Automobilista Time Trial Challenge - Season Completed!

I don't have time, I don't have interest, I don't have knowledge in moving 20 suspension settings in tiny increments at random and doing 10 laps after each change all night every night for the next 11 weeks to see which is fastest. It's actual torture. Could you just go and program a world class Android app? Do you want to do that? I don't want to freeload, that's why I suggested fixed setups for this competition. I want to be able to compete for once without having to torture myself. Whether we want it to be about pure driving or driving and engineering is just opinion, it's up to Reiza, but up until now they've allowed setup sharing which strongly suggests it was originally supposed to be about the driving. Renato said "Personally I´d rather not have that loophole at all, and there are a few reasons why I feel that to be overall the most positive approach at least for this particular competition" which also suggests they wanted it about the driving unless I am misunderstanding. If not then setup sharing should have been disabled from the start so I didn't spend so much time on the previous round.

 

Let's not make it a personal debate.

1. It's a prize winning competition. If someone wants to do what it takes within the legal limits set by the rules, it's to be respected.
2. Challenge involved from the beginning setting up the car, so it's a vital part of it. Make the setups free to download after every round is a good compromise right now. Maybe reiza should try for the next one fixed setups and see how it goes. Up until now its a success

 

About the setup process itself, that's a huge exaggeration. It is the furthest thing from adjusting twenty different settings every ten laps, and it is especially not at random. You lower the ride height suitably, then swap in stiffer springs to compensate for the decreased travel, looking for the compromise between optimal weight transfer downforce and overall mechanical grip. You adjust the front bump/rear rebound to fine-tune corner entry, front rebound/rear bump for corner exit, and the anti-roll bars for mid-corner (or neutral) balance. Tune the fast bump/rebounds to soak up the kerbs/hard bumps but not bounce around, and go a click or two softer on the back end just to give stability under shock.

That's my understanding from my journey, and obviously it's worked well (for tourers/GTs anyway - still got a lot to learn in formulas, not sure how well I'll do this week). Doing that base setup work is literally half an hour at most. Once you grasp how it works it's simple and logical, and it's the most complicated part of setting up the entire car. To call it a torturous hell of randomly clicking settings is simply absurd. Give it a go, once you get the hang of it you'll see that the setup work is easily half the fun.

 

Just thought I'd share my opinion on this.

I know I'm fairly quick, probably not among top 5 or so in this but decent. I absolutely hate making setups and the setup sharing is the reason for why I can be as high as I've been, and also as high as you could say my driving deserves.

I understand the guys making the work into the setups and that they'd like it for themselves. I think it's mostly just a sad situation that those who cannot make a setup, can't be competitive.

IMO, fixed setups would be awesome and make the competition what it should be about. (allowed setup with setup sharing works as good for me but is clearly sth the guys making the good setups don't like (even tho you could say they already get that small advantage by them having created the setup to suit themselves, what they like and what they're comfortable with)).

@Ethan Dean Not to start an argument, but I know I could not be able to make a setup that's close to as good as the one I ended up fetching, not in a sensible amount of time atleast.

 

While you're at it could you tell some of the slower guys how to drive fast in one paragraph so they will be able to beat us in 30 mins lol? But I'll try what you say, I will spend 30 minutes on it and report back my best lap time.

btw, everything I am doing is totally at random. No idea whether to raise or lower bump or what that does for example, no idea why I'm doing that, no idea how it affects anything.

 

No problem dude, I completely understand where you're coming from. Like I've said, I'm glad that my setup helped those lower in the ranks who might have used it, but there's a line; I don't want to offer my setups to those who really shouldn't need them and, at their level, ought to be making their own. The F1 Strategy Group is reportedly clubbing together to help Honda with their turbo V6 powerplants, but you won't see Mercedes giving tips to Ferrari. Generally leads to trouble...

In short:



But yeah, give it a go. If you have any questions, ask away. I will gladly help you make your own sets, and that goes for anyone reading this.

 

Well I spent like an hour on it in the end. First setup managed 1:31.2 and felt horrible, second felt better but was not really any faster, after some more tweaks I got it down to 1:30.5 so about 1.3 seconds off my current best. More tweaks after that made it worse/the same. Really haven't got a clue what I've done to achieve that. For reference no setup got me around 1:31.6 so substantial improvement on that but still miles off a good one. Tomorrow I will compare whatever I've done with the other setup I was using and see if I can learn anything.

