Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 (C6) RM '09
Well this is hands down the one of the best close-wheel racer money can buy. Not many cars even come remotely close! There have been many tunes of this car already, but this being the first few cars I bought, I took the liberty of enhancing what was already a beast into a menace.
Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 (C6) RM '09
HP: 905
Curb Mass: 1100 kg
Weight Distribution: 52 / 48
Requirements:
*Race Modification
*Every other upgrade available; purchase some racing soft and sports soft.
Aerodynamics: 34 / 52
Transmission: 360
Initial Torque: 16
Acceleration Sensitivity: 28
Braking Sensitivity: 38
Ride Height: 1 / 1
Spring Rate: 16.7 / 15.9 (Racing Soft)
Extension: 9 / 8
Damperes: 8 / 7
Anti-roll Bars: 4 / 5
Camber: 2.4 / 2.0
Toe: -0.14 / 0.010
Brake Balance: 7 / 4
This set up got me 1:49.701 on Suzuka
Enjoy!
So, it's been a day since my last failure at the Expert Series - All Star Event, and with a new day comes a new tune to try.
Track 1 - Trial Mountain - Best Lap: 1:19.683
Apparently I suffer from short term memory loss. The first thing I said in my last ZR1 review was that I should have known to up the ride height for a track with as many bumps and hills as this one, but what did I forget...
So, here I'm remind of how much the car doesn't like bumps, and moreso how much it doesn't like them while braking. Typical learning curve of a new tune, put me into an early spin, but this tune allowed me to work my way back to 3rd at the checkers. I also should have dropped the Top Speed to something more realistic for such a small track, but hindsight 20/20 and all that.
Corner Entry: Car entered pretty well and was very stable under hard braking. So much so, that I tried to take advantage of hard, late entries, but this forced the car to understeer through the center. Once I 'paced down' and entered the corner like a normal human being, it allowed the car to get settled and planted into the track, and make it through the turns pretty well.
Center: As long as I entered the corner accordingly, this tune pays off patience. If you can wait for the nose to settle into the track, you can get right back on the gas and the car won't fight you. Get on it too early, even under low throttle percentages, and you'll experience a mild understeer from the center off. This is manageable, again, only if you're patient enough to back off the throttle, let the weight unload, and then get back on it. If you are not patient, you'll fight the tendency of understeer, and the power of the ZR1 will either push you into the mountain side, or if you overdo it, you'll break the rear end lose, get sideways, and ruin your straight-away speed. From time to time, I would bottom out, forcing the car up the track about a car width, which throws your entire line out of whack, but again, this is an easy fix.
Corner Exit: As stated above, as long as you let the car get planted before accelerating off, the exit is wonderful. Getting through the center smoothly, allows you to get an early exit, if you have good throttle control. This pays dividends back two-fold. The Corvette is an overpowered machine, that wants to burn the tires off the back end. So if you have the car planted and get that early exit off, you're accelerating through the exit of the corner, which allows you to put the power down over more space and time, equating to a lot less potential for tire spin. If you blow by the apex, and try to force the vette to turn with the throttle, you'll end up just spinning your tires, and give up all of your forward bite and momentum, and it's extremely likely, you'll send the rear of the car all the way around.
Overall: This tune, on this track at least, appears to be a very mechanical one. By this I mean, it feels as if it were designed and built around 3 sections of the corner, rather than a single corner as a whole. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, and actually for myself, having grown up on a circle track, suited me fairly well. Basically, it divides the corner into a simple 3 step process of: Brake in, Coast through, accelerate out. If this fits your style, then you're in luck. The only thing I'd like to see a little bit more of, is rotation through the center. I know the car likes to break loose easily, but I felt that this tune was a little too balanced through the center. If I could have it just a hair more on the free side, I'd be able to take advantage of the early drive off, a lot more often. And if I were to toy with your set up on this track, I'd probably just drop the Rear toe to 0.00, or possibly -.05 to try and get off the corner from center out, just a bit better. But I'm not a tuner, so I could be wrong on this, but it's work for me in the past. Or maybe just bumping up the front downforce to 35 and see how that felt.
Next track is the Grand Valley Speedway. Best lap of 1:44.244
Pretty much everything from above carries over to this track, with the exception of the bottoming out, ride height issues. Unfortunately this track has quite a few medium speed 'S' curves, combined with higher entry speeds and slightly tighter turns than the previous track. What this did was magnify the issue I had from before, with rotating the center of the corner, which hindered my exit speed, and therefor the momentum I was unable to carry into the next straightaway. Another early mistake on lap 2, forced me into catch up mode, and this damn Judd and Minolta aren't cutting me any slack. Another 3rd place disgrace.
Nurdbergring 7:01:931
I'm horrible at this track. I'm best suited to repetition, because I seem to get better with each lap. So you can see how a long, single lap race, doesn't play into my favor. I set the ride height to 15/15 for this race, and the car simply hates touching the curbs, maybe I needed to go higher. I've seen someone mention 35/35 for this track, but I thought that was a bit much, but I'll try it on my next pass. Don't even get me started on touching the grass. The car is also very unstable at high speed bumper cars. Working through traffic is not a strong point. 10th place finish and the series is now out of reach, so that's where this review will end.
I do think I'm going to keep this set up on the car for the next try, and I'll play with a few things to try and free the center up a bit.
I have a stupid question. Do you have to gold the series, or can you gold each track individually and still get the car reward?
