AC Round 14 of 23 Formula Agile@Zandvoort Thu, 24th August 2023

[a_murel]

Hi guys,

I'm thrilled to made it to the podium in an Agile race! This achievement, however, came with a handful of challenges due to the nature of this car. After the setbacks at Silverstone and the previous race, I put all my experience into configuring the car to match my driving style. Yet, no matter how hard I tried, it seemed to go in the opposite direction. This little car, I must admit, doesn't exactly embody the ideal racecar experience in a simulation game.

However, the experience was a great with all guys. It brought a smile to my face knowing you were witnessing my struggle with the setup, with understeer and limited straight-line speed. Luckily I could match the speed a bit with bravery and track-knowledge.

After the race, I had a conversation with Steve. He shed light on the unconventional approach needed to set up this car, tossing ANY logic out the window. This conversation was a revelation, as I was beginning to doubt my ability to handle a racecar's speed effectively.

Cheers

 

[Kek700]

Yes the car is weird Andre, so are some other cars in AC.
You seem to set every setup adjustment to the opposite and it works. ( that is not true of course, it makes sense to a very low very light weight single seater )
We are so used to saloon cars that a modern fast single seater is a new thing here on race department.
I could see you had pace, certainly faster than me. But the car was not joining you in with the process.

 

[KFMaster]

I tried my best for you Han, got a blindingly fast start, but the car in front bogged down. Next thing is Hank flies by. Managed to stop Fulvio for some corners then got a bit over exited with the throttle, how I will never know managed to straighten it up and only lose some car lengths. Only to be up with Fulvio and watched him hit a spinning car, yes the driving gods were on my side, no they were not, the nose of the spun car hit me. Well I was not going to be of much use being last.

If this was the second race first lap event, then that was me in the spinning car Sorry to have caused the chaos for everyone!

This was somewhat of a discouraging race for me, actually that started a couple of days before the race. Normally, I could continue to make progress reducing my lap time in practice leading to the race. But here I ran into a wall in the 1:29s, could never get under that. I was just happy to finish both race even pretty much dead last.

Still was a fun race to participating in, so as always, thanks to Markus and Han for organizing!

 

[Kek700]

@KFMaster

This cars for most of us? is a difficult car, but what makes it very difficult is a poor setup. When you get the setup right, then it is very stable, ( as long as you stay off the kerbs ) takes a lot to lose it, then it is just down to your ability to extract a maximum from it, as Fulvio said, braking is a massive part of this car performance.
( From a personal point of view, I struggle with tracks with slow corner and heavy braking, then then this car suddenly becomes a handful for me )
Make sure you have a good setup, that I do not know !! have you copied one from our group.?
The main obvious thing to do is run a lot of front wing and rear wing. The wing does not affect this car, so removing wing will not make you quicker, unless you are on a very long straight.
Or you are chasing the odd tenth.
For example, on Le Mans I would run 0 rear 4 front, here at Zandvoort it was 12 rear 14 front.
I would not have said much, but following Andre at this circuit brought it home to me.

Hope I am not poking my nose in where it is not wanted.

 

[RasmusP]

Make sure you have a good setup, that I do not know !! have you copied one from our group.?

He got my Melbourne setup, which I built on "our" Bahrain setup
With that setup, I did the second fastest time behind Fulvio at Melbourne and Barcelona. Very stable, very grippy, max front wing, rear accordingly to balance the understeer

For me, a long throttle throw with high resistance and a loadcell make a big difference with cars like this!
You need to be pumped with adrenaline to be awake enough and then you'd simply slam any stock standard pedals like G27 or T300 pedals...
You need to be slow and careful on the throttle and never brake too hard or you'll first lock up and then spin out, lol.
But to be quick, you need to do both things really fast too... Riding one semi-locking wheel from the braking point to the slowest moment of a turn and then instantly get into a mild drift while holding on for dear life

 

[Kek700]

That answered that. cheers Rasmus.

 

[stigs2cousin]

Yeah, your description of the ride sounds legit.

 

[KFMaster]

He got my Melbourne setup, which I built on "our" Bahrain setup
With that setup, I did the second fastest time behind Fulvio at Melbourne and Barcelona. Very stable, very grippy, max front wing, rear accordingly to balance the understeer

Yep, thanks Rasmus for that setup. It is my standard high down force track setup (which seems to be everywhere so far except Baku for which I used Jason's low down force setup, thanks Jason!).

For me, a long throttle throw with high resistance and a loadcell make a big difference with cars like this!
You need to be pumped with adrenaline to be awake enough and then you'd simply slam any stock standard pedals like G27 or T300 pedals...

