[Steen Toudal]

I won all five of my New Jersey races by using MacGarry's Tor Poznan setup with only changes to wings (F 7, R 5) and minor changes to tire pressure to keep the temps down (mediums were still in the red for the last handful of laps, though). I'm using all five gears.

[Mark Germaney]

Thanks Dominic but could not get on with that set either, will try this one Donnchadh Thanks.

[Donnchadh MacGarry]

I haven't raced this week yet but I was doing some practice and tweaking the setup today, should be attached below. I generally can run a low 1:03.XX although I can hit some 1:02.XX with a very good lap, I think I hit a 1:02.7 once. This time falls off as the tyres get worn though, the left rear goes into the red zone of wear after 14 laps but I think that's more track related then setup related. Compared to my Tor Poznan setup, I only made small changes to the alignment, gearing, ride height and put on bit more front wing.

Interesting to see how different Dominic's setup is compared to mine, as he is using much more toe, camber and aero downforce. I checked the results and my lap times seem to be quite comparable. Seems like my setup would be exposed in the twisty sections, but it would have the edge for the long straight when in drafting distance. Since I haven't raced yet, I couldn't say which one would be more preferable when in a close battle. Also interesting how he has tuned his setup for only 4 gears, where I use all 5. The cars loose some time in the gear shifts so I suppose using 4 might be as good or better if done correctly. I had tuned the gearing in the Audi VLN to not use top gear when I did one of the races at Chang last season as I felt changing gears lost too much time in that car.

Made a few more tweaks, setup attached below. 2nd, 3rd and 4th gear are slightly longer so I only need to use 5th on the long straight (I switch to 5th at about 195km/h). I can hold 3rd before and over the small hill at the end of S1 and then hold 4th to the end of the straight after without hitting the limiter. I slightly raised the ride height to avoid bottoming out, although I can hear that I still scrape the ground once or twice on the first and final turn, but I don't think I loose any time. Returned the toe to -5 like for Tor Poznan as I can hug the last corner easier with it. Don't forget in qualifying to reduce the tyre pressures by 1psi on all four tyres when using the softs.

With mediums and 20L fuel I can run in the mid to high 1:02.XX with this setup up to about lap 14. Then the left rear goes into the red zone of tyre life and my times drop into the 1:03.XX. 

With this car you really have to avoid sliding on the tyres as that will cost you alot of time and is incredibly easy to do. I try to brake early and then turn my steering wheel as little as possible into the corners so I can reduce the tyre slip angle. Then I can get on the throttle really early and power out of the corner with as little sliding as possible. 
I take the final turn flat out in fourth, where I start wide and then move in to hit the apex but then continue to hug the inside line even on exit as I find that quickest. If I turn the wheel slightly too much the tyres will slide, where I can loose at least a tenth or two and will be slower on the exit and all the way through the long straight making overtakes/defending harder. So if I mess up my entry a bit I don't try to change the steering wheel to hug the inside which would cause some tyre slide. Instead I hold my steering angle as before and run the corner slightly wider which is slightly slower but I should still have better exit speed for the straight and be less exposed there. 
In the windy bit at sector 1, you really need to think about the weight management of the car since there are relatively quick changes in direction as the car goes from right to left and right again before going over the hill. A setup like mine (although I pretty sure is true with any setup in this car) struggles with shifting weight from one side to the other quickly and the car can snap and spin with sudden changes in direction like this. I also run very little aero downforce which wouldn't help with overall grip in those sections. I've noticed a number of people are way too aggressive with late braking into some of the corners and have very little speed on the exit. For example, many people try to brake very late into turn 3 which is a right turn and have no speed on the exit, or worse they spin out. This means they are incredibly slow going around the left of turn 4 followed by the right over the hill of turn 5 and the straight afterwards which is a huge time loss. In that section you actually need to brake early and not aggresively as you don't want to shift the car weight too much. Then coast (you can use a small bit of throttle to balance the car and keep some speed) into turn 3 so you can have way more speed coming into turn 4. Since you are coasting the car's weight is much more stable, making it much easier to change direction when entering turn 4 and getting on the power again around the mid section of that turn. This means while you might take turn 3 slower, you take turn 4 and approach turn 5 at much higher speeds and save way more time. If I take turn 3 at too high a speed I generally loose at least 5 tenths of a second and am very likely to spin out as well. 
Same goes for turn 5 over the hill. Get the car to the outside making sure the car's weight has settled, break slightly if needed and coast (again you can use some throttle) your way over the hill. Once you feel the car's weight settle at or slightly after the peak get on the power. As before, try avoiding any sliding as it really hurts time here.

