Too Much Understeer

[Ecklesia]

I see that all the cars in this game suffer from a terrifying level of understeer. I just got the game today, and I want to know, what are the best settings to improve oversteer? I brake properly before corners, can't make it due to understeer and constantly go off course, so I brake 2-3 times as much and only then can I safely take the corners, but then I take the corners way too slow. Please tell me the best ways to increase oversteer so it doesn't feel like I'm driving with a ship on land.

[dbond1]

Understeer is a function of too little weight on the front axle when cornering. So to dial that out you want to make setup changes to encourage more weight on to the front wheels and the car will turn better. There are many ways to accomplish this, and which you use requires some trial and error. Only make small changes and then head out to test it. Revert back to default and then try a different tweak to get a feel for what each one does, how it affects the car's balance.

A few things you could try....

-- Softer front springs or stiffer rear springs. These two do essentially the same thing to a car's balance. Springs are usually my first tweak to dial out entry understeer. I'll try both options and settle on which one feels best given the current circuit's characteristics as well as the car's.

-- Softer front roll bar or stiffer rear.

-- Shift brake bias toward the rear

-- Lower front tire pressure, higher rear.

-- Alter the car's rake by changing the ride height. The lower the front is in relation to the rear, the more weight on the front wheels. Make very small changes. Add two or three mm to the rear ride height and take it out for a test.

-- Aero balance. More front wing helps turn in. Perhaps counter intuitively, less rear wing does too.

-- Trail braking. This is a technique that involves continuing to apply brakes all the way down to the apex. Braking shifts weight forward, and this reduces understeer. In passenger cars we are taught to brake, release, turn. In racing cars, this promotes understeer. Try braking all the way down to the apex, gradually reducing pressure.

--Differential and pre-load. Different cars have different adjustments and some do not allow any change to the diff. But this is one of the most important parts to dial in a good setup. Assuming a full differential and associated settings, there are two main things to look at. A diff can de expressed as say, 60/40. The first number controls exit behavior. The second controls entry behavior. If we want the car to rotate better on entry, raise the second number. A 60/60 diff will turn in much better than a 60/40. Some cars have 'clutch' settings here, but we will not venture there for now.

Preload acts as a unifier for both the exit and entry sides of the differential, or power and coast sides as I call it. It is a setting that affects both sides and is the fine tune after the rough work of getting the diff right. For the purposes of this thread, you would want to lower the preload to encourage more rotation on entry.

-- Engine braking. Many cars in RR have it, some do not. And many are already at the lowest value. But if not, lowering the engine braking will help the car rotate on entry.

How's that for an answer? One last thing.... for every action there is a reaction. So you always want to approach chassis setup from a perspective of balance. It does little good to dial in your entries if that makes your exits a mess. You want to find the settings that give the car the best balance through all four phases -- entry, mid-corner, exit and top speed.

That's just a sample of setup and suspension changes that might help. It is important to only assess the changes you are making when you are driving well, and only make one small, single change at a time. If you are missing your braking point or otherwise bungling your driving, you cannot properly assess the setup change.

[76561199637406677]

Originally posted by dbond1:

-- Shift brake bias toward the rear

Shouldn't you shift it towards the front so that the back wheels have less brake pressure, so they want to spin the car to be in front of the front tires?

[Ecklesia]

Originally posted by dbond1:

Understeer is a function of too little weight on the front axle when cornering. So to dial that out you want to make setup changes to encourage more weight on to the front wheels and the car will turn better. There are many ways to accomplish this, and which you use requires some trial and error. Only make small changes and then head out to test it. Revert back to default and then try a different tweak to get a feel for what each one does, how it affects the car's balance.

A few things you could try....

-- Softer front springs or stiffer rear springs. These two do essentially the same thing to a car's balance. Springs are usually my first tweak to dial out entry understeer. I'll try both options and settle on which one feels best given the current circuit's characteristics as well as the car's.

-- Softer front roll bar or stiffer rear.

-- Shift brake bias toward the rear

-- Lower front tire pressure, higher rear.

-- Alter the car's rake by changing the ride height. The lower the front is in relation to the rear, the more weight on the front wheels. Make very small changes. Add two or three mm to the rear ride height and take it out for a test.

-- Aero balance. More front wing helps turn in. Perhaps counter intuitively, less rear wing does too.

