UKGTL Season 20 Cobra -v- Corvette - Mid-Ohio - Mar 2

[EvilClive]

After reading Erlings last paragraph...…
Maybe, if I want to challenge the dynamic duo who always seem to be out of reach for my limited talents, I should reduce my simracing commitments. I currently race 4 times per week ( 2 X GPL, Sun & Tues, then 2 X GTL  Mon & Wed) and rarely do any preparation or practice for any of them, which probably explains a lot  . But I do enjoy the competition..and it is for fun.  

Other than doing a quick check that I have the correct circuit and car set ready for UKGTL, within the preceeding 12/24hrs, all of my race prep is done in the 30 mins before each race for GPL and GTL. The only exception might be ( if free time allows, or my wife is monopolising the tv remote  ) when the server check shows up a totally new and complex circuit. Then I might spend enough time to at least learn which way the next corner goes, but that never gets as far as fine tuning setups/setting fast laps etc.
With all my races I usually take a look at the fastest laps displayed above the race post in SROU and use that as a target time in the 30 mins before the race to judge where I am.
 FWIW I rarely bother with a qualifying setup as I personally find them misleading. If I set a qually lap on race fuel, then I have a fair indication of where I am vs the other cars. If all have set their time on race fuel, then I have a true comparison, but if some have set their grid time on very low fuel, then I should be much closer ( or possibly faster) in the race. Also, my poor brain does not have to adapt to a "heavy" car in the first few laps of the race, where there are already enough reasons to get things wrong  

[Geoffers]

Like Clive I race several times a week, 2 GTL races & 1 or 2 Raceroom events & also since Christmas I have been doing a number of races on the Raceroom ranked servers, although not recently with my steering wheel problems. I know most of the circuits we use, so not often a need to learn a circuit & I have setups for most of the cars we use, so just a matter of finding the last setup for a particular car & adapting it for the particular circuit. So usually 30-40 minutes practice with a car is plenty to prepare for a race, in fact once I have done one or two setup adjustments I get bored of just driving around trying to go faster or improve the setup & move on to something else. So it is only when using a new car or circuit that I spend extensive time practicing.

[Erling G-P]

We each have different ways of approaching this obviously - if I raced 4 times a week, I would have to give up my day job!!  (May be given up for me soon, as there's no work currently, but that's an entirely different story  ).

I wish I was 'naturally fast' and could get by with next to no practice, like you and a certain alien I believe.  If I want a good result however, and I have enough of a competitive mindset to want that, then I need practice, and lots of it.  If I work on setups, which is still very much a black art to me, I need a lot of laps to judge if the changes I made, made things better or worse, unless it has a very profound and immediate effect, and it seldom has.   As I like to know what I'm up against, I often run full stints, or even full race distances in practice, to see how bad tyre wear gets, and perhaps work out a pit strategy, if one is needed.

Qualifying I usually do on a lighter fuel load, as I'm almost always faster in a lighter car. Fuel load is usually the only difference between race and qual setup though - I'm not advanced enough to change other things!

In addition, we've increasingly been moving towards multi-race, multi-car events, which requires even more preparation time.  Now it's not unusual to have to prepare 2 or even 3 cars, and in the Australian series you can pick the 3 out of 5 each event - can you imagine how time consuming it is for someone with my approach ?   

Today's series, with multi-class, multi-car options is almost just as bad, unless you just pick a random car/class and stick with it.

You guys often laud my consistency; well I guess anyone doing so many practice laps ought to be consistent.. 

[Geoffers]

I have a setup guide that I printed out from NoGrip many years ago that I use. I will reproduce the main part of it below, it may help some of you. I have another much more comprehensive one that I obtained from another website, but I find it a bit too confusing so rarely consult it. Before using this guide you really need to determine where the car is not responding as you would like.

Here it is:

Understeers into corner
Soften front bump
Stiffen rear rebound
Soften front springs
Harden rear springs

Oversteers into corner
Stiffen front bump
Soften rear rebound
Harden front springs
Soften rear springs

Understeers mid-corner
Soften front roll bar
Stiffen rear roll bar

Oversteers mid-corner
Stiffen front roll bar
Soften rear roll bar

Understeers on exit
Soften front rebound
Stiffen rear bump

Oversteers on exit
Stiffen front rebound
Soften rear bump

Caster – more generally helps turn in but you can go too far, keep increasing until it feels like it is not improving then go back a touch.

Tyre pressures – even temperature spread across the tyres when hot.

Camber – set so that tyre temps are a few degrees hotter on the inside.

Front toe – a little negative at the front helps turn in.

Rear toe – more positive helps to control oversteer, use 0 on low powered cars.

Brake bias – Keep moving to rear to help turn in until car gets unstable on the brakes, then go back a couple of percent towards the front.

[Erling G-P]

Thanks for that Geoffers - looks like it could be a great help, so much appreciated!

[EvilClive]

Oh!! so that is where I have been going wrong...…………………………...like everywhere!!! lol 

[Wiltshire Tony]

What's the setting for winning races?

[Geoffers]

What's the setting for winning races?

That'll be 'Go faster than everyone else'!