Wait, wait, wait… let me get this straight…
I’m almost competitive with LEO? 
The world has ended.
I had forgotten that I was only using MacPherson fronts! Anyone else here not using double wishbones? I’m pinning my presumably poorer cornering dynamics mainly on that.
I must stop doing cars in less than 20 minutes, as in this case. It used to work, but surely it doesn’t as well anymore.
My car has McPherson struts, Strop. Otherwise the engine wouldn’t fit.
Did you end up going with -15 suspension quality? Could be that. 
Actually, on that note, in my ultra brief tuning schedule, I find that the crap quality suspension made zero difference on the track… BUT on reflection its highly likely that’s because I don’t test on really poor roads. Time to conduct more thorough tests!
EDIT: Checked them on tracks with both high and low degrees of sportiness. Makes almost no difference whatsoever except a handful of milliseconds on a few of the tracks lol, hence my previous practice. In fact sometimes 0 quality goes SLOWER than -15 quality, but I never worked out why. My main issue is the Macpherson fronts, because, like leo, can’t fit that and my over-stroked engine in the bay!
Sorry for double post, found it necessary to bump thread due to new developments:
Went back over testing of new downloaded tracks. I know there’s a fair degree of variability in the track testing between files, but I’ve just realised the discrepancy is a bit too large: on Daytona Sports Course I’m actually getting a time of 2:20.58, which is a difference of over 1 second! Even accounting for various differences when sending files between users, I never encounter that much natural variation, it’s more like 0.2-0.3s.
Could I trouble you to go back over the file, first clicking through all the Trim tabs (especially aero, that’s quite buggy), and check the time again?
Oh, the sports course I am using is slightly tweaked, as it was producing errors with one of the cars. I forgot about that, here is the version I am using.
Tweaked Daytona Sports Course.zip (379 KB)
Besides that, there is a bug when loading a car in sandbox mode. The game always assumes that maximum cooling is being used, for it to use the real cooling values, you need to click the cooling slider up, and then down to get the original cooling.
ah ok. I now get 2:21.62, which, when I run the ventilation slider up to maximum, matches your times posted. That’s the tricky thing about testing for tournament purposes and all that, as it affects different cars differently depending on what their fixtures are and whether the extra drag on the course affects it or not (for Daytona, it definitely does due to the Tri Oval).
This is absolutely not a complaint, as I’m actually even pleasantly surprised that the inferior Not-Golf Mk I body is doing so well (a 5 minute build with a not-CRX body with double-wishbone fronts goes about 1% faster, which is significant), but given the result in round 1, I was slightly surprised by the result in round 2 hence my enquiry.
There’s something to be said about tweaks to the course, what was the tweak? Were the cambers decreased in some areas? The reason I ask, is because in most other tournaments, unless there’s something known to be inaccurate/wrong with the track, if a car runs a “triedtocomparevaluewithnil” error on the track, we more commonly assume that it actually crashed on track and failed to finish the race, which is most often due to inadequate traction or too much lift (4 minutes into my not-CRX build, I had the aero wrong and the excessive lift on the rear created that very same error). This might be difficult to anticipate if the tracks aren’t announced, but IMHO it would be left to the responsibility of the entrant to ensure their tune would be safe enough for all tracks encountered, and that such errors would have to be counted as a DNF… but of course this would be most properly left to the discretion of the tournament host.
Well in this case, I really don’t think it was the car’s fault really. Not sure of what causes the lua error, but I doubt it’s the car, since that’s all “in game”, and it works on the next much much much harsher track just fine. That said, here is the results for Race 3. This track is the BRC Mountain Ridge Track. I think I will cut out the last track as well, we don’t need another pass at daytona.
Don’t worry strop, your vehicle is still quite competitive.
Oh I’m not worried, in fact I’m pleasantly surprised my car even got to be a front runner in the faster stages, what with its massive drag disadvantage!
I mention those things more as a general FYI, mainly because these are issues commonly encountered by new tournament hosts. I expect the car in question to be fine on slow tracks but may crash on tracks with high speeds significant banking and corners all on the same track where’s the issue is an imbalance in lift. Specifically at certain speeds and degrees of attack the lift in any part of the car may exceed the total weight and therefore the car would theoretically become airborne. I would be interested to see if that car makes it around nordschleife!
Race 4 results! This famous japanese track was a different kind of challenge to the other courses. However the GSI Morpho Turbo and it’s driver oppositelock continue to dominate!
Up next will be the fifth and final race. Which will take place on the BRC Road to Highway rally track.
That morpho car is very well balanced! It seems we have generally different levels of car entered, which is not that surprising given that mer_at and Leo (both whose tuning skills with automation I hold in very high regard), for two, did not spend much time on their builds. I spent a bit more, but mainly on making a replica, so that it is punching above its weight for the body makes sense, but so too is the fact it will never beat an optimally tuned car with a better body except on slow tracks!
I think road to highway was a very fast stage with big straights, so I will expect the morpho to win that, too. If I still managed a 2nd, that would be a pleasant surprise!
Also, your (bittwiddler) benchmark car is very strong!
You are correct, Strop.
I think I spent more time naming the car than building it. I sure as hell spent more time to send the PM, as it was very late.
From this I see that Oppositelock’s car is really good, congratulations. And BitTwiddler has a good car as well.
I was 4th (excluding the benchmark car) in every single race so far.
At least I am fairly consistent.
That is something of a massive surprise!
Not sure what it is about this track, but the morpho did terrible on it! Just enough for strop to sneak ahead and grab first prize.
Wow. That can’t be right. I was so sure the Morpho would win it! Either way, I am grateful for the (most narrow of) wins, and many thanks for hosting (with your very strong benchmark at that!), as well as everyone else for entering! Given we did not know the tracks, the balance was definitely a lot of luck, so it could have gone any which way.
BitTwiddler, would I be correct in saying your car has comparatively low downforce and a much higher top speed? Now that I look back at the stats, oppositelock’s car had comparatively less top end power (I assume it had superior bottom end power). I really would love to know how it managed such a high sportiness to tameness ratio with less power, as I feel that had a lot to do with why the car excelled on the “medium” speed stages, but maybe it really lacked top speed and had a lot of downforce. Worth some more study!
I’m only going to give you the stats I collected before the race, anything else you will have to ask them. As for my car I had 100 front areo, 50 rear, 40 downforce with fully clad. MY car just happened to have the best acceleration and top speed, not sure how I managed that, but it involved a lot of tuning. Just means it will destroy any other vehicle in the race in long straights (like the last track apparently).
Oh that’s even more interesting, 2nd and 3rd were the sedan bodies which I assumed would be weaker! (That being said, given how 5 minutes with the not-CRX body yielded something that would have thoroughly destroyed everything on this track, but only in retrospect, of course), it all came down to not knowing the balance.
Confounding the downforce settings are the placement of wings and lips. As you can see I’ve sneakily disguised a front wing as some kind of opening on the blown hood. The truth is, at this stage, a wing at default setting counts for 0.11m^2, while a lip counts for 0.044^2 of effective area. Lips are less efficient than wings at creating downforce. Exactly where you put the fixture changes the comparative amount of effect on each area, hence even though I had front setting of 40, rear of 16 and undertray (fully clad) of 0, I bet you I still had heaps more downforce than you did. Then again, given the body I used, I also had a lot of extra drag (well, not a lot, more like 0.3m^2 over the not-CRX, and 0.1m^2 over the not-70s Escort) to deal with.