Formula-Retro drivability

Sry my miss I think

 

Some things still feel wrong. The car rake seems to have a very strong influence on the aero config. Driving the McLaren. At the beginning of the brake you get understeer, as if the rake gives too much downforce to the rear wing and the front tires feel like floating. Then, when the car lose speed, it sudenly have a strong turn in and you start to lose the rear as soon you push the throttle and the front of the cars rises.

Another thing that I have to test again is how rake affect the final speed, I made a quick change of front height just before to start a race, and the change gave the car 10 km/h more.


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Or maybe safe enough for a beginner.

I am finding it quite remarkable how aggressive I am getting with the diff now, you really have to drive these cars from the rear. Fitting I suppose with such a disparity between front and rear tyre sizes.

 

I don't think there is anything at all 'safe' about the default differential settings for a beginner, neither is there anything fast about them. Driving sideways is not driving forward, all the diff is doing if the car is sideways is help point the front wheels in the right direction, and the tyres are from a later period well after a four wheel drift was meant alter the cars trajectory purely on the throttle. The logic of 'how to drive them' is not explained by going sideways, it is explained by the size of the tyres which got wider and wider for the purposes of traction. If sideways was the faster style they'd have used skinny rear tyres.

The same can be said of the rear wings, they aren't doing anything aerodynamically if the car is sideways, the rear wings got wider and with more aggressive profiles to allow the car to go forward, not to allow it to go sideways.

The default differential settings should be much milder if you want to make them faster (and easier) for a beginner, then there won't be a grey area where setup changes are marginalized because the differential and resulting driving style is cancelling aero and suspension changes.

 

Well it is subjective. When I first got in the car I thought the diff settings were quite severe, so I eased them down and loosened it up, switched to a geared differential (which I am not sure any of these cars had) and improved my driving.

As I got to 4 or 5 hours in the car I got far more comfortable with it and started to tighten up the diff again, using it to be able to manipulate the corner entry and exit behaviour, not, I might add, to drive the car sideways, it is far quicker to be precise and clean.

So as of now my setups are using a tighter diff than the default, it appears safer to me than it did when I first got in the car. I could agree that the default setups could be more safe. The default setups could be far easier for beginners I think in many areas, but it takes time to get to know a car and build up speed. I don't think ultimate lap time should be too much of a consideration for anyone until they have had enough seat time to get comfortable with the car's behaviour, but everyone differs in this area.

It would be prudent for more sims to follow what ACC has done really, with presets for "safe" and "aggressive" so that there can be a default that suits a wider range of people. Ultimately, in these cars (and most cars) the setup is specific to your driving style and what you feel comfortable with.

I'm also going to add a caveat that when I say "beginner" i mean new to this car, not new to simracing. If you're a beginner to sim racing full stop I don't really think any F1 car, let alone those from the 1970's is a good place to start.

 

Yea, I get you here. I think you need to get the car quite rotated into the corner and usually oversteer into the apex. I did plenty of laps with your ghost at Kyalami yesterday and we're both doing the same thing; but it isn't drifting.

The tiny front tyres are always going to struggle I think to get into the turn if you don't provoke some yaw.

 

Just a quick insert from (I should be working)
From what I have seen of my own ghost, I am sure it is slightly filtered. I know when I drove the car I was more sideways than the ghost on corners esp when I tried Kaya H @ T5 so easy to go wide
see your own ghost from cockpit to confirm. amount of corrections
edit
CHR was it the ai that chased you all through race 1 hard to tell from replay. Ai need names in a different colour to players imo

 

I've moved so far away from the default now it is hard to remember. But doesn't part of this come down to just confidence in the car and understanding how much you can blend the brakes on entry/how early you can get on the throttle on exit?

I drove the Lotus 72 for the first time on Friday and had a session with some friends, and I remember getting this corner entry behaviour and initially being surprised, then being paranoid of getting on the throttle too early and losing alot on exits. I was better able to modulate my return to the throttle initially by extending rear suspension travel and softening things, but as the seat time progressed my setup "journey" led me back to a stiffer spring set, and more rear packers. I had to learn to drive the car before I could use the setup.

Anyway, I don't know. I don't expect the default setup to be anything other than a starting point. I don't think anyone should rely on it to be fast.

 

No I wasn't talking about Tokyo drifting, simply that sideways stalls the wing and so reduces the grip of the tyres which then results in going even more sideways. Or it should. And irrespective of your own skills many TT setups and styles are cartoon like yet still fast, so some people are exploiting some loopholes somewhere.

 

Theres definitely a little four wheel drift, but I dont see the corner entry scrubbing of speed that I tend to do, and I've seen it on CrimsonEminence's cornering at Spielberg as well. I think it's the fastest way around in the game... but I dont htink that's necessarily accurate.

Interesting discussion.

I was also thinking about the Brabham being so unforgiving over crests... The Brabham design was an early attempt at ground effect downforce... Is this perhaps modeled in game? I know ground effect is very sensitive to ride height, and that might explain it.

 

Of course I think laptimes IRL were at least 3 seconds off what we're doing. This "backing it in" to a corner is a high risk strategy for anyone to do when they might die.

First I'd heard of that?! So it ran a diffuser of some sort?

 

I think that is only really the case for Kyalami. Lap times at Spielberg (especially if you consider all the extra track we have compared to RL) and Interlagos seem about right. I wonder if Kyalami is not so accurate, or the track was not so grippy, who knows.

 

McCabism: Formula 1 aerodynamics in the 1970s

Oh that is interesting, so the front airdam wing acts as a ground effect device and creates a kind of venturi under the car beyond it, I wonder if then one can find a lot more pace and downforce from rake work on the BT44. I've still not touched that car.

 

Yea, plus the TT gives "optimum" track and in all of the footage I have seen of the old Kyalami it was covered in dirt and dust and so the optimum we have was probably never really the case.

 

Maybe this versión looks wider than the one at GPL, that's the only difference I see. Which one is more accurate? I don't know. However, laptimes in a SIM never are exactly as in real life for many factors. I think a 5% of difference is normal.

 

Indeed and they don't touch any of the runoff bits from what I've seen, can't remember if I posted in here or some other thread but those raised curbs look serrated and kind of harsh if I was looking at the right bit.