Tuner Challenge Championship ~ April McLaren MP4

[Basilea]

I'd say race softs! As Adrenaline wrote somewhere about opening a tuning garage everyone only uses race softs no matter what...

 

[yanaran]

My thoughts from a driver POV:

1: Race Cars: Race Medium on high HP cars, Medium or Hard on low HP (like GT300)
Sports Cars: Stock tyres on untuned ones, Sports soft on tuned super cars, Race Hard if really high powered. I think Race Hard for the McLaren.
Never Race Soft (but I'm pragmatic and will of course test with them if that's what's decided).

2: As for tracks I think it's up to the tuners but I'd feel more comfortable if there where either one set track, or 2-3 tracks to choose from. Both so that the tuners can be a little more focused on their setups and also to remove a little of the driver-side influence in the results.

3: Adjusting the gearing was the most annoying part of testing for me . I'm for anything you decide that alleviates this; like fixed max and final. The exception would be if you go to one-track testing, then I think tuners should be free to do what they want with it.

budious and Motor City Hami: I'd also like to do a head2head with your tunes, are there any particular tracks you'd like tested (or avoided)?

 

[mosstang]

Raybrig NSX
Chassis Stiffening
Stock HP/Weight
Oil Change
Racing Soft Tires

These won't be part of the competition, but any driver interested in pitting them head to head is encouraged to do so. Write a review or comparison, whatever you please. I'd like to thank both budious and Hami for entering their tunes, I apologize that they won't be included in the competition

Booooooooo! I was really excited to see these results, but I understand that it just didn't work out. Too bad, b/c the Super GT NSXs are a perfect challenge for tuning in my opinion. Guess more than one car per month is difficult when there are this many people and their own personal schedules involved. I'd like to be involved in the driver testing for future events. I'm not a great driver, but maybe that will help balance things out a bit seeing how the tunes work for the "average joe" versus the "elite" My biggest problem is I travel for my job waaaaay too much. I was in France last week and I still have trips to Canada and Brazil before month's-end. I'm around next week, so maybe I can submit some head-to-head times for Hami and budious. Adrenaline, can you send me, or point me in the right direction, for lap time submitting instructions? PM me and I'll send my email address if needed...

EDIT: OK, sorry. I read the "main page" again. So basically we're on our honor and turn in the best 3 of 15 laps excluding the fastest and slowest - also excluding 5 warm-up laps unless the fastest happens to be one of those, then just email them to Adrenaline, correct?

 

[GT5SER]

budious and Motor City Hami: I'd also like to do a head2head with your tunes, are there any particular tracks you'd like tested (or avoided)?

I would also like to know this.

- Jeramy

 

[budious]

I don't care, just review as is anywhere. If you feel my car had some fault on the track you tested, I can address it with some supplemental configurations later on.

 

[Adrenaline]

EDIT: OK, sorry. I read the "main page" again. So basically we're on our honor and turn in the best 3 of 15 laps excluding the fastest and slowest - also excluding 5 warm-up laps unless the fastest happens to be one of those, then just email them to Adrenaline, correct?

In reference to April's competition, you'll receive an email with all necessary details when the tunes are ready. (21st)

In regards to the NSX, you can do whatever you want as it's no longer officially a part of this competition.

 

[Basilea]

I'm just thinking about the lack of drivers, the tuners themself aren't driving because they could give an advantage to their own tune. Now what do you think if the tuners all take part and test all tunes but their own. Only thing would be that all tuners take part otherwise some tunes are tested more and thers less.

 

[Motor City Hami]

I tend to tune for the flat tracks in the game and just adjust top speed for shorter or longer circuits. Only a few tracks call for big suspension adjustents or LSD changes. A good tune should still be pretty decent on most tracks in the game.

