The Art of Setup Building, Part 11: Did we do it?
Baseline v Custom setup, time and telemetry comparison
Hello again. Through the course of the first 10 parts, we've managed to build a setup that's solid and has a lot of performance. This chapter doesn't involve Setup modification. Instead, it involves one of the best tools at our disposal. Telemetry. I will show you the layouts that I use and how I use them. all of them are available on the FindTheLimit Telemetry tool. This one is a bit more theoretical, there won't be images of a Fast Car going Fast. I will load the Best lap I've put after improving the setup (Gray), as well as the setup developed during "The Baseline" (Green). Let's see how much time we gained and how we made up that time.
General: General Overview
By default, this is the first screen that loads, and it is generally the most useful to see raw improvements. We can see a Speed trace, an Engine RPM trace, and the Incremental Time Difference (Delta) trace. Our focus here is the Speed trace. Look at the beginning of the trace, through Sector 1. The gray line is nearly always higher than the green. We are faster through Sector 1. This is a constant through 2 and 3 as well, but it is more notable through Sector 1. The Speed trace is very good at pinpointing where you gain/lose time. It can tell you in which part of the corner you gain/lose time, but it won't tell you the why. That you'll have to figure out yourself.
General: Track Conditions
You might run a session where the tire temps are perfectly fine, then on another one the balance is killed because the tires are overheating. Track conditions can definitely alter the balance of the car. In between sessions, check the Track Conditions to see if much has changed. You can also, notably, see the track wetness and how much has rained. An extra factor to take into account if there's rain during a practice session.
General: Incremental Time Difference
Here we have the Delta trace, but bigger! The Delta trace works similar to the Velocity trace. It will show you where you gain time, it shows you how much time you gain, and it is a cumulative trace, so you see how much time you have up to that point. For this trace to work, you need a reference lap. If a line is above the reference line, it means the lap lost time. Below means the lap gained time. In this case, you can see that the Green "Baseline" is losing time ... everywhere. Only in the exit of the final corner does the "Baseline" lap gain ... only to get even a few ticks later.
General: Track View
This view I don't use much, but I think you could. The Track View map shows ... the map.What's more notable is that it shows the line you took through the lap.
Here's Maggots-Becketts-Chapel, zoomed in. You can see that my line through the complex in the "Baseline" lap is a bit more aggressive and tries to be more flat. The "Best" lap isn't as aggressive. Also, at the end, the "Best" lap exits a bit tighter, while the "Baseline" runs a bit wider. You can see this as an animation using the Real-Time option at the top of the screen.
General: Driver Inputs
Here, we can see the inputs we input through the lap. Clutch isn't really important, as that's controlled by the semi auto gearbox of the car. More notably is the Throttle, Brake and Steering inputs. The Gear trace is also here, but without RPMs the only thing we can figure out is when you shifted, not if it was right to shift.
Since I'm using Traction Control due to my Keyboard terribleness, so you can see TC modulate the throttle. The full Throttle trace can tell you how good is the traction. On the "Best" lap, we average 76% Throttle, compared to 74% on the "Baseline". That means we could apply more throttle AND apply throttle earlier thanks to the fact we have more traction.
I can't provide too much help, visually at least, because I have ABS and that controls each brake individually. You do have the Longitudinal Acceleration trace, which helps show acceleration and braking effectiveness. You can watch how good your trail braking technique is through here as well. There's another Layout, Wheelspin: Throttle-Brake, where you'll be able to see if you can detect Wheelspin or Wheel Locks created by Throttle or Braking.
The Steering chart can help you fine tune your Steering Lock setting if your input device is a wheel. If you are close to 90-100%, your Steering Lock might be too high. If you don't go over 60%, it is probably too low. Anything in between should be fine. If you are using a keyboard, seeing the Lock shoot to 100% in a non-hairpin means you approached the corner wrong.
General: Friction Circle
Generally I don't use the Friction Circle, but I do think I must talk about it. This here maps the lateral and longitudinal acceleration. There's a little description up and to the right. Up is braking, down is acceleration, the sides are turning. You want this oval/pear/circle shape to be as wide as possible. That means two things. First, it means the car has more grip. Second, it means you are using more of the grip. Notably, you can see that the gray points are wider than the green ones, which tells you the "Best" lap had more and better used grip than the "Baseline" lap.
General: Chassis Accelerations
This is basically the Friction circle components, laid out as a trace. Longitudinal is shown here, just like in the Driver Inputs layout. Lateral Acceleration is shown here, but there's a better way to use it. The one that's worthwhile to use is the Vertical Acceleration. You can see how bumpy the track is, which helps when determining how low you want the car down the straights. Remember, we want the car low, but not bouncing down the straights.
Height: Front/Rear Ride Height and 5x Smoothed
If you've been following this little series, you know this chart already. We can see the ride height of the car, both front and rear. I'd recommend keeping an eye on the lower traces, the Smoothed 5x traces. Those traces are smoothed out, which removes incidental bumps and gives you a better idea of the true ride height. As you can see, on the "Baseline" the ride height is absurdly high, while on the "Best" lap, the setup is just what we need.
