Easy to drive=fast car?

[TheoneDavis]

Hello!

When you are tuning are you trying to make the car as easy to drive as possible? or can a "easy" setup be a slow setup? what ar your thoughts regarding this?

 

[rams1de]

Much will depend on driving ability. An easy to drive set up might get you through a race without incident and a better finish than driving a car that's faster but always on the edge.

Faster drivers who've tried some of my tunes generally tweak them for more rear slip but with my driving limitations, I prefer something 'safe'.

 

[TheoneDavis]

So maybe a super tweaked fast tune is more a choice in time trials and the safer ones in actual races..?

 

[crowhop]

There is a difference between hot lapping and racing. There are tunes for both. They are rarely, if ever, the same.

Typically if I'm looking for that one super lap, I'll only be able to run two or three out of ten that are clean. If I'm looking for a race setup, I'll adjust and drive it until I cannot run a dirty lap.

 

[rams1de]

So maybe a super tweaked fast tune is more a choice in time trials and the safer ones in actual races..?

That works best for me.

 

[TheoneDavis]

I find the tuning a bit frustrating... The car gets worse the more i try i understand the concepts but cant seem to put it together. so ive been racing mostly with stock, apart from adjusting the lsd. I kinda like cars thats a bit hard to drive. Gives them a "personality" if you catch my drift

NOT understeer hard thou.... so unfunny to drive

 

[DolHaus]

https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/threads/general-tuning-guide.297354/ - hope that helps.

 

[TheoneDavis]

https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/threads/general-tuning-guide.297354/ - hope that helps.

Yeah thanx i actually read all about it both yours and the one in motorcitytunes. great writing and i guess its all about patience. Adjust one thing and feel the differnce and hopefully see the difference in laptimes. But patience is a hard thing to learn

 

[crowhop]

I find the tuning a bit frustrating... The car gets worse the more i try i understand the concepts but cant seem to put it together. so ive been racing mostly with stock, apart from adjusting the lsd. I kinda like cars thats a bit hard to drive. Gives them a "personality" if you catch my drift

NOT understeer hard thou.... so unfunny to drive

Quick Tune.
https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/threads/gt6-quick-tune.294825/

Works great as a base. I've used it to learn the basics of tuning. Just input the data and it spits out the suggested tune.
I flip the suggested Ride Heights, Front and Rear, but otherwise it works great.

My 608pp Aventador on SS tires is absolutely amazing. Tuned using QT.
Suspension Level 3
Corner Entry 1
Corner Exit 1
Base Camber .2
LSD 3
(flip the suggested Ride Heights)

 

[DolHaus]

Yeah thanx i actually read all about it both yours and the one in motorcitytunes. great writing and i guess its all about patience. Adjust one thing and feel the differnce and hopefully see the difference in laptimes. But patience is a hard thing to learn

Very true.
Its all about compromise, not too stiff, not too soft. You just need to find which compromises suit your overall style and tune to that. Try and think about how each part is acting during various stages of cornering/accelerating/decelerating and what might be causing the problems when you encounter them.
Try and isolate the problem, it always comes down to two basic problems - Mechanical grip and weight transfer. Both have similar symptoms but are fixed in opposite ways, knowing which one is causing the problem makes it much easier to find the solution

 

[Siggers]

If it's a race car (or any car with modded suspension) set the camber to 0 for both front and rear. Then in the differential always put the initial acceleration down to like between 10 and 20. If your car high powered and is moving about like crazy under heavy braking increase the braking LSD setting to like 30 or 40.

 

[RampageRacing]

Similar to what the others have said, I can tune a car to make it very fast but it will be "edgy". With it, I can run one or two really fast laps but I lack consistency. The tunes I keep are sometimes as much as a second slower per lap but I can duplicate that time lap after lap after lap. I have also tried the tunes of some of the best established tuners on GTPlanet and found that some suit my driving style well and I am quick in them while others do not and result in mediocre lap times. So much of what makes a tune good or bad, fast or slow, depends on what the driver likes.

 

[Johnnypenso]

Yeah thanx i actually read all about it both yours and the one in motorcitytunes. great writing and i guess its all about patience. Adjust one thing and feel the differnce and hopefully see the difference in laptimes. But patience is a hard thing to learn

A great way to learn tuning is to take a car that is already good and play with it. Sounds counter intuitive but it's sometimes easier to notice things when they take you away from good handling rather than towards it. Trying to tune difficult cars from scratch as a way to learn tuning isn't the way to go IMO, even experienced tuners have difficulty with difficult cars and usually end up making some comprimises. Start with slower cars on harder tires as any mistakes will show up quite quickly at 450 PP on SH or CS tires, not so quickly on SS tires, even if SS tires are the ultimate goal.

