How suspension settings impact on lap time?

[mattia.piron]

I'm doing some tests, using the ktm xbow on top gear test track.
I made 8 run of 10 laps for each run using different dampers settings (compression - extension of front and rear).
I'm working on the extremes of the setting range (0 or 8, none intermediate value) just to exaggerate the behaviour.
I can feel that the car behaviour change, but I don't see any difference in lap time (some little differences in the beginning, but when I understand the new car behaviour I come back to the previous lap time).
So I'm wondering if these settings can really make differences in improving lap time.

Thanks

[onearmedbandit]

Definitely can make a difference, but you need to adapt your driving to the differences to take advantage of them.

[ling.speed]

If that top gear track is an old rip you can forget dampers. After all damper is designed to counter what track does to the car, and old tracks were flat as pancakes.

Even if the track is well made you'll mostly see difference over bumps, and TG course had like 2 or 3 bumps where damping colud affect laptime, rest was pretty flat. For hammehead you could weald the suspension in and it would post the best laptime (both in game and IRL).

There is definitely a lot to dampers in AC but it's VERY situational. Not only track surface mesh changes things, also the springs you choose, the stiffness and damping of tyres car has on, and even setup sliders values often being hidden behind vague numbers (1 click on one car might be worth as much as 10+ clicks on other) etc.

If you wanna start tuning dampers for laptimes, open "car engineer" dev app, read up on what is "critical damping", get a car that has both slow and fast bump damper settings on a bumpy track and start experimenting. If you want to go wild Shelby Cobra is a fun starter as it has BIG range of options (including 0) and actual damping values are exposed.

[mattia.piron]

I'm not sure that a flat track is insensitive to suspension settings, because low speed damping modify the behaviour during load transfer (that is low speed movement, while bumps are high speed).
In fact, I can feel different behavior of the car, with some settings is more sensitive to over-understeer, with others is more gentle... But these differences are not visible in lap time. Maybe the problem it's me

[ling.speed]

Yeah, yeah load transfer this load transfer that, it is important on Autocross, but on wide tracks you can adjust driving style and post almost the same laptime with widely different settings. In fact thats kind of the point of using dampers to control weight transfer, to tune the car to fit driving style.

Depending on your skill level you might not be precise enough to use the difference in weight transfers due to dampers, or you might be fast enough to not care and drag the car over ideal line regardless of them.

What will help laptimes regardless of skills is maximizing tyre grip through traction. And you want to use both slow and fast damping for that. And in most cases to know what dampers you need for that is experimental. Make a balanced setup, then stiffen or soften front or rear dampers and look for balance change. For example: if you changed fronts and car tends more toward oversteer you just increased front grip for "free". If you cant feel anything chances are track is flat enough to not matter - so you can stiffer the dampers for sharper response to inputs.

ps: Dampers and weight transfer is often talked about on the internet not because it matters but because it's easy to explain and static. In practice dampers are anything but easy or static. It's just too hard to distill the usefull stuff into anything less than a small book when trying to talk about more than one car.

edit: pps: i'd not expect dampers to matter on TG track in X-bow, so don't feel discouraged. There are combos where good damper set is worth 0.5s per lap or more (thou generally it's not that much).

[clairvoyantwolf]

Just a couple quick points. It's best to think of the suspension as a system instead of individual components. Of course you can tune individual components to see what they do, but in the end always tune the elements of the suspension in concert to achieve an specific goal.

A second very important point is to realize that what feels good may not actually be fast. That's where data comes in. There are several real life sports cars and aftermarket shocks that are over stiff simply because there is a perception that stiff equals fast, that is not always true. The point of dampers in a performance setting is to keep the tire in contact with the road. Even a seemingly billiard smooth racetrack is not actually flat. Small barely perceptible surface changes affect the tire's contact patch.

Last point, a car has to move on its suspension to create grip. Ultra stiff might feel great but performance is not maximized. A car that rolls around and heaves like a trophy truck might develop a lot of grip but will be so slow to respond as to be hard to control. In reality land the optimum amount of suspension deflection for a given car with a given tire can be mathematically defined (at the pro level). In game experiment as you are doing, but I suggest using segment times instead of entire laps. It is also good to try and drive in a deliberate fashion like a test driver than pure hot lapping.

[lx]

this xbow thing is not the best vehicle to use, for testing if suspension tweaks matter.
the others said good things. i also heard that dampers are the last part to tune in a suspension, so their effect will not be major. they do provide better handling, if optimized for the conditions.
my setup is 8 bump, 7 rebound. that visualized as "optimal" on the telemetry, for the track i have driven on. and kind of compensated for the soft suspension overall.
and i have watched some real footage from ktm xbow models, they are nothing like this thing in the game, so i consider it broken.

you also said some good thing yourself

Originally posted by mattia.piron:

...some little differences in the beginning, but when I understand the new car behaviour I come back to the previous lap time...

lap times dont come just from the cars and setups

... i have other stuff to complement the subject:
so if you see the pimp car video i have, you can see what dampers do. i drove this car with 0 dampers. they are used to stop the main springs from bouncing like that. tweaking them will make the process of calming the bounce of the suspension smoother or rough.

and for the above quote am about to upload my best time so far with the x-bow.
i loaded a setup labeled as 206580, which was made out of a previous 206500 and made a 2:03.810 with it. i was unable to drop my time any further. yesterday i gave the telemetry a good look and watched a few replays. i saw a few areas where im doing it a bit slow and today i totally destroyed that unbeatable time of mine. and i did not touch the dampers at all.