F1 2010 What's your programme, huh!?

[iF1Nut]

For those who have the time for long weekends... What's your strategy during the P1/2/3 phases of the weekend? I'm not much of a tuner and looking for tunes is how I got here. But, once I saw what the tunes were and not why I decided that I didn't want to play that way. So I haven't used one tune from RD yet. Up until last night I would simply use just the quick setups and which ever one got me the best consistent time, I used. I thought that's not much of a strategy so I began to dig a little deeper. Like I said, I'm not a tuner so I don't mess with much. But, I was wondering what others do. Here's my strategy so far...

P1:

• Look at track bio, find top speed and tune gear box. If the straights aren't huge then I pretty much tune out 7th gear and make sure 6th is 2-5MPH faster than the tracks top speed and stair step 5th - 2nd from there. If I find I'm redlining at a undesirable point I'll do little adjustments.
• Always start with the wet (quick setup) that's closest to the first dry setup.
• Heavy fuel, on primes
• Run 8 laps
• If handles okay and seconds ahead of field, then sit and wait to see who gets within 2 seconds.
• @30 mins, no one within 2 secs, switch to options, run 8 laps
• I expect my time to be about 2 secs faster on opt's, if not save setup and begin tuning areo.

I'm not racing at hardest or hard levels, so I usually don't have too much work to do in P2/3. I only end up only running about 5-8 laps in P2-3 and I'm smoking everyone else, so I can relax.

So, what's your strategy???

 

[dkfireblade]

So when you first start do you choose a particular quick setup and start learning from there? I normally start with the stable setting and start learning the track from there. I don't have fuel/tyre sim on so I can't do that part. You mentioned backing off downforce until riding the edge, so does that mean when you first start custom tuning you start with the areo package and THEN go to the camber, toe, etc.. I've been really trying to figure out where the best place to start custom tuning should be. Not everyone is in agreement on that.

Toe/Camber does not necessarily make the car faster, it makes it behave how you want it to. Those are purely what feels best for you. If you were perfect it might get you ~.1sec a lap.

Downforce/gearing/suspension will next the biggest difference, next to you actually learning the track.
You want the least amount of downforce possible for a given track. Downforce=drag, drag=less speed

With gearing you don't want anything wasted. The stock setup for force india monaco has 7th ending at 228mph. The top speed of monaco is ~160mph. So on paper you still have ~70mph left to go in the gear which means you might not even hit 7th, depends on 6th gear. Gears are there to keep cars in the powerband, maximize each gear and it will maximize your power. If 1st goes to 110mph, yet your slowest corner is 30mph, you will bog down severly on the exit of that corner. When lapping, keep an eye on your speedometer, figure out the lowest, and set 1st right above that. If you run auto, you don't want the computer to shift mid-corner. You want it to shift slightly after you begin to apply power.

This is the way I do it. Camber/toe is primarily to make the car feel better. Also, braking and fuel map are for your own preference. if you find your tail is kicking out on braking, change the brake bias more towards the front. If you find that you are getting understeer, tweak the camber/toe/balance to fit you.

The number 1 thing that will make any driver faster, is the driver.
If I got behind the wheel of Vettel's F1 car, I would not have won at Suzuka. Not gonna happen.
Vettel and Webber do not run the same camber/toe/balance/bias or anything. They have identical engine and chassis, but the setup is for the driver. Do what feels right. You can use the setups on here as a guide, but I guarantee you if you take the time to figure out what each one of them does, your lap will be faster in the end.

Here's what you can do:
1. Leave the car on avg/avg setup
2. change one thing on the car, i.e. just the front wing, or just the brake bias
3. use the "sector 1" entry so you don't have to waste time on an out-lap
4. drive until you know what happens with the change
5. hit start and hit "return to garage" so you don't have to do an in-lap
6. return to standard settings and change something else

This will serve 2 purposes, you learn the track and you actually learn how to tune your own car to fit you.

I know some may not agree, but they have made the game to be as realistic as possible. I see no reason why realistic practices would not work in the game.

 

[shadowmane]

Hi iv been playing the game for a few days now and thought id add what iv been doing to find a setup that works. First I do a few laps with the setup provided by the engineer just to get to know the track. Then I use the net to look up f1 tech data for the track I'm racing at. That tells me the average speed for each corner and the max speed on the longest straight ( handy for setting gears and downforce) it also gives lots of useful info on the track characteristics. For instance the Bahrain track causes a bit of understeer so to counter that I set the car up with some oversteer . Turn 18 is off camber after doing a few on line races that's a turn iv noted ppl are slow at I would think its because they don't have the camber settings right.

