I saw you ahead of me in the Crosslé competition Derek so I used your ghost to improve my time. Initially I saw I lost time out of the 3 first turns and held my own or were faster, for the rest of the lap. I perservered until I had you covered for those first 3 turns and stepped up on the rest of the lap too.

I suspect that once you start tweaking your setup, you’ll blast past me again, but for now I’m enjoying my 1.37.78.

Ha, that's the way to do it. Dial in a target and then beat it. Nicely done Jens. Not sure I could beat your lap, that's a fine one. Impressive driving.

As an old school street track it has a bunch of quirky turns, and finding time here is probably a matter of taking a different line. There's one kerb for example where I'm sure I'm all four wheels off, but no track limits, so it's fair game and at first you are driving around it until you make a mistake only to see it's legal and now you picked up three tenths.

I don't find the car comfortable, so some sort of shift is required in the setup, but not sure where to go yet. I'll tinker with it.

I know the corner. I cut it blatantly too and was not penalized so it clearly goes. When watching ghosts however, I think RR renders a line through that corner that would have you believe that the correct and fastest line would be somehow not cutting it. It looks a little bizarre.

I brought the brake balance a bit more towards the rear as my main problem was looking up the front wheels when braking.

Some stuff in RR is not qwait awwwight as the Indycar at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway used the roadcar configuration that will only achieve laptimes around 49 secs. So speeds are a lot lower than they should be.

I had my second race on rFactor 2´s Race Control online with the BMW M2 Cup car on the Indy 500 track this afternoon. It´s what´s on rotation this week for beginners DR and SR rating. I had a hell of a time trying to control the car with It´s default setup, I have to say It behaves very different then the M2 on RR. I know there´s not much love for rFactor 2 around here but I am afraid I trust S397´s car model and physics more then I do those In RR, so yes RR Is a bit hit and miss sometimes.

I'd be happy to offer some suggestions if you can describe the behavior.

Knowing Jens had nicked my Pau lap I had to fire it back up and claw ahead. Managed to nick him back by a tenth

It´s the BMW M2 In rFactor 2, not the newer one just released for R3R.

Physics is physics, regardless

Yeah I know, just saying. Initially I was just comparing the two side by side out of the box. It was not Intentional, just a coincidence that the M2 race was (or Is still) on rotation on Race Control online beginners race In rFactor 2. Have you compared both cars?

No, I don't have rF2 installed. I was offering to help tweak the default setup you struggled with is all.

Oh ok, basically the car needs care while driving It, to fast on breaking and acceleration and you will spin very easily. So that said you have to drive It In a controlled manner. In my case, I didn´t know the track or the car, but did get like a 30min. practice with the combo before the race. Overall It did catch me by surprise but still was a fun race, aside from getting bumped from behind and thrown off the track which ended being second to last.

So it oversteers on both braking and acceleration? That's odd. Not sure what is meant by to(o) fast on braking. What do you mean?

With more specific details I think I could offer better advice, but at this point I'm thinking the suspension is too stiff. Try softer springs and/or roll bars. Which way you should go (front or rear) is usually determined by entry/exit behavior, but I'm unsure what you are seeing here. Based on what I read I think you'll want to soften the rear, to get more weight on the rear axle under acceleration, and it would also increase entry understeer by limiting how much weight goes forward under braking. Softer rear springs, stiffer front springs, and rake titled more toward the rear (higher front, lower rear) will all do the same sort of thing.

If the differential can be tweaked these issues can be dialed in or out here too.

In most cases I would expect a car which understeers on entry will oversteer on exit, or vice versa, as this is two sides of the same coin, a balance thing. It's rare to have the same behavior in each phase, but maybe I misunderstand.

Ah, the sad case of rFactor2. I was loyal to it, hung on for oh so long and still think it has the best physics of all sims perhaps only recently eclipsed by LMU but that is basically rFactor2 too. But nobody loves vintage racecars, vintage as in before 1975, and everyone apparently wants GT’s so in the words of John Lennon; “I just had to let it go”.

I like rF2 fine. Great feel, sound and all of it. I like the setup page too, and that's goes a long way with me. But I found it was the one out of the four I bought all at the same time (ACC, AMS2, RR and rF2) that I was playing the least and I needed to make room on the drive. So I uninstalled it. And it has Lime Rock, the track I said before I used to run on track