I have got the Moza SRP peddle with load cell and what I would think qualifies as a long throw throttle. I had modified the brake to have a very short spring travel that simulates the gap between the brake pad and rotor so it feels just like what one would find on a racing kart. But set the max force to be on the low side for my weak foot -- Carsten and I had some discussion on that one So I can't blame my equipment

You need to be slow and careful on the throttle and never brake too hard or you'll first lock up and then spin out, lol.
But to be quick, you need to do both things really fast too... Riding one semi-locking wheel from the braking point to the slowest moment of a turn and then instantly get into a mild drift while holding on for dear life

I think this is the part that I am missing. I can do it quick, just can't seem to do it with proper precision in timing nor modulation

I felt this is just a matter of more seat time, with more practice I would get better. That had been true until recently -- until the Zandvoort FA race and now the Brands BTTC race, I had been able to make continued incremental improvement in my lap time towards the race day. Now I am not, stuck with bigger gaps to the front runners than what I had been narrowing down to. In fact, I am off by a second to the best time I got days before. Unfortunately I had not been able to spend sufficient time to dig into the data to figure out what is causing this

 

[KFMaster]

Didn't actually install it. All good now.

View attachment 688683

Hi Han,

I think I have the same problem with my black & gold JS lotus skin. I was getting the gray skin in both practices and race Could you also fix that?

Thanks,
Dai

 

[Kek700]

One very simple but very important thing to look at is your throttle and brake trace.
It really is very important, I have adjusted my pedals in an attempt to eliminate most of the silly things I do.
Like wonder why I cannot stop in time, then I look at the trace and find my foot is resting on the accelerator pedal and applying some throttle whilst I am braking. No wonder I don’t make the corner.

The next is I am not accelerating as fast as I did last lap out of the corner, only to find I have my foot resting on the brake pedal, no wonder the car is not accelerating as before.

Now I use throw and dead zones to try and eliminate these things, which I have done. The only problem is that I start to pick up other habits after extended use.

I had to go to hydraulic pedal, they have some friction in them which helps a lot to eliminate these silly habits I seem very good at creating.

My latest habit is “for some bizarre reason” when braking at a max or should I say trying too, I have now morphed into a ballet dancer, pivoting my foot up wards on the brake. pedal.
This has the amazing but not exactly unexpected consequence of reducing the brake pressure, exactly when I should be increasing the brake pressure. No wonder I over shoot my apex.

I have now changed my brake pads for large carbon ones, they look great, to stop the pedals cutting onto soak covered ballet pivoting feet.

How I manage to race and not be in fits of laughter about all my weird foibles, I have only dared mention a few, I will never know.

My rig is designed to accommodate all this Tom foolery, it resembles an invalid carriage rather tha a racing rig. It is also designed to lock me into place so there are as few involuntary movements as possible.

 

[KFMaster]

One very simple but very important thing to look at is your throttle and brake trace.
It really is very important, I have adjusted my pedals in an attempt to eliminate most of the silly things I do.
Like wonder why I cannot stop in time, then I look at the trace and find my foot is resting on the accelerator pedal and applying some throttle whilst I am braking. No wonder I don’t make the corner.

The next is I am not accelerating as fast as I did last lap out of the corner, only to find I have my foot resting on the brake pedal, no wonder the car is not accelerating as before.

Now I use throw and dead zones to try and eliminate these things, which I have done. The only problem is that I start to pick up other habits after extended use.

I had to go to hydraulic pedal, they have some friction in them which helps a lot to eliminate these silly habits I seem very good at creating.

My latest habit is “for some bizarre reason” when braking at a max or should I say trying too, I have now morphed into a ballet dancer, pivoting my foot up wards on the brake. pedal.
This has the amazing but not exactly unexpected consequence of reducing the brake pressure, exactly when I should be increasing the brake pressure. No wonder I over shoot my apex.

I have now changed my brake pads for large carbon ones, they look great, to stop the pedals cutting onto soak covered ballet pivoting feet.

How I manage to race and not be in fits of laughter about all my weird foibles, I have only dared mention a few, I will never know.

My rig is designed to accommodate all this Tom foolery, it resembles an invalid carriage rather tha a racing rig. It is also designed to lock me into place so there are as few involuntary movements as possible.

All those thing you said I have done plus some.
The funny thing is, we are very good at adapting to the new setup to return to old bad habits
I look at my trace allot, pretty much every session. So these jumps out at me to keep me on my toe (well, not literally , me foot was already not strong enough for my highest load cell setting, much less the toe).

But I think I have just figured out why I have been doing worse recently. After a bunch of more laps and looking at the traces, I finally start to get back close to my earlier BTTC lap time and feel more at one with the car. I think what happened was that recently I had been mixing driving the FA and the BTTC cars. These cars being so different, I am just not at the skill level to adjust back and forth easily and it was really messing me up.