-- Trail braking. This is a technique that involves continuing to apply brakes all the way down to the apex. Braking shifts weight forward, and this reduces understeer. In passenger cars we are taught to brake, release, turn. In racing cars, this promotes understeer. Try braking all the way down to the apex, gradually reducing pressure.

--Differential and pre-load. Different cars have different adjustments and some do not allow any change to the diff. But this is one of the most important parts to dial in a good setup. Assuming a full differential and associated settings, there are two main things to look at. A diff can de expressed as say, 60/40. The first number controls exit behavior. The second controls entry behavior. If we want the car to rotate better on entry, raise the second number. A 60/60 diff will turn in much better than a 60/40. Some cars have 'clutch' settings here, but we will not venture there for now.

Preload acts as a unifier for both the entry and exit sides of the differential, or power and coast sides as I call it. It is a setting that controls both sides and is the fine tune after the rough work of getting the diff right. For the purposes of this thread, you would want to lower the preload to encourage more rotation on entry.

-- Engine braking. Many cars in RR have it, some do not. And many are already at the lowest value. But if not, lowering the engine braking will help the car rotate on entry.

How's that for an answer? One last thing.... for every action there is a reaction. So you always want to approach chassis setup from a perspective of balance. It does little good to dial in your entries if that makes your exits a mess. You want to find the settings that give the car the best balance through all four phases -- entry, mid-corner, exit and top speed.

That's just a sample of setup and suspension changes that might help. It is important to only assess the changes you are making when you are driving well, and only make one small, single change at a time. If you are missing your braking point or otherwise bungling your driving, you cannot properly assess the setup change.

--

Thanks a lot for this answer, dbond1, and I very much appreciate you giving your time to give a proper response to my questions. I can see that you're someone who knows what they're talking about, so I will take your advise and try all these settings. This game seems very cool and I'd love to be able to play it properly but I only had this one little problem which is the understeer, everything else seems to be great about this game. I'll try these settings as soon as possible. I'm very grateful for your reply. I'll copy this text to my phone so I can have quick access to it while I'm in-game without having to use alt+tab to switch screens. Thanks a lot!

[dbond1]

Originally posted by MrYeast001:

Originally posted by dbond1:

-- Shift brake bias toward the rear

Shouldn't you shift it towards the front so that the back wheels have less brake pressure, so they want to spin the car to be in front of the front tires?

Good question, but yes, you want to shift bias to the rear to help it rotate better. Why? I'm not sure lol. But I reckon it has something to do with stability. Instability promotes agility, a concept used in fighter planes for example. But I'm just guessing.

Give it a go. Take out any car and make the bias say 60 front and turn a few laps. Come back in and make it is 54 or whatever and try it again. There is not a single default setup in RR where I haven't shifted bias to the rear, usually two or three points as virtually all default setups are understeery. This is done so that beginners have a stable car under them but as your skill improves you won't want that. Stable is not fast.

I don't feel like I've rally answered your question. Just saying 'try it yourself' is not usually a convincing argument lol.

No worries Ecklesia, hope it helps and let us know how you get on.

[capersnip]

Originally posted by MrYeast001:

Originally posted by dbond1:

-- Shift brake bias toward the rear

Shouldn't you shift it towards the front so that the back wheels have less brake pressure, so they want to spin the car to be in front of the front tires?

Hem,not to extreme the brake bias.
Like 55% front-45%rear is all good,can even do a bit more.

[dbond1]

I can go as low as 50-50 depending on the car and the track. usually around 53 front for me as an average. The exceptions are tracks with super-heavy braking zones like the first turn at Monza for example where I need more front bias. For tracks like Mosport for example I like it pushed farther back.

[capersnip]

Originally posted by Ecklesia:

I see that all the cars in this game suffer from a terrifying level of understeer. I just got the game today, and I want to know, what are the best settings to improve oversteer? I brake properly before corners, can't make it due to understeer and constantly go off course, so I brake 2-3 times as much and only then can I safely take the corners, but then I take the corners way too slow. Please tell me the best ways to increase oversteer so it doesn't feel like I'm driving with a ship on land.

Hi,something simple you can try is,modulate the throttle in corner to see when the car loose/get grip.

[dbond1]

Yesterday I took on a challenge from one of my friends, who had posted a time trial lap in the Formula Vintage Gen 2 at Road Atlanta. These old time rocketsleds are among my favorite classes, if not top already. They evoke memories of GPL, but this class adds wings! I call them the ''69 cars" even if that might not be accurate.

