Group C cars grip under acceleration

Again, thanks for the very detailed info! Something that many forget is that the tracks in AMS2 all have different base grip levels, so the same car will "feel" different even with the same setup.

 

Japanese tracks are known to have lower levels of grip because they use a different mix for preparing tarmac (I think it's due to their use of lava rock or something of the sorts). The change is still quite shocking!

 

Just saw that Group C cars got tyres and aero adjusted. There it goes the whole testing, will have to start from scratch.

 

Yep… I’m not doing anymore for a while. It’s like trying MP here. All that practice, testing and you get some weird disconnect or bug and boom , all done. They don’t say, but using the old setup prior to the hotfix probably wrong thing too do

 

never said it wasn’t, you’ve done two in a week. I’ll wait until you get a few more done, polish them well, until then no mas. Is Gabriel Correct , 88 guts on an 89 C9 skin

 

Not saying it's out of the blue or that is a problem. I'm not angry or mad. It's just that I have to start again due to the changes, otherwise the testing gets skewed. Not complaining

 

These adjustments are just how the process works in AMS2, as it has been from the beginning.
Grip level changes need to be gradual and tested under varied conditions, hence the ongoing small changes following any update to car physics.

In theory, being aware of the process involved may help with reducing player anxiety during AMS2 development. If not, probably time to take a break.

 

People will complain regardless Come on.

 

Just for the record: I'm eager to get behind the wheel tonight and find out how the cars have changed

 

the first few years in iracing every 3 months we had to start over with setups, night and day difference. I’m ok with that on every build with the goal too be get it close as possible

 

I was able to sneak in some laps just now, busy day yesterday. Still on the C9, went back to my original scenario of real date real weather Spa 89 race (Spa 93 layout in game) default progressing, loading 51 liters, soft tyres, tweaking only steering angle and brake pressure.

Initial thoughts are that straight line performance has dropped very slightly, a couple km/h down. Rear end grip has been reduced, and tyre wear increased. After a few laps it becomes a handful and you cannot push the rear end. The front end remains pointy; it seems a bit harder to nail the line on corner entry towards the apex, but the looseness of the rear end takes care of the rest after it, and becomes a game of controlling the car playing with the throttle and the wheel.

Fuel numbers remain similar, and so does power output, so I will suppose that nothing has changed directly on the powerplant, and overall, besides what has been mentioned, there isn't much of a change. Although I reckon this will make lapping at Suzuka quite hard.

Think I will just jump into my experiments of limiting setup ranges to see how the car changes. I think we have some options at the garage that we shouldn't have, and could help on the car's handling to feel closer to what I think it should. I'm running the car just one click behind max rear wing, and the balance is still one that oversteers.

 

More laps done, and have some stuff to share...(if you are uninterested in the details, just go to the last part of the post, titled FOR THE COMMUNITY)

Back at Spa on the same scenario, I started to limit the front downforce of the car by pretending there were new limits on the setup page. As such, I set front splitter at 0 and raised front ride height to 65. To complement, I removed the bumpstops.

The car was now 7 tenths slower per lap than before, but most important, it showed a more pronounced understeer at high speeds, the car being less pointy but at the same time more forgiving to drive, accepting smoother inputs to determine the lines around corners, which made for a more believable driving experience of what was the ultimate endurance machine. It still did not lose the brutality of low speed, reminding you all the time the amount of ponies available under your right foot.

After gathering some data, I tweaked the dampers and cambers a bit, maxed caster, topped up the tank, fitted hard tyres, and set boost at 66%, for a specific reason: 66% of max 1.2 bar is 0.8 bar, the same pressure used as baseline by Sauber in 1989. And lo and behold, the engine outputs 770 HP, exactly same power the real life car got at that pressure! This leads me to believe there is something on the parameters of the engine itself and the turbo, that is not allowing the car to produce the +900 horspower that the real thing had for qualy runs. I was quite happy with this finding though, because I was focusing on race trim runs. Left this pressure for all my tests.

