, with the fastest being 1.47.. On very hard, they're even quicker. I actually thought I was doing well before this!

I then went into replay mode and took the camera of the fastest car and reviewed his fasted lap from the in car view so I could see both his shifts and the speed (mph) at which he shifts. The fuel he carried was the same as mine, and the speed at which he shifts a gear was the same as mine however he appeared to reach that speed quicker than me. So my conclusion is that his car is accelerating quicker than mine was.

Does anyone have any advice as to how/why this is. With my current set up (As mentioned), I'm consistent and couldn't think of anyway where I could gain 6 seconds +

My tires are hot after a lap (Front left hot after first turn) but I've not been able to dial this out.

Thanks

 

Because the AI is bugged?

Edit : just checked qualifying times for real world GT3 cars, and they are around 1:47, so that should be doable.

It's probably just because you are at the limit of your talent.

 

>>It's probably just because you are at the limit of your talent.

That's more than likely the answer

 

Wheel or controller?

 

I'm controller, the guy who's beating me by sub second is using a wheel.

I'm starting with warm tires in my hotlap and they go red quickly (Front left on first turn, others follow soon). The ai starts cold, has a slow lap then gets the good lap on the 2nd run.

It's possible that their tires are in a better place on 2nd lap than mine are when from staring on warm?

 

Very possibly, front tyres can be tough to manage with a controller, because it's just so easy to have so much steering angle in the corner, where as you wouldn't be able to put in that much steering angle with the wheel, without forcing against the force feedback, so you just end up scuffing the tyres and over heating them.

AC isn't as bad as PCars in this respect, but it's still an issue.

 

Agreed. I use a pad as well and a few days ago I tried the special event with the F40 at Mugello. End of the lap, front tyres' temps were 115-120°C. It's really hard to be smooth with a controller, and consequently the tyres suffer a lot.

 

Thanks, all makes sense.

I believe the tires start at 16psi cold and 25/26 warm. I'm thinking at the start of lap 2 the ai tires could be between 20-22 and be at a better starting point for lap 2 than I am when starting with 25 and quickly rising.

I'll try turning off warm tires, running a lap and seeing how I perform on lap 2 against my starting on warm. May help, may not.

Thanks for your advice

 

I'm not quite sure why a sim like AC can't use the strength of the (apparent) FFB in a particular situation to soft limit the amount (or at least slow it) steering that controller users can apply, it seems such a simple solution to an issue.

That said, some might say the dirty word "assist" because of it...........

 

Hm, I dont think youre supposed to use that low pressure in the tyres on console atm. On PC you are, but thats because of the latest patch that you will get soon. Try to use ~25 in the setup and see what kind of times you get.

 

Hey Doz,

How are things, good to see you over here!

Tyre pressure is a key thing to get right in this game, it can make a huge difference to lap times when you stumble over the "ideal" hot figure, more so than tyre temperature!

Unfortunately finding that figure is a somewhat laborious process, but to me it sounds like you are using under inflated tyres, so gradually increase until you find what is working best.

If you have tyre wear on the peak performance of the tyre will often only last a lap or two (softs or super soft), so better to use tyre warmers and hit hard from the start using the lowest fuel load possible.

Use hotlap mode and restart, rather than running an outlap, set fuel load to minimum and just run two laps. Beware using restart does reset your time!

I'm not much cop in a GT2/GT3 car so not in a position to help further than that.

 

I just looked it up, ideal pressure hot are 35 on gt2 tyres

ideal on gt3 tyres are 33

 

In real life it's not really that straight forward, it's simple in AC because there is a hardcoded ideal pressure variable.

 

If he was driving a gt2 car in real life he wouldnt have asked about how to improve here on the forum anyway so I assumed it was in AC he needed help

 

The AI is using the automatic gearbox - watch the upshifts they are always perfectly timed at the first bar of the red zone. There is also an acceleration advantage with the auto on the Xbox One for certain cars. Try it for yourself and see, change nothing else in the setup just switch on auto gearbox and see if you are faster. If you watch the AI lines the auto box has no risk included for mid corner downshifts and they can also use far more of the kerbs without spinning. If you want to see the difference in auto to manual stability (with stability set at 0% so nothing to do with the stability control settings) attempt to drive your manual car on the grass (you will pirouette) and then try the same in the automatic car, you can drive as normal.

Once you get a setup that works for you on the car you can go faster with the manual gearbox once again. It's an odd situation but one that definitely exists.

 

Bit of a combative reply, but anyway..........

Tyre pressure isn't a set "this is right, this is wrong", lots of variables influence the ideal pressure, including but not limited to, track temp, type of circuit, car weight, fuel load, suspension settings etc.

Not knowing that AC uses a fix variable for ideal pressure could have you barking up a lot of wrong trees.

 

didnt meant my post in a bad way if it sounded like that

 

Exactly.
I should have prefixed the first part of my post with "In real life"

 

A few things:

- A setup may enable you to be quicker because it will be more comfortable, but at 1:53 there is something wrong with your racing lines for sure.
- Try practising with the soft tyres rather the super soft. 17 pressure on all four.
- Minimum final gear ratio + slider on the right for 6th + 5th speed somewhere in the middle between 4th and 6th
- increase TC and rear wing until you don't lose the rear
- be patient with the throttle on most corners

 

The console havent got the latest patch yet so they still want a bit more pressure.