Formula Classic Gen 1 - Aero acting weird?

Been giving the Formula Classic Gen 1 a shot, running laps on racetrim and hotlap mode at a couple tracks. With 1986 being IMO one of the best years in F1 (and best title battle ever), I really want to drive these cars a lot in sim and have fun!

With the latest physics updates, the Gen 1 cars feel better than ever in terms of how the diff works like mad to handle the insane power, and how tyres can be pushed till the breaking point of grip.
BUT...something is really wrong on the aero side of things it seems. After trialling the Model 1 (which arguably tries to match the Williams FW10 with Honda engine) at Adelaide 88, I noticed that the top speed was suspiciously high, going past 320 km/h at the back straight with boost at "only" 80%. So I started to search some information about top speeds, and I did find a link with a bit more precise data of what these cars were achieving at Monza that very year. As the 1991 layout has been used with practically no changes from 1976 to 1994, with some information at hand I figured out that it was the best place to do some testing.

ARROWS BENETTON BMW

Here, I picked the Model 2 (which resembles the Benetton B186 with BMW engine, the highest powered car of the season, specially at Q trim). As I have been doing lately with AMS2, I gave the setup screen a look first, changed what seemed wrong for the car, starting with the disproportional spring rates for a mid engined car, adjusted dampers for the same purpose, lowered ride heights, trimmed out the wings, decreased diff locking, lengthened the gear ratios, maxed out the boost and off I went. This was done on a "Test Day" setting with default weather. I now realize that for getting the information to be as accurate as possible, I should have chosen the exact date and time that 1986 Italian Grand Prix Qualifying took place, and add some rubber on the track. It's an adjustment that I will do for a later test, but still, the initial tests show that there are greater discrepancies than what weather conditions can account for. Please bear with me.

On the first flying lap I was shocked right away: with a setup that was still off the mark and needed adjustments on all areas, scraping the floor on the straights as speeds increased, and ratios that I got wrong and were too long, the car still managed to reach an insane 380 km/h of top speed before braking into T1. As I did more outings, I kept tweaking the setup at each try. It took me some time to get the gearing right, and I felt that wings at 0 were too little downforce, as it made braking into corners a bit too hard, so I settled at 2/1. Even increasing wings, getting the gear ratios better meant that on better laps I went past 390 km/h (!!!) before braking into T1. And downforce definitely did not feel like lacking on this car. As I kept on trying, laptimes went down and the last one I did was a 1:21.3.

The top speed recorded at Monza in 1986 was 351 km/h (by then an all-time record for Formula One) for the Benetton-BMW, those engines dominating the speed trap charts that weekend, showing their top end prowess. Pole time was for that car too, with a 24.0, by Teo Fabi, who was not the fastest on the trap. The Williams on Q were 10 km/h slower. Prost, who did not have special Q engines that year, and was about 16 km/h down on speed compared to BMW engined cars, managed to put himself on the front row, 4 tenths off Fabi's laptime.

The TT record with Model 2 is a 19.0, and it was done on default setup with increased boost. The outright TT record was done in Model 1, which goes for higher DF than default, and is a staggering 16.0!! I have the setups saved and will give them a run next time I can hop on the sim again. But the two things that stand out from just peering the setup values and the laptimes, is how insanely fast around the course they are, and that aero drag seems to not factor into this, as none of them did even bother to trim out the wings. Something I did not even consider, but it's probable that there is a big downforce gain with little loss on long straights by leaving wings high. Which cannot be right on what are, by nowadays standards, blocky and unsofisticated cars. IMO ofc.

If I try to consider more variables, there are even less excuses to justify why AMS2 cars are so much faster than IRL. Top teams in 1986 not only had Qualy engines, their qualy cars were a completely separate car that was not used in race, and everything on it was specifically prepped for one big hotlap. On top of that, they had a special compound of tyres that would last only one lap at full speed, then it would degrade, something that is not available for us in game for increased grip on a hotlap, we qualify on the same tyres that we race, which probably offsets us by 1s (guesstimate ). The full qualy for the 1986 British GP, available on YouTube, took place at Brands Hatch. There, you can see that cars go out on track, do two outlaps warming up the car, and then and only then turn up the wick and let it rip for one flyer.

