Apparently my setup is terrible

[Ykonoclast 1]

I started playing with F1 2018 and I must say I am not a very good driver. That said, using no assists (except ERS), I could race the AI on 50% and finish a race around the level of my team mate (which seems to be a good measure of one's limits).

 

I thought I had a basic knowledge of how setups worked and was quite satisfied with mine in 2018 (note : I didn't use the so-called ''ballast trick'' as I could'nt manage the oversteer of a ballast higher than 7) but I am really struggling in 2019.

 

I spent time learning about the differences in 2019 (with youtube videos, articles etc.) and adjusting (in Spain) my base setup to get the best times. Once this was done, I started a career.

And then the nightmare began : on 50% AI, I am always 20th, sometimes several seconds away! Lowering difficulty (to 30%) helped, but then I can only win anything using massive amounts of flashbacks (like several... for every turn), achieving a lucky qualifying and then bottlenecking everyone behind me with a hard defense : I have absolutely no pace whatsoever and even Williams cars easily go past me.

 

Worse : when pushing the car to the limit I am suffering of both understeering and oversteering at the same time : I go extremely wide on corner entry and spin ridiculously on corner exit.

 

I tried ajusting my setup, but there is only so much you can do (isolating each setting is hard : I am not a machine and my lap times are never exactly the same so it's hard to see what does what). 

 

This really ashames me, I really took a lot of time to adjust the setup and... well it kind of sucks anyway as behaviour is subpar in the end. So, could anyone teach me how to suck less?

 

Here is what I use in Spain (and is quite ''baseline'') :

 

Transmission :

Diff ON : 100 (tried lowering it, seemed to give worse times as the car struggled to accelerate on corner exit)

Diff OFF : 75

I never really understood what these does (I understood that it governs differential locking, but as to the effects on the car... that is not clear)

 

Geometry :

camber : all to the right

toes : all to the left

I don't really get what is the exact effect, but many advise this (and it actually seemed to improve lap time)

 

Suspension :

Front : 3

Rear : 4

AR bar front : 7

AR bar rear : 5 

I tried other values for the AR Bar but performances degraded with lower and higher settings, 7/5 seemed the sweet spot

Ride height front : 3

Ride height rear : 4

 

Brakes :

pressure : 90 

bias : 55

 

Tyre Pressure :

Front : 24.2

Rear : 21.9

 

 

 

 

[tportellacsl 2]

8 minutes ago, Ykonoclast said:

I started playing with F1 2018 and I must say I am not a very good driver. That said, using no assists (except ERS), I could race the AI on 50% and finish a race around the level of my team mate (which seems to be a good measure of one's limits).

 

I thought I had a basic knowledge of how setups worked and was quite satisfied with mine in 2018 (note : I didn't use the so-called ''ballast trick'' as I could'nt manage the oversteer of a ballast higher than 7) but I am really struggling in 2019.

 

I spent time learning about the differences in 2019 (with youtube videos, articles etc.) and adjusting (in Spain) my base setup to get the best times. Once this was done, I started a career.

And then the nightmare began : on 50% AI, I am always 20th, sometimes several seconds away! Lowering difficulty (to 30%) helped, but then I can only win anything using massive amounts of flashbacks (like several... for every turn), achieving a lucky qualifying and then bottlenecking everyone behind me with a hard defense : I have absolutely no pace whatsoever and even Williams cars easily go past me.

 

Worse : when pushing the car to the limit I am suffering of both understeering and oversteering at the same time : I go extremely wide on corner entry and spin ridiculously on corner exit.

 

I tried ajusting my setup, but there is only so much you can do (isolating each setting is hard : I am not a machine and my lap times are never exactly the same so it's hard to see what does what). 

 

This really ashames me, I really took a lot of time to adjust the setup and... well it kind of sucks anyway as behaviour is subpar in the end. So, could anyone teach me how to suck less?

 

Here is what I use in Spain (and is quite ''baseline'') :

 

Transmission :

Diff ON : 100 (tried lowering it, seemed to give worse times as the car struggled to accelerate on corner exit)

Diff OFF : 75

I never really understood what these does (I understood that it governs differential locking, but as to the effects on the car... that is not clear)

 

Geometry :

camber : all to the right

toes : all to the left

I don't really get what is the exact effect, but many advise this (and it actually seemed to improve lap time)

 

Suspension :

Front : 3

Rear : 4

AR bar front : 7

AR bar rear : 5 

I tried other values for the AR Bar but performances degraded with lower and higher settings, 7/5 seemed the sweet spot

Ride height front : 3

Ride height rear : 4

 

Brakes :

pressure : 90 

bias : 55

 

Tyre Pressure :

Front : 24.2

Rear : 21.9

 

 

 

 

Hey, man, don't get mad!

