A few of us in the Champions League ( F1 V10 Gen 1 League ) were doing some testing this afternoon, and noticed a few odd things regarding slipstreaming. We devised tests to check on slipstreaming behavior Conditions FV10G1 All using default setups, wiith 10/6 df and matching gear ratios Hockenheim 77 Assume a +/- 1 or 2 km/h depending on how long your straights are. Test 1 - Slipstreaming Cars Top speed without slipstreaming: 323 km/h Top speed slipstreaming for following car (with a long enough straight): 334 km/h Top speed slipstreaming for lead car: 331 km/h Test 2 - Tandem Cars Top speed increased from 323 km/h to 330km/h for BOTH CARS. These are cars SIDE BY SIDE. Conclusion It appears that just being near another car is enough to give you a speed boost. This means that you can tuck in behind someone, and likely cause them to overshoot their braking zone if they're not realizing their top speed is increasing as you're following. This also negates the benefits of running lower downforce setups to a degree. This also means you dont even need to be directly behind them. Has anyone else noticed this? Has anyone else confirmed it independently?
I have noticed the following: On the Nordschleife long straight in the GT3s, if I am coming up on a group of AI, I will get a really good slipstream and fly past a whole group of AI cars, yet the AI in the group that were following behind seem to get no slipstream boost. Not exactly what you're seeing, but more weird programming regarding slipstreams.
The car in the front of a draft also receives an aerodynamic benefit IRL. I don't know if it's as big as what you've described, though.
This was my thought as well. It's a matter of whether or not this is exagerrated in game or if this is in the realm of possibility. One thing we speculated is that perhaps the slipstream model is the same basic model for all cars in the game, and it's probably a bit unfair to say this, but AMS2 is, at its core, probably more of a Brazilian Stock Cars simulator than anything else, and this to me would almost make sense from that point of view. The curious bit is that you dont even need to be in the slipstream to gain speed., you can be side by side and still both of you will go faster. And to be clear, we only tested this with the FV10G1, not any other cars. So I cant say whether this is consistent for all cars in the game, or just those. We were really just speculating on whether or not this was overexagerrated due to the slipstream potentiially being standardized for all cars in game. If it is not then that is off the table.
It's interesting to learn that it works with all cars in the proximity. The side draft is actually a thing IRL too. But only the car attempting the pass gains speed. The one being passed loses it. This is a tactic drivers use a lot in the Daytona 24.
If this is a fact then its wrong. Because most people dont know that if a car is drafted by another car close behind then the car in front get its rear airflow destroyed so much that its speed is lowered. This is a physical fact in RL - but I dont know if any racing sims does simulate this (rather un-intuitive) effect.
Haha I had a good laugh when I saw that somebody disagreed against this physical fact. The reason its not so wellknown even in RL car racing is probably that its harder to feel directly by the driver inside the car. ByTheWay: In RL MC racing every driver knows about it. Because they can instantly feel it when another driver comes up to their rear. (no sexually conotations - please )
Seriously it's right, that is the whole point of teammates drafting with each other, not to over take but go faster, add another car in the line and they go even faster. To go even faster the drafting cars then run as close to the wall as possible.
I think you guys should try it before you say it's correct. I am open to that notion, moreso than the others in our group who were testing with me. But the question is not about whether the lead car should go faster. The question is should the lead car go 6 mph faster? And should they both go 6mph faster if they're on opposite sides of the circuit? We are talking 1-2 car widths apart when we were observing this tandem side by side behavior. trying to drive that close to another F1 car on hockenheim at 330km/h is not easy to do. Its a bumpy circuit and the speeds are high. We were trying to be as far apart as possible to rule out "side drafting" and also simply to not run over each other. Again, we are not necessarily doubting that there should be some effect, we are debating on how extreme the effect should be on nearby and leading cars. I also want to note that this is normal behavior for stock cars, certainly, but you never see this in open wheel racing. If this effect was this strong and pronounced, you would see F1 teams taking advantage of this in qualifying I would imagine.
The "front car goes faster" effect is also tremendously exaggerated. In the sim, the effect starts to kick in even when the rear car is probably something like 4-5 car lengths behind (hard to measure precisely). We aren't talking about a situation where the following car is tucked under the lead car's rear wing.
The car front causes a “V” shaped stream this is why it is recommended to keep as close as possible while overtaking; to be in that V shape boundaries. This V shape angle however can change by car but not sure how detailed it modeled in AMS2.
We are talking cars side by side, but 2 car widths apart. However far apart you can get on the straights at Hockenheim. I think it's around 2 car widths. A cone shaped wake makes sense, but we are talking about being as far outside of this cone as we could manage. The whole point is we were trying to see if drafting was modeled based on a simple proximity trigger or based on location on the track. Our testing SEEMED to indicate it was just a proximity trigger.
The speed gain out of drafting seems a bit too much like speedway oval, than road course. The effects themselves are there, of course. The OP isn't denying, that side drafting, bumpdrafting with influence to both cars etc. is accurate. It's about how strong the effect is. I kinda agree with the potentially overexaggerated effect, when thinking about my acceleration, when overtaking a GT4 car due to draft (rear, bump, side) on the short straights at Velo Cittá in AMS2.
Maybe the game is programmed such that there is both a proximity formula (to simulate side drafting and bump drafting for the leading vehicle) as well as a formula for whether one is "following behind" another car. Perhaps the former effect is simply a bit too strong relative to the latter. Alternatively, the former effect might be too strong in absolute terms at particularly high velocities (I assume the formulas would be written so the effect magnitudes increase with speed). Maybe 200mph+ at Hockenheim is enough of an edge case that the formulas start to spit out unrealistic figures in this setting. But I'm pretty sure I've seen comparable results in other scenarios. (For example, in an online race at Montreal in F1 V10 cars, I remember running high downforce and reaching top speeds of about 175-180mph on my own going into the final chicane, but when another car followed me closely I could reach speeds in the low/mid 190s. That seems an awfully extreme benefit for a leading car.)
Just to add to the maelstrom regarding slipstreaming and a proximity effect, the AI are much faster when racing as a pack than when they are qualifying about a second apart. When they race they're bunched up and are considerably faster than when they qualify but racing 1 v 1 the other car races at its usual qualifying speed. When they bunch in qualifying it's typically a faster car being held up by a slower vehicle (e.g. Carrera 4.0 behind a 3.8) and seems unwilling to move aside and punts the leading car instead, losing speed and masking the proximity effect. The effect on me is somewhat distorted by a more, er, consistent inconsistency, lap to lap, and less of that pushing hard when there's only one other car on the track and it's going slower anyway.
