With the discussion about equal cars going on in the PC league forum, I wanted to collect some data. Basic question for this little investigation is: What car accelerates fastest under equal circumstances and default setup?
Here is the answer of my little research so you don't have to scroll down first:
From fastest to slowest car - 110kph to 310kph in seconds - Difference in frames with car above (1 frame = 0.02sec)
That top speed difference vid, some have seen it (India track). But in my opinion top speed is easy to fix by adjusting 7th gear. Acceleration is a more important factor than raw topspeed in my opinion.
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The setup for the test:
I chose for Shanghai as testtrack, since it has a long straight without small hill, and an obvious DRS line that became the startpoint of acceleration. Test were done in the following settings:
tyre sim off, fuel sim off, clear weather, equal cars (duhhh), TC Full, Dynamic Race line on, automatic gears, default car setup (the middle one). What I would do: I tried to drive with 100 kph in 2nd gear to the DRS activation point, and then just floor the throttle, until arriving at the hairpin. No use of KERS or DRS. It looks like this:
Capturing the runs with 50 frames per seconds, because that's easy calculating, each frame represents 0.020 seconds.
------
going to the track:
First I did a comparison between Mclaren (known to be fast) and Ferrari (known to be slow). I added Force India, because I'm driving with that myself.
I did 6 runs with each of the 3 cars (so 18 runs total).
I've putted those runs on the timeline of my video-editing software. Startframe was 110kph (if not present I took the frame with 109 kph), the endpoint was the frame with 310kph. I didn't pick 100kph because sometimes I arrived with 99 and sometimes with 101.
Comparing the 6 runs of each car, I saw only 1 frame difference on the 6 runs with McLaren, 1 instance of 2 frames difference at Ferrari and 1 frame difference on the Force India.
I was curious about the other 9 cars. I decided to do 3 runs per car, due to the consistency of the runs of the first 3 cars, but still had a way to check if I didn't fall asleep and lifted the throttle a little performing the test for the n-th time.
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Back to the video-edit:
I cutted all runs seperately, and put them above eachother. If 2 runs were of the same length, I took one of those runs, and ignored the 3rd run. If the 3 runs differed from eachother, I took the average one. In case of the 6 runs cars I took what happened most frequently.
Then came the part I was looking forward to: Putting them in order, and in some cases surprised myself. In the video edit timeline it looks like this (Shorter = quicker, longer = more time = slower)
Summarizing the results in one short video, you'll get the following results:
Note that you can pause throughout the clip and you'll see for example the top 8 all reaching 250kph at the same time. At that same point, Toro Rosso, Lotus and Red Bull are on 248 and Ferrari on 247.
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Criticism and further possible research:
Accelerating: I could've mapped accelerate to a button on the steering wheel so it would just be 100% on in an instance. Not really sure if this would've influenced the results in any way.
Selecting one run from the car in the video-edit: Usually the difference between runs of the same car was 0 or 1 frame. In about 2 or 3 cases, it was 2 frames difference. Looking at the ranking this means that if someone does this same test again, the ranking may differ from what I've presented here. Also sometimes there was no frame with 110 kph, and I took the frame with 109 kph. Again a slight accuracy loss of 1 frame.
So the bottom cars sucks and the top cars guarantee a podium? If you think so after going through this, you don't understand F1. It's not just plain acceleration speed. I tend to think that some cars have a bit more aerodynamics by itself already. Perhaps you can set slightly less wing on Red Bull compared to a Force India for example. Every car may need its little tweaks to come to moreless the same performance online. Also possibly the Red Bull has such good aerodynamics that in default setting you'd drive faster with the Red Bull then say a Force India on most tracks. I'm not gonna research that, since I'm not consistent enough. I think no one can come with solid proof for this anyway, that's a matter of driving style and personal preferences.
----
Special thanks to: illusioneddy to be the 2nd player to get from lobby to track, and just drive around without challenge for 45 laps.