In range for my tune:
High Speed, Deep Forest, Grand Valley, Cape, Monza, Nurburgring GP/F & D, Fuji, Suzuka, Indy road, Daytona road, Rome, Madrid, Tokyo, SS5, London,

May need some adjustments:
Trail Mt - I'd probably raise ride height back up to zero and go with it.
Autum Ring -adjust top speed to top out 6th gear at end of longest straight.
Tsukuba -adjust top speed to top out 6th gear at end of longest straight. Maybe 155 mph top speed?
Laguna Seca -adjust top speed to top out 6th gear at end of longest straight.
Top Gear -adjust top speed to top out 6th gear at end of longest straight.
Cote D'Azur - adjust top speed to top out 5th gear through tunnel on waterfront. Too much shifting with 6th gear.
La Sarthe - adjust top speed and raise ride height back up to zero. With some cars I would soften the springs and dampers.
Nurburghring Nordschleife - needs many adjustments. Higher top speed, softer springs, softer damping, softer sway bars and a much higher ride hight, higher than zero.

Unknown:
Edger - I don't enjoy this track so haven't tested a tune there.
SS7 - don't even bother.

 

[Motor City Hami]

I'm just thinking about the lack of drivers, the tuners themself aren't driving because they could give an advantage to their own tune. Now what do you think if the tuners all take part and test all tunes but their own. Only thing would be that all tuners take part otherwise some tunes are tested more and thers less.

I don't think that I would have time to drive too.

 

[Basilea]

I don't think that I would have time to drive too.

Well yeah I just thought about that, you already start with the next tuning at the time I drive a car...

 

[Motor City Hami]

Final Results

[SIZE="3"][B][U]Pos Tuner	Points	Behind Leader[/U][COLOR="Red"]
1 - Rotary J	39	
2 - budious	34	5
3 - NTwo	34	5
4 - Niigma	30	9
5 - Motor City	29	10
6 - NM Racing	23	16[/COLOR][/B][/SIZE]

*Maximum Points Possible: 54

Adrenaline - how are you breaking ties when multiple tunes have the exact same average? I count 5 out of the 9 driver submissions where I am tied with another tune, down to the tenth and I lose out. What method are you using?

Also, I experimented with a % points system and it really shows something interesting. I took the lowest average time for each driver/track and gave the winner 10 points. The other 5 tunes get their score through comparison of their average lap time to the winner and will get some percentage of 10. Here are the totals on a % of points system.

Rotary Junkie 89.6 points
Ntwo 89.5
Motor City 89.4
Niigma 89.4
Bodius 89.3
B-NM Racing 89.0

The total time difference for all nine drivers/tracks is 0.6%. When you score the competition the way you have, one would look at final point totals that range from 23 to 39 and believe that one tuner rules and the bottom sucks. In reality, ALL tuners produced tunes that generated times within 0.6% of each other. Incredible!

 

[Motor City Hami]

Some more interesting data. 0.6% difference in total tuner time when averaged across all drivers and tracks. The margin is wider at each individual track. Seems that each tuner did well with some drivers and not others and some tunes were better at different tracks. Here are the spreads by track.

Tuner/track - Diff between best and worst tune - % diff
Doc - Fuju - 1.3 sec, 1.4% difference
Bas - Deep Forest - 1.6 sec, 2.4%
Bas - High Speed - 1.7 sec, 2.8%
Bas - Tsukuba - 0.3 sec, 0.7%
GT5 - Deep Forest - 1.2 sec, 1.7%
Yan - Suzuka - 1.1 sec, 1%
Adr - Trail - 1.1 sec, 1.4%
Doc - Laguna - 0.6 sec, 0.7%
Adr - Grand Valley - 1.0 sec, 1.7%

 

[Motor City Hami]

One more to chew on. For drivers/tracks who submitted stock setup times, I comparred the winning tune time to stock.

Tuner/track - Diff between best and worst
Bas - Deep Forest - 1.7 sec faster than stock
Bas - High Speed - 0.8 sec faster than stock
Bas - Tsukuba - 0.7 sec faster than stock
Yan - Suzuka - 0.4 sec faster than stock
Adr - Trail - 0.5 sec faster than stock

Bottom line: Other than for Deep Forest, all of this tuning crap is just thoery and does little to improve on lap time. Just run cars stock. None of us know what we are talking about.

 

[Basilea]

One more to chew on. For drivers/tracks who submitted stock setup times, I comparred the winning tune time to stock.

Tuner/track - Diff between best and worst
Bas - Deep Forest - 1.7 sec faster than stock
Bas - High Speed - 0.8 sec faster than stock
Bas - Tsukuba - 0.7 sec faster than stock
Yan - Suzuka - 0.4 sec faster than stock
Adr - Trail - 0.5 sec faster than stock

Bottom line: Other than for Deep Forest, all of this tuning crap is just thoery and does little to improve on lap time. Just run cars stock. None of us know what we are talking about.