I started a run at Spa, and it was an impressive experience. The car felt very natural at all places, it demanded restraint at La Source and Bus Stop Chicane, it could still (barely) take Eau Rouge flat out, but Blanchimont was another matter, requiring lifts. It maybe would have become possible later on the run, with rear tyres wearing down more than the fronts and the rake increasing as the fuel burned, but before I completed 10 laps I went too wide at Stavelot and crashed out, as I always run with damage at max offline. The other impressive bit was the laptimes: a string of low 08s and high 07s, same as the tests I did before but now with the correct amount of power. Very satisfied with this.

So I moved into Suzuka. Kept real weather, set the real date as April 9th 1989, defined medium rubber track as there was no rain, and went out for a full run without touching a thing on the setup, to test the strength of it on a different track. Ended up doing a full run and emptying the tank completely

Most laps once I got on the groove were 54s, with the very last lap being a 53.8. That's on average one second slower than my previous test, again with more power. The car could be a handful if you lacked finesse, but it was way more predictable and inviting to drive. FFB was getting a beautiful workout, loading up progressively as the grip increased, its behaviour very noticeable at Dunlop, right at the change of profile, when it's time to power out. Maybe that's why, for the first time in +5 years of service, my veritable Small Mige got warm! The car may have been tricky on the outlap on cold tyres, probably because of the 19 ºC track temperature, but once the run got going, it felt perfectly fine, maybe it could have used one click less of final drive, but that's to be expected.

So these are some numbers I got from this stint:

Laps Completed: 27 (counting the outlap)
Tyre Tread % left: FL 73; FR 63; RL 66; RR 59
Fuel per lap Average: 3.65 Liters
Engine Damage: 3%
Top Speed attained: 302 km/h
Downforce produced at top speed (on fastest lap): -30700 N (Front: -20869; Rear: -11464). Ride Heights at that point: FL 45.48; FR 46.04; RL 48.52; RR 48.29
Max Downforce produced (on fastest lap): -29820 braking into T1. Speed: 290 km/h. Front: -16311. Rear: -13510. Ride Heights at that point: FL 32.44; FR 33.39; RL 47.71; RR 51.02

Regarding fuel numbers and consumption...

Current Fuel Number at Suzuka with 66% boost and no saving: 3.65 Liters
Fuel Target For Quota: 2.96 Liters
Target For Quota +20%: 3.55 Liters
Difference between Current and Quota + 20%: 2.8%

Current Fuel Number at Spa with 66% boost and no saving: 4.57 Liters
Fuel Target For Quota: 3.54 Liters
Target For Quota +20%: 4.24 Liters
Difference between Current and Quota + 20%: 7.7%

Depending on the track, fuel consumption at the moment is quite close to where it should be (always testing with the current setup that reduces front DF in purpose, not trying to max what the virtual car can do in game atm).


To me, this car is quite believable testing it on this state, and I'm enjoying it, A LOT!. So, in search of refinements, my opinion is that the overall believeability (if such word exists) of the C9 in AMS2 could be improved a lot with some changes that I THINK (heavy emphasis on this) should not take devs a lot to do:

Limit front ride height to a minimum of 65 mm
Set front downforce to 0 on the setup page, and remove the current options of 1 and 2.
Reduce the fuel consumption rate by a number between 8 and 10%

It would come with the benefits of having some setup exploits removed, as increasing rake comes at the cost of raising the rear end too high, messing up with the underbody, raising center of gravity, increasing frontal area, etc. More likely than not that setups would have to stay at a rather low rake.

Things that I would like to see for this car for 1.6 version:

Revised engine parameters so it can reach 925 HP at full boost. A must so we can go crazy with the release of Le Mans, trying to reach 400 km/h at Hunaudieres.
A dedicated tyre set, just for this car, with higher heat and wear rates
Revise the aero so its center of pressure is moved back, and the rear wing is more effective, so lesser values are needed instead of running near max on high speed tracks already. This would enable for ride heights to be restored, although front splitter adjustability should remain off, as it always run with the same bodywork at all tracks that were not Le Mans during a season.

