Okay, I took a look at the file. Because I spent an hour or so previously trying to find the sweet spots in this car, it was pretty easy for me to figure out what the issue was.
This particular body intensely dislikes overly wide front wheels, insufficiently stiff front springs, and heavily rearward biased downforce, all three things your car happens to have as it is set up now. If you drop the front tyre widths to about 175mm, then stiffen the springs (specifically the springs) to 30000 or more, and move the lip to the front so you have at least 20kg downforce up the front, you’ll probably gain about 8 seconds around the track. With that, even if you slashed the power to say, 280hp (to give a similar power:weight ratio of the other car), and removed the aero (which, at such low power, is better for the car since it’s hardly going to go fast enough to warrant the extra drag the wings produce), you’ll still go significantly faster around the track than the FR car in its current setup.
Good morning, Strop. And thank you very much, your advice seems to be the key to a better laptime.
I followed your instructions and set tyres to 175mm, and laptime goes down instantly by 6 seconds.
The problem here seems to be the massive oversteer the car has, which at some point between 175mm and 185mm turns into understeer.
I also found that I can remove the aero completely, and still go a reasonable fast 2:27. I am not looking for the best lap times to compete with more competent people but I want laptimes that compare reasonably to my other cars. And I prefer simple solutions, not doing 100 things at the same time and ending up not knowing what I have done. This here seems very simple, tyres must be balanced before everything else, and front tyres should be narrow.
Just one more question, you did not specifically say which springs should be stiffened, front or rear.
That would be the front ones (the settings on the left, at least in this build). This car, being rear heavy, expects the rear springs to be much stiffer than that anyway.
Thanks, I tried that but the springs did not have much of an impact. Probably one can gain an extra second or so but not 6 instant seconds like the tyres.
It was the tyres, definitely. I use ca 255-265mm tyres rear and 175-185mm tyres front and the laptimes have stabilized around 2:27. 6 seconds faster than the same car with 245-255mm tyres front.
And it will be interesting to use a smaller 3L engine in this car because as you said, it is probably not that much slower.