I believe in this case it has a lot to do with the car itself! The Xanavi Z is a very, very good car just as it is with stock settings!

 

[jcamargos]

Regarding post #706
This is going to be my first test, so I am open to what you guys decide.

1. My feeling is that we should use Racing hard minimum for such a powerful car. If it is Racing soft is fine too.
2. 3 tracks would be perfect (1 should be specified by Adrenaline and the other two the ones that you prefer)
3. Transmission should be included. (I know is difficult, but I believe a tune is completed when everything is set up for the best performance).

Just my two cents.

Edit: Off topic, the Raybrig NSX is the '00 or the '06? I want to give it a try.

 

[budious]

Bottom line: Other than for Deep Forest, all of this tuning crap is just thoery and does little to improve on lap time. Just run cars stock. None of us know what we are talking about.

None of us were really tuning a car for a specific track though, so you could probably say tuning blind is as good as driving stock. Race car drivers don't enter next week's race using last week's setup (most of the time) unless the courses are extremely similar.

 

[yanaran]

Raybrig NSX '06 Test/review
Tracks: Suzuka Circuit & Tsukuba Circuit
Driver Setup: DFGT, Automatic Gears, ABS 1​

When I was starting out with GT5 and got to the Super GT championship in B-Spec I was instantly impressed by the Arta NSX that just seemed to walk all over all the other AI cars. It was the first Race Car I saved up the $ to buy and when the tuner challenge champs announced it would be next months car, I got very excited! Unfortunately only two tunes to test, but I had at it nonetheless.


Suzuka Circuit
I decided to once again start at Suzuka, thinking it would be interesting to see how it compares to the Xanavi Z. I refurbished my Raybrig in the garage and joined the lobby to test out the stock settings. I noticed that my shift points seemed to be the same as the Automatic so I used that instead on this car and it actually seemed to be a little faster. After 3 laps I remembered why I never drive it - I hate driving Super GT NSX's! It would go sideways on corner entry, then sideways on exit, sometimes sideways in the middle of the corner for no apparent reason (I probably hit a penny on the road!). I actually broke out into a powerslide half way through Dunlop a few times, something that NEVER happened in the Nismo Z test! I'm also horrible at correcting slides in race cars so it usually means a ruined lap every time it happens. After 10 or so laps, feeling a little depressed, I exited to the lobby to apply the tunes. I noticed something missing when I double checked my aero settings, I didn't have a chassis reinforcement! That must be it, bought that and tried again with stock tune - and I still hated it. Improved my lap time quite a bit though, guess that upgrade really is useful! 👍

Stock with max D/F, Best Lap: 1:53.906
Stock with Chassis Upgrade, Best Lap: 1:53.511

note: Since both tunes use the default gear ratios and only "max speed" was changed on one of them, I decided to use the default settings for both setups. I would adjust the top speed per track anyway if I used these tunes so I think that's fair.

budious: I wasn't expecting anything great considering how bad the experience was with the stock settings, but I could tell already on the first warm-up lap that this was different. It no longer wanted to slide all over the place. It was much more stable in the S-curves and I could hold 3-4 kph more through all of them. I also got the feeling that the car jumped out of the corners more, but I still had to be a bit careful with the throttle on exits or I would sometimes go sideways. It was more precise through the high-speed 130R corner and I had no problem taking it without lifting off. On the 3rd lap I matched the best stock lap, and in only a few more I went faster and faster. I still had some ruined laps but I blame myself for most of them. Basically it felt like you fixed most of what was wrong with the car!
Best Lap: 1:53.176

Motor City Hamilton: Not a whole lot of changes from the previous tune, except for the LSD. I don't quite understand how it works so wasn't sure what to think, but when driving it immediately felt easier and more controlled. Just like the previous tune I could hold a few kph more through most corners than stock, and it felt like I could be more aggressive on the throttle without going sideways. It didn't feel like it had the same *umph* but it seemed to make up for it by being able to accelerate earlier coming out of the turns. I was more consistent than before and kept up with budious to the first split, but I was never able to hang on in the second half and even though I kept trying I was always a few tenths off. Other than not getting the fastest lap I actually have no complaints on this tune - well except for the fact that it's still an NSX...
Best Lap: 1:53.398


Tsukuba Circuit
I was actually thinking of doing a "Super GT" thing and running all japanese tracks, but since I remembered I don't really like this car I gave up on that. To add a little more substance than another Suzuka test I did a stint at the much shorter Tsukuba track too.