 

[XS]

I think a good example is the Difficult Car thread. The Option Stream Z in stock form isn't capable of competing against cars with 50 less pp. Yet the tuners who posted tunes made it competitive at the 600pp level by taking out the little quarks of the car and making it easy to drive. That car is a perfect example of how an easy tune is a competitive tune.

 

[lldantell]

I tried to make cars that would be driveable to everyone instead of my driving style because my driving style is different from most people.cars like the x bow are easy to tune because that car don't have loads of power like the Minolta,tz3,and the huayra which is a real issue to tune

 

[Flying_Kefran]

For hot lap, there is no discussion: tuning should focus purely on lap time potential even if it makes the car harder to drive.

For multi-player, it might be a bit different. It may be wise to prefer an easier and more consistent set-up... if it does not cost to much in terms of lap times potential.

It is important to also test set-ups with damaged tyres if you plan to do races with tyre wear. If the car is hard to drive with10/10/10/10, it might turn nearly undrivable with damaged tyres... while it would not be the case with an easier set-up. Depending on the race duration, it may be more important than the first laps pace (again if the difference is not 4 seconds/lap).

 

[demonchilde]

I agree with the patience issue. It isn't hard to have patience on something that you enjoy, but patience on something that frustrates you is evil.
In GT5, it took me about a year of playing and using nothing but Praiano's and Motorcitys tunes before I actually made a tune for myself. And the only reason I could, is because I was seeing and learning tuning patterns from car to car.
The first thing I did, was adjust the LSD, left everything else stock. Did that for many many cars before I went any farther. MC's guide in GT5 was all I went by back then.
once the LSD starts to make sence to you, then you know your ready to dive in. But untill then, I advise taking it 1 step at a time.you will feel more comfortable that way, trust me.

Good luck man

 

[Z1-AV69]

What does "easy to drive" mean in this context? More understeer? In this case I would never tune for that. But if "easy" means controllable body movement, smooth transitions, good traction, the right balance, than I would want to optimize for easy driving for every purpose.

Btw: In my opinion it's a myth there could be setup which is quicker for a lap but less consistent for more.

 

[DolHaus]

Btw: In my opinion it's a myth there could be setup which is quicker for a lap but less consistent for more.

I would disagree, you can setup a car so its on the very limits of what is possible but it needs a perfect lap to make it work, these cars tend to be absolutely lethal if you push too hard or lose concentration for a moment. One moment you're flying along the track lighting up the timing screens with blue sectors, the next you're in the gravel trap wondering what happened because you missed your braking zone by a metre or got on the power a fraction too soon.
This is the key difference between a Hot Lap car and a Race car, hot lap cars only need to get one lap right and it doesn't matter if you fall off the circuit or spin, a race car needs to be on less of a knife edge because you may not always be able to drive the perfect line and you need a car that is more forgiving at the limit and therefore more consistent over longer periods. Dropping a second a lap of outright pace is better than dropping 30 seconds when you inevitably get stuck in the kitty litter

 

[RampageRacing]

Btw: In my opinion it's a myth there could be setup which is quicker for a lap but less consistent for more.

What @DolHaus said and I would like to add that it is a lot easier to drive a car that is tuned to the razor edge on a empty track where you can chose the perfect line for the car and your driving style. It is quite another thing to drive the car on a racetrack with competitors where you may need to take a less than optimum line in order to complete a pass or avoid a car. There are definite advantages to running a slightly safer and slightly slower tune in nearly every racing situation except Time Attack and qualifying.

 

[Z1-AV69]

@DolHaus @RampageRacing

It's a nice theory, but..

1. I've never seen an example in my gameplay. I have to admit though, I drive Nordschleife by far the most and you can forget about making a lap if your chance to get it right is 1/10 per difficult corner. But I haven't seen it when tuning at other tracks neither.

2. The issue with your argument is, what shall "at the very limits of what is possible" really be? I mean, the amount of sliding you can do will depend on how much sliding you can control. In @DolHaus example, you might need less sliding in a "lethal" car because it already rotates so much. But the "non-lethal" car will be much easier to control while sliding or being super aggressive with curbs etc. You will always be able to drive harder in a car which gives you confidence and control and once you adapt your driving style to make best use of it, it will be equally quick (mostly even quicker), even over just 1 lap.
Again: I'm not necessarily talking about understeer, though much of what I said before is true regarding understeer too. As many I personally find myself more and more at the oversteer side of things. To get consistency and confidence in a car, I'll try to get controllable body movement, smooth transitions, my preferred balance, all in all a car which can take a lot of bad stuff in races. And still I then get the best times out of them when pushing them as hard as their good setup allows.

 

[DolHaus]

@DolHaus @RampageRacing

It's a nice theory, but..

1. I've never seen an example in my gameplay. I have to admit though, I drive Nordschleife by far the most and you can forget about making a lap if your chance to get it right is 1/10 per difficult corner. But I haven't seen it when tuning at other tracks neither.

