Car Setup

[Fritz]

I've been seeing a lot of threads where players are requesting for a feature that allows you to save/load last season's setup so you don't have to do it pen and paper or whatever. It wasn't until recently that I was able to watch a test run to see the difference between excellent and poor setup.

During the practice session, while on a quali trim stint using medium tyres, the drivers did 1 flying lap with terrible setup, came back to pit, then switched to excellent setup for another flying lap.

Pernet
99% setup-S tyres 87-79% deg 1:16.507*
10% setup-M tyres 100-85% deg 1:17.593
99% setup-M tyres 85-69% deg 1:17.527

Flores
99% setup-S tyres 76-67% deg 1:16.365*
15% setup-M tyres 100-86% deg 1:17.260
99% setup-M tyres 86-70% deg 1:16.982

*Note that soft laps done with ~12 laps of fuel in tank while mediums were done with ~2. Just included these for completeness.

That's a difference of 0.066s and 0.278s. Rather small for an ~80% gap in setup. Here are some possible explanation I came up with:
it's inconclusive data from a single flying lap. Maybe the medium tyres just crossed the line between fresh and normal tyres and were too hot so the 99% lap is slightly slower than it should be.

Correct me if I underestimate something but even if we adjust for those things, it doesn't seem like it would make the results >1s. So is it worth the trouble to fine tune your setup for those extra couple percents or do you just stick it in the green bar and call it a day? If this test was any indication, the latter choice seems like the better option. Less time going in and out of pit to check setup, more time on the track getting race and quali trim to level 3.

[Lilebilb]

I assume there were no changing weather effects....
If you want to really compare those 2 stints you Need to save when on the Setup page right before the Training starts.
Setup#1, start your stint, note the time
Reload, Setup#2, start, note & compare.
Without any setup/tire/fuel Change here is what I found out:
You will drive your fastest lap 99% of the time when in your first stint. The more grip the track gets from rubber THE SLOWER the lap times.
Another Advantage is you should have exact the same tire temperature and fuel if you select driving modes in the same way.
In General my 2nd stint (both race Setups, 4 laps of fuel, ALWAYS high engine mode, low tire Setting in pit lane, trying to adjust in outlap so temperature is in middle, Switch to aggresive driving style 1 Corner before timed lap starts, ride as Long as fuel allows, repeat for stint 2) is ALWAYS slower than my first.

Short Version:
More track grip translates to slower lap times.
A single set aint too good for results in respect of rng....

[Fritz]

I see what you mean. In this test, after getting race trim done, the drivers were sent to pit to switch to quali trim. Switched to mediums, bad setup, then sent out. They do out lap, 1 flying lap then back in. Switch to excellent setup, back out for out lap and 1 flying lap.

If what you say about grip slowing them down, since those results were only 2 laps apart (test 1, in lap, out lap, test 2) I don't see it making a large enough impact on time. Same with tyre deg or temperature. With a delta of 0.066s and 0.278s even if you add 0.5s to account for odd factors you still end up with 0.5-0.8s for an 80% setup difference. I was expecting something like 2-3s delta from a 10% setup compared to a 99%.

That means each % you tweak for, fighting to change that great green face to an excellent purple, all that does is save you 0.00625s or less per percent. A 90% set up is only 0.060s off 100% and while 0.060s might be the difference between pole and 2nd or 3rd, I don't think it's worth it if you risk missing out on trim and tyre bonuses (which I'm assuming give larger speed bonus).

[[₣] TastyFish]

I don't know about others, but I simply take a screenshot of my setup per driver, per race, label it, and upload to my Steam page. Everything then displays in order per last race.

[Fritz]

Well that's what I'm trying to figure out, is it worth the trouble of taking pics, writing down parameter values just so that next year you can replicate the same 99% setup again without going through several iterations of guess work? Should players just be satisfied knowing 89% is not that much worse than 99% and see this feature more as a luxury than a necessity?

Unless the a more consistent test environment (YouTuber plans to repeat it later in season during race instead of just practice) generates better results that show a significantly larger pace delta, then the extra headache might not be worth the man hours it would take to add that feature in the game (write the code, create the artwork for buttons, rearrange the UI, etc). Maybe not for 0.006s per percent (it's already not that hard to get 90% without knowledge of previous season's setup) when there's more pressing bugs, features, etc to fix/add.

Maybe that's why the devs have been silent on the matter and ignore the request. They know the feature wouldn't do much for the player. Maybe in the player's mind it would increase gameplay/fun level, but the actual car isn't that much faster for it.

[BigHooters Racing]

i got a notebook and all my setup for all 3 categories in there so when i in new season i put the setup i got and fix that with the practice time u have.. if u can get it around 85 after first practice run u in good hands to improve it.......

[[₣] TastyFish]

Originally posted by Fritz:

Well that's what I'm trying to figure out, is it worth the trouble of taking pics, writing down parameter values just so that next year you can replicate the same 99% setup again without going through several iterations of guess work? Should players just be satisfied knowing 89% is not that much worse than 99% and see this feature more as a luxury than a necessity?

