New player, having a hard time heating up tyres

[Alexandre Arruda]

Hey guys, maybe someone can help me out?

I've recently bought a g29 wheel and Asseto Corsa, and this Sim Racing thing pretty much amazed me. This game is a blast. So, next month, iRacing Brasil will host a new season of a championship series for begginers and I'm like "WTH, "i'll give it a try. They'll even give new entrants 3 months of subscription for free."

So, before I subscribe to that racing league I decided to practice the MX-5 Cup in Laguna Seca, one of the tracks that league runs. And boy, do I need a lot of practice.

My first problem is tyre temperature. The hard slicks used in Asseto Corsa take a LOT of time to heat up, up to 5 laps sometimes. And I never get to heat up the left front and left rear tyres. I even tried to use assymetrical settings (15 psi for the left tyres and 17 psi for the right tyres), and although this setting makes me almost get proper temperatures, the left tyres are always a little bit colder than their optimal temperature. I also tried to add some negative camber, but I feel I'm going to some extreme cambers and I know that extreme set ups are usually not good to go for.

My second problem (and proably a consequence of the first one) is consistensy. I still haven't managed to complete 10 laps without spinning or drastically oversteering. Not to mention I still find it extremely difficult to downshift while cornering. Although it might be obvious that braking, turning and downshifting at the same time is an extreme stress for balance, I feel that if I managed to trailbrake and downshift correctly, I would improove my times a lot more .Especially at turn 1 and the corskcrew.

Aaand that brings me to my third problem, which isn't a big deal for me anyway, but... after ~50 hours of practicing, my lap times are waaaay to high. I mean, I've managed a personal best of 1:41:1 and an average of 1:43. Although those are times made with half a tank of fuel, lowering the fuel isn't giving me a better feel of the car.

So, I wonder... do you guys have any tips for setups and driving techniques that might help me?

Thanks in advance

 

[Pawel Ziolkowski]

Yeah I don't do anything to heat up the tyres really. I weave around to get tyres that don't start on 100% grip up to max.
I have no idea how you drift an MX5 on slicks, I can't even drift an AC drift car on road tyres

Almost 2 years ago I made a half-joke half-proof of concept... guess it's finally time to post it

The slicks weren't even overheating

For the slide heating to work in race, it has to be 4 wheels sliding or it's understeer galore.
ps: It's crazy how fast this car can slide, if drifting is your thing, just check out corner speed at 1:45 haha.

I'll refrain from commenting on most of the Deeap stuff here but this:

You get more play & maybe allow you to turn the steering faster because there's more step with the brake while retaining the front load.

is horse s*it. I have no problems making WR laptimes on most combos (or be within 1s off really good alien WR's) and im using half, literally HALF the default 8 bit rate on g27 pedals (so 128 steps), and i could not tell the difference when switching between 128 and 256 steps! Not using the "untealistic exploit divebombs" either, only threshold braking.

For steering yeah it's important to have more than 8bit, but for pedals, no way.
Just look at any pedal telemetry be it sim or RL, and the amplitude of pedal movement oscillation is way above the minimum step.
Heck it's hard to push the pedal step by step at 7bit, going above 8bit would start being physically impossible for human foot to accurately do it ... these special 10bit cables and what not is just plain marketing.
Literally the resolution of the braking foce for 10bit pedals on Mx5 cup's rear tyres (thats force change in car's brakes, not the pedal) is two Newtons, which is roughly twice the force to push two keyboard buttons... A fly hitting the car will have more drastic effect than 10bit pedal step.

Also if resolution is so important then why some good gamepad drivers can reach WR speeds too.
/rant

 

[Mr Deap]

@Alexandre Arruda
I'll probably favor you average 1:39 with the default setup & get feel of the understeer mid corner while keeping brake pressure.

You can always try max negative camber on all the wheels, before exploring the suspension. Often it does wonder. More suspension travel lead the need of more negative camber.

One step at time, but you're heading in the right direction in my opinion.

It's always fascinating when you read statement that setup doesn't matter.

 

[RasmusP]

It's always fascinating when you read statement that setup doesn't matter.

It's mostly not about that setups in general won't matter.
It's about the fact that someone does a 1:52 for example on default and then does a 1:50 with a setup which perfectly fits his current driving skill.
But then you have "the fast guys" who do 1:47 on default and would only do 1:46.8xx with a perfect setup for the specific track and their skill.
Now the question is if the slower guy should invest time building a setup which makes himself 2s faster but a skilled driver only 0.2s or better invest the time into his driving skill.
And it's also very likely that the "perfect setup" for the slow guy will be complete crap for really going fast.

As I experienced my self when I tried to optimize the mx-5 for magione and it got me faster. Somehow @BhZ was still 1.5s faster than me on default.
After comparing telemetry I found out that I needed a different approach for the tight corners (drifting for a tighter radius while also accelerating earlier), because the mx-5 just works like that.

Sad truth is that my setup indeed gave me more grip but it also completely restricted this slight exit drifting so I got stuck with my slower lap time.
I then moved back to default, tried to do what @BhZ did and got 0.5s faster after 10 minutes.

This kind of story isn't a single case for me and BhZ. I see it at every event and help-thread.
Yes, a few cars have bad default setups but most are spot on for going really fast!
Instead of digging into setups better get Motec and acti and ask the quick people for a baseline lap data

 

[Kek700]

Rasmus

For what is worth, this exactly reflects the views I have concluded.
In other words I completely agree with what you have said. Maybe with the accumulated knowledge
in the future I may have an alternative point of view. , but at the moment this is how I see it

 

[Mr Deap]

If you run a competitive league or something, it make sense. If you don't it make no sense.

