[Filip Stoyanovich]

Well, just finished a little session with all the cars this nice and loud afternoon   here's my laptimes screenshot and a little pre-season early conclusions. Took Q tyres and 30 L of fuel.

All the default setup cars suffer from bad mechanical grip at the rear which especially shows at this bumpy track with some of the slow and tight corners. I couldn't really drive safe and consistent in those slow corners so I went with adding a little camber on the rear and stiffening  the anti-rollbars, a lot at the front and a little at the back. The gearbox has only a few options compared to back then with old cars which sucks. Aero reduction won't give you much top speed difference. Minardi is such a surprise, don't know if bad or good hahah same with Brabham

One little detail is that back in 1991 the cars weren't allowed to refuel at pitstops, only change tires. Like now. But, here in the mod it wasn't changed to be at least much longer, and works like some several years ago in modern F1. Which is a bit disappointing to me with these 1 hour races, because the whole deal back then was starting on full fuel for the race, and going faster and faster towards the end. Making strategy with tyres only for a particular track... But I guess you can't have everything
The semi-automatic shift cars might be safe for gearbox and engine, but you've got to be careful as there is a delay on downshift. So you might end up spinning if you downshift braking late and while turning. The car will just snap loose at the rear, so make sure you do your downshifting before turning into the corner, just to be safe. Kind of good to have in sim, because it was still in development back then, and it is kind of an advantage for online sim racing.

I still don't get what's wrong with using a McLaren for this season?



Note: McLaren is early season version. Still haven't tried properly the Late season, but so far I guess that one is only with a bit more power and that's all.

[Michal Ringes]

Yeah the setups are really bad and some changes will easilly make a big difference, around those slow corners i mostly go doors first but its kinda fun. i think i will go for minardi or brabham for the season, there will be too many ferrari's and fw14's anyway. About the strategy i was planning not to do any refueling but i am not sure if it wont be a too big disadvantage. About tyres not sure yet, didnt do many laps so far, but i was thinking that hard tyre (no pitstop), or soft + medium (1 pitstop) should be fine ?

[Simon Meisinger]

The setups work a bit weird on those cars. Stiffening the rear ARB makes the rear more stable and so does rising the ride height. I wouldn't be too surprised if we get an update during the season and have to get used to the cars again. Reducing the negative camber at the front also gives you a weird amount of stability at the back.

I only tried the C tires for now, I do slow 01:16s with the Ferrari, Williams and Minardi and 01:17:5xx with the Benetton.

[Michal Ringes]

yeah i was messing with the setup a bit now, its weird somehow oposite to what one would expect with a lot of things, on the other hand some things have like almost no impact (wings)
managed to do 1:15:3 with minardi on q tyre

[Donnchadh MacGarry]

Haven't got around to doing much lapping yet, don't really know Okayama so I'm not going to be able to build consistency for a while. Did a little test on the pits stops, here are the results:

    Time to change tyre = 3s

    Time to add 200L fuel = 16s
    Refuel rate = 0.08s/L
    Fuel added in 1s = 12.5L
    Fuel added in 3s = 37.5L

This was with the Ferrari but I assume the results are the same for the other cars. 

I'm probably going to go with the Ferrari due to the sequential shifter and I'm a sucker for the red and black livery. I'm going to spend this series working and learning how to tune the car. I don't think I can do H-pattern shifting and heel and toe braking consistently enough in cars of this speed, so I'd rather use something I can drive consistently that will give me better information on how my tuning is going.

[Michal Ringes]

Those refueling rates look like its gonna be much faster to refuel than drive a heavy car.

[Filip Stoyanovich]

These tires used to be harder and durable so it looks like the soft © tire can run on this slow track the whole race, although a bit stretching it towards the end of 1 hour. Probably won't be the case on tracks with faster corners like Spa for example.
At this pace, that should be 47-48 laps, less than 50 anyway. Just over 2 liters per lap used in most of the cars from what I saw, so that's somewhat over 100 liters for full race.

---

I liked the Brabham too. That V12 Yamaha sounds like a heavy guitar sometimes
Updated the hotlap table in my post above. Went faster with Brabham at 1:15.8... At this point I can't really care about pace that much, I just want to race all these cars finally hahah

[Michal Ringes]

Yeah for minardi it seems 110l (48l) for the whole race, but not sure about the tyre, tried to simulate race on medium tyre with 110l but idiotic ai lap down destroyed me on lap 18, tyre was still fine at that time lol laptimes were 1:19 at the start after few laps it went down to 18:4. But i am not really sure about the strategy for this one. Stop or no stop and what tyre. Difficult to simulate with such a long race.

[Filip Stoyanovich]

I tried the 50/50 fuel loads - like for a 1 pitstop race, and the grip on C tyre started to reduce only at about 19-20 laps. And even from then on, it goes off really slow. Pace was at 1:19-18, then 17, then 16, even went to those 15s with same tyre. On full race fuel load, because even more weight is at the back and less on front tyres, the car is a bit understeery in first several laps, kind of more stable. But as it gets lighter, turns better and better which seems is the way it should be. The only thing is if you can run this race without much sliding and wheelspin, as the rear tyres are that are wearing off faster and need to take care of them. Fronts are not an issue.

[Michal Ringes]

So it seems that 1 stop and soft-soft is pretty much ok, so no stop medium should be also ok This will be interesting, i would rather not stop