Right, tests done. I decided to keep with the same car as before running the exact same set-up. and as I had left the original wheels on for aesthetic purposes plus I already have two nice data logger files to compare against, I went and bought myself some 1" up wheels. I would really have liked to to do this again with a car which will allow 2" up wheels too but that will have to wait. I have put in about 6-700 miles on this F430 this week alone and probably 80% of that time has been round Route 5 tuning, then performing my other test so It made sense to stick with it instead of starting fresh with a different car, I think it makes for a fairer test.
I did the exact same test as before, ran 10 laps with no camber, saved the fastest lap. Added the
same amount of camber as the other test
(0.7/0.5) and did another 10 laps and saved the fastest lap from that run too. I also loaded up the ghosts from the previous test and ran against the corresponding one(0/0 camber with small wheel, against 0/0 comber with big wheel and the 2 camber using models against each other.)
So what did these test have to show me?
Firstly the Overall Speeds and wheel speeds, again at the slowest point in the corner.
Corner 1 (Tunnel)
Without Camber
Overall speed:
90 MPH Front Left:
83 Front Right:
85 Rear Left:
90 Rear Right:
89
With Camber 0.7/0.5
Overall Speed:
91 MPH Front left:
87 Front Right:
90 Rear Left:
89 Rear Right:
91
Without Camber, Wheels: +1"
Overall speed: 93 MPH Front Left:92 Front Right:91 Rear Left: 97 Rear Right: 93
With Camber 0.7/0.5, Wheels: +1"
Overall Speed: 92 MPH Front left: 90 Front Right: 89 Rear Left: 95 Rear Right:93
Corner 2( Tight left 2 after tunnel)
Without Camber
Overall speed:
55 MPH Front Left:
52 Front Right:
55 Rear Left:
55 Rear Right:
57
With Camber 0.7/0.5
Overall Speed:
58 MPH Front left:
56 Front Right:
59 Rear Left:
58 Rear Right:
59
Without Camber, Wheels: +1":
Overall speed: 53 MPH Front Left:52 Front Right: 54 Rear Left:53 Rear Right:54
With Camber 0.7/0.5, Wheels:+1"
Overall speed: 65 MPH Front left: 61 Front Right: 65 Rear Left:66 Rear Right:67
Corner 3 (Hairpin)
Without Camber
Overall speed:
33 MPH Front Left:
28 Front Right:
31 Rear Left:
35 Rear Right:
35
With Camber 0.7/0.5
Overall Speed:
35 MPH Front left:
31 Front Right:
34 Rear Left:
37 Rear Right:
37
Without Camber, Wheels: +1"
Overall speed: 39 MPH Front Left: 37 Front Right:40 Rear Left: 38 Rear Right: 41
With Camber 0.7/0.5, Wheels: +1"
Overall Speed:42 MPH Front left: 39 Front Right: 43 Rear Left: 42 Rear Right: 42
I hate to say it but I think as far as the slower corners go, the winning combination is pretty clear.
Well as far as speeds go at least. What about those pesky G-Forces?
I'll give you the short version. The first comparison is both of the
non-camber running set-ups.
Longitudinal Gs: The standard wheel produced the overall smoother curve but this is the only plus side for me.
The larger wheel showed higher G's in both acceleration and braking as well as in the corners, but the results of this were almost too close to call. If it hadn't been for the slower corners on the track this would have been quite hard to distinguish
Lateral Gs:
The standard wheel again showed a smoother curve but I found it also just pulled slightly higher Gs in the slower corners and at the direction changes at the chicane. The larger wheel was far more peaky and generated higher G's in the middle section of the track( from the tight left hander, all the way down to the hairpin) and again in from the hairpin to the chicane and in the final long sweeping right hander.
From these two
the car with the larger wheel size was the better overall I feel. It had more grip than before and it allowed me to brake a bit later and get back on the gas with more confidence but in those slower corners it just didn't want to rotate quite as quickly, I would also say from a stability point of view with this set-up as is the bigger wheels were better but as we know, more stability normally means more understeer (or less oversteer in this case!)
Which leads me to the two cars
running camber.
Longitudinal Gs:
This time I would have to give the standard wheel all round, smoother curve and slightly higher G's everywhere except on exit. But there is a reason for this I'll get too later.
Lateral Gs: The
standard wheel car here had again the smoother of the two curves(If you remember the last test, you will know that this was due to less grip/ more slip from the tyres.) and
in the faster corners and at the direction changes this one produced the higher Gs of the two. The larger wheel displayed higher Gs in the slower corners(Which, If you look above at the cornering speeds, I think you might just see a pattern.) with a pretty obvious peak above the other car just after getting back on the gas.
Right now that's all said and done, what do I take from these extra tests?
Well, some of these results may seem to contradict our good friend @
DolHaus with his theory about the wheels and the flex/compliance issue. But I would actually think the reverse to be true. As pure chance would have it, this was the only car I have tuned which doesn't run on the biggest wheels available and this is the reason I think the results differ from what he would have suggested. This car is nowhere near how I like to drive it even on the normal wheels and SRF off in the tests this thing is still a little too safe for me and I had to change my normal style to even get consistent laps done now imagine the fun of having a car which is too safe and then putting on bigger wheels which seemed with this set-up to generate more grip than the smaller wheel. The extra stability really hurt the test on the bigger wheels, I just couldn't get the rotation i could with the standard sized ones. There goes 5-6 months work down the drain, I've been working with the belief that the wheel size didn't matter because the tyres had no flex and now it looks as though they might just. Like he said not all that much to make a big difference but I think It may be enough to work with.
I did say earlier I would explain about the Big Wheel Camber using version, so here goes. For the purpose of objectivity, I wanted to run the exact same two tests as before but with the bigger wheels to compare them against the standard ones. this was all I was looking at in this test, wheel against wheel to see if there was any noticeable difference between the two, but I think I have found more than I was looking for with this test.
I added the exact same camber settings to the car with the bigger wheels as I did with the standard ones. Not as I did the last time, when I applied the factory settings then adjusted for balance. The same settings had a much bigger difference than it did on the Standard wheels but again not a big difference in lap-time. There are a few reasons for this, Firstly I had to change my driving style a lot for that last one, the camber being added caused a huge amount of understeer on entry to the corners, whenever I had to brake hard for the corners I didn't have the ability to turn in as sharply as before so I had to brake and delay my turn in, square off the corners, this did however allow me to get back on the gas earlier and exit the corner at a far higher speed but once I got use to it, I found the right line to use what I had and started to get the slower corners more consistently. The higher speed corners were a different story but they showed me that this car was just changed, my once nice and slippery F430 has been turned it to an understeering super grippy whale and I had to make so many corrections in the long fast corners, through the tunnel, down from the hairpin to the chicane and the long right hand finisher that I ruined what could and should have been a very quick lap, considering how much faster I was going through the slow corners.
Now, I shall let you all once again draw your own conclusions, And feel free to replicate the tests if you will, all of the information you need is provided in one place or another, but if you don't know where to look and you want to try just ask.
More tests to come me thinks. Damn, I should have taken the blue pill.
