Ford Falcon FG V8 Supercar
Track: Bathurst Mount Panorama
Wheel: Tuned with ClubSport Wheel Base V2.5 and ClubSport Pedals V3 with damper and performance kit
Car Bad Habits: Easy to lock the brakes and bad oversteer very late in the corner, past the apex, but before track out.
The Ford Falcon rolls through corner entry and around the apex in a very balanced way. It is terrible under braking and equally as poor at corner exit with massive oversteer.
Fixing the brakes - This should be an easy task. Lower the brake pressure and move the brake balance away from the tires that are locking under braking. Not so easy in this version of the game (V1.1.3.2). The tools for finding which end of the car is locking are not present yet in Project Cars 2. In PC1, there were yellow circles under the tires in the telemetry view and those circles provided valuable information about how the car was performing. The yellow circles seem to be missing in PC2. They show on screen when exiting the pits, but as soon as control is shifted from the AI to you, the circles disappear and do not return at any point during your session. This needs to be fixed if we are to effectively tune in PC2. So fixing the brakes on the Falcon is currently a bit of a guessing game. Here is where I landed after some trial and error.
- Lowered brake pressure from 95% to 86%. Lowering the brake pressure essentially moves threshold braking deeper into your brake pedal movement or controller stick movement. The default setting on the Falcon locks the brakes at about 1/4 pedal movement on my rig. I like the brakes to lock at about 3/4 pedal distance. It allows for more smooth and controlled braking. Controller users should play with this setting and maybe go even lower to get more control of braking in PC2.
- Adjusted brake balance from 55/45 to 56/44. This very subtle adjustment, changed the car from rear locking oversteer under braking to have a slight front lock, which is far easier to control.
Fixing the exit oversteer - The LSD is the first place I started. The differential was pretty much open (very little lock). One annoying part about the current LSD setting screens is that multiple LSD types can be turned on at the same time. In the Falcon menu it is unclear which LSD type is actually on the car. I tried adjusting all three separately. Gear and Viscous produced absolutely zero results on track. Clutch LSD seemed to improve the car in a noticeable way. Back to the missing yellow circles in telemetry HUD view, without them, it is complete trial and error to properly set up the LSD. In PC1, it was easy to see if one tire was breaking loose (not enough lock) or if both tires were breaking loose early in throttle application (too much lock). For now, you simply have to guess. With the Falcon, the Clutch LSD was fully open, so there was only one way to adjust. I kept adding 5% at a time between hot lap runs until the car felt more comfortable. I ended up adding lock to both Power Ramp (on throttle) and Coast Ramp (off throttle). It helped to stabilize the car on corner exit, under braking and in the downhill sections at Bathurst.
At this point, I had a very driveable car. I could turn consistently fast laps, but still had to work around the car a bit. So I turned my attention to the suspension. I took a wild swing and it worked. Bathurst is bumpy, narrow and has steep elevation changes. The rear of the car gets very light over the dropping hill sections. The theory I threw at the car (broke the rule of making more than one change at a time) was to soften the entire suspension, but increase the rear damping rebound. This should have made the car more reactive to the bumps while also slowing weight transfer from the rear to the front, equalling more rear traction on corner exit and over hills. Below are the settings that I changed. Boy did it work. The car got remarkably better, faster and more consistent. Way more fun to drive too.
- Springs one click softer front and two clicks softer rear
- Dampers on front down one click on all settings for bound and rebound
- Dampers rear down one click on all bump settings and up one click on all rebound settings
At this point, I stopped tuning and just drove the car for a number of laps. I almost put her back on the trailer, but went in for one last change. The car was very fun and behaved, but would slowly lose rear traction slightly from corner apex to exit. So I dropped the rear ARB one click and went back to hot lapping. The car may have a little more to gain through tuning, but after two hours and looking at 3 am, I was tired.
Tires/Brakes/Chassis
Soft Slick Front and Rear
1.62 Front Tire Pressure (Bar)
1.45 Rear Right Tire Pressure (Bar)
86% Brake Pressure
56/44 Brake Balance
75% Front Duct Opening
75% Rear Duct Opening
6.00 Rear Downforce
53.5/46.5 Longitudinal Weight Bias
Suspension
5.5 Front Caster Angle
-3.4 Front Camber Angle (degrees)
80 Front Ride Height (mm)
160 Front Spring Rate (N/mm)
12.5:1 Steering Ratio
0.0 Front Toe-In Angle (degrees)
120 Front Sway Bar (N/mm)
-3.0 Rear Camber Angle (degrees)
85 Rear Ride Height (mm)
110 Rear Spring Rate (N/mm)
+0.4 Rear Toe-In Angle (degrees)
23 Rear Sway Bar (N/mm)
Dampers
15 Front Bump Stop (mm)
15000 Front Left Slow Bump (N/m/s)
19000 Front Slow Rebound (N/m/s)
8500 Front Fast Bump (N/m/s)
10500 Front Fast Rebound (N/m/s)
450N Front Bump Transiton
-1075N Front Rebound Transition
15 Rear Bump Stop (mm)
6500 Rear Left Slow Bump (N/m/s)
16900 Rear Slow Rebound (N/m/s)
5200 Rear Fast Bump (N/m/s)
9400Rear Fast Rebound (N/m/s)
490N Rear Bump Transiton
-840N Rear Rebound Transition
ECU/Engine/Gearing
40L Fuel
80.10mm Air Restrictor
75% Radiator Opening
2 Engine Braking
Gearing (default)
Final Drive 3.558
1st Gear 2.357
2nd Gear 1.824
3rd Gear 1.474
4th Gear 1.238
5th Gear 1.042
6th Gear 0.920
ECU
10% Traction Control
75% ABS Strength
1.00 Fuel Map
Differential
Clutch LSD
0 Nm Preload
40 deg Power Ramp
65 deg Coast Ramp