Stock: Much more behaved than on Suzuka. I'd say orders of magnitude better, but still some rough spots. First corner was ok, some wiggling on exit if I touched the inside kerbs or went wide. Hairpin left was fine if I entered wide but I spun nearly every time if I entered tight. The following right was manageable at around 128-129 kph and the next hairpin was basically the same situation as the first one. Final turn to finish I could hold about 155 kph.
Best Lap: 51.290

Motor City Hamilton: No wiggling tail, no spinning out of the hairpins, no power slides. This tune seems to thrive on hairpins as I gained lots of time coming out of both. Could manage 133 kph in the middle right-hander and over 160 in the final corner. Quicker turn-in than stock settings but never unstable on corner entry. I think this tune is almost perfect for this track. I got my fastest time after about 10 laps and could probably go even faster but felt that was good enough. A++, would tune again
Best Lap: 50.919

budious: Also stable and much less prone to sliding out than stock. Could hold nearly identical corner speeds as MCH but seemed to shoot out faster from the first corner as well as the middle right-hander. I had to be more careful when exiting the hairpins though, and lap after lap I would be a few hundreds in front or behind at the second split only to lose a tenth or so coming out of the 2nd hairpin with no way to make up for it in the final corner. It still felt like this tune could go faster if I could find a perfect lap, but it never came. I did have some incidents trying to push really hard in the middle section, but even the power slides were controllable with this tune unlike stock setup where high-speed slide = wall/grass for me. Can run 51.1xx all day long.
Best Lap: 50.956

When I was done I decided to do a quick run in offline practise to see if it's just the online physics that give me problems with the car, and there was definitely a big difference. Stock setup was still unstable but both tunes were glued to the road and I think budious benefited more due to having more "jump" out of the corners.
Lap Times: Stock 51.154, MCH 50.843, budious 50.663.


Overall I would choose budious' tune for a time trial/qualifying type session where mistakes aren't the end of the world, and MCH tune for a race. That is, if you don't have a Toyota or a Nissan to use.

 

[budious]

Great review, not for me, but just in general. Proper grammar and complete sentences are abound in this review. Formatting was nice and easy to read.

Review of the review: A+

As for my dampers, I actually played the safe route and toned them down for consistency, you can turn them up a notch and get better time trial results but laps are a little less consistent.

 

[Basilea]

Just some ideas about the track selection, if the drivers could agree to test every month on 2 tracks, wouldn't it be interesting if we would test all tunes always on the same track then? I would say Trial Mountain (Autumn Ring or Deep Forest) because that really challenges the suspension and it shows how a car does compared to others.
The second track should be something that tests/represents the cars characteristics or maybe has a historical context.

The discussion about the transmission setting is in my opinion unnecessary, because it just should be in the tuners hands! Otherwise we don't get the best possible tune and that's what we are looking for I suppose. But I would also say it should include precisely how to set everything and not like Tune B for the Xanavi Z. It was not that difficult to figure out in this case, but if all tuners would send the tunes like that, it gets annoying. Tunes with missing settings should just be disqualified, it's not asking to much to send in complete settings!

What about changeable tuning parts? Can a tuner just leave out some parts if he believes the car is faster like that or does he have to install all no matter what? I know that some tuners don't always fit the twin plate clutch and this was ok for the february entry but what about power parts? For example medium or high RPM turbo?

 

[budious]

"Power will be transmitted to the wheels through a 7-speed Seamless Shift dual-clutch gearbox equipped with "Pre-Cog", which allows the driver to pre-select the next gear by half-pulling the paddle shifter behind the steering wheel, which allows the transmission to execute faster gear changes."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLaren_MP4-12C

I've been impressed by the stock transmission, this may be why. If the advantage of a faster shifting transmission has been hard coded to the factory 7 speed then upgrading it might be counter productive. I have the same opinion of cluth, flywheel, and drive shaft on some high-end exotic cars, sometimes the stock components do better than the upgrades.