If you struggle in sector 1 (or anywhere else in fact), I definitely recommend watching Dominic ORourke's onboard lap that he puts up in his Onboard laps thread. Even though his setup is different, the driving line and pedal application is similar enough to what I try to do. He brakes very early for corners, coasts the windy section and gets on the power early where the car is not sliding much at all. I find watching a replay like that helps me decrease my lap time pretty much instantly, without needing to bang my head against a wall doing loads of laps.

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Thanks Dominic but could not get on with that set either, will try this one Donnchadh Thanks.

Just updated the setup again, so try the one that ends in v2.5 as I find I am more consistent and slightly faster with it.

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I won all five of my New Jersey races by using MacGarry's Tor Poznan setup with only changes to wings (F 7, R 5) and minor changes to tire pressure to keep the temps down (mediums were still in the red for the last handful of laps, though). I'm using all five gears.

Glad that has worked for you. A clean sweep, very impressive. I've been unlucky with traffic in my two races today which cost me dearly unfortunately.

[Mark Germaney]

I also find 4 gears a bit bizarre, i guess if u can hit a perfect lap every lap then fine, but where is the allowance for errors/corrections, traffic, general race conditions ? I personally prefer the extra control and consistency.

[Amitesh Rao]

Great setup, thanks.

How do you guys avoid getting bogged down at the start? I seem to get overtaken left and right every time the lights go out.

Great setup thank you, but yeah the start is super problematic for me too. I lose 2-3 places at least and worse its a recipe for someone to push you off. Perhaps its because I dont use a clutch?

[Steen Toudal]

Perhaps its because I dont use a clutch?

Yep, you absolutely need a clutch for starting this car.

[Dominic ORourke]

I adjusted my gearing slightly and found a really small amount but not worth posting because the change was so small. I tried Donnchadh's setup but the rear was not stable enough for me. I want to be aggressive on turn in and have the rear planted to let me do it but I felt I had to be too gentle with that setup. I think most of it is driver and finding a setup to match the style.

[Donnchadh MacGarry]

I adjusted my gearing slightly and found a really small amount but not worth posting because the change was so small. I tried Donnchadh's setup but the rear was not stable enough for me. I want to be aggressive on turn in and have the rear planted to let me do it but I felt I had to be too gentle with that setup. I think most of it is driver and finding a setup to match the style.

I used to casually drive the GPL mod (late 60's F1) for Assetto Corsa around the Charade circuit a lot before I joined SRS. Just found it a really fun combo and the track is just an amazing mod. It meant I grew a real tolerance for driving a car with the rear end sliding a lot. So I don't mind dealing with that in the Estonia 25, but it doesn't mean I'm quicker when its like that. With my setup, I was really trying to maximise my top speed on the long straights to make overtaking easier. I used just enough front wing to take the final corner flat out, but wanted to keep the wings as low as possible. However, this tunnel vision made me not identify that there could be a lot more to gain in sector 1 if I planted the rear more. Earlier in the week, I tried increasing the rear wing and tested it for only a few laps. I didn't really do enough laps to try to change my driving approach and see how I could improve and maximise my sector 1 time. Thus when I saw I was losing a lot of time on the straights in sector 3 giving me slower laptimes (I never hit a 1:02.XX at that time), I was too quick in saying it was hurting the car's potential. 
I also have a feeling I went a bit overboard with softening the front springs and ARB when compared to the rears. While it helps prevent mid/late corner understeer as the car leans on the front outside tyres more, from what I understand it actually causes some entry understeer and feels a little slow/drunk on turn in. Overcorrecting this entry understeer by increasing the wheel angle causes the mid/late corner oversteer and so the rear of the car slides out which can be hard to deal with and easily loses time and speed. The soft fronts also makes left-right/right-left direction changes harder to do quickly as the front is slower shifting the weight from one side to the next. Since the rears are doing it way quicker, the car can feel like an pendulum, making it easy to snap and spin out. This is why I was stressing in my earlier post to not to overturn the steering wheel with my setup and to really pay attention to the weight balance of the car. I made this mistake really badly in my setup for the ASR F1 1991 race at Okayama, it was so hard to manage the car in that race and I lost so much time trying to drive cautiously. 