Anyway, I wanted to make this post to show how I go about dialing in a setup, I had just driven Mosport in this car, and with the nature of the turns on each track seemingly similar I gave it a go here too, but it was crap. I was slow, and fighting exit oversteer, the tail dancing around, kicking out this way and that when I try to pick up the throttle. Entry understeer was an issue too. So I'm faced with correcting two dissimilar handling issues, really, two sides of the same coin and a tricky one to balance out.

First task was to get the entries right. Set brake balance to 53 and pressure to 90%. The car was pushing under braking and cornering, classic understeer. First I tried adjusting springs. And whilst the stiffer rear spring settled the entry, it exacerbated the exits issue, reducing rear grip as the weight wants to shift there under acceleration. Set springs back to default.

Next I fooled around with the roll bars. Softening the front gives the car more entry grip, but makes handling less responsive, so in the esses section it felt a little too sluggish, and I was running up on the kerbs. But overall the added grip when cornering felt good. Left it there, with a slightly softer front roll bar.

Next I messed around with aero. Many sim racers think of aero as 'downforce' and while it is that, it is also a way to balance the car by changing the relation of the front and rear wings. Oversteer and underster can be added or removed as needed by changing this relative. Tried adding a lot of rear wing, but back came the entry understeer as the rear now has more grip and resists the rotation. In the end I bumped rear wing one notch to a value of 7. Raised front wing but that just made the car slower down the straights, costing time. Set that back to default value of 2.

At this point the car is feeling pretty nice, the balance is good, we've softened front roll bar and added a little rear wing, changed brake settings, but the car was still tail happy when picking up the throttle especially on to the backstraight.

All this time my lap times are falling. Started off in the mid-27s, but these changes have started bringing that down and now I'm running in the 25s.

With just the exits left to correct it was time to tune the differential. By raising the power side of the diff I was able to tame those exits, letting me get the power down more smoothly and eliminating the happy tail. Dropped clutches to 4 which opened the diff up a bit and now the car felt like it rotated freely, especially on entry. One of the setup goals I chase is getting the lift oversteer right. Racing cars are driven as much with the pedals as with the steering wheel, and there's a specific feel I want the car to have when I lift going in to the corner. It was over-rotating slightly as I did so with the lower clutches setting, making me take more kerb than I want, so I dropped the coast side of the diff to 45, now running a 55/45/4 and now I had the balance I had been hunting. I could attack the corners with lift oversteer, pick the throttle up early and planted, with none of the instability I had earlier. Smoother, faster, more predictable.

Lap times were now in the 24s with the current board-topper at 24.1. I was close. I now had a car I was comfortable with, confident in, and as I adjusted to this new balance I was able to turn a 23.5 and clear the field by some distance. of course with the board reset there are not many laps up. But it feels good to identify the issues and have the ability to dial those out and put a fast car under you.

Of course setups are public in AMS2 so feel free to use it and see if you can top my lap :)

[dbond1]

I'm embarrased that I forgot this is RaceRoom forum and not AMS2. That was in the latter, but the concepts still apply. Ooops :)

[goblueteam]

We are def spoiled right now with all the good sim racing content we have available to us lol its hard to keep track of.

I actually thought the cars were driving really nicely With out to much understeer and just lifting off the throttle a bit would bring the weight forward and give me the turn in I needed.

Maybe its just a FOV issue or something.. possibly your just entering the turn to fast or on the brakes to hard while turning can cause the car to go straight as well.
Sometimes the FOV can really effect this feeling of understeer.

Anyways idk I just felt like the gt3 and wtcr cars I drove felt really good especially when it came to getting the weight to transfer and getting the car to turn in.

Would agree with the tips above
Try to use more rear brake bias so the front tires do not lock if your trail braking into the corner.

You can lower the front ride height or raise the rear ride height or both to put more weight on the front tires keep in mind you will eventually spin around much easier if you go to extreme.

Sometimes having the front end to stiff can cause understeer as well..

You could try using more -camber and + on the caster. (this might be a ACC only thing idk)
so if your on -2 camber try -3(example) on the front(usually less -camber on the rear but on some games it can be the same).

If your at 5 caster try 6-7(example) not sure what type of numbers raceroom uses off the top of my head as I mostly drive ACC.

Anyways im no raceroom expert so that is just stuff that usually works in most sim racing titles and seemed to work for me in raceroom as well.