On top of it, some times you can recover from high speed spins almost magically, which also makes me believe that loss of DF with yaw is not well implemented, like they did with CART on the latest patch, and it was one of the things that helped fix the behaviour it had when you could save some spins that you should not be able to. Here I'm being more vague because I need to do more testing, focusing on this specific behaviour, and first I want to reach my maximum potential on laptime, and see how close to the Time Trial WRs I can get with my limited skills, before trying this stuff.

At the same time, I will probably give the Lotus 79 a go in here, because I think that car is another one which shows a similar behaviour of having either little aero drag or tyre rolling resistance, because its topspeeds are brutal. Data from the era shows that cars had trouble reaching 300 km/h until both turbo engines and carbon fiber chassis were adopted. Going higher than that did not start happening regularly until 1982. Considering that on the tests I did with it, I managed to go higher than 280 at Oulton Park, and past 290 at Silverstone, I'm sure I can get it past 310 at Monza 1991 (again, track would be period correct for this car too), which would be again wrong.

I think that if I keep on trialling more cars specifically aiming for top speeds, I will find that there are more that have too much perfomance in that aspect. Which kinda says to me that something on the aero side of things of the Madness engine needs some refining. I don't know if Reiza is aware of this (they probably are) and if there is something in the works. I posted this on AMS2's FB group and judging by the answers I got there, I'm not the only one that has found this. It could probably be the next breakthrough for the simulation of this title, just like they did when the devs figured out how to use the diff model, and the simulation took a massive step forward. I hope this comes up next on the physics side of things.

And specifically speaking of the Formula Classic Gen 1 cars: I truly believe that there is no better car to demonstrate how capable AMS2 physics are of simulating any racecar. A qualy run of these cars were mindboggling to watch, as the drivers would put everything on the line, and they seemed to dance on the edge of the laws of physics, the cars twitching and ricocheting around the tracks under braking and under power, and still gripping and launching forward, no matter if there was so many ponies available under the right foot that the cars would spin even in top gear (yes, that did happen with these cars, ask Gerhard Berger). Some of these things I'm talking about are already happening in the sim, just take the Model 1 to Adeilaide 88 and see for yourself how the car reacts on the twisty bits when you step on the power. Tackle the second to last corner flatout, only to find out that you arrived with too much speed and you need to brake like mad for making the final corner. Heel and Toe like your life depends on it and hear and feel how the rear tyres scream for help, the rear dampers saying "mate, I don't think I can do that", and see how the tacho bumps like mad showing how the whole rear end struggles to accept the downshifts, but someway manages to grip the track just enough as you release the brakes and drift into the corner. It's thrilling, unbelievable, natural, mechanic, whatever adjectives you want to put on it. And there is nothing out there that delivers something like this.

Really hope this is improved even further by developing the aero side of things. This can only get better.

 

Well, after some more testing, I have settled on rear wing at max, increased rake and front wing for proper aero balance, and quite stiff springs for keeping rake stable on turns and scrape the floor as little as possible.

I am still able to reach some mammoth 367 km/h before T1, and best hotlap was a 17.7. Now waiting for Time Trial to be re-enabled so I can record a time and have the setup made available to everybody.

 

I agree there is an issue with the top speeds of that car. I had a lively chat with someone here a few weeks back who was doing over 400kph on the Monza oval, I did a test of the 1993 Monza as that is the closest we had to the 1986 track and I was able to pull 389 I think it was on the main straight, I also found the 351kph top speed when I searched online. A 38 kph discrepancy is massive in this respect. Maybe the aero or drag needs tweaking to slow them a bit in a straight line to bring it back to reality a bit.

 

Just as an aside, top speeds on aero cars are always a bit contentious. I've not done research into this topic specifcally, but did your source say if the 351kph was the max speed it went at Monza or was it the maximum that could have been theoretically achieved on max boost with low/no aero, and did you achieve your 389kph with the same trim the car in your source used? or did you go all out on top speed with no regard for laptimes?

 

The 351 was the actual top speed at Monza. It is impossible to know the exact aero configuration it ran, I just dropped front and rear wing levels and made the gears taller so it wasn't bouncing off the limiter.

 

Speaking for myself, I started with the car completely trimmed out, and added downforce bit by bit, and kept on piling it up as laptimes were benefitting from it. I ended up with max rear wing and the rest tweaked for balance.