I had spare time this afternoon and decided to really test the setup you put up and compare how it felt to mine. I made minor tweaks to the setup you put up. I changed the gearing to match mine. I raised the ride height to be 7 on all four corners to eliminate most of the bottoming out. I lowered the tyre pressures on both left tyres by 2psi, although I noticed during my stint I should have lowered the LF by 3psi and LR by 4psi to get to the ideal pressures. I really liked your setup with these tweaks, the car is so planted and I could really attack sector 1 especially. The car felt more reactive and pointy, but also more stable and I felt I was less likely to slide and lose time. Your adjustments to suspensions, dampers, alignment and aero made weight management easier to deal with.

I will make an excel sheet later today/tomorrow comparing stints. I have already driven the stints but I haven't collected the laptimes properly yet. I know its a bit too late for this track, but I think it will be interesting to see regardless. I'm also going to use Steen's modification of a FW=7 and RW=5, although I applied that to my NJMP setup and not the Tor Poznan setup as I feel that the gearing and ride height needed the adjustments I made as well. I was a bit tired trying Steen's edits, so I made a few small errors in that stint, which might have increased the average that I could potentially do by a bit, but not by anything crazy.   

As a brief synopsis I found in general I was about 0.2s - 0.3s quicker with your setup. This came from the first half of the lap where I would decrease my lap time by 0.4s-0.6s, but then my setup recovered some of the deficit in the second half as it had less drag, reaching higher speeds on the long straights. I also think your setup felt nicer as the tyres wore out and I think I didn't lose as much time each lap as the stint progressed, but my comparison later should confirm that. Steen's modifcation unsurprisingly felt like a halfway house between my setup and yours. Quicker then mine but slower then yours in the twisty first half of the lap and slower then mine but quicker then yours in the second half on the straights. Of course results might vary depending on a person's driving style.

While I believe your setup is the quickest, I think it would make an interesting race having two evenly matched drivers where one uses my setup and one uses yours. If the driver using mine got ahead, they might be smart and skillful enough to not be overtaken in sector 1 and then would not be as exposed from the slip streaming car behind on the long straights due to having the higher top speed. Conversely if the driver using yours got ahead, they might always make up so much distance in the first half, that the driver in mine could never quite be able to catch up in time to make a move before the end of the straights. Sort of like what you mentioned (or was it Simon) with the VRC FW31 at Spa when comparing your setup with Marco's.

[Alan Braz]

My setup for this week. With a clean run my lap times is about 1:02.5, and I can get a 1:02.3 on good laps.

I just used Donnchadh setup from last week and messed up at with all the settings, I don't even know what I did in this setup, but it works, hehe.

[Dominic ORourke]

You are definitely a lot more thorough than I have been with this car Donnchadh. I did maybe 2 hours last week getting something I liked then changed the wings a bit this week and it seemed okay. I hadn't even done an uninterrupted race distance before my first race this week due to lack of time. I've stiffened the suspension a bit now which is better in the fast corners but a bit worse on the change of direction. Don't read too much into my setup though because it feels like a starting point not the complete article. I am sure if I practiced and adjusted my style I could still be fast with your setup and I assume you can be with my setup. I decided not to go further with your setup because I haven't time this week. I have confidence with my setup and can push for the whole race so I am happy with that for now.

In racing we always look for ways to gain time and when we see someone with something different it is easy to assume it is either better or worse, but sometimes it is only different.