I would be amazed if any top guys voluntarily shared their setups for this competition. Maybe I could find an average driver sharing a great setup though.

 

Good to hear you improved time. I'm working on a setup guide for everyone at the moment, so hopefully that can help a bit more with the feeling, although I will say my experience is primarily in touring/GT cars and not so much formulas. But yeah, not sure how long it'll take but keep your peepers peeled on General Discussion

 

@Ethan Dean FYI, Racedepartment.com recently published a fantastic guide to setting up cars in Automobilista. Not only is it readable on the forum, it's also available as a PDF to download (see post #1 of the thread).

@Renato Simioni Perhaps Reiza might ask RD if they could include it in AMS's manual? It would make an ideal addition.

Automobilista - How to Set Your Car Up!

 

Not that any of it affects me and the wheels are far too in motion, but 4 weeks sharing, 4 weeks no sharing, 4 weeks fixed would be an interesting mix. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

Great link, thanks for the heads up. The guide I'm creating is more of a crash-course in the fundamental concepts, rather like the quick-start guide at the beginning of user manuals. I had a lot of trouble understanding some core concepts which led to a bunch of penny-drop moments, so I wanted to create a nice simple guide that I would have wanted back then. I'll be sure to point to this for further, more advanced reading for sure

 

Both sides of the argument are right. The problem could be solved by having two tracks for each weekly competition--one with fixed setup and one with user-variable set-ups. My prediction was that mostly the same people would end-up near the top, but what an amazing experiment to find out. Or maybe some people will only prefer to join one track?

Or, have this competition with set-ups (since it is already started) and then have another one in the future with fixed set-ups. Or alternate one week fixed, one week not fixed. So many options, but there is no way to make everyone happy. Is it about 50% who prefer each way? How do we know?

I support(ed) Renato's original philosophy about set-up sharing and community, but maybe that's easy for me because I am not in the top 20 (or even 50 or 100 in most cases).

 

Guys, there is no problem to be solved here. No need to come up with ingenious ideas... It's the best of both worlds if you look closely.

Just face this challenge as a fixed setup one (or better, a same setup one). But, as always, fixed setups favour one driving style, and that wouldn't compare driving skills evenly. That's why one can change the setup to match his or her style. Great! And it will be available for others to download, because being able to create setups is not the focus here.

If you do not want others to use your hard worked setup, there are two things you can do if that's extremely important to you: Practice offline and set a lap as late as possible, or don't work on setups at all, racing it as a fixed setup challenge (or even downloading from top times).

I think this is just right. Making things different over the course of the challenge also doesn't feel like a good thing.

 

Nice Buddy. Solved . I think this is the best option.

 

Comment Deleted

 

Mate you're are getting too carried away with setups. If you're a slow driver then setups will not help. Just try to go as fast as you can with default. What you will find is that a setup change will then allow some additional tenths of a second to be shaved. Hardly enough to win you anything unless you're quick to begin with. A quick tip for you......try playing with the brake bias as in putting it the rear more....will help with getting the car to rotate round corners better. Probably the most to be gained right there.

 

No, setups shave several seconds off my times not tenths. As second on the leaderboard with Ethan's setup last week and a tiny bit faster than Ethan himself I have no problems with being unable to exploit the setups. Without one of their good setups I would have been at the brick wall about 52 seconds if I remember correctly. As stated earlier there's at least 2.5 seconds in the setup I used this week. There's zero chance of winning without good setups but I clearly am in with a vague chance of winning with.

Maybe someone else can handle it but for me these V10s are already too biased to the rear for brakes, I've been shifting it forward to avoid going backwards into the hairpin/chicane. That said I might be able to go faster if by some miracle I don't crash with the standard bias settings. On other cars for sure that's something I'll try, thanks.

 

Looks like Turks has been bumped out of top spot! We have a new leader for the first time in a few days.

And @Matty28, you're doing really well mate running a low 1.29! I'd love to see how some of you fast guys do some laps.

Great competition, even if I am losing

 

Thanks mate, here's an example lap for you, would've been just into the 1:28s I think if I didn't mess up the last chicane, how I did it at the start of the video was better.