Height: Ride Height and Chassis Slip Angle Smoothed 5x
This chart is overall more useful. With the Chassis Slip Angle (Which I will detail later), you can check the ride height during corners, specifically the Rear ride height for diffuser efficiency. I recommend the use of this here chart.
Tire: Tire Temperature (Averages)
You might remember this chart. Here we can see tire temperatures around the lap. Ideally, you want to see the tire temperatures reach their optimal temperature when they are most stressed, aka as their max. That's generally impossible. The better use for this chart is to check overall balance. If the front tires are hotter, that usually means understeer. Hotter rear tires means either oversteer or traction issues that will lead to oversteer anyway.
Something else you have to note: Cooler tires mean two things. First, it means lower ambient temp, so double check the conditions to see if they are similar to the reference lap conditions. Second, cooler tires are usually the result of tires with more grip. More grip = less sliding = less heating.
Tire: Tire Temperatures All
Another screen you should already be familiar with if you've been following the series. Here we can see the important tire spreads, both Camber (Inside - Outside) and Crown (Middle - Inside and Outside). FindTheLimit provides a few Optimal Temps for Crown and Camber. I don't recommend using the Camber ones, I already outlined the method for ideal Camber earlier.
Engine: Engine and Gearbox Information
These traces are quite useful. Ignore the Clutch RPM trace down there, I think I modified this layout. The important traces here are Gear and Engine RPM. With the Engine chart, we can see how close we are to hitting the Engine RPM Limit, which can help tweak Gearing. Something you can see here, it the downshift peaks. You don't want those peaks to be too high, unless you want the engine to die OR you are on a qualifying run. However, this is NOT the chart you want to use to tweak gearing.
Engine: Engine vs RPM, RPM %
This is the layout you want to use for your gearing changes, specially your final gear. Here you can see the engine RPM as well as the Speed you are reaching. That Speed is locked on MPH for some reason. I mentioned how to set the RPM in the Engine chapter, you can use this one to fine tune the gears a bit more.
The RPM% chart helps determine the effectiveness of your shifting, gear selections and RPM Limit. You want the peak to be close to, or at, the Peak Power RPM for maximum performance (Thinks qualifying). You want this chart to be a bit below the Peak Power RPM in race trim.
Here's something I wanted to focus on. We are looking at 6th gear, our top gear on this car. The gray dots are lower and more to the right. This means we are using less RPMs to reach more top speed, compared to the green dots. Result? More acceleration potential (can use a slipstream better) and less engine wear due to RPMs.
Wheelspin: Differential Lock Leakage
This chart has 2 uses. The first, we can see Wheelspin caused by Throttle inputs. Going below the line means overrotation. Some overrotation isn't bad for reasons explained in the Tire chapter. Too much, though, is very bad. We can also see wheel locks, as peaks going up, caused by too aggressive downshifting (Those are the rear wheels, remember)
The second use is the primary reason to visit this chart. We can see how effective the differential is, using the Rear Wheel Speed Differential trace. A locked differential will have a trace closer to the middle. An open diff will have a trace being wider than what you can see there. You can fine tune Accel, Decel and Diff Lock setting. That's why the Throttle trace is here too, to see in which mode the Diff is.
Damping: Springs Fast
This chart is quite useful to deal with Packers. Pay attention to the Suspension Travel down there. A higher trace means that the suspension is more compressed. What you usually see is the suspension compressing, Ride Height trace going down and the Suspension Travel travel trace going up. However, if the Packer is engaged, the Ride Height will go down slower, and the Travel trace will start to get flat. I might show this in a future chapter about Telemetry.
Yaw: Chassis Slip Angle vs. Lateral Acceleration
This chart can be very, very useful to determine your car's behavior. If you are struggling to understand if your car understeers or overstreers, this is where you can look at. Lateral Acceleration is how hard your car corners, Chassis Slip Angle is how sideways your car is. The objective here is increasing Lateral Acceleration, without increasing Chassis Slip Angle. Why?
Well, if Chassis Slip Angle increases, that means the car is more sideways. That's what we call oversteer. The peaks you see in the Chassis Slip Angle chart is the car getting a bit out of control. Less Chassis Slip Angle means the car is more in control, less sideways.
More Lateral Acceleration means the car is cornering harder. Less Lateral Acceleration ends up being understeer, and we clearly don't rate that.
Something you should keep track on is this chart while you adjust the setup. You want the chart to be as vertical as possible. That means Acceleration is higher and Slip Angle is lower.
For example, in this chart, generally the gray line is more stretched vertically (more lateral acceleration) while being being similar horizontally compared to the green line. That means the "Best" lap setup has more grip, without the car getting more oversteery. This chart is a bit more difficult to explain, this is a section I'll potentially revise in the future. There's a similar chart that maps Slip Angle to Speed, which can be useful to determine car behavior at low, mid or high speed, but I'm not used to reading it yet.
Consider this an article in eternal development, I'll eventually cover all the layouts, and even post some custom layouts I use.
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