-----
Ps. Was I surprised to see the Force India on top? Yes! I hoped it would be lower so my performance here so far would look better
Here is the answer of my little research so you don't have to scroll down first:
From fastest to slowest car - 110kph to 310kph in seconds - Difference in frames with car above (1 frame = 0.02sec)
That top speed difference vid, some have seen it (India track). But in my opinion top speed is easy to fix by adjusting 7th gear. Acceleration is a more important factor than raw topspeed in my opinion.
------
The setup for the test:
I chose for Shanghai as testtrack, since it has a long straight without small hill, and an obvious DRS line that became the startpoint of acceleration. Test were done in the following settings:
tyre sim off, fuel sim off, clear weather, equal cars (duhhh), TC Full, Dynamic Race line on, automatic gears, default car setup (the middle one). What I would do: I tried to drive with 100 kph in 2nd gear to the DRS activation point, and then just floor the throttle, until arriving at the hairpin. No use of KERS or DRS. It looks like this:
Capturing the runs with 50 frames per seconds, because that's easy calculating, each frame represents 0.020 seconds.
------
going to the track:
First I did a comparison between Mclaren (known to be fast) and Ferrari (known to be slow). I added Force India, because I'm driving with that myself.
I did 6 runs with each of the 3 cars (so 18 runs total).
I've putted those runs on the timeline of my video-editing software. Startframe was 110kph (if not present I took the frame with 109 kph), the endpoint was the frame with 310kph. I didn't pick 100kph because sometimes I arrived with 99 and sometimes with 101.
Comparing the 6 runs of each car, I saw only 1 frame difference on the 6 runs with McLaren, 1 instance of 2 frames difference at Ferrari and 1 frame difference on the Force India.
I was curious about the other 9 cars. I decided to do 3 runs per car, due to the consistency of the runs of the first 3 cars, but still had a way to check if I didn't fall asleep and lifted the throttle a little performing the test for the n-th time.
------
Back to the video-edit:
I cutted all runs seperately, and put them above eachother. If 2 runs were of the same length, I took one of those runs, and ignored the 3rd run. If the 3 runs differed from eachother, I took the average one. In case of the 6 runs cars I took what happened most frequently.
Then came the part I was looking forward to: Putting them in order, and in some cases surprised myself. In the video edit timeline it looks like this (Shorter = quicker, longer = more time = slower)
Summarizing the results in one short video, you'll get the following results:
Note that you can pause throughout the clip and you'll see for example the top 8 all reaching 250kph at the same time. At that same point, Toro Rosso, Lotus and Red Bull are on 248 and Ferrari on 247.
-----
Criticism and further possible research:
Accelerating: I could've mapped accelerate to a button on the steering wheel so it would just be 100% on in an instance. Not really sure if this would've influenced the results in any way.
Selecting one run from the car in the video-edit: Usually the difference between runs of the same car was 0 or 1 frame. In about 2 or 3 cases, it was 2 frames difference. Looking at the ranking this means that if someone does this same test again, the ranking may differ from what I've presented here. Also sometimes there was no frame with 110 kph, and I took the frame with 109 kph. Again a slight accuracy loss of 1 frame.
So the bottom cars sucks and the top cars guarantee a podium? If you think so after going through this, you don't understand F1. It's not just plain acceleration speed. I tend to think that some cars have a bit more aerodynamics by itself already. Perhaps you can set slightly less wing on Red Bull compared to a Force India for example. Every car may need its little tweaks to come to moreless the same performance online. Also possibly the Red Bull has such good aerodynamics that in default setting you'd drive faster with the Red Bull then say a Force India on most tracks. I'm not gonna research that, since I'm not consistent enough. I think no one can come with solid proof for this anyway, that's a matter of driving style and personal preferences.
----
Special thanks to: illusioneddy to be the 2nd player to get from lobby to track, and just drive around without challenge for 45 laps.
-----
Ps. Was I surprised to see the Force India on top? Yes! I hoped it would be lower so my performance here so far would look better
