Hi
Overall spring and damper stiffness is a bit of a mistery to me. In general I know whether I need more stiffness to the front or the rear to balance the handling of the car between over- and under-steer.
But I find it very difficult to know whether the "all-around" level of stiffness is ok, or too soft, or too stiff, for both springs and dampers. Sometimes I just decrease or increase everything by the same amount (in proportion), and I find my lap times improving or deteriorating, but I don't really know why and cannot feel such a big difference in the feeling of the car.
I know the setup guides say "if the car is not responsive enought, stiffen", or "if car is too nervous or lacks grip, soften", but all those notions are relative. Lacks grip compared to what? Cars could always do with more grip, right? And what is a car that is "not responsive enough"? How do you assess that?
So anyway, if anyone has a good rule of thumb to figure this one out, could they let me know because it puzzles me a bit, and I believe I could probably scrape out 0.3-0.5 sec per lap if I had a better understanding of that.
Thanks!
Overall spring and damper stiffness is a bit of a mistery to me. In general I know whether I need more stiffness to the front or the rear to balance the handling of the car between over- and under-steer.
But I find it very difficult to know whether the "all-around" level of stiffness is ok, or too soft, or too stiff, for both springs and dampers. Sometimes I just decrease or increase everything by the same amount (in proportion), and I find my lap times improving or deteriorating, but I don't really know why and cannot feel such a big difference in the feeling of the car.
I know the setup guides say "if the car is not responsive enought, stiffen", or "if car is too nervous or lacks grip, soften", but all those notions are relative. Lacks grip compared to what? Cars could always do with more grip, right? And what is a car that is "not responsive enough"? How do you assess that?
So anyway, if anyone has a good rule of thumb to figure this one out, could they let me know because it puzzles me a bit, and I believe I could probably scrape out 0.3-0.5 sec per lap if I had a better understanding of that.
Thanks!