[Donnchadh MacGarry]

So just did the race there, had a bit of fortune to finish 2nd as other people had problems. Fuel usage is much higher than other tracks since the car is flat out most of the time, I used around 124L which is 30L more compared to the 90L for other tracks. Note this means that adding fuel in the pitstop is necessary since a full tank is 100L, so you might as well change tyres too. Tyre wear seems to be slightly less but still roughly the same as before. For example my softs go to the yellow medium grip after 3 laps which is 9 minutes, which is roughly 40 seconds longer than for my test at Imola. For the race, I ended up starting on hards with a full tank, pitted with 5 laps to go (about the 47:00 mark I think) and did those final 5 laps on softs. I was debating going hards or softs as I wasn't sure how softs would be after the first 3 laps, but I went with softs since I was running on my own and could afford to try it. They felt good at the end, my final lap was slow because I made a mistake with my gearing and coasted a corner to avoid a mistake as I tried to find the right gear. I started on a full tank to minimise the fuel I needed in the pitstop. I pitted so late, so I could run longer on a lighter fuel tank than if I pitted at the halfway mark and also so that I could have a comfortable 2nd stint length on softs.
Unsurprisingly, I have too much wing and (most likely) also toe & camber to be able to keep up on the long straights as I have far less topspeed than most. I used RW=4 in qualy and RW=5 in the race as I lost my nerve and just wanted to do a race with no spins, front splitter is on 0. I'll need to reduce these things to have a chance of keeping up with the fastest guys. I feel more confident with how to drive on this track so I think I'll be able to do that hopefully. However, if you do not feel confident in the corners at all with such a light rear, don't be afraid to use some RW. The time you gain in topspeed with extremely low aero is not worth it at all if it causes you to crash in the corners. My advice would be to brake early and gently, ease the car through the corners. This helps prevent the weight of the car from shifting too much and so the light rear doesn't suddenly kick out causing a spin.

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One major thing I noticed in the race and would like to talk about is using the slipstream. During the race and having skimmed through the replay, I often found people were battling for position on the straights, even from lap 1. Some drivers were moving from side to side on the road in an attempt to prevent an overtake. In reality they were just slowing themselves down and losing time to those in front, which crucially meant they lost the slipstream which is essential to use to keep up with the leaders. Then when drivers got side by side, they tried racing and side drafting each other to the end of the straight which further slowed themselves down and also increased the chance of an accident.

Let's consider an example of what should, in my opinion, be done. Consider Driver A is just ahead of Driver B entering onto the Mulsanne straight (that's the very long one, you can't miss it). Since Driver A is the lead driver of the pair, they should hold to one side of the road and not move from side to side trying to prevent an overtake. Driver B should tuck in behind and use the slipstream to gain speed. Driver B can do one of two things

1. Stay tucked behind Driver A for the whole straight, where they can reduce throttle input and still maintain constant speed since there is less drag. Do this for multiple laps in a row and they can save some fuel. For my first 6/7 laps I did a quite a bit of this and was averaging around 0.2 - 0.3 L of fuel per lap less than when in free air. In fact I could have done it better at times and maybe increase this to 0.4 L, note that requires slip streaming around the whole lap not just on the Mulsanne Straight. If a driver did this for 10 laps, they save 2L - 4L of fuel which would make the pitstop 1.2 - 2.4 seconds quicker, which is enough time to gain track position and even break the slipstream I think. Do it for more laps, like my 15 lap 1st stint, then the driver can save even more fuel.
   
   
2. If Driver B wants to make an overtake, they should move out at the last second to get the slingshot past. Normally this slingshot is enough to get the drivers roughly side by side before Driver B loses some topspeed again. At this point, if Driver B is slightly ahead, Driver A should very briefly ease off the throttle so they can let Driver B by, and then Driver A should tuck in behind Driver B and start slipstreaming. Conversely, if Driver A was still slightly ahead of Driver B when side by side, then Driver B should very briefly ease the throttle so they can safely tuck in behind Driver A to begin slipstreaming again. This process should happen over and over right up until the final few laps if the two drivers are keeping pace with each other. The two drivers will end up boosting each others speed, where they can break away from the pack, or close down people who are a few seconds in front and out of the two drivers slipstream.
   

For those in the race, go to the replay and watch how Simon Speth and Simon Meisinger did this to great effect in the race, I think Hugo Hekkenberg also did it on lap 1 with Simon Speth before he ran into trouble. Pull up the pedal input app and notice how they sometimes ease off the throttle while slipstreaming or to let the other driver ahead so they could tuck in behind. Even though they had the best qualifying times so they were always going to gain a lead, by working together like this they easily broke away from the pack. If they fought in the first few laps, they would have slowed each other down and other drivers might have caught up. This race is an hour long, there is no point fighting for position on the long straights until the last lap or two really. Otherwise you should work with the drivers around you so you can give each other speed boosts and maybe catch up to drivers a few seconds ahead of you. If you weren't in the race then maybe you'll be able to see this on the saved SRS livestream video of the race, I'll add a link when the video goes up as it takes a few hours (if it was recorded that is).
 