Sometime you just want to adjust your setup while understanding your drawback & not caring. Although, because of that drawback the result is exponential & especially when AC driving model is known to be somewhat forgiving.

https://www.racedepartment.com/threads/are-you-happy-with-the-latest-tire-model.136185/#post-2485907
"For all the rest of the people that think AC tyre model is too unforgiving, I'm sorry but I strongly disagree. We've always had one of the most forgiving tyre models in the industry, up to the point that often hardcore simracers were complaining it was too forgiving."

 

[RasmusP]

Almost 2 years ago I made a half-joke half-proof of concept... guess it's finally time to post it

I forgot to quote this in my post:
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!

 

[BhZ]

If you run a competitive league or something, it make sense. If you don't it make no sense.

Sometime you just want to adjust your setup while understanding your drawback & not caring. Although, because of that drawback the result is exponential & especially when AC driving model is known to be somewhat forgiving.

https://www.racedepartment.com/threads/are-you-happy-with-the-latest-tire-model.136185/#post-2485907
"For all the rest of the people that think AC tyre model is too unforgiving, I'm sorry but I strongly disagree. We've always had one of the most forgiving tyre models in the industry, up to the point that often hardcore simracers were complaining it was too forgiving."

It is forgiving in the sense that you dont have to care about tire wear and stuff like that as much as you'd do in real life, but from a handling point of view, it is very similar to rfactor 2, in fact i could switch between sims without the need to adapt my driving style or my driving technique.

 

[Andy-R]

Hey guys!

So, let me give you some feedback. After reading this thread, the first thing I did was turning off the auto clutch. As I don't have the H stick gear, I was only using the clutch during starts. So I had to re learn all the technique to break with the right foot again. It took me a while to achieve the same laptimes and consistensy using the 3 pedals. Also, I figured some turns are uneven and offcamber. For example, I was quite prone to oversteer at turn 9 untill I realized the right side of that corner is a little off camber. When I noticed, I started to straight the wheel a little early so that the car didn't get too upset with that transition.

I do have a point to make here. Althouht I figured my main problem is still sticking up to the right racing line (I figured I was turning too early on turns 3 and 5), I believe heating up the tyres gives you more grip than getting the optimal pressures. With my low pressure setup, I managed to find a 1:40:2 hotlap with half a tank, even though the car gets a lot more prone to snap oversteering. Maybe that's not an ideal setup for a long race, but an okayish one for qualy?

When I changed my setup to 21 psi on all four tyres (they heat up and reach 27 psi after 3 laps), I felt the car was a LOT more stable and I managed to complete 14 laps without any incidents. BUT, I didn't feel confident enought to go flat out on turn 6, for example. Maybe I should set lower values for rebound, so the car gets more manageable on all those ups and downs?

And yes, @Andy-R was right. As the MX-5 Cup needs a lot of momentum, I was eager to downshift on gear more than need in order to keep high revs. With a better corner entry, that became completely unecessary, although I always tend to snap oversteer at turn eleven. There is a huge gap of torque between 3rd and 2nd gears, I still haven't managed to "heel and toe" correctly there.

And this thread only made me learn a lot. You guys have been really helpful and I would love to buy you a beer sometime!

I'm not good with setups, other people here could probably give you better setup advise, mine is copied from an ancient thread on the official forum. I really think you would be better off with correct pressures but it's up to you of course.

I was going to quote some of your comments about specific turns but I figured I would just do corner by corner thoughts. This is all IMO. Oh and remember that the apexes have been highlighted with little red curbs at Laguna Seca

T2
Brake inbetween the 3 & 2 markers, down to 3rd gear. I think you are supposed to miss the first apex but my delta was happiest with quite a tight line. You can get back on full throttle about here anyway (I don't have good enough control of my brake to trail brake into the first part though so maybe you can carry more speed in and be further to the right if trail braking)

T3
Brake inbetween the 2 & 1 markers, turn in at the 1 marker (more or less at the end of the curb)

T4
Full throttle all the way here, turn in at the end of the curb about here

T5
I made the engine/gearbox my b**** here! Brake at the 2 marker and change down into 3rd gear, turn in at the very end of the curb and if you get it right you should be on full throttle again just before the apex

T6
Nail your foot to the floor! I was turning in a little before the 1 marker

Corkscrew
Start braking about here

Get right up to the left side curb and then try and straight line it from there as much as possible

T9
Flat out. I think a tight line is faster but if you get further over to the right before T9 you will have less chance of oversteer (or running wide)

T10
Brake at the 2 marker and turn in somewhere near the end of the curb

T11
Brake at the 2 marker, down to 2nd gear, turn in as close to the end of the curb as you can for best drive out of the corner

 

[Mr Deap]

If you watch real onboard pole or lap record T9 is done differently. I often recommend to avoid real life contents in most cases to improve quick in video games.

 

[Richard Dastardly]

If you watch real onboard pole or lap record T9 is done differently. I often recommend to avoid real life contents in most cases to improve quick in video games.

Agree, somewhat - real life doesn't have homogenous grip across the track width, especially after some time into an event. It's good for learning a smooth general line though.