1.6 - Issues with grip

I second this about engine braking. I always turn it to 10 because I hate the feeling of it

 

True, in some cars its worst than others. One car I hated before seeing the post about engine brake the other day was the P1 Ligier, too snappy when braking, the moment I got rid of the engine brake it became another car.

 

The rear going away like that can fortunately be dialed out with setup changes quite a lot. One is that lowering that engine braking amount (increasing the value) mentioned, but you can dial it out quite a lot also with suspension changes as it feels the nose just dives and keeps it the rear too light and too long, especially if you also have more engine braking AND trail brake at the same time. I have seen plenty of setups where you basically just limit amount suspension travel available, to prevent this kind of dramatic and unnecessary shifts of weight/load to front, which seem to work very well and make the driving just easier. In those cases, you can actually run more engine braking as well without difficulty.

I would also look at the engine braking in open mind, it's very related to you driving style as well as well as being piece of the overal setup puzzle. I find many of the GT3, LMDh in AMS2 cars rotate quite well without need to do a lot of trail braking for that purpose, especially if you have more engine braking happening.. so why would you trail brake so deep when you don't actually need to do that? Naturally if your muscle memory is such that trail braking comes automatically, it's probably just easier to take out the engine braking as much as possible.

I actually find it a bit easier for me to utilize the engine braking for that a bit of additional rotation compared to giving tiny bit of braking manually with just right brake bias. I often rather adjust the suspension to help with losing the rear that easily.

 

I think some turns that you have to brake while you are doing the turn, like the last turn in sebring are the biggest problem, unless you change the way you do the turn you need to do trail braking, thats my case at least, the amount of times I spun before reducing engine brake in that turn is no joke.

 

I mean considering that the stock setups are oversteery and with too little brake pressure I'd argue setup changes are a must. I agree that the feeling of driving has to be right, but data doesn't lie and vary from person to person, and any snap oversteer would be seen in it or it's causes investigated.

 

This only works on cars that have engine brake as an option and yes I've already done that on cars that have that option to help make the car more stable during trailbraking. But on cars that don't have the option, you're SOL. You have to run a compromised setup that isn't realistic, eg: lowering the fronts to run on bumpstops, which come with it's own issues.

 

thanks I'll try.

 

True, but if reducing engine break solves the problem its most likely not a problem with the tires physics model. The only circumstances I find cars snappy is under tail braking and just in some cases. I cant remember from the top of my head a car without engine brake adjustment, could you give me an example?

 

Try the Ginetta GT4.

 

I cant say I found it snappy in anyway, if anything its very balanced and easy to catch a slip, but maybe its because I'm cautious and not particularly fast.
I wonder if the complains people have isnt related to overdriving sometimes, I dont mean that as a jab to you in anyway, maybe sometimes you need to adapt your driving to each car.
Or maybe you are not feeling oversteer enough through FFB?

 

I see that there is a lot of talk about braking or engine braking if I understand correctly, in sector 2 of spa, to be clear that very fast S without pressing the brake and going fast, you go there to the maximum and after a few laps you necessarily have to go slower, if you go there as fast as before, without the tires being wearing or in the wrong temperatures, You can easily spin, then go slower and those behind with the Audi for example started to recover 1 or 2 seconds per lap.

 

Yea it's not snappy if you underdrive it but it you try to drive at the limit, it'll bite you in a way that's unrealistic IMHO. It feels like traction loss one experiences in real life with cold tires.

 

Sorry to be the grammar nazi, but it's 'brake', not 'break'. And you didn't say this but every time someone says eg 'I broke too late', I'm pretty sure that somewhere in the world a kitten gets snuffed out.

 

Sometimes i write "break" other times "brake", just a slip of the brain

 

I second reducing the engine brake. ~8 seems to be good. Also try lowering diff clutches to 2 and starting there instead of it being 6 on default. These settings on engine brake and the diff seem to be very broad and can have wildly drastic changes to the handling. I personally like a really loose and lively car and taming it rather than having a locked down, stiff understeery car and having to loosen it up like the default settings are. So those are 2 things I start with, engine brake up to 8 or more and clutches at 2. I usually half the diff preload too. The car rotates and you have to have good throttle control, but more importantly it gets rid of a lot of that floaty and tire snapping away issues.