2. The issue with your argument is, what shall "at the very limits of what is possible" really be? I mean, the amount of sliding you can do will depend on how much sliding you can control. In @DolHaus example, you might need less sliding in a "lethal" car because it already rotates so much. But the "non-lethal" car will be much easier to control while sliding or being super aggressive with curbs etc. You will always be able to drive harder in a car which gives you confidence and control and once you adapt your driving style to make best use of it, it will be equally quick (mostly even quicker), even over just 1 lap.
Again: I'm not necessarily talking about understeer, though much of what I said before is true regarding understeer too. As many I personally find myself more and more at the oversteer side of things. To get consistency and confidence in a car, I'll try to get controllable body movement, smooth transitions, my preferred balance, all in all a car which can take a lot of bad stuff in races. And still I then get the best times out of them when pushing them as hard as their good setup allows.

You are right in some respects, when tuning for the Nordschleife you always need to leave some margin for error, its a very long lap with a lot of variation in corners, speed and road surface. A NBR tune needs to be balanced and easy to drive because trying to hit 130 corners absolutely perfectly is beyond most drivers abilities and concentrating that hard for 7 minutes is a difficult task.
The problem with oversteer is that it is not fast, if you are spinning the wheels or sliding then traction is greatly reduced. This means that you are not getting all of the power down (about a 90% reduction) and therefore not accelerating or cornering as fast as you could be. A truly fast car is focussed on grip, this means that the car is not designed to slide, it will grip and grip and grip and then when you go 1% past the threshold it just lets go and you either spin (rear wheels lose grip) or understeer (front wheels lose grip). Once you lose grip the car becomes completely unrecoverable because it is so focussed on not losing traction in the first place.
If you watch the fastest circuit racers, Le Mans Prototypes and Formula style cars, they never slide. They either grip or crash, nothing in between whilst driving at race pace.
I'm not saying that this is the best choice by any extent, I don't like driving cars that are set up in this manner at all because they aren't any fun. They are the fastest over one lap though, its just whether you have the ability to drive that one lap.

 

[Z1-AV69]

You are right in some respects, when tuning for the Nordschleife you always need to leave some margin for error, its a very long lap with a lot of variation in corners, speed and road surface. A NBR tune needs to be balanced and easy to drive because trying to hit 130 corners absolutely perfectly is beyond most drivers abilities and concentrating that hard for 7 minutes is a difficult task.
The problem with oversteer is that it is not fast, if you are spinning the wheels or sliding then traction is greatly reduced. This means that you are not getting all of the power down (about a 90% reduction) and therefore not accelerating or cornering as fast as you could be. A truly fast car is focussed on grip, this means that the car is not designed to slide, it will grip and grip and grip and then when you go 1% past the threshold it just lets go and you either spin (rear wheels lose grip) or understeer (front wheels lose grip). Once you lose grip the car becomes completely unrecoverable because it is so focussed on not losing traction in the first place.
If you watch the fastest circuit racers, Le Mans Prototypes and Formula style cars, they never slide. They either grip or crash, nothing in between whilst driving at race pace.
I'm not saying that this is the best choice by any extent, I don't like driving cars that are set up in this manner at all because they aren't any fun. They are the fastest over one lap though, its just whether you have the ability to drive that one lap.

The matter of sliding depends on the tyres. With high powered cars on Sport Hard or less not cooking the tyres is indeed key to a quick lap. But this only sets the limit lower. With a well controllable car you'll be better able to never cook the tyres while still getting close to it. Sport Soft or better on the other hand can't be cooked. It's all about how hard you can drive it then.

Also I'm of course not talking about drifting, which is slow. But the quickest way to drive MR cars is to drive into the corner so fast it understeers. Then use lift-off oversteer to make the rear oversteer a little more so you turn. And after it turned enough you go gently back on throttle to get out. It's just a bit of controlled sliding you will hardly notice in a replay.
It's not true it isn't done in real racing either. If you look at F1 before the Pirelli tyres, they had this strange looking way to corner in qualifying. It was the sliding I described. Only in an F1 car the transitions will be so fast and short, you won't see it. They don't do it with the Pirellis anymore because they have to nurse them.
In GT I can tell you my quickest laps at Nordschleife (Sports Soft) will even have a bit of smoke in many corners, usually from the outer front, but in some corners from the outer rear too. But in GT this very much depends on the springs softness, a few ticks stiffer and it's gone while the car still does the same. So the fact of smoke is mostly a matter of style (and maybe distracting following drivers....).
Anyway, the quickest lap (on tyres that can take it) has small amounts of sliding all the time. Especially at Nordschleife were you can even use the outside of some curbs to turn the car at otherwise impossible speeds.

 

[DolHaus]

Lets just agree to disagree, different cars, different drivers, different tracks, different tyres, different setups