Automobilista Time Trial Challenge - Season Completed!

I understand your point. But I think the spirit of the competitive time trial is to truly showcase driving talent. They could use a locked set-up, but people would complain that it didn't suit their style. This way, everyone has access to the identical cars, tracks and conditions to truly separate the wheat from the chafe. Of course, there are good drivers who know little of set-ups and good set-up engineers who can't drive in the top 5%. This TT is clearly favouring the drivers.

I'd love to see a set-up contest where everyone drives the default set-up to their fastest ability and then a system of alternate set-ups gets utilized and ranked by how much it improves how many drivers from the default. The end-winner would be the set-up that had the largest total impact/improvement. But set-up experts may not want their secret sauce shared.

If removing the sync in Steam addresses this issue for those who do not want to share and it doesn't interfere with anything else in AMS, I think the situation is resolved. There will still be the top drivers who can beat the rest of us regardless of whether we are using their set-up. My experience is that the less talented among us often do worse with a highly strung, super fast set-up anyway, so talent will always eventually rise to the top no matter what set-up or set-up restriction is used.

 

On the subject of setup sharing, I can say that most of the setups that I have downloaded have not made me quicker. Some are more stable and would be a better race setup, but few of them have made me quicker over 1 lap. What I have found to be more beneficial is replays of the quick lap. That way you can see what others are doing that you may not have thought about, Lines, gears, braking points. That sort of thing has made me quicker in the past.

 

Good ideas there. I like the idea of making this fixed-setup, and I like your setup contest idea a lot too.

As far as I'm aware, disabling the sync doesn't mess with anything else. In fact, I found out how to do it from a post made in Reiza 51 by @Luis Miguel, a moderator, so I doubt it's frowned upon by Reiza.

As to your final paragraph, certainly a big factor in speed is being able to tune your car to extremely fine tolerances to perfectly suit what you want to do with it, so it's intensely personal. Back in the AC beta, I was battling back and forth with a friend of mine in the MP4-12C GT3 Pro Rank. We were equal on pace and had some great fights, but I couldn't drive his setup and he couldn't drive mine. This is why it's pretty surprising that @Matty28, a human bean different to myself, was able to do so well with my setup (I'm fairly sure anyway, I checked and it seemed the same except for steering lock and rotation); it's like someone's tried on a suit tailored to me and fit perfectly.

and SLIGHTLY better

I will end you for this

 

I know basically nothing about making setups and have no interest in making them, I just want to get in and drive. Apart from the potential winnings, the fact I can download the top guys setups was what attracted me to this challenge because I have always wondered what I'd be able to do on a level playing field regarding setup since that's something I've never had on these games. I'm usually stuck at 101-103% on Assetto Corsa due to the lack of a good setup.

I downloaded like 8 setups from the top guys on here and all of them felt fine tbh, most of them were an improvement over no setup. I can tell small differences between each of the setups I've tried and I'm sure that's what makes setups vary in performance for one person but not the other. For me Ethan's and Horizon's setups were the ones I improved most with. Both of them felt substantially better at changing direction and turning in while adding a bit of oversteer so I could manage a micro-slide at the rear and get the power down earlier due to changing direction quicker. It made consistency harder but by just repeatedly lapping I'd fluke a lap where everything goes right every now and then. It took me about 300 laps to get that 51.942, probably 50% of them I either crashed on or made big mistakes. If I'd done 300 laps without the setup I'd probably have done those 300 laps a lot quicker, but also would never have got below about 53 seconds for an individual lap.

 

I really don't understand your final sector. I was -0.068 ahead at the first, -0.082 ahead at the second, but was behind by two tenths in the final sector and you barely grabbed it back.

Here's a quick cap of how I handle the final sector, I could see a couple of hundredths left in it but two tenths is unreal. I can't cut the kerbs any more than I do or it'll give me a violation, and the yellow sausage upsets the car too much anyway. I get on the power as hard as I can without it wheelspinning after the first left-hander and the final hairpin.

 

Haha, all of my previous bests the last sector was the one that I was like 2 tenths behind but this time it flipped around.

"I can't cut the kerbs any more than I do or it'll give me a violation, and the yellow sausage upsets the car too much anyway."
That may be true 99% of the time

I can't even beat 52.5 tonight, don't know what's going on...

 

Wow, thanks, guys!! I tried Ethan's and Horizon's set-ups and could immediately feel the distinct difference between them and my own. Turns out Horizon's was a closer match to my driving style and after immediatey surpassing my best time, I tweaked it a bit more to my liking and went even faster. Moved almost 100 places up the ranking (after about 15-20 laps or so).

I am still no threat to the really fast guys, but at least the car is much more driveable and controllable. If I wanted to spend the time to do 300, I am sure I would hit it lucky with a lap that nailed every turn and brake point. I might be in the top 50 if I did that

This is what this contest is all about. I have zero chance of being first, but I learned a lot about the stock car and how to set it up. I already knew the track well, but never have I hated sausage curbs more than in this car

 

I got one more effort in me on Velopark tomorrow but 53.8 seems to be about my limit. Though all this sausage talk tells me I'm being way too conservative in those areas as they haven't factored into my efforts (much) yet. I had great fun reaching my 53.8 though. Its funny thinking back that something like 55.5 was gonna be my limit and then slowly but surely taking 2seconds off of it and "bad" laps now being faster than that. 107% baby!

 

I've reached the point where no matter what I try I'm getting slower.
I've also noticed the top setups use higher rear wing but for me I can't make it work.
I had one lap in the 52's and the following lap 3 tenths up before spinning since then nothing close to 52's.

 

I get slower each time myself. I'm not close to the top, but it's frustrating to know time is there and I can't get it.

 

When things are working, one should be able to turn pretty consistent lap-times and if you find that you can't gradually improve as the tire-temps increase, then you may not be pushing them hard enough to build heat. If you are not over-driving the car, you may need to improve stability to find some consistency and that can be a simple as adjusting tire pressures a little.

I found Aris's videos to be a great refresher-course for some basic tuning and driving tweaks that quickly got me on the right track. Since then, my lap-times are super consistent and tend to improve constantly during a short session. Sometimes, we just need to focus on a few fundamental aspects to make progress.

 

I agree with everything you said. The problem I seem to have with these cars is that the rear tires heat up and the fronts cool down. Then I end up with understeer going in and oversteer, if not a spin, coming out. I will watch Aris's vids and then try again. I think I am at #167 right now, 2 seconds from the top.

 

My limit is 52.2 (maybe 52.1) but my 3th sector is a shame.

@Matty28 what kind of view do you use?

 

Usually bonnet or roof.

 

What should I do to make my time into the ranked list? I had no driving help except vulnerability and I thought that it was the cause, disabled it tried again but I am not in the ranked list. Anyone care to elaborate? Thanks.

 

Do you see the other TTOTW results in AMS after you do your lap? There are also the regular TT lap times for the same car and track combo--check there.

 

I just selected time trial, stock car and velopark, I wasn't aware that there was a seperate section for ttotw :/

 

@Tim O'Glock

 

Sorry.