There appears to be two levels of adjustment. The coarse adjustment between the car can be done in may be 5 -10 laps in my case. But the subtle ones linger and I don't really notice it. Then I ended up driving in a way that is not optimal (to the extend my skill level let me optimize it) for either car. And these subtle things seem to take allot of laps to readjust for me. When I don't get it, frustration sets in it just goes down hill. Today after about 60 laps of Brands, I finally got back within 0.1 of my best and start to feel better again. I hope this stays with me tomorrow morning when I wake up and I have decent race

Thanks sharing all your experiences and wisdom!

 

[gearwhine]

Yep, thanks Rasmus for that setup. It is my standard high down force track setup (which seems to be everywhere so far except Baku for which I used Jason's low down force setup, thanks Jason!).

I have got the Moza SRP peddle with load cell and what I would think qualifies as a long throw throttle. I had modified the brake to have a very short spring travel that simulates the gap between the brake pad and rotor so it feels just like what one would find on a racing kart. But set the max force to be on the low side for my weak foot -- Carsten and I had some discussion on that one So I can't blame my equipment

I think this is the part that I am missing. I can do it quick, just can't seem to do it with proper precision in timing nor modulation

I felt this is just a matter of more seat time, with more practice I would get better. That had been true until recently -- until the Zandvoort FA race and now the Brands BTTC race, I had been able to make continued incremental improvement in my lap time towards the race day. Now I am not, stuck with bigger gaps to the front runners than what I had been narrowing down to. In fact, I am off by a second to the best time I got days before. Unfortunately I had not been able to spend sufficient time to dig into the data to figure out what is causing this

Dai, you had plenty of pace from what i could see from following you for a few laps. What i think you lacked was 'flow'
My fault completely for diving into the back of you as i was too close and you had completely different braking points to me which i think were early and too hard maybe.
If your setup feels good to you try to let the car do more of the work as it is quite stable i find as long as the throttle input is gentle.
I use the same setup i created from the very first race with just a little tweak from wing and tyre pressures to try and keep zero understeer or oversteer and it works fine for me.
I am never going to be super fast with it because i am probably no longer sharp enough to react at the speed needed to get that extra second or so but when i make a mistake it is me and not the car. I really like it and find it a satisfying drive.
I gave Andre the base setup that i use which as he said goes against everything we should do to make it work but it does. My wing for this race was only 3 rear and 9 front but it was very stable.
I agree with Ernie that low wing only makes a difference on faster straights with this car and one other thing, pump the tyres right up.I find it likes it

 

[stigs2cousin]

Sounds like Dai still has the "Walter Whites" :

For the Beemer "Sqeeze and release" works much better than "stomp on, jump off"

 

[RasmusP]

BTTC

British Touring Tourette Cars, instead of British Touring Cars Championship?
Sorry, just came into my mind from Ernie's ballet dance, doing pirouettes

These cars being so different, I am just not at the skill level to adjust back and forth easily and it was really messing me up.

Absolutely! You can quickly change between touring cars, but aero single seaters are really different. I always need about 2 hours with the FA to really get up to speed when I haven't driven it for longer than 2 weeks.

I gave Andre the base setup that i use which as he said goes against everything we should do to make it work but it does. My wing for this race was only 3 rear and 9 front but it was very stable.

Can you share this setup? I'd really love to have a look and compare it to my Melbourne/Barcelona/Hungaroring setup! Very curious about the changes that went against what should work. Not meant ironically/sarcastically. I really want to have a look and learn a few things or get/write an explanation about this

 

[Kek700]

MY setup Rasmus
PS.
I put very little effort in, as you know this is not my favourite car. I found it to be very stable and easy to drive.

 

[KFMaster]

Sounds like Dai still has the "Walter Whites" :

View attachment 690176

For the Beemer "Sqeeze and release" works much better than "stomp on, jump off"

Now you tell me!
I have been faithfully working on "Stomp on, release" as you have instructed me
Actually from the log you shared I have noticed that you were doing this obvious "Sqeeze" thing and I was wondering, wait, why is Carsten operating the brake like what he tells me to do with the throttle? I was puzzled for while until I tried your setup like what I was mentioning to you, if I don't have the steering straight, the moment I stomp on the brake, the Beemer starts to turn in so fast it was not even funny. But for the setup I have been using, stomping on it has not been a problem. But it is probably also why I am 1 second slower. But I felt it would take me much longer to get used to your setup, so I stayed with my setup (default plus camber adjustment from Robert's tip on using the Camber Extravaganza, my first step venturing into setup ).