 

[Adrenaline]

Adrenaline - how are you breaking ties when multiple tunes have the exact same average? I count 5 out of the 9 driver submissions where I am tied with another tune, down to the tenth and I lose out. What method are you using?

Down to the tenth? Lap times go to the thousandth, so that's what I use.
Carl Edwards didn't tie Trevor Bayne at the Daytona 500 because he finished within a tenth of him.

When you score the competition the way you have, one would look at final point totals that range from 23 to 39 and believe that one tuner rules and the bottom sucks. In reality, ALL tuners produced tunes that generated times within 0.6% of each other. Incredible!

First of all, I've already explained that I'm not completely satisfied with the way last month worked out. Secondly, I've made it clear multiple times, that drivers should test and experiment with the top 3, if not more, and see which one fits them best. I usually take the top 3, apply a universal Transmission, LSD, Aero and brake balance to all 3 of them and then re-test them all, to see which one has the best suspension settings, because honestly, that's what I'm personally most concerned with.

Data Manipulation

There are lots of ways to twist things to see what you want to see.
For example, Removing Deep Forest from the data results in:

Tuner	Points	Behind Leader
D - Rotary J	36	
G - budious	26	10
C - NTwo	24	12
F - Niigma	23	13
E - Motor City	20	16
B - NM Racing	18	18

Where RJ destroys everyone, and all the standings don't even change.
Or, remove Basilea from the competition and you get:

Tuner	Points	Behind Leader
D - Rotary J	29	
F - Niigma	24	5
G - budious	23	6
C - NTwo	20	9
B - NM Racing	16	13
E - Motor City	14	15

Where MCH drops to the bottom and Niigma jumps to the top.

If you do the unmathematically sound and actually average together un-alike lap times you get the following:

Tuners	Average Lap	Behind Leader
D - Rotary J	00:01:14.890	
C - NTwo	00:01:14.934	00:00:00.044
E - Motor City	00:01:15.038	00:00:00.148
F - Niigma	00:01:15.041	00:00:00.151
G - budious	00:01:15.090	00:00:00.200
B - NM Racing	00:01:15.346	00:00:00.456

And for the final trick, if you only average together same-track(deep forest) laps and award only 6 points rather than 12:

Tuner	Points	Behind Leader
D - Rotary J	37	
G - budious	30	7
F - Niigma	26	11
E - Motor City	25	12
C - NTwo	24	13
B - NM Racing	20	17

Or finally, what may actually be the most accurate results of them all.
By combining every lap average together, for a total sum of time you get the following:

[B][SIZE="3"][U]Pos Tuners	Average Lap	Behind Leader[/U]
[COLOR="Red"]1 - Rotary J	00:11:14.013	
2 - NTwo	00:11:14.410	00:00:00.397
3 - Motor City	00:11:15.343	00:00:01.330
4 - Niigma	00:11:15.370	00:00:01.357
5 - budious	00:11:15.811	00:00:01.798
6 - NM Racing	00:11:18.114	00:00:04.101[/COLOR][/SIZE][/B]

Using the immediately above is probably the way it should have been done. This way it takes into account every second of every lap, within the average at least. This allows the ability to accurately track lap times, without the need to mandate specific tracks. Although I think it's still in the best interest to focus on a specific 'type' of track in the future, as I'm not a fan of transmissions being a determining factor in lap times.
Thoughts?

 

[Motor City Hami]

Adrenaline - Your Google document only showed down to the tenth.

But now I am really confused. There is so little difference in lap times between tunes.

Yanaran - nice review. We should post both tunes. I'm curious to see the differences in our tunes? Primarily LSD?

 

[Adrenaline]

Adrenaline - Your Google document only showed down to the tenth.

But now I am really confused. There is so little difference in lap times between tunes.

Yanaran - nice review. We should post both tunes. I'm curious to see the differences in our tunes? Primarily LSD?

Both tunes are posted on the previous page.
As for the google document, is anyone else having that issue?
This is what I see on my screen:

 

[budious]

That is what I see as well, maybe they just need to widen their columns. I'm using Gnumeric (linux) Firefox 3.6 (linux) to view it as well and works fine for me.

