OK folks, I’m about to reveal my noob-ness here.  A few days a go a good friend suggested that I change the toe-in of my car to help with cornering.  So I went into the setup and changed the toe-in from 0.00 to 0.10 – notice! – I gave the car positive toe-in, or actually toe-out.
Well, this actually did help a little, but it was still a struggle to maintain grip on the road and get a decent lap time (on straights, the car wanted to go left, then right, then left, then right . . .).
Yesterday, after spending the previous night having a blast cruising around Oahu in some vintage Detroit iron in McClusky’s Dream Cruise in TDU, I decided to educate myself a little and Googled caster, camber and toe-in (the three stooges of car physics).  Toe-out helps on oval tracks.  In fact, they use what is called asymmetrical toe-in.  For counter-clockwise ovals, they set the left front tire with positive toe-in, and the right with either a negative toe-in (so both tires always point left, into the corner) or leave it straight, to help keep a straight line.
What I found was that I needed to get a negative toe-in.  So I quickly jumped into my trusty F3000 car in R07 and gave it some negative toe-in, and tried it out.  Very quickly, I was pulling my previous best lap times with ease.  A few more laps and I was shaving 100th’s and even 10th’s off my times.
Now I have no idea how positive or negative toe-in on the rear wheels affects my car, I’ll just have to try it out.  Also, I’ll just have to wait and see how toe-in and toe-out affect tire wear.
I also set my brake bias to 60(front):40(back) and my steering lock from 15 to 17.  All of this seems to help, but I’m still not down to where I want to be as far as lap times go.  I will say this:  with the proper setup, or at least one I feel comfortable with, I can now take a lot of corners in a higher gear than I was before and actually make the turn!  This can only help to lower lap times.
As a further note, I now play R07 with no driving aids, but I can see how and why some people would want to continue using them.  Some just don’t have the time to practice it enough to feel comfortable like that.  The traction control and ABS is the most significant here.  I don’t miss Stability Control at all (I don’t think!), but I sometimes do miss ABS and TC (when I end up facing the wrong way on the course . . .).
I have also gone back to ‘cockpit’ view (in the F3000 and Mini-Cooper – don’t ask about that! OK you can, but I’ll tell that story later!), but I remove the steering wheel.  It’s just too confusing to me to have a wheel in front of me in my own grimy hands and see another pair of hands holding a steering wheel on the screen; it’s like we’re fighting over who gets to control the car!
See more when Slash Goes Racing!
OK folks, I’m about to reveal my noob-ness here.  A few days a go a good friend suggested that I change the toe-in of my car to help with cornering.  So I went into the setup and changed the toe-in from 0.00 to 0.10 – notice! – I gave the car positive toe-in, or actually toe-out.
Well, this actually did help a little, but it was still a struggle to maintain grip on the road and get a decent lap time (on straights, the car wanted to go left, then right, then left, then right . . .).
Yesterday, after spending the previous night having a blast cruising around Oahu in some vintage Detroit iron in McClusky’s Dream Cruise in TDU, I decided to educate myself a little and Googled caster, camber and toe-in (the three stooges of car physics).  Toe-out helps on oval tracks.  In fact, they use what is called asymmetrical toe-in.  For counter-clockwise ovals, they set the left front tire with positive toe-in, and the right with either a negative toe-in (so both tires always point left, into the corner) or leave it straight, to help keep a straight line.
What I found was that I needed to get a negative toe-in.  So I quickly jumped into my trusty F3000 car in R07 and gave it some negative toe-in, and tried it out.  Very quickly, I was pulling my previous best lap times with ease.  A few more laps and I was shaving 100th’s and even 10th’s off my times.
Now I have no idea how positive or negative toe-in on the rear wheels affects my car, I’ll just have to try it out.  Also, I’ll just have to wait and see how toe-in and toe-out affect tire wear.
I also set my brake bias to 60(front):40(back) and my steering lock from 15 to 17.  All of this seems to help, but I’m still not down to where I want to be as far as lap times go.  I will say this:  with the proper setup, or at least one I feel comfortable with, I can now take a lot of corners in a higher gear than I was before and actually make the turn!  This can only help to lower lap times.
As a further note, I now play R07 with no driving aids, but I can see how and why some people would want to continue using them.  Some just don’t have the time to practice it enough to feel comfortable like that.  The traction control and ABS is the most significant here.  I don’t miss Stability Control at all (I don’t think!), but I sometimes do miss ABS and TC (when I end up facing the wrong way on the course . . .).
I have also gone back to ‘cockpit’ view (in the F3000 and Mini-Cooper – don’t ask about that! OK you can, but I’ll tell that story later!), but I remove the steering wheel.  It’s just too confusing to me to have a wheel in front of me in my own grimy hands and see another pair of hands holding a steering wheel on the screen; it’s like we’re fighting over who gets to control the car!
See more when Slash Goes Racing!
