Is that on your own set, Justin? And Burkey, how was the weather?

I've got a set I developed on my own that, with the weather of the Roar (in an official Roar session) I could get down into the low 46s. But it barely lasts 30 minutes... by 22-23 minutes in I'm chasing the rear end everywhere.

We developed a completely different setup that, in official Roar weather, could *barely* scratch the 46's if I pushed hard but otherwise is happy in the 47s.

Then yesterday I set up a hosted session to mess with setup more and forgot to use the correct weather - and the track was ~1s faster... was running 46.2's all day long, with a couple in the 45's. Same set back in the official Roar session and I was back in the 47s. But it was consistent - I did the same laps for a full tank of fuel.

It takes a while to adjust. Car won't do what I want it to do with the "enduro" set, understeers and plows... but it's at least consistent.

 

I've got 2 sets now. 1 qualy and one enduro. I'm not sure if the weather was accurate for our sessions, but it seemed similar to the roar weather. The set I was using, I'll share in tonight's practice session. I stabilized it a bit more so it can hopefully be pushed for a whole tank. It's pretty good.

Setup changes were:
50lb stiffer front springs and lowered back down to minimum with full tank.
a couple less clicks of caster.

 

Just started iRacing, we are talking weeks at most. When in a car I know like the Ruf and on a track in know I can get the hang of things. But to move up I need to drive the Miata and I cannot "feel" anything in the car. Sure I can stay on track at a decent but not front running pace. But when racing you have to go off line and at that point I am lost since I have no seat of the pant feel. Result is 3-4 offs per session and an occasional smash into a tree. What's the secret for getting a better handle of how to manage that loose rear end? Sway bar is soft (mandated) which makes it worse.

 

Seat time, some people enjoy the miata so much they continue to run it after they move up. Look at the MPR for moving up to the next level and try and figure out the best way for you to get out of the rookie class.

 

Seat time served me well at Sebring with a custom set up that I downloaded. It was a great car. Very predictable. Then when I figured I better move up I went back to the standard config and it is loose. I guess I need to quit driving the thing like a 911.

 

RobT, just takes practice and working on the visual keys and the feedback through the wheel to know when the car starts lose the backend. Don't need to worry about the setup on the Miata to get your D license it is a fixed setup and you can't change it.
There are some setup guides out there, there is also a number of setup sites you can download setups.

 

The Mazda is harder to get a seat of the pants feel for because it's so neutral. It goes sideways most of the time so you don't get the rotational queues on the screen like you do with the Ruf. I find that you just have to be more anticipatory and less reactive. You also have to throw it into the corners more and use less trail braking then the Ruf. A couple of weeks isn't very long to train your brain to pick up those queues either, it takes a while. Once you get it you will find that the biggest obstacle to promotion are all the idiots who drive completely out of control. Give them a wide berth. It's better to finish at the back and not have an incident. Good luck.

 

Thanks for the help and guidance. It is very useful. Beyond seat time, this seems to be the biggest issue. I think I expected to come up to speed more quickly given the track time I have and that is not the case. I will have to be more patient. I tried a few different techniques yesterday that seemed to help. In a couple of corners I tossed it in and it did well. Reducing trailbraking seemed to help as well. Seems like if you are carrying too much speed it will fly off as it cannot turn. I am trying not to be one of those idiots, right now I fly off more than race.

 

Have set up a team for the 24 as well, have not had a chance to test the driver change, couple of questions. Can more then 1 guy get into a test session with his own car, i.e 2 guys from the same team on the track at the same time? If not I guses it is easy enough to set up your own team. How easy was the driver changes? It looks like 5 guys can be logged on at the same time, have you guys tried that yet? Will be doing a lot of testing in the next 2 weeks.

 

The other thing to check is to make sure all your gear is working well. Do some reading into how to set up the wheel and make sure the forces are being transmitted accurately to the motors. Some wheels do a lot of processing and smoothing of data before feeding it to your hands. I turn all that stuff off in the wheel software. Just let iracing deal with all those calculations. In the bars at the top right of the screen there is one labeled "F". That is the force value that iracing is sending. It should match pretty close to what you feel, if it clips then adjust settings so you are using the full sweep of the total force. Start with all the damping off and just a hint of minimum force.

 

Transitioning from real racing to sim racing takes a little bit of practice since (as you've found) you lose some key information (the seat-of-the-pants info!) Slow it down and take your time.

Some good advice here.

I'll also throw this out there: are you on a single monitor or triple monitors, and what's your FOV (field-of-view) settings? A lot of folks (especially those with a single monitor) tend to run a really wide FOV (so they can see the mirrors) and that ultimately distorts your view, like driving through a wide-angle lens. It screws up your speed and depth perception and makes corners look less tight than they really are. For a single monitor I would never run a FOV beyond 60. For most triple setups the correct FOV rarely comes out much over 100. I think when I had triples (24" from my face) the correct FOV was only like 110 or something. Use the iRacing FOV calculator in the sim.

If you're in a "team" session, then all your team members share one car - meaning only one driver on the track at a time. We bounced in and out of sessions all weekend - some "team" sessions (so we could play with driver swaps, etc.) and then some private hosted sessions so we could each sign in with a car and mess with the setup.

Ideally we'll come up with a single set that works for everybody... but I do think it's possible to load in different sets when the car comes in for a driver change. Just means you'd need 3 people signed in at once: current driver, next driver, and a crew chief. Only the crew chief has the ability to look at and change the setup, and only one person can be the crew chief.

I'm hoping to get our team a little more organized over the next two weeks. I'll be in Daytona for the real 24 next weekend so I'll be MIA a few days. Might add a few more people to the driver roster for our team to ensure we have full coverage. A few guys I invited said they were interested but then went silent once it came time to get into some test sessions.

 

OH! And here's the vid from Barber.


Sorry it took me a while. Lately it seems my video recorder software is glitching when it records. I had to re-run it a few times, kind of a PITA.

 

OmniGLH: Good advice here. Makes a huge difference in the corner radius, the slip angle, and for seeing more detail on the track that can help with braking and turn in points. The only downside is I feel like I am starting all over again, but this time in the right way where laps times will progress and not just happen by accident.

JustinL: Also a problem I am fighting. Small adjustments are making it better but still not there yet. I have the logitech wheel, never installed the software other than a device driver.

 

Jordan Taylor was turning some Pre daytona laps in the HPD ARX last night. I was pretty happy to jump in and run similar times.

 

Now you just need a dad like his! Me too actually

c.