While the total lap time is fine, I do think the adjustment time is factor, plus driver error plays to the advantage of the tunes driven mid session, at peak of concentration. If you had done the testing in order of lettering than RJ would have been after the learning curve and before the fatigue set in. So removing some bad laps remains a better method, though, perhaps more than the best 3 should be scored.

 

[Adrenaline]

While the total lap time is fine, I do think the adjustment time is factor, plus driver error plays to the advantage of the tunes driven last. If you had done them in order than RJ would have been after the learning curve and before the fatigue set in. So removing some bad laps remains a better method, though, perhaps more than the best 3 should be scored.

I ask that everyone do random orders when testing them.
I can't vouch for the others, unless their email was sent in order.
I tested with an outward and then inward spiral for the 2 tracks.
Meaning the first track, Trial Mountain I tested in the order of:
Stock, Motor City, RJ, Niigma, NTwo, budious, NM racing.
E,D,F,C,G,B
Then for Grand Valley East the exact reverse.
B,G,C,F,D,E

Basilea did them in the following orders.
E,C,B,G,F,D
G,E,D,C,F,B
C,D,E,G,B,F

The other driver's emails were all written alphabetically, whether by nature of their testing sequence or thoughtfulness to reading/transferring to me I'm not sure.

Although I should note, Basilea is the only driver who submitted lap times in the way I requested Yanaran gets a pass because he didn't get the email instructions.

 

[budious]

Stock, Motor City, RJ, Niigma, NTwo, budious, NM racing.
E,D,F,C,G,B
Then for Grand Valley East the exact reverse.
B,G,C,F,D,E

All you did was move G, B from the fatigue curve to the learning curve. Take your first two E, D and move them to the end, so you had tested F, C, G, B, E, D on the next track. Anyways, it's really too close to bother arguing overall and I find the differences in per track setup more interesting than combining all times for all tracks because that is a rather meaningless figure in of itself.

 

[Basilea]

Stop, it's not my driving order, I did send them in order of fastest to slowest, like you asked for! My first tests on Tsukuba, where I couldn't do all tunes in one day, showed that my driving really depends on my mood. That tells me I have to test all tunes the same day, but then there is what budious said a curve, first I get better to a point after which I get tired and lose concentration. With this in mind, I gave myself a time frame and tested in 3 x 5 laps for each tune.

 

[Adrenaline]

All you did was move G, B from the fatigue curve to the learning curve. Take your first two E, D and move them to the end, so you had tested F, C, G, B, E, D on the next track. Anyways, it's really too close to bother arguing overall and I find the differences in per track setup more interesting than combining all times for all tracks because that is a rather meaningless figure in of itself.

I might buy that, if my results didn't completely contradict your logic.

Trial Mountain Order: E,D,F,C,G,B
My Top 3: D B F
D falls into your 'learning curve' and B falls into your 'fatigue' and yet they placed 1st and 2nd respectively, with 3rd being in the middle.

Grand Valley East: B,G,C,F,D,E
My Top 3: D B F
Where D is under 'fatigue and B is under 'learning curve' and low and behold F is in the middle again.

I see no pattern in running order and lap times, at least not for myself.

On the second note, adding all lap times together does make sense.
It's like treating each track as a 'sector' for an overall lap time. In which case you need to run all sectors well to produce the lowest overall lap time.

 

[budious]

On the second note, adding all lap times together does make sense.
It's like treating each track as a 'sector' for an overall lap time. In which case you need to run all sectors well to produce the lowest overall lap time.

Well, you may be a very precise driver, though there is a warm-up and fatigue period and some drivers depending on rest level may be more or less affected.

Also, you make the same argument I made for the inclusion for Nordschleife, the difference being that all those sectors actually exist on the same physical course. Concatenating those results for separate tracks nets no real measurable gain across any one course. Tuning for high average is different that tuning for targeted performance through a particular sector.

 

[Motor City Hami]

I see no pattern in running order and lap times, at least not for myself.

.

So my tune, tune E, was tested in the first part of your learning curve and at the tail of you fatige, according to bodius. I like that thoery. He's definately onto something. It couldn't be at all that your driving style differs from mine a bunch?