More real life data points would be very cool to have to form a bigger picture. I would like to see top speeds from more tracks, and some setup sheets, which sometimes can be found. Footage from 1986 is hard to analize because more often than not it has poor resolution, so you cannot pause and try to visually check the aero trim of cars. Good quality pictures may or may not be a way around this.

My belief is that on one hand, these cars were never run completely trimmed out in qualy runs, not even at Monza, because you really needed the DF to deal with the brutal amounts of power available. But in game, there is not enough penalty for such choice: I went for max DF, and while maybe I could get a bit more through some settings, I'm 16 km/h above the max speed recorded, and even more above the speed recorded on the actual pole lap.

Also, there is the small fact that I'm plus 6s faster than pole, and that is without a special Q compound that we don't have available, but back then top teams did have it. I'm able to do the second Lesmos in 4th gear with just lifting before turn-in, then progressively adding power through the turn. Setup tweaks could help in reducing mid corner understeer and be able to do it even faster.

And this is why I think the aero is overly effective on this car: not only I'm not being penalized enough for max DF, I'm also getting huge grip levels from it, allowing me to corner at very high speeds and set unusual laptimes. And again: I'm far from being an alien.

 

In fact, it does not look like they ran a low-downforce setup at Monza in 1986:

Compare with 1991:

Or even more drastically 1996:

 

Those are nice pics! TY.

While they are good for checking evolution of racetrims, which no doubt got more aero effective with time and development, what we would need are lots of pics focused on the 1986 season, that may allow us to see different aero configurations between cars, between sessions, and between races. We would need lots of them with precise data of when they were taken, to try and correlate everything. It's something I will try to go through at some point.

And going back to the pics: one thing to note, is that there is a difference between running the same wing on higher or lower attack angle, and run a completely different wing build. This is also why we need more pics from just 1986, to understand if they swapped wing builds depending of the circuit, or if they just tweaked the angles of a single one. And then there is the not easy matter of trying to correlate that with the 6 values of a single rear wing that we have available in game.

 

Monaco is probably the best comparison point. They used to run all sorts of weird concoctions there, double rear wings etc., but I can't find anything special at least in the 1986 Williams:

Note that rear wing extensions were banned in 1985 and those regulations were run until 1991 until they completely changed that front and rear wing dimensions through regulations.

 

Another cool pic! TY, I reckon that one is from Monaco then?

From what I can see comparing the 2 pics you posted of the FW11, the Monza and Monaco ones have basically the same build structure on the upper elements, maybe with a difference of attack angle. But the Monaco wing has extra elements on the lower end, presumably for more downforce, which would make sense, as these two tracks are practically polar opposites in terms of layout, challenges and car setup.

Teams have used to bring specific bodywork packages for Monaco and Monza, for decades. It would not surprise me if packages for those two tracks were not used anywhere else.

 

German GP 1986, same rear wing as Monza, which is to be expected:

British GP, wing looks the same as Monaco. Brands Hatch was a twisty one:

French GP, not up and close, but wing again looks the same as Monaco:

Canadian GP. Again, not up close, but wing again looks the same as previous two:

Belgian GP, at the fast and flowing Spa. Rear wing looks like previous three images, although gap between upper and lower elements seems to be a bit bigger here:


From these pics, and this is talking solely about the FW11, it seems like this car had a main wing build for most of the calendar, and it was adjusted per the needs of the track and then they used a LDF package at Monza and Hockenheim (and maybe Osterreichring, need to find pics from that GP). Model 1 in game, which arguably represents this car, has what seems to be a low DF rear wing. Model 2 has more elements on the wing and seems more like a HDF wing. I would have to check more photos focusing on just the Arrows and Benetton specially, to see what they were using all season long. It's hard to find shots that are both upclose and from the rear.

Edit: Mmmm preview post shows images correctly, but they don't seem to work on the final message? I found an Austrian GP pic somewhere else, and has the same high DF wing as most of the other tracks they went to:

Formula 1 Images: Austrian GP (1986)

 

I did my last shots at hotlaps with the Model 2, and got the time down to a 17.5. Made some improvements by stiffening the bars and slightly adjusting aero balance through rake, and I even got 1 or 2 more km/h at the end of the straight. Besides being sped up like mad, it's a throughoutly enjoyable experience. But it can be even better, hehe

I will begin work with Model 1 and see what perfomance I can get from it.