Everyone probably takes time to be good at this game and, since I've bought my F1 2018, last april, the most I've learned from myself and famous youtuber is: practice makes perfect. I dared to set the AI to 90, at first attempt. No way. Reduced to 50% and was still getting knocked down. I left the game and purchased GT Sport and also Project Cars 2. These games, mainly PC2 allows you to learn cornering and braking correctly. That's possible thanks to the physics and possibility do drive slower and "peaceful" cars. Now I'm using AI at 75% and found a good and non frustrating challenge. To Learn every setting of the setup is important to tame the cars and don't get time trials as a parameter. They do not consider tire wearing, fuel consumption, the risk of break the car in a wall, etc. You can use this mode to learn the tracks. I recommend you to read articles about car dynamics (mechanical grip and wings, for example). Avoid using differential at its maximum value. It will wear your tires and make you spin. Diff. ON means how much torque you'll put on wheels when you press the gas pedal at corner exiting. The higher you go on this bar, the most locking you will apply on your differential, making the wheels spin together. Decreasing this value, the wheels will become more independent during cornering. Diff. OFF is almost the opposite. It represents the torque you have when leaving the gas pedal before cornering. In other words, it can mean how nervous is your car when turning in on a corner. Stiff anti-roll bars and suspension can make your car more responsible, but cut off some grip and loose control on bumpy tracks. Softening them will give you more time to react and/or fix driving errors, but making you a bit slower in cornering... The link below has explained setups for every circuit and it helps me a lot in my career. Not because I don't know how to set up my car, but because it was written and tested by a most experienced driver, obviously. I do few clicks down or up accordingly to my drive style/car, of course.

 

https://realsport101.com/f1/f1-2018-game-monaco-grand-prix-setup-guide/

[Andrew210227 199]

For 2019, I'd  recommend significantly opening the diff on and off to between 60-70%.

Switching up the front and rear Anti roll bar compared with what was usual in 2018: go higher value for the rear than front (5-7 F, 7-8 R should be OK for most tracks, but play around with it..

Lower brake pressure to about 80%.

Lower tyre pressures a bit, they seem high.

[Ykonoclast 1]

Thanks for the contributions. I will try with these indications.

 

What are the exact effects I can hope to obtain by opening the diffs?

What would inverting rear and front bars exactly do?

Same for tyre pressures, what is the desired effect by lowering that here?

[Ykonoclast 1]

Follow-up : I did everything I was suggested (lowered tyre pressures to 23.4/21.5, set AR bar to 7/5, set diffon to 70 and diff off to 60) and performances drastically improved : I went from 20th to 7th position (moreover, in an Alfa Rome this time) so it all worked perfectly, thanks a lot.

 

Now, I would love to understand a bit more what exactly this all did, but what's really important is that I can now enjoy the game much more, so really, a gazillion thanks.

[Andrew210227 199]

What are the exact effects I can hope to obtain by opening the diffs? --> It'll give you more gradual traction out of the corner, and a better turn in entering. It's also much easier on the tyres. You'll have to feather the throttle a bit more. In F1 2019; I have both values at between 55-70 for nearly every track.

What would inverting rear and front bars exactly do? --> going with a higher value on the rear will give you a sharper turn in. I've found that this slider works fairly similarly to the ballast we used to have. In past games I would always go with a slightly higher value front, but in F1 2019 I've reversed it for most tracks and the response of the car is just better (Suzuka being the best example). Be careful though, you can easily overdo it and make it really unstable.

Same for tyre pressures, what is the desired effect by lowering that here? --> lower rear tyre pressures will give you better traction and generally better tyre temps. Traction wise this compensates the loss of outright traction created by the lower diff setting a bit.

[Ykonoclast 1]

Thank you Andrew210227 (that's... a lot of Andrews) all is much clearer now.

[tportellacsl 2]

4 hours ago, Ykonoclast said:

Thank you Andrew210227 (that's... a lot of Andrews) all is much clearer now.

You probably did not read my reply, but... that's life...

[dwin20 38]

On 8/5/2019 at 1:43 PM, tportellacsl said:

Diff. OFF is almost the opposite. It represents the torque you have when leaving the gas pedal before cornering. In other words, it can mean how nervous is your car when turning in on a corner.

What do you mean by nervous? Thanks - your overall post was very helpful.