I wonāt lie, since Vos wanted us to go all out with the tech, I went the whole hog and took everything out of the car there was to take out. You could say that of every choice we had free to us, I went for minimal weight, and nearly maximal drivability.
There are a few things about RR formats (see @AirJordanās car, the frame peeking through the bodywork is a dead giveaway) that make them good for this kind of challenge. Theyāre lighter. Most of the weight goes over the driving wheels. The rear wheels are being driven. The lighter you make the front end, the faster you can make the front end pivot.
By the same token, theyāre horrendously difficult to tune because theyāre prone to ridiculous amounts of oversteer. You simply canāt tune them the same way as you tune FR or MR cars. Itās kind of almost the opposite of turning an FF car except it makes even less sense.
When it comes to VVT + VVL, the trick is⦠for racing purposes only the VVL profile matters. Who cares how much low end you have unless youāre concerned about economy? (On that note Iām working on hypercars that will do 400km/h, 6:40 around Green Hell and all on 9L/100km or less lol). Iāll wager thatās why @squidhead said the VVL bit was really weird: it adds a lot of weight to the car and for our purposes here all it does is kind of get in the way. I just set the cam profile to as low as it would let me without knocking when Iād maxxed out everything else, because when the cam profile is nearly as high as the VVL and the VVL is maxxed out for performance, thatāll infinitesimally broaden your powerband. Thatās not how anybody in their right mind would tune a VVT-L engine at all in the real world, mind you.
Besides, with an NA engine, the lovely race exhaust and super expensive injection system and throttle bodies, the powerband and response is already lovely so all that remains is to find out the maximum performance index, and the method for that is pretty simple because itās NA (much more difficult with turbos). Then after that, once youāve optimised everything else, you just need to fiddle with the gear ratios because they donāt always follow reason. Thatās the part I kind of skimped on because I couldnāt be bothered testing 30 ratios for probably 0.02s gain. And Iām not sure that my choice of aero tuning is the fastest possible either given weāre playing with a mere 250hp (or, to give it some perspective, 350-450hp:ton). But one of my weaknesses is insisting on cars with zero lift, so thatās what I did. That probably cost me a bit more time too.
True, tuning is the real pain here.
I think a have a bit bigger rims than you and mybe wider front tyre. As far as I remember, mid1.10 was my time. I could get better with shorter ratio but since I did not know what will count I made a compromise. Also it was my first RR suspension tune and after some time cutting 0.0X seconds I simply called it.
I could get 1 extra HP (still one shirt I see) but curve was better that way and yield better times with gearing I had. As far as aero goes, I do believe I reduced rear lift a bit but more than that hurt my time.
Your rims are probably quite a bit larger than mine. They look like 15". Mineās 12". Youād be quite right to think using profiles of 55 and above for front wheels is crazy talk, but apparently the weight I saved made up for it. Also with such a light front end, I suspect I donāt have to worry about sidewall shearing nearly as much.
With the saved weight and slightly improved contact patch due to more give in the tyre, I even shaved 0.1s off the 0-100 time
well downforce actually helped me here. and a clue, both of my cam profile are only a couple points apart.
im getting 250hp @ 9700 and i canāt tweak anymore. and i canāt seem to find where to lose another 20kg compared to stropās
now on the Rear/Mid engine config. i always end up in a dillemma. bigger front tires or less oversteer. sure i could alleviate some oversteer with camber, but it only goes so far, and beyond that makes more sense to make the tires thinner.
This is the question. Iāve found that eliminating all oversteer is not wise as youāll end up on bicycle tyres and it hurts your braking and turn in. Based on my questionably realistic experience with old Porsches in simulators, if you lift off or brake, the rear end goes all kinds of squirrelly anyway.
The best balance Iāve found somewhere around (but not on) the mark where estimated drivability is maximised, which involves a ton of terminal oversteer. This is one situation where clever suspension tuning really pays dividends, I slashed over a second off my Airfield time with that.
Because of the ultra fast pivoting, if set up correctly, RR cars in automation are capable of insane levels of cornering. Which makes them very handy on technical tracks. I can come pretty close to breaking the real world record on the Pikes Peak track (which may or may not need recalibration, since I wrote it ages ago) with one.
i do NOT get how strop could get less that 1:09. i pulled all the stops and trick and iām still a bit short of that.
even with 2.7s 0-60 and 1.5g cornering.
Wow! I didnāt totally suck, despite not knowing how to tune VVL and carrying extra weight around. Sure, I didnāt win anything, but I wasnāt last. Thatās an improvement in my book!
Well, that went about as expected actually. In terms of AirJordan coming second and Dziuras coming third. I hoped that the AWD config would make waves but the weight penalty at these outputs is just too high and the car ended up really slow, so no surprises.
A date with Randy huh? Iād trade that for a date with the livestock at the farm Whaddyasay?
wait what?
but thereās no deadline O_O
i thought it would still go for at least another week.
edit: so i just found the deadline is halfway down the thread, so i think i skipped thatā¦
and technically, itās may 7th right now which is may 6th on the western world, which is what im used to since most players are not from the east
sooooo i just wasted my time then. soocksā¦
so, i, uh, goddamit, argh, whatās the word, ah, feckit, i donāt know the words for what im feeling right now.