Mini Reviews: (in order of testing)
Track: Trial Mountain
Stock(w/max downforce): Ran 15 laps to get back in the groove, as I haven't even played GT5 in over 2 weeks now. Stock the car feels great. It has some strong but controllable throttle oversteer, that allows you to get to the gas earlier and let the LSD steer you out of the corner. Too much too soon and you'll spin though. Because of that, the best lap times came from early braking, a quick coast to let the car settle and then back to the gas really early, about the center of the apex. I had the stock tune run faster than 3 of the tunes, including NTwo, Motor City, and budious, but not by a very large margin, and I definitely would say the stock set up, is driver style specific, unless willing to adjust to the tune.
Best Lap: 1:16.960
E - Motor City Hami: This tune used the stock springs, so I expected a feel rather similar but I was mistaken. I found this to be the least consistent of the tunes for me, with a .5 difference between my fastest and 3rd fastest lap times. It had less 'turn in' than the stock settings on corner entry, and exit was consistent with this as well, as I again felt a tendency to understeer on exit. Although under acceleration this tune had much better forward bite that the stock set up, which was made it much more controllable and safer on acceleration. I did find that this tune also had a breaking point, where when I tried to push it too hard it would understeer as stated and then frequently snapped loose and sent me sideways. This happened a number of times. This was on both exit as well as entry, where when driving into the corner hard, the setup gave the car a RR type feel, as if it were very @$$ heavy and the rear end kind of felt like it was 'swinging' the car into corners. Again, I found myself being majorly penalized for pushing the car beyond it's limits, very unforgiving. I think this could partially be from the very low rear downforce used.
Best Lap: 1:17.626
D - Rotary Junkie: The transmission annoys me when driving this car. I mean, it works, but it just sounds like it's going slow, because it's geared very highly. I must admit though, this odd gearing set up, seemed to 'pull' harder than any other tune down the straights, not to mention this gearing allows you to slam the gas down at any point without any concern to losing traction. It does seem to lack some rotation through the center of turns, but overall was consistently quick lap after lap. This transmission setting can really help some of the heavy foot drivers with traction issues. Didn't provide the fastest lap, but did provide the fastest 3 lap average.
Best Lap: 1:16.675
F - Niigma: This tune wasn't as maneuverable as RJ's which really hindered the cars ability to keep up through the tighter sections. I felt some high speed understeer through sector 1, but even so, this tune kept pace with RJ's all the way through sectors 1 & 2, but lost time in sector 3 every time, which is what ultimately ended up being the determining factor in lap averages. Personally I felt the issue was in your LSD Initial settings being so high. Lowering it down to the 10-15 range would (by my theory) open up the diff, allowing the car to get through the tighter turns better, especially the Esses of the track. I think the 40 initial was just too locked (again, by my theory) and didn't allow the car to rotate through the turns. I will be testing this tune again with my custom LSD later on to verify this, but haven't yet.
Best Lap: 1:16.897
C - NTwo: This was a rather 'neutral' tune, which translates to understeer for me. I've always preferred my cars on the loose side. If I had to guess, I'd say this was a DS3 tune and would probably work well for DS3 users, as it's less likely to bite you for mistakes from imprecision. The understeer seemed constant through the track, regardless of high/low speeds, banking, tight, sweeping or ess curves.
Best Lap: 1:17.380
G - budious: This tune was pretty much a mirror image of NTwo's on the track, but with more understeer overall, which I think might have been due to excess front camber, resulting in all 3 laps times, being "roughly-exactly" 1 tenth slower that NTwo's. .3/.5/.7 and .4/.6/.8 respectively.
Best Lap: 1:17.427
B - NM Racing: This was a very neutral set up by my standards. This tune was easily the best through the 2nd sector, enough so, that it managed to put down the best lap time overall, despite losing time through every 3rd sector compared to RJ's sector times. Unfortunately this car has 1 little glitch that I ran into, which was that it's very unstable anytime you get 1 tire in the grass. On trial mountain there are numerous places where the grass is the fastest way around, which is what I feel cost NM Racing the gold trophy for me. On other tracks I can see NM Racing coming out on top, but oddly enough, this tune has been suffering in the hands of many other drivers, I'm not sure why.
Best Lap: 1:16.581
Personally I'll be taking tunes B, D & F (NM Racing, Rotary Junkie & Niigma) to a few tracks, where I'll install my personal LSD and the same Transmission gearing on all 3, to find out which suspension truly fits me best. Taking those 2 variables out of the equation should give me the insight to decide which single tune I'll apply universally to the car.
Current Results, as you may have guessed due to my reviews, have been quite drastically changed based on my, what appears to be reversed from most, results; and are as follows:
Code:
[B][SIZE="4"][U]Pos Tuner Points Behind Leader[/U]
[COLOR="Red"]D - Rotary J 30
C - NTwo 28 2
E - Motor City 25 5
G - budious 24 6
F - Niigma 21 9
B - NM Racing 19 11[/SIZE][/COLOR][/B]
Since I had the bottom 2 finish top 2, and the top 2 finish bottom 2, you can see how it's tightened and jumbled things up a bit.
Looking at the lap time/track data I can see a few trends that worry me, but I don't want to jump to conclusions, so we'll see...
There still 2 more lap averages to be added into the results before they're final. If no word from tuners by tomorrow night about the NSX, I'm going to go ahead and send out the April Info for the McLaren, call off the NSX. Though I will personally test and review both cars for the 2 that submitted and I apologize that it didn't work out, I will award you both with bonus points. At least they're highly sought after tunes that will bring your garage attention.