FOR THE COMMUNITY

This is just my opinion and my analysis on the Sauber C9. But I would like to get more feedback on what I'm proposing. As such, I'm attaching here screenshots of my setup. Adjust steering lock and brake pressure to your liking, and nothing else, then take it to the track! Suggested test scenarios:

Spa 1993
Date in Game: 17/9/1989
Real Weather
Track State: Default Progressing

Kansai Classic
Date in Game: 9/4/1989
Real Weather
Track State: Medium Rubber

Of course, you can go bonkers and test whatever you may see fit, as long as it uses the HDF variant and not the LDF used at tracks like Monza and Hockenheim. Have not turned a lap at those, and frankly would like to have the regular version for every single track that is not Le Mans (which means every track in game lol). The more opinions and test scenarios used, the better!



For now, my time with the C9 is over. Next up, the Porsche 962C

 

I’ve been wanting sims to eliminate the “freak” setups, forever. There’s a reason they don’t but that’s for another topic. Those unreal setups diminishes the “simulation” Not interested in spending more time in the C9 until the 1.6 but the odds of it coming at months end are not too be bet on

 

Just 1 question.
Is boost 66 and radiator 80 highest boost/rad combination its possible to run to not damage the engine`?

 

I left the rad untouched as I had oil temp around 110, which is my usual target. It would probably need more rad to not rack up damage, or maybe just needs for myself to be a bit less brute banging the rev limiter, like I did more than once

As a side note: before the latest update, hotlaps with boost at 100 and rad at 60 did not damage the engine one bit. Did not try again at the current version.

 

My club races have been using the Group Cs for the last few weeks and here's a few bits I've gleaned from the races sessions. All the turbo cars can run 100% boost for the race - 25 mins @ X2 fuel /tyres - with mechanical damage enabled & damage set to Performance Impacting and Scale set to low. I've managed to blow the Corvette's engine/gearbox on lap two through an aggressive downshift to 1st gear for a hairpin. That's with manual clutch and an H shifter. What's odd, is that all practice and quay laps produced no damage at all, and I abused the redline on downshifts - as is my style, even jumping from 5th to 2nd. No issue, except in the race. The Corvette - in the hands of a fast driver - owned the field @ Silverstone, this was before the latest update but it was the pick of the litter. The Porsche is by some margin the nicest, safest to drive, but is well down on outright pace compared to the other 3. The Nissan is perhaps the best combo of brute force and drivability, over the Sauber and Corvette. The new tyre model really punishes lockups and the front tyres will give up the will to live after being pushed with a flat spot even if temps are okay for most of the race. I love these cars and hope they keep on keeping on getting better with the revisions.

 

About the engine damage, did you use sync to race mechanical failures? I am not 100% sure but I think mechanical damage doesn't sync to Practice and Qualy length, only in the race. These being endurance cars, made to "last" 24h they shouldn't get too much damaged in 20 minutes. This is just me speculating as to why you got no damaged in qualy but did break in the race.

 

Thanks for the detailed info!

Tried your setup at Suzuka, and felt very easy to drive, so those looking for a challenge might not like it! I did enjoy the way it drove, although it felt heavier and less nimble than the default setup, so much so that I was 1 second faster with the default setup (lowered the boost to 66% and 100l of fuel). I did 5 laps runs with each setup and made my fastest laps on lap 3 of both, 1:52.8 default and 1:53.8 with yours.

I enjoy these cars so much that I don't mind a slighty understeer prone car like with your setup, but I think the current default is more along the lines of what people expect of the C9. However I do understand your line of thinking, maybe the C9 or the group C cars for that matter weren't as nimble as the default setup makes it, it does feel a little bit too quick to change direction, but then again these were the cream of the crop for their time and as show on one of the videos, the Nissan could keep up with a much more modern LMP1.