Just one point to make about changing one setting at a time then doing some laps. Tyres wear and as they do they lose time due to that wear. Just because a tyre is not overheating doesn't mean it hasn't reached the point at which its loosing time. That means its possible to change a setting for the better and get a slower time if testing that change using worn tyres.

 

[Anthony Lucas]

these setups for races and its nice to see that people are getting in volved in the game in detail as all the complaints that were floating around were putting the game down i dont see too much wrong with the game and from all the replys here none of you seem to either

 

[iF1Nut]

With gearing you don't want anything wasted. The stock setup for force india monaco has 7th ending at 228mph. The top speed of monaco is ~160mph. So on paper you still have ~70mph left to go in the gear which means you might not even hit 7th, depends on 6th gear. Gears are there to keep cars in the powerband, maximize each gear and it will maximize your power. If 1st goes to 110mph, yet your slowest corner is 30mph, you will bog down severly on the exit of that corner. When lapping, keep an eye on your speedometer, figure out the lowest, and set 1st right above that. If you run auto, you don't want the computer to shift mid-corner. You want it to shift slightly after you begin to apply power.

This part interests me and brings to mind a question. You're not the first to say something like this and I tried it lastnight. I don't know if I had better times because I was more worried about getting my shift points right but I wondered... 1st can only be tuned down to about 70mph if the slowest corner is say 50mph, does it make sense to tune 1st down to 70mph? Shifting out of 1st without hitting the rev limiter with it that short is NOT easy. Thoughts???

 

[Gonira]

without tc, i'd personally never take a turn in 1st gear, so it doesn't really matter, imo.

 

[iF1Nut]

without tc, i'd personally never take a turn in 1st gear, so it doesn't really matter, imo.

but doesn't that kind of go against tuning the gears? I mean do you tune ANY of them and if so, which ones? For instance, someone was kind enough give out a site that shows each circuit and on it it gives gear, G-force, and speed for each corner. Bahrain, Monaco, Villeneuve (x2), Hockenheimring, Spa, Monza (x2), and Suzuka have at least 1 1st gear turn. Villeneuve and Hockenheimring have two and Korean looks like there will be at least one (turn 4). This information is coming from Allianz so I can't say they don't know what they're talking about. I'm wanting to extract every little bit of time I can. As of last night I have everything on the hardest lvl expect for AI (I'm not ready for that), so no TC for me. So, looking at Bahrain this site shows two corners (turns 3, 17) where 5th is the "desirable" gear. Turn 3's max speed is 221kmph whereas 17's 205kmph. My logic tells me to tune 5th to about 225kmph which should have me ready to shift up and get back on gas as soon as I clear the apex and start my exit turn 3. I'll just have to make sure I enter turn 17 at the right speed so I don't push which shouldn't be too much of a problem because you're down shifting all of 17 into 18. Does that make sense?

 

[Gonira]

1st gear is mainly for launching the car at the start. from what i can remember, the only turn in the entire season where i actually use it is the hairpin in monaco. i was seeing some laps of mark webber in the red bull simulator (search youtube) and in a lot of very slow spots, the animation graph would show 1st gear as recommended but mark was actually in 2nd gear (you can see in his wheel). perhaps allianz took average speed as the only reference to pick the "ideal" gears in their maps, i don't know but it's possible.

and i'm not very much into tuning, just saying...

 

[Scott Woodwiss]

P1 - I start by applying a setup, usually from these forums , and then just do some laps to get used to the track and the handling of the car. I also use this session to change engines if I have to, which means I skip this session in the process.

P2 - Depends if I need more track time, if not I do a couple of laps and skip to P3

P3 - Same as above, may skip straight to Q1 if I've done enough laps.

If it's a weekend that has an R&D objective, it usually only takes one lap to complete the target lap time on top of any usual running.

Q1 - Done on primes mainly, doing one run consisting of about 3 flying laps. If I have to, I go out again on the same set to get to Q2.

Q2 - Same as above, just to ensure I can get into Q3.

Q3 - Depends on what I want from strategy. Options if I want to be up near the front of the grid, primes if I want to try going long.

Race - normally I just go with the engineer's recommended strategy. In the first few races in my Career for Lotus on Expert, I benefited from starting on primes, running about 3 quarters of the race and then switching to options which would normally result in a late charge through the field. I had a great one in Istanbul. I did start on pole, but when going onto options, I had a big pack of cars in front of me and fought through from about 14th or so up to 5th.

