Set up Development and Race Craft

[Paul M]

Hi All,
One of the things I truly enjoy about Sim Racing is the Technical aspect of setting up the car. I am by no means the best at it, however I can set up the car to what works best for me and my style (Normally in a wall or gravel trap).

I thought starting a thread just for Discussion, Resources, Tips and Tricks would be a good for everyone; especially considering the problems we are experiencing with both MMG and F1RT this season. As set up will only help you so far I think discussion regarding driving technique would be useful as well.

To kick this off here is what I am using to develop my set ups:

The first link is to a set up development tool I found after Echoshill directed me to a league he runs in. The page will open to a list of articles regarding Sim racing and Technical aspects of a Race car. The last line of the list is a Setup development tool that walks you through setting up a base set which can then be tweaked, using the tool for whatever car or track you are driving. Very cool, it gives you alternate solutions to common problems with everything from Understeer to Pit strategy.

http://www.race2play.com/forum/articles

The second is to a telemetry program and DAQ Plug in , Telemetry is mostly greek to me however the more you play with it the more info you can gain on where you are loosing time as well as what affect setup changes are having on your lap times.

http://software.motec.com.au/release/

look for the i2Pro version, You will also need this plugin to acquire data from your sessions. Read the readme's as you will need to make some adjustments in your PLR file to get this working.

http://www.rfactorcentral.com/detail.cf ... n%20Plugin

My hope is that this will take off and perhaps we can find some short term solutions to the current physics problems both mods are facing at the moment.

Cheers,

[Bilbo]

On the subject of driving technique, I would recommend the following inexpensive books:

Speed Secrets: Professional Race Driving Techniques and its sequel Speed Secrets 2 More Professional Race Driving Techniques, both by Ross Bentley, and Going Faster!: Mastering the Art of Race Driving: The Skip Barber Racing School by Carl Lopez.

Each of the 3 books cost between $15-25 (new) so, for roughly the price of a single PC game, you could get all 3 books.

The books by Ross Bentley are really easy to read and you'll get to the end of them before you realize it. They really contain lots of technique and driver preparation wisdom aimed at making you understand the how and the why in simple terms and ultimately help you go fast and/or be more consistent. The books contains many "speed secrets", little easy to remember sentences summarizing the lessons and that you can think about while driving without getting too distracted. These books are relatively non-technical, the principles you will learn in them are general and can be applied as much to your FWD real-life car as to the simulated RWD F1s as you will easily understand what's happening and how to compensate/enhance it with better driving technique (i.e. playing the weight transfer game, etc.), no matter the conditions. That could even save your life someday in your real-life driving. The second book builds on the first one and mostly introduces complementary lessons, so if you can only get one of the two, I'd go for the first one as it covers to most important points that will make the biggest difference, IMO.

The Skip Barber book is more technical and might appeal more to those with "scientific" backgrounds as there are math charts and geometry and just has a generally more "technical school textbook" feel to it. This book is a bit more complete and expansive than the Speed Secrets books but that's not always a good thing as I've found it getting needlessly long at times. It does contain a nice section about the different passing situations that, for me, is worth the cover price in itself if you have ever wondered/debated who should have given up before a "racing incident" happened while passing someone. If you ever intend to or thought about going to a racing/advanced driving course, this book would probably give you a good idea about what to expect. It's the textbook for the Skip Barber racing school after all...

Each of the 3 books mentioned above contain things not found in the other 2, so you would probably end up being a better driver if you read all 3 but again, if I only could get one, I'd get the original Speed Secrets because it makes you easily remember the principles so you could intelligently improvise a technique to fit almost any situation if needed and it gives you "good practices" in your preparation for the races. Bentley has experience teaching to would-be pilots and it shows in how he explains things clearly in his books.

Note: The links above are from Amazon Canada, but the books are also available on their US site and probably in your local EU countries too (but I haven't checked). All these books are often out of stock at Amazon but usually not for very long.

Sorry for the long post, I hope it will help someone someday.

[Firefly]

I have the 'Going Faster' book - I've read most of it but it does get a bit too complicated for me, a bit too deep on the techincal side.

I also have the 'Going Faster' DVD. It's quite old fashioned in the way it is put together but it was nice to see some of the techniques actually tested on a screen rather than just reading them in a book.

[dutch power]

Here is a link to a old thread i ever made to help the guys out here, it pretty much contains the information what realy matters.

http://forumserver.zapto.org/NAR/viewto ... f=3&t=2686

[Flow]

[quote="Paul M"]look for the i2Pro version, You will also need this plugin to acquire data from your sessions. Read the readme's as you will need to make some adjustments in your PLR file to get this working. http://www.rfactorcentral.com/detail.cf ... luginquote]


I did not find the ReadMe, did i mist it in the install or can i have it somewhere else?