 

[KFMaster]

Dai, you had plenty of pace from what i could see from following you for a few laps. What i think you lacked was 'flow'

Yes, I think I know what you mean, it is what I was calling not feeling as one with the car, I seems always a step behind what is happening

My fault completely for diving into the back of you as i was too close and you had completely different braking points to me which i think were early and too hard maybe.

No worries. I think this is because in the race, I am trying to do this 90% thing to avoid over drive. So I concisely for myself to brake a bit early so I have margin and ended up over doing it.

If your setup feels good to you try to let the car do more of the work as it is quite stable i find as long as the throttle input is gentle.
I use the same setup i created from the very first race with just a little tweak from wing and tyre pressures to try and keep zero understeer or oversteer and it works fine for me.
I am never going to be super fast with it because i am probably no longer sharp enough to react at the speed needed to get that extra second or so but when i make a mistake it is me and not the car. I really like it and find it a satisfying drive.
I gave Andre the base setup that i use which as he said goes against everything we should do to make it work but it does. My wing for this race was only 3 rear and 9 front but it was very stable.
I agree with Ernie that low wing only makes a difference on faster straights with this car and one other thing, pump the tyres right up.I find it likes it

Yes, I got to work on letting the car do more by staying a step ahead of it, guiding it and let it do its thing instead of reacting and fighting it. This is also where that 90% driving thing came (courtesy of Carsten's coaching) -- if I do that right, things flow much better and I often improve my fastest time.

What is interesting is that although the 90% often improves my fastest time, it does so by consistency, i.e., every corner gets close to the best I can be, but get to the next second, I still to have push really harder for make the best of each corner better.

The tire pressure setting is another interesting topic that requires another post to discuss. I better get on with some laps for the BTTC racing now!

Thanks Steve for sharing you insights and pointers!

 

[stigs2cousin]

Now you tell me!
I have been faithfully working on "Stomp on, release" as you have instructed me

Damn, should I not have mentioned the difference in driving dynamics between high downforce single seater and spruced up saloon cars

Actually from the log you shared I have noticed that you were doing this obvious "Sqeeze" thing and I was wondering, wait, why is Carsten operating the brake like what he tells me to do with the throttle? I was puzzled for while until I tried your setup like what I was mentioning to you, if I don't have the steering straight, the moment I stomp on the brake, the Beemer starts to turn in so fast it was not even funny.

I remember telling you with my setup the beemer ist turned in with the brakes squeeze and release in all the fast lefthanders.
"Your Honor, let the data show....."

But for the setup I have been using, stomping on it has not been a problem. But it is probably also why I am 1 second slower. But I felt it would take me much longer to get used to your setup, so I stayed with my setup (default plus camber adjustment from Robert's tip on using the Camber Extravaganza, my first step venturing into setup ).

Nice.
We should talk about that later. I tried CA before Motec, but got no usable information out of it

 

[KFMaster]

Damn, should I not have mentioned the difference in driving dynamics between high downforce single seater and spruced up saloon cars

I am sure you did, but it didn't sink in until now

I remember telling you with my setup the beemer ist turned in with the brakes squeeze and release in all the fast lefthanders.
"Your Honor, let the data show....."

I guess it is an expectation thing. I was expecting it to turn in, not spin out

Nice.
We should talk about that later. I tried CA before Motec, but got no usable information out of it

CA? Or do you mean CE (Camber Extravaganza)? That thing is simple, you watch it, if histogram is blue, more positive camber, if red, more negative camber. Kind a camber for dummy. Motec has lots of data, but I have no clue how to map that to camber setting.

CE does the calculation for you. It use the tire data to figure out the grip vs camber curve, apply to both tires in real time to calculate the total grip for each axle based on the loading of each tire. It would be nice if it can record the data and import it be Motec. Right now one would have to watch the histography during a test lap and mentally average out the histography to adjust the camber. But CE does make it easy by doing the color coding thing, so you just try to make more green. The CE download page also have all the formulas it uses. I suspect Motec has all the variables needed and we can probably writing a new math channel to do the same calculation. Not sure if some one may have already done it.

 

[KFMaster]

The tire pressure setting is another interesting topic that requires another post to discuss. I better get on with some laps for the BTTC racing now!

Now the tire pressure setting. I have been using the sidekick's tire pressure recommendation. But that is just a number. If I look at my lap data, it varies through out a lap. Motec has a nice thing where it shows the Max, Min, and Avg of the pressure for what ever the window you have on the trace. So I have tried to set the pressure to make either one of the three to match the sidekick recommendation. But I could not tell any difference in driving And my lap time just isn't consistent enough for me say which pressure is better. So I have been leaving it at Avg and just match the left and right for CCW and CW circuits.

I take what you said, Steve, is that I am better off to set it for the higher end, that is, to make minimum pressure match the recommendation?

Many people had recommended ProTyre, I will have to give that a try some times.