[James Blint]

First up i want to say it's not an argument against fixed setup (on the contrary) but i ve often heard that fixed setup makes the grid more even, and i had yet seen that in my experience in fixed series so i wanted to find some tangible comparisons with past series on SRS. I compared the ten best lap times of a GT3 series a couple of months ago on the same track, Imola which was open GT3 class, open setup and regular rate vs the fixed setup, higher fuel/tyre rate of the Digiprost 488 series.

Here are the top laptimes of each series

Digiprost 488
01:43.329
01:43.33
01:43.336
01:43.967
01:44.093
01:44.239
01:44.404
01:44.478
01:44.796

GT3 Euro
01:43.423
01:43.659
01:43.664
01:43.677
01:43.887
01:43.89
01:43.894
01:44.158
01:44.475

First surprising thing is that, in the 488 we were actually a tiny bit faster in quali than in this past series where you could choose any GT3 you liked or see most fitted for that particular track, but this is still very comparable. I didn't expect that frankly, although Imola is a relatively small track, quite technical, the 488 has to be very good at it because of its massive torque but some other GT3 might be at least as fast (Huracan, 650s, Porsche GT3R,..) and some actually picked the 488 too back then. I don't think there was much difference in the strength of the field, in the GT3 series you had Marek Vons, Josh Martin, and other excellent drivers.

The modified rates don't have much influence at least in quali flying laps, even if you need a bit more fuel to make at least one outlap and one hotlap, as well as not getting the bonus extra grip you can have at 100 tyre rate in the very first kilometers of fresh tyres, the difference should be negligible but of course in actual race the laptimes cannot be compared at all, as we all started with like 100l of fuel, which is a huge weight deficit (at least +1s per lap just for it) and once you get a bit less loaded then tyre degration at 170 kicks in much quicker.

So it doesn't seem it makes much difference to have fixed or open setup, even in races it's still 2-3s difference between the front and the end of the pack, no surprise it still comes down to the driver but does it make the grid safer, maybe that's more important? I don't think so either from what i ve seen but probably only because of the locked tyre pressure.

This is what i was getting after 10 min or so, driving rather hard on Imola (fixed at 16 psi on all 4 tyres)



It's really bad, it's literally like running with slow punctures in the front which is gonna give you a quite lazy and vague steering and also weirdly more turnin once it grips than your rear would allow and be able to keep up, on other tracks it was even worse as we were getting both over pressure, and/or cooking temperatures. So to me fixed setup is absolutely great, it's just driving, eventhough i don't really think it levels the field but at least it's not hurting it i guess, it would just be even better and more importantly safer for everyone if we could at least change tyre pressure, it's like a 2min setting that you can even do in practice before the race, it would prevent a lot of wrecks in my opinion, while bias isn't locked, and you can do some mad things with it.

Any thoughts, experiences about this are welcomed.