 

This is something I return to from time to time. Did it again after latest updates yesterday.

Nice to finally have Q compounds. It seems like overall grip has reduced a bit, which is good. Problem is, the car remains very aero effective: max downforce setup and the car only begins to stall past 360 km/h, reaching top speeds that are still insane and boosting laptimes beyond realistic terms.

It's a problem that many open wheelers continue to suffer of. Overall handling keeps on improving, but this aspect has not changed much, and still requires work.

 

After the last update, when the rake effects of open wheelers were revised for decreased efficiency, I decided to give it a go at again, my preferred testbed: Formula Classic Gen 1 Model 2 at Monza 1991.

What I can see is that now the speed increase hits a wall earlier, but it's still a high one: instead of stalling past 360 km/h, it's doing it past 350 km/h. And we are still talking of a HDF setup, with max rear wing, high front wing, and 30mm rake, with little bumpstops, so it's scraping the ground here and there at the end of the straights.

The effect is notorious when hitting that aero wall in terms that the max speed I recorded on my best lap was 358 km/h before braking for T1, but on every long straight I reached no less than 354. All speeds at the end of the straights are perhaps too close, because the car penetrates the air too easily until reaching that terminal velocity, which is just too high for a car set to max DF.

As a result, laptimes remain too fast, being able to set 18s on Q trim myself, thanks to having super straightline speed with lots of downforce.

 

Perhaps these Gen1 cars in the game simply have too little drag? Most of the turbo cars from 1984-1987 specifically, had ‘barn door’ rear wings, even for the really fast tracks, in a bid to control the massive power outputs.

 

That's definitely the case IMO. I opened this thread hoping to grab attention from Reiza themselves, there has not been enough progress on this so far.

 

Hello Gabriel,
we had a league race with this Classic Gen 1 in february 2022... and i remember i was shocked after the top speed we could reach at Estoril... i reported it to Reiza on beta forum. I was shocked because i could hit a top speed of 330 kmh at Estoril... which is not known for its great top speed.
I have not tried this car since but it's "sad" to see this have not been fixed yet.
That being said Reiza did a massive efforts to bring the big "1.4" update. Now that the physics (tyres) are more stable i'm sure they will be more likely to fix this kind of akwardness. I mean once the base is "sane" it's easier to fix.

 

Yes, I do know that Reiza has been tackling general stuff with the sim, which as a whole has progressed a lot.

Open wheelers being too aero efficient has been a general problem with AMS2, so I was happy to see on the last patch that this was revised in terms of rake. But this car in particular seems to have a specific issue with the aero drag. Now, I cannot say if this is easy to fix or not, as I have no idea if aero parameters of a car on the Madness engine can be tweaked easily by just increasing some drag coefficients, like what you would do on a moddable simulation. So I'm trying to be patient, but still remindful of what's going on.

 

Yeah i do agree with you. More drag and aero révision with this car are needed.

 

Reviving my old thread regarding these cars...

I was quite happy with the handling of them at 1.48, they seemed right on the money in their balance, the only thing I didn't like was their straight line efficiency (but it was still MUCH better than when I opened this thread).

With 1.5, I don't like where they went. The Model 1 and the 98T became extremely tame and don't feel like a particular challenge to put a decent hotlap on it. The only one that stays this way is the Model 2. Maybe it's because of its horsepower? Cannot say, I also don't know if it runs on a different tyre than the other two. According to telemetry, these are the power figures with max boost and radiator fully open (so it can survive one lap without losing a lot of power before the S/F line):

Model 1: 1215 HP
Model 2: 1365 HP
98T: 1290 HP

At Monza 91 I'm hitting 358 km/h on the Model 2 with some setup tweaks, I reach the same speed at Hockenheim 88. The 98T gets to around 352, but it is some tenths faster given how easy it is to just floor it out of slow corners, something you cannot do with Model 2 without becoming one with the wall. I only tried the Model 1 at Estoril 88, and there I reached 343 km/h at max boost max rad on default setup at T1.

Before, my main complaint was just straight line efficiency. Now that seems so secondary compared to how their brutality and lifeness has been sucked out

I just hope that, like with Group C, the tyres of these cars are due to some recalibration to be nerfed down, so the raw character of these beasts surfaces again.