 

[dkfireblade]

I will use first in super slow corners like most hairpins and i will start power once I am lined up and shift very quickly. I normally don't take it to redline because there is hella-spin. I roll on through first, not always giving full throttle. I have found that with the super slow corners there is sometimes bogging when I try and use 2nd. Even if I tune to make 2nd as useful as possible it still is not enough power for the exit. Since the cars shift so fast there isn't hardly any speed loss during a shift. If you use first in anything but hairpins it will cause some excessive wheel spin and wheel spin=lost time.
At Valencia, i originally tuned to have the final hairpin in 2nd, which led to decent lap time. I adjusted slightly to be able to use 1st and I consistently gained about .2 sec in the third sector and .3 in the next sector 1 from that. It allowed me to get a better drive out of the corner which led to a higher top speed going into turn 1. I was getting about 5mph at the end with starting in 1st over starting in 2nd.

It might not work for everyone, but it works for me...for now. Force India has such awful downforce and grip problem that I have to gain as much as possible in the straights because I am going to get killed in the corners. I've found that when I do a grand prix weekend with mclaren or reb bull I can go sooo much faster through the turns. With the higher corner speed I don't always use the same gear for turns. At Canada with FI, the hairpin was 1st gear; with RBR it was 2nd because I could brake later and carry more speed through the turn, on avg 5-10mph more. That 5-10mph was enough for me to tune the gearing to use 2nd through the hairpin.

 

[Fahad Gaffoor]

Just started to Play the Game in Expert mode with Manual Shifting.
Here is how I get on with it

P1
Since, just started to play the game in Manual, I do several laps getting the hold of cornering speeds and gears. For this period till I get used to the track and gear shifting I would use the Average setup with prime tyre. One I get used to it. I would do a few laps with Low Downforce and High Downforce till I get a good lap time with both the settings. Drawback of this session is I try to get used to the track with the same tyre. So it hard to understand proper lap times.

P2
Here is where I start tweaking the car and change tuning based on the setup that worked for the previous session. Once found the perfect solution. Do a Couple of laps with the Option tyre and see how it works out.

P3
Basically this session is just to try my setups that I am pleased with, with both option and prime tyre and practice pit stop too.

Q1
2-3 Laps

Q2
Same as Q1

Q3
1 or 2 laps with option.

 

[Tim Brook]

I use the same setup for every single track because afterall, you want to use the lowest downforce & ride height, stiff rear and soft front ARB and soft springs everywhere (You're always tweaking your setup between two points decided by the computer). I just go into P1, run one lap to make sure that the gears are set correctly then skip to the race (It's always more fun running from the back). That's on Legend.

 

[iF1Nut]

1st gear is mainly for launching the car at the start. from what i can remember, the only turn in the entire season where i actually use it is the hairpin in monaco. i was seeing some laps of mark webber in the red bull simulator (search youtube) and in a lot of very slow spots, the animation graph would show 1st gear as recommended but mark was actually in 2nd gear (you can see in his wheel). perhaps allianz took average speed as the only reference to pick the "ideal" gears in their maps, i don't know but it's possible.

and i'm not very much into tuning, just saying...

You may be right because I used allianz corner speeds to tune my gears and I noticed that I was taking every corner faster than what they had listed. So maybe they are averages rather than maxes.

 

[iF1Nut]

P1 - I start by applying a setup, usually from these forums , and then just do some laps to get used to the track and the handling of the car. I also use this session to change engines if I have to, which means I skip this session in the process.

P2 - Depends if I need more track time, if not I do a couple of laps and skip to P3

P3 - Same as above, may skip straight to Q1 if I've done enough laps.

Every since I made the game harder with aids and AI I need all the sessions to make sure I have a good spot on the grid at race time. What's you AI settings?

 

[iF1Nut]

I will use first in super slow corners like most hairpins and i will start power once I am lined up and shift very quickly. I normally don't take it to redline because there is hella-spin...[\QUOTE]
I'm taking the game slow and have reset my career a few times so I can only speak to the 1st few races, but I have noticed that on some corners I get better times if I don't let the revs get close to redline when exiting. This has been especially true for me in Melbourne turns 3-5. It makes me wonder if we should be figuring out shift points. We did it in Forza2/3 I can't see why it wouldn't be relevant in this game too. But, doesn't matter without telemetry

 

[iF1Nut]

I use the same setup for every single track because afterall, you want to use the lowest downforce & ride height, stiff rear and soft front ARB and soft springs everywhere (You're always tweaking your setup between two points decided by the computer). I just go into P1, run one lap to make sure that the gears are set correctly then skip to the race (It's always more fun running from the back). That's on Legend.

Uhhhh yeah I'm not that good, plus (and this is just my opinion) the practice sessions are a BIG part of this game. I think tuning is what they meant for you to do. Before I changed my settings I was blowing everyone away in practice. It made it boring coz I could go thru the whole session without every damaging my car. Now, I have to work to shave seconds and so far I've had to use the whole session to do it. Because now I HAVE to tune to compete, so I end up losing times fixing the car.