Just as a final analogy, in the Tour de France breakaway groups need to work together like this, where they slipstream each other and then slingshot those behind to the front, so that they can gain some time over the main pack. If they do it successfully, they gain enough of a lead that they are then able to fight among themselves for the win over the last 5 or so kilometers. When they don't work together like this, they end up slowing each other down, lose energy and always get swallowed up by the main pack long before the end of the race. I know the Tour de France is cycling and not car racing, but the same principles apply to racing cars on a track like Le Mans especially.

[Simon Meisinger]

People tried to defend on the straight? Oh my …

[Matteo Venuti]

absolutely terrible. Went wide on turn 4 (after the esses). Lost 30 seconds only there, and i was losing about 1 sec on the straight for the damaged aero (i crashed into a tree). Pitted, and the lap later, i crashed on the last fast corner. Definitely not my day, after a disconnection earlier, in the mx5

[Simon Meisinger]

sounds like my monday this week

[Hugo Hekkenberg]

I can not get this car stable on this high speed track. I drive with my wing on 2 but it’s scary as hell. Lowered the car and soften the suspension. Camber on -1,5 and dif power on 10% and coast on 60%. Any tips? When you put more wing on the car you are to slow on the straights

[Donnchadh MacGarry]

I can not get this car stable on this high speed track. I drive with my wing on 2 but it’s scary as hell. Lowered the car and soften the suspension. Camber on -1,5 and dif power on 10% and coast on 60%. Any tips? When you put more wing on the car you are to slow on the straights

I ran RW=3 the last day as I'm also struggling with high speed corners, turn 1 and the final turns (that S part) are really tough. My top speed was 344 km/h, so slower than the +350 km/h others can do, but at least I wasn't losing the car on those turns.

I have heard through the grapevine that anything less than RW=2 won't give anymore topspeed so stick with that. Then there is something that can be done with height to help with stability, not sure what it is and I hope to figure it out in my next practice session. Perhaps changing the pitch of the car could work since you lowered the ride height which didn't do much for you? Raise the rear height and leave the front height the same, which increases the rake to the car. Theoretically this increases diffuser performance and rear downforce increases, but will this work for the car in AC is the question I don't know the answer to. If that doesn't work maybe try the opposite way too, raise front height and keep rear the same. I don't think that would work in real life, but you never know with simulations they can have odd things that don't really make sense, so its worth a test at the very least.

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I can not get this car stable on this high speed track. I drive with my wing on 2 but it’s scary as hell. Lowered the car and soften the suspension. Camber on -1,5 and dif power on 10% and coast on 60%. Any tips? When you put more wing on the car you are to slow on the straights

I ran RW=3 the last day as I'm also struggling with high speed corners, turn 1 and the final turns (that S part) are really tough. My top speed was 344 km/h, so slower than the +350 km/h others can do, but at least I wasn't losing the car on those turns.

I have heard through the grapevine that anything less than RW=2 won't give anymore topspeed so stick with that. Then there is something that can be done with height to help with stability, not sure what it is and I hope to figure it out in my next practice session. Perhaps changing the pitch of the car could work since you lowered the ride height which didn't do much for you? Raise the rear height and leave the front height the same, which increases the rake to the car. Theoretically this increases diffuser performance and rear downforce increases, but will this work for the car in AC is the question I don't know the answer to. If that doesn't work maybe try the opposite way too, raise front height and keep rear the same. I don't think that would work in real life, but you never know with simulations they can have odd things that don't really make sense, so its worth a test at the very least.

Okay just did a quick test there and I think I have something. I think I'm wrong about RW=2 gives top speed so ignore that. Raising rear height to increase rake didn't help me, car felt just as unstable if not more on the high speed turns. However I tried raising the front height, kept rear height low and removed the packers from the rear and the car felt way more stable. I did these changes at once, so I'm not sure if raising the front had the effect, or changing the packers in the rear did. I didn't try RW=0 yet, but used RW=1 when I couldn't use that before. I managed to hit 350 km/h on the straight, and hit a 3:00.9 on my first lap where I pushed it, which was on a full tank with hards, never hit below 3:02 before this. So I think I should be able to try RW=0 after F1 qualy and my dinner (i'm missing Q1 as I write this).

[Donnchadh MacGarry]

I threw up my setup for Le Mans 67 that I used in Saturday's race on this pre-existing thread: https://www.simracingsystem.com/showthre...910&page=2
My post should be on the 2nd page. I put my setup there since it made more sense to me to have it in the setups section of these forums, and thus could apply to any SRS series that uses the Mazda 787b, which could happen again in the future.

[Simon Speth]

So since I promised it to Donnchadh here I'm not only sharing my setup for the le mans track but also explaining a bit how I created the setup.

