Post 3 * Setup Your Car

After you pick a race, you can run some practice sessions and play with you car setups.  There are off the track decisions that will really come into play when we talk setups.

• Training your driver's technical skills makes a difference.
• Hiring a race engineer makes a difference.
• Running as many laps in practice as you can, makes a difference.
• Adjusting your setup sliders logically, makes a difference.
• Don't run like a madman, until your driver has mad skills.

Your driver needs the ability to give Feedback to his crew.  Feedback is capitalized as it is a skill name in the game you do need some points in.  Technical and Mechanic skills are good to know to when it comes to dialing in a car during practice.  The better educated your driver is on these things, the better they can communicate and help in the testing process.

A race engineer to a Formula Car is as important as a Crew Chief in NASCAR.  That is the person who makes key choices in strategy and technical knowledge.  The better the Race Engineer, the faster the setups dial in.  You can't afford many if any employees early in the game, but the sooner you get a Race Engineer and some driver tech skills, the better practice sessions will go for you.

Experience trumps all.  The more laps you can run, the more data you get.  Look at fuel tank limits.  Look at what other drivers are doing.  If you get six practice sessions and you see drivers getting a little over 180 laps in, do the math.  They are running a little over thirty laps per session.  Follow suite and get some results.  Keep an eye on your fuel and tire levels between sessions, and make sure you maximize your data collecting efforts.

(This car is not dialed in on setups.)

Adjust your settings between each practice session.  You start with full red bars in each category.  You want all the color gone as much as possible.  Find a pattern of adjustment that works for you, and stick with it.  I use a binary sorter method.  I just keep 1/2 things until I eliminate possibilities.

I will never tell you what track this is or how many laps this took.  This is however a good example of having your car ready to qualify in a good starting spot.  It took me three seasons, a race engineer, and lots of driver training to get these settings dialed in.  

(This car is dialed in on setups.)

I see people talk about aggression, tire, and mechanical settings.  Some folks crank em up and run like a mad man.  Hey, more power to em.  I found what works best for my team is to start low, and work up.  As my driver and team get better, I turn up settings.  When it appears we crossed the line and get a few DNFs that are our fault, we back it back down.  That line appears to move with skills.  I could be wrong, but the better the skills, the higher the settings you can run with.  That is my opinion, based somewhat on trial and error.

Warning

Trading data is honestly no good in this game.  I have a firm belief that no two teams are identical.  What works for one driver, the engineer, and car they use, will not necessarily work for your team.  Drivers have so many variables in skills.  The same is true of the engineers you hire.  It is that combination skills combined with track data that forms what your settings are.  That math is different for each driver style as well.  You have to develop and record your own team data.