Unless the a more consistent test environment (YouTuber plans to repeat it later in season during race instead of just practice) generates better results that show a significantly larger pace delta, then the extra headache might not be worth the man hours it would take to add that feature in the game (write the code, create the artwork for buttons, rearrange the UI, etc). Maybe not for 0.006s per percent (it's already not that hard to get 90% without knowledge of previous season's setup) when there's more pressing bugs, features, etc to fix/add.

Maybe that's why the devs have been silent on the matter and ignore the request. They know the feature wouldn't do much for the player. Maybe in the player's mind it would increase gameplay/fun level, but the actual car isn't that much faster for it.

I'm aware there is no setup from year 1 to year 2 that will give you the exact perfect setup that you had before (i.e. year 1 99% then year 2 89%). Still saves me time having to guess and tweak further in practice. I do go for close to 100% as possible. Most importantly, I want the race/quali bonus.

[Prasiatko]

How many repititons of this did you do to get the time. Remember drivers with a low consistancy stat will have very variable lap times anyway.

[Fritz]

@TastyFish
Generally from what I've seen, using the previous year's setup on the first attempt gets you somewhere between 89ish% to straight up 99% (though that only happened once). But more often it's 93-94% with some great and excellent faces, maybe a good face.

So if the data is remotely close and scales linearly that's a difference of 0.007s (low end) to 0.04s (high end). If we want to be extremely optimistic and say this data is a low end outlier (since its from a single inconclusive lap) then it could realistically be around 0.06s delta between 90% and 99% setup. Originally I was expecting a 3-4s difference between 10% and 99%, that would translate to a 0.39s delta between ok setup at 90% and excellent one at 99%.

@Prasiatko
Each lap time is from a single flying lap during a practice session. Which is why I'm not entirely confident in the result but even with some variance from the drivers, for it to affect to both drivers in the same way (reducing the lap delta between 10-15% and 99% stints) seems unlikely.

Also, based on past experience the bonuses and penalties this game awards for each individual variable (a single stat, or single trait, etc) are all very small in scale. So I don't think it's silly to say that given the fact that these results match other bonuses in scale, that even if the actual results are larger, they shouldn't be so much larger that it invalidates the usefulness of this first batch of data. Also that YouTuber seems to be interested in running the test again later in the season if he's winning by a large margin and doesn't necessarily need the points from podium finish. Though I'm wondering what would be an effective design for the test since you can't switch setup mid race. Maybe he'll have to sacrifice an entire practice session this time instead of doing it after securing race trim and soft tyre bonus.

[Lilebilb]

@Tasty&Fritz:
I NEVER had a drop in Setup down to <90% when using previoius years Setup. Most of the time it is 95+. The ONLY time that happens for me is when TRACK LAYOUT changes.
Fritz, your sessions were THREE laps apart. Gripwise this can be a huge difference, depending on General lap time. (with 1:30 laptime this means 4:30 quali time, for 15 minutes qualification this roughly means 30% Change in grip....)
Another Major limiting factor may be driving helps. Are These allowed in your season?

Edit: Ontopic I think Overall you are avsolutely right, the Setup should matter more....a lot more. (And it would be interesting how "good" AI finds Setups....if they suck/excell at it a small influence on lap times would make sense balance-wise)

[Fritz]

Ya. Your observation sounds about right, I was being conservative when I said 89%. If I had to estimate an avg I'd be 93-94% like I said before. You're also right about it being 3 laps, counting is hard sometimes lol.

Had another look, test 1 started at 6:57 minute mark and test 2 started at 2:28 minutes (counting down from 20:00). I watched the grip change and a it was more like ~10% increase, as grip tends to plateau towards the end of the session so that seems legit.

Though I'm still not sure what that means for the accuracy of the data. The impression I get from my memory is that although lap times can get slower as grip goes up, it's very vague and sometimes it doesn't and you still see some faster laps even on slower tyres. Tyre temp was also optimal for both tests, same engine and tyre modes, similar fuel, the effects of different tyre deg were probably minimal as well.

So you might understand why I don't think there's something that would change results from 0.066-0.278s to 2-3s delta which is what I was originally expecting. The most I can see it realistically change to now is 0.5-1.0s delta meaning each % is worth 0.006-0.011s, or 0.056-0.112s for 10% setup gap at which point it starts to become worth talking about.

I'm not sure about driving aids but that shouldn't matter since driver would have/not have aid for both 10% setup and 99%. The variable that's changing and being tested is the setup %. You could argue that grip slowing down cars is another changing variable but I can't control that (though its influence is being minimized by doing test laps as close as possible).

Ai seem pretty bad at it, if you do simulate practice, it's all over the place and often times your original ratios gave the best percent.

I also tried to see if I could figure out how fast lvl 3 trim and tyre bonus are and I didn't get anywhere. If I had to guess I'd say between 0.1-2s which isn't very useful.

[Fritz]

Ok, here's a new set of potentially suggestive data. This time it's results from an instant practice and instant quali, so I can't say for sure about the legitimacy since idk how the game runs simulated events. However, even if it's not conclusive by itself, the results help paint a picture we've seen before.