Quick disclaimer: Austin's setup seemed to be very fast on his youtube video, maybe even faster than mine so maybe he will join the discussion as well

So this freak track needs an even more radical aero setup than lets say monza: It only has slow corners where aero is not important or flat out full send corners which also require no downforce as they are super fast.

My goal therefore was to get as much drag away from the car while at the same time keeping it stable and drivable. Of course I lowered the front splitter to 0 first and tried to lower the rear wing as much as possible but at around wing 4 the car got undrivable ecause of to much aero balance at the front. Basically saying ecause the splitter at 0 still produced to much downforce I couldnt safely reduce my rear wing more. So next step was to even more decreade downforce of the front wing, which I figured out by putting in a "negative rake" into the car. Like literaly my setup runs max front ride height and min rear ride hight. This made the front splitter less effective which allowed me to reduce the rear wing to 2. This was super safe drivable in fast corners while also not notably slow in the slow coners, most important with the right gearing you will hit 355kph in free air.

I guess the next weeks setups will be more interesting because the track also features a lot of downforce dependent corners and a long straight so maybe different setups might work.
  le_mans_h.txt (Size: 1.78 KB / Downloads: 15)

[Donnchadh MacGarry]

So since I promised it to Donnchadh here I'm not only sharing my setup for the le mans track but also explaining a bit how I created the setup.

Quick disclaimer: Austin's setup seemed to be very fast on his youtube video, maybe even faster than mine so maybe he will join the discussion as well

So this freak track needs an even more radical aero setup than lets say monza: It only has slow corners where aero is not important or flat out full send corners which also require no downforce as they are super fast.

My goal therefore was to get as much drag away from the car while at the same time keeping it stable and drivable. Of course I lowered the front splitter to 0 first and tried to lower the rear wing as much as possible but at around wing 4 the car got undrivable ecause of to much aero balance at the front. Basically saying ecause the splitter at 0 still produced to much downforce I couldnt safely reduce my rear wing more. So next step was to even more decreade downforce of the front wing, which I figured out by putting in a "negative rake" into the car. Like literaly my setup runs max front ride height and min rear ride hight. This made the front splitter less effective which allowed me to reduce the rear wing to 2. This was super safe drivable in fast corners while also not notably slow in the slow coners, most important with the right gearing you will hit 355kph in free air.

I guess the next weeks setups will be more interesting because the track also features a lot of downforce dependent corners and a long straight so maybe different setups might work.

Congrats on being the only person to getting a 102 at Le Mans. I was convinced you got to RW=0 in your setup, especially after your qualy on Saturday. Once I realised I needed to raise the front height before the weekend races, I was much more able to match your pace. Unfortunately mistakes and bad luck with traffic cost me a chance for a win on both Saturday and Sunday. I saw in the bottom left of Austin's video his in-game chat were he mentioned some values in the setup, a bit of spygate going on by me there (Link for those who don't know the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrvYyRONY20&t=12s). I was already close to the suspension values, but I tried using his packer and bump stop values mixed to my setup from Saturday. It helped an awful lot, I ended up running RW=0 in qualy (only missed your best qualy time by 0.001 seconds) and RW=1 in the race as I didn't want to overly push my luck and it only reduced my top speed in free air by 1 km/h. It was so stable through the last two turns of the lap (that S thing) that I didn't even need to briefly lift the throttle, where using RW=1 allowed me still go flat out even if I went slightly offline and touched the grass in that part.

These races really made me appreciate how crazy a race at Le Mans is, especially before they put in the chicanes for the modern version. I had an absolute blast in them, except for the parts where I was involved in incidents of course.

[Donnchadh MacGarry]

Paul Ricard is this week for the Euro series. I'll be honest I'm not wild about this track, it is one of my least liked tracks on the F1 calendar and I don't find that interesting to drive. At least the mod seems decently well made from what I can tell. Maybe the tarmac should be darker black, but that's all I would say is wrong from first impressions and really isn't that important. One thing to note is that the Blancpain layout is being used. For those who don't know, this means that the chicane is not used to break up the long straight, unlike the layout in F1 which has the chicane.

I've only done a couple of laps just to learn the track so I don't have too much to say about strategy or setup ideas, I imagine ideal strategies here will be more similar to the ideal ones for Imola. As Simon mentioned this track has some straights (the back one being very long) and also some tight technical twisty sections at either end of the track, so setups could possibly vary depending on what sections you want to prioritise for speed. I reckon making sure having good top speed for the long straight and having enough downforce to carry alot of speed into the right hander afterwards might be the best thing to maximise, at least for the actual race scenario as this is clearly the prime overtaking spot.

I won't be racing until Thursday but not because I want to avoid the track I swear. I'm a bit too tired to race tonight as my sleep schedule is a bit messed up, I'm watching Man Utd vs RB Leibzig tomorrow and coaching football on Wednesday. So good luck in those races everyone, I'll have my eye on the times in the standings so I know what I should be aiming for when I can race later this week.