I redid the Bahrain race recently. Using Ramon van Rijin's setup for everything but gear ratio's. I used Sam Peacock's gear ratio's cause when I drop both types of setups, Ramon's felt more controlled for my driving style. When I tried out Sam's, the acceleration felt more controlled. The in practice I ran a few test modifications to both. Car seemed to lose grip a lot on full fuel and sometimes a slight bit to much acceleration out of a turn was to much for the setup. I only managed 12 laps on full fuel load and my option
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[URL="http://www.racedepartment.com/members/ramon-van-rijn.html"][/URL]tires ended up in the orange. I wanted to get it to near 20 laps. So I increased front wing downforce from 3 to 5 and rear from 1 to 3. I had to use the prime tires so I didn't get a good feel for whether the new setup was working off the first lap out so I ended up pitting. If I even touched a curb with full fuel it was basically pushing my car off it rather than the car bumping over it. So I set the ride height from 1 to 3 on front and 1 to 3 on rear. Then out I went again, first 2 laps it still didn't feel to good. But then suddenly on lap 3 on those prime tires I was flying as if I was using options. Felt like I was on rails.
Anyways, 2nd practice I tried a flying lap, was amazing, even better lap times than Ramon's setup did for me. On full fuel, the first 10 laps felt amazing. Even though around lap 8 the tires started to go yellow. Then on lap 17 they started going went orange. Did a few flying laps after on primes and low fuel, was really nice control, no where near the options though.
P3 I didn't do to much.
Qualifying, did a 2:01. in Q1 on primes, 1:59 in Q2 and just got into Q3 on primes, and managed a 1:57.5 in Q3 for 7th on the grid on options.
Race, I set my strategy to Lap 18 since in P2 I noticed that was when all 4 tires were orange. I did the first stint just great, had to be careful around lap 14 cause of the wheels were losing a lot of grip, and pitted on lap 18. Got onto my primes and after 2 laps the traction was a lot better. I messed up though and was braking to hard before turn 5 where its bumping and didn't notice my front right wheel locking up. Ended up with a puncture and a long drive to get back to the pits. I did noticed after going back on options that I was locking the front right wheel at that location, so I eased off the gas in that section and used the engine and incline to slow most of my speed in that section. 1 puncture ruined my whole race haha, but was the first real race that I felt like I was racing on rails.
So it is definitely worth looking into trying out peoples TT setups and then modifying them for race pace.