Practice-Vancouver
Pernet
93% setup-US tyres >60% deg 1:24.304 (1 lap)
12% setup-US tyres >60% deg 1:24.313 (3 laps)

Flores
93% setup-US tyres >50% deg 1:24.247 (2 laps)
56% setup-US tyres >50% deg 1:24.184 (3 laps)

Quali
Pernet
91% setup-US tyres >95% deg 1:24.169 (1 lap)
93% setup-I tyres >80% deg 1:24.127 (1 lap) p2
93% setup-I tyres >80% deg 1:24.296 (1 lap)

Flores
93% setup-US tyres >95% deg 1:23.920 (1 lap) p1
93% setup-I tyres >80% deg 1:24.012 (2 laps)

I'm not going to factor quali results too much since they're kinda wonky and the track was wet most of the time, there's quali trim and tyre bonuses at play, etc so that's too many variables that's clearly different. Pernet's Q1 is at 91% because the setup was changed but optimization actually went down so presumably the ai went back to the better 93%. Not sure how Flores got 2 laps of Q2, or maybe her Q2 and Q3 have identical lap times or were averaged together and this is how game displays that. Also for those who were wondering, there are no driver aids since that's actually come up as a vote in a few weeks from this race.

But back to practice results. The first setup optimization was arranged using the previous year's info that had been saved outside of the game, while the others were computer generated by instant result ai. Again, since this was from an instantaneous results I don't know how the game handles a lot of the other factors that can affect pace (fuel weight, tyre deg, traffic, track grip, tyre temp, pushing modes, etc). But I think it's fair to say although we don't know to which extent they're skewing the results, we can all agree that they are skewing them nonetheless. How else could we explain bad setups generating faster lap times than good setups.

I don't honestly think the setup optimization mini game does absolutely nothing, which is what these results would have you believe at first glance. I still think setup pace bonus is just very small so it can get easily lost in the turbulent cacophony of other more numerous changing variables or variables with larger pace deltas. This is the big picture I was talking about, had the value been large it would've been far more evident and obvious. Instead we get fluctuating results that hardly show any correlation to setup optimization. So it goes back to my prediction of a small value, and I can see it ranging from a low end estimate of 0.001s/lap per % to 0.01s/lap per % as the high end estimate. My own personal opinion at this point though is that it's in the smaller ranges of 0.005-0.008s/lap per %.

[Madjamjar]

I auto pracise, tweak for quali, auto quali, tweak and then run race. In both gp3 and gp2 i can 8 out of 10 times come first. Even when i went from gp3 to 2 i still mostly came first in the first season. I dont find that practise and quali really make a huge difference. I dont know about top gp as i havent done that yet but i cant imagine it being much different.

[VNDKSHN]

I wonder if driver stats (such as focus, consistency, etc) are causing the variations you are seeing. I've often wondered why one of my drivers will turn in a lap 3 or more seconds slower than the times they were running, I've just come to the conclusion it has to be those stats, and if they happen at the wrong time, you get screwed in quali!

That said, I started saving my setup settings when I first started playing, and through some trial an error and testing, found that it is not 100%. I believe I was messing with the settings at Munich once to see if I could figure out how to get it to 100%. Ran practice, got it to 98%, reloaded my save and went back to the exact same settings, got 95%. Head scratcher to be sure. Got them back to 98 or 99, noted settings, reloaded, started with those same settings, setup wasn't 98 or 99 again.

Also saw the driver feedback change. I don't recall the track, but I set the downforce to 16.5 and 26.5. Got a green, started increasing, then decreasing (dropped to "good" in both directions), went back to 16.5 and it was purple. What. The. Hell.

Bug?

[VNDKSHN]

I'd also like to figure out a way to see if the race trim, quali trim, etc actually mean anything. So far, I don't really see a difference.

[Fritz]

@VNDKSHN
I just got your username when I said it out loud typing this...vindication, lol.

There's like a million variables that affect pace in race/quali. Rng of race line, rng of stat rolls (probably related to traffic and overtaking), track traffic, fuel weight, track grip, tyre temp, pushing modes, tyre deg (fresh/normal/worn), race trim bonus, tyre compound bonus, setup multiplier, etc. It is near impossible to freeze out all of these other variables so they don't change and only the one being tested is varying as needed. Best you can do most of the time is minimize how much they're changing so their variance is less than the value you hope to get. Or, abuse save/reload so that hopefully the changes are identical in each iteration effectively factoring them out as causes for difference between test run 1 and test run 2 and so on.

The best we can do to test a variable is save on race weekend after the setup screen has shown up. That way, any rng settings the game needs to roll has been determined and will not change from this point. There's probably some modding methods to make sure some of the other variables I named are also not changing. So when you run multiple test runs, a pattern should emerge and with enough patience and digging, the value of the variable you actually want should emerge (more or less).

But my guess is each 5% of race/quali trim (each lvl goes up by 5%) probably improves pace by 0.03-0.15s. This can be tested by using the methods outline above and run quali with lvl 3 bonus, reload and run with no bonus.