Monday Night Touring Car Challenge

[dabneyd]

so you'll obviously end up with two winners each night, right ?

That's the plan. Really, the only thing the two classes will be competing for is track space.

 

[dabneyd]

I did a bunch of testing, and I think I've decided where the two classes are going to be set. As has been pointed out, regulating by HP and weight isn't going to work, so I'm going to set PP levels; 510 for Touring and 585 for GT. You can use any parts to get your car up to the PP level, but you cannot use engine limiting. Once your parts are chosen, they cannot be changed. The only adjustments that affect PP allowed are ballast and aero.

I like the tire penalty idea, so we'll do that. It's been mentioned that a driver can pit on the first lap to get back onto race tires quickly, but I'd like to have a minimum lap requirement for each type of tire. Does anyone know the difference in lap time between RM/RH and SS/RH?

If we're all for one class or the other, that's fine, and I'd like to hear your thoughts.

 

[Johnnypenso]

I haven't done extensive testing on it, but the differences in lap times between the various compounds varies depending on the car and track. Faster cars at twistier tracks make a bigger lap time variance, slower cars straighter tracks less variance. I'd say on average about 1 second difference between the compounds or something like that, again depending on track length/difficulty/pp level.

If memory serves, in a McLaren MP4 recently at 600pp, the difference between RS and SS was about 5 seconds at Deep Forest but only 3 seconds at Grand Valley East.

I'm not sure I like the idea of only being able to install parts to get a certain pp level and no engine limiting. Some cars will adapt to well to this and some won't. Some may get to 579 and others 585 and 6 pp can make a big difference sometimes. We're all on our honour anyway with the engine limiter so why not just allow the use of the limiter within a given range and go with that?

 

[dabneyd]

I say no engine limiting because it flattens the power curve, even if it's limited to 5%. What's wrong with ballast? And if you can't get your car to 385, you might want to pick another car.

 

[chuyler1]

Engine limiting, like everything else, is a tuning feature. If you think maxing it out is going to be the way to go, you are mistaken. It takes a careful balance of downforce, weight, and engine limiting to make a car fast. And the balance will change between tracks.

If we are doing PP based racing, I say leave it completely open. Let drivers experiment with it and find the right balance for their car.

Sure it may flatten the power curve, but it will also reduce max hp. On some tracks you're better off having 300hp from 7000-8000 rpm than 290hp from 5000-8000. While other tracks it could be the opposite.

 

[dabneyd]

Leave it open? What would stop someone from maxing out a car and running it in the lower class with a totally flat power and torque curve? You don't think they would have an advantage over the non-limited cars?

 

[spooble]

Is there really that much of a "glitch" with the power limiting to make it unfair? The hp does flatten out, but the torque drops at high rpms. I dropped an NSX to 60% to hit a low pp room and it wasn't magically faster than everyone else. In fact, it couldn't even keep up. Maybe I'm missing something?

 

[Nicktune]

I think what huyler mean is PP and tires limit but open weight/downforce/power....right?
There's no glitch with the power limiter....
Usually you want to take off parts...when you choke down...yes you can have more torque but you also lose a lot of it at high rev (where we spend 95%of the time while racing)not an advantage at all...

 

[Vol Jbolaz]

It doesn't matter to me, but yes, there is a limit to how much engine limiting will help. But I think the 450 rooms have proven that a car limited down to 450 will be faster than a car built up to 450. The sweet spot varies by car. I imagine it is between 85 and 95%.

 

[Nicktune]

the 450 rooms have proven that a car limited down to 450 will be faster...

I'm always between 99-100%

 

[chuyler1]

It's not the engine limiting that makes those de-tuned 450 cars quicker. It is the tires. They have better grip which translates to faster corner exit speed. Cars like the RUF BTR, Lambo Countach, Lotus, etc are all super cars with wide tires. They are pretty slow in a straight line at 450 though.

Since we are chosing race cars, they should all theortically have pretty wide tires to begin with. I don't think we should allow detuning a 585pp car to compete at 510, but something that is around 520 should be perfectly fine.

As mentioned above, the amount of detuning is the key. You don't want to hit max power at 250hp@3000rpm might be fast off the line with tons of torque, but it will lose the drag race by the end of a moderate straight to a car with 300hp@6000rpm.

 

[Johnnypenso]

It doesn't matter to me, but yes, there is a limit to how much engine limiting will help. But I think the 450 rooms have proven that a car limited down to 450 will be faster than a car built up to 450. The sweet spot varies by car. I imagine it is between 85 and 95%.

I've had some success at 450 and I tune all my cars the same way...in that case up to about 455 and then a couple of % to get to 450. If I have to use more than about 8% power limiting I don't use that car. Yes the limiting keeps the torque up, but the more limiting you use, the lower the peak torque is in terms of revs, and it's always so far down the tach that it's almost unusable. You'll often find, if you assume the scale PD provides is actually to scale, that the torque available in the rev range you actually use is both flatter and higher when you don't use a large engine limiting %. Engine limiting may flatten the power curve but it also lowers the hp as well.

 

[NEPALII]

Can you reserve me a spot? I need to test the cars first, and then I'll let you know if Im interested.