Looking for performance stats/info to recreate old F1 cars (1985 etc.) in GT7

[the Interceptor]

So I'm planning to recreate a few select races from the Formula 1 season of 1985. I bought a total of 11 Gran Turismo F1500T-A (which apparently has been modeled after Senna's Lotus 97T of the '85 season) and gave them liveries of the big players at the time. I plan to set up custom races (me vs AI) at the Nürburgring (Grand Prix track), Brands Hatch, Spa and Monza, with the weather conditions they had in the actual races. Other details to be determined.

My problem is that I would like to introduce some subtle differences between the cars' setups to generate some competition and make it more realistic. I tried my hand at googling to find out if there was a "fastest/slowest car of the season", but other than Ricardo Patrese stating that the Alfa Romeo 185T was "the worst car he ever drove", I found nothing. My goal is to vary the horsepower and downforce figures a bit to recreate the individual capabilities of the respective cars at the time. Can anyone help me out here?

By the way, when the F3500 comes to the game in the upcoming January update, I plan to do the same for the 1991 Formula 1 season.

 

[TheCracker]

It will be really hard to come across any decent car stats for the '85 season, i would think. Teams are never keen on sharing this info, even retrospectively. Maybe adjust the cars by comparing quali times over the season? - in that era there were far too many retirements for race results to be a reliable source for relative car performances.

 

[Sir Crashalot]

I highly doubt those settings have ever been made available publicly.
Also, most tracks have changed since then, some more, some less. Different layouts, repavings, etc.
So, recreating those seasons in a realistic way isn't possible in GT7 anyway.

 

[the Interceptor]

My recreation will always be pretty limited in realism, I know. I was thinking along the lines of, for example, "the McLaren was the fastest in terms of top speed, while the Ferrari was particularly fast in the corners". Coming from identical basic settings for all cars, I could adjust power and downforce slightly for those manufacturers to recreate these tendencies.

Looking at qualifying times is a good start, I will look into that. Thanks for the hint!

 

[daan]

Autocourse 85 has power and weight figures for most of the cars. Kind of surprised to see that they weren't all at the 540kg minimum weight.

I can scan the full pages if they would be of use.

 

[Tommy_D]

Just so you know, you will go to all this effort and when you make a custom race, PD will just change your setups to make some cars faster and some slower. It did this to me when I put together a bunch of my 600pp tuned cars to race at Tokyo in a custom race. Despite all the effort I did to tune the cars and make them all run similar lap times, PD, changed the tires on half of them to a worse compound to make them run slower. Not to mention the rubberbanding that is designed into the AI's programming. Cars that I know can run a certain time would run 3 seconds slower than me then all of a sudden they would run 4 seconds faster than me the next lap. You may just be best to tune your car to your liking, but leave the rest of them as stock, or just throw better tires on them and see how PD sorts it out.

 

[Sir Crashalot]

or just throw better tires on them

I think, and it also has been mentioned here in this thread, that AI will always use stock tires in custom races.

 

[Tommy_D]

I think, and it also has been mentioned here in this thread, that AI will always use stock tires in custom races.

Well, isn't that the dumbest design decision PD could have made.

 

[Sir Crashalot]

Well, isn't that the dumbest design decision PD could have made.

Yeah, I also don't get it. Seems like a completely pointless restriction.

And sorry, I was wrong, it was another thread where this has been mentioned recently:

Gran Turismo 7 Custom Race thread

Hi all, I've got a few questions regarding custom cars (single player only) which I couldn't get answered using the search thread function, or on which I found inconsistent answers. Do opponents make use of Nitro / KERS / DRS if equipped with (I suspect no)? What setup do garage car...

www.gtplanet.net

 

[the Interceptor]

Autocourse 85 has power and weight figures for most of the cars. Kind of surprised to see that they weren't all at the 540kg minimum weight.

I can scan the full pages if they would be of use.

This would be amazing! Yes, please! With lots of reading I was able to cobble together a lot of data, but I had to do a not so surprising amount of guesswork, cross-calculation and cross-checking sources against each other. Having actual data would clearly be better.

Just so you know, you will go to all this effort and when you make a custom race, PD will just change your setups to make some cars faster and some slower. It did this to me when I put together a bunch of my 600pp tuned cars to race at Tokyo in a custom race. Despite all the effort I did to tune the cars and make them all run similar lap times, PD, changed the tires on half of them to a worse compound to make them run slower. Not to mention the rubberbanding that is designed into the AI's programming. Cars that I know can run a certain time would run 3 seconds slower than me then all of a sudden they would run 4 seconds faster than me the next lap. You may just be best to tune your car to your liking, but leave the rest of them as stock, or just throw better tires on them and see how PD sorts it out.

So after you posted this, I ran some test races yesterday evening. I can confirm that the AI automatically limits its throttle position at roughly 90%. Offsetting this by adjusting my car's power in respect to theirs is possible, but needs extreme differences. I ran a 1-lap race at Fuji and was easibly able to keep up with my AI opponents. They had F1500 with 723 kW, I was in an F1500 with 350-ish kW. Only on the straight they slowly pulled away from me, but way too slow regarding the power difference. This is with boost turned off in the race options and pro level opponents.

Thus yes, I guess my efforts to work out the actual differences in the cars is completely negated by the game interfering out of my control. So I could call it a day. But I want to understand this as a personal project and work the real-life differences into the game, just for my peace of mind.

I think, and it also has been mentioned here in this thread, that AI will always use stock tires in custom races.

This is good to know, thank you! I was considering using different tire compounds for some cars. I found out that Pirelli tires had issues with getting to temperature in the 1985 season, so I considered just using a harder compound for the cars which ran Pirellis at the time. However, this strategy goes out of the window the moment they pit for the first time - the AI doesn't care and will use either the compound they see fit or the stock compound. Since in real life, the lack of temperature seemingly mainly caused undesired understeer, I will just adjust the suspension setup to provoke understeer. Not ideal, but better than nothing.

 

[Meythia]

Well, isn't that the dumbest design decision PD could have made.

Very likely just an oversight instead of a decision, but anyway a stupid "decision" to not fix or change this after it has been well known for so long now.

I can confirm that the AI automatically limits its throttle position at roughly 90%.

It is not even as simple as that.

"The AI usually doesnt drive at 100% throttle even on the straights (that is why players always catch up), but here it was really extremely patient. For almost 2 laps on Route X the 787B decided to idle behind the Alfa 155 on around 250 to 260 km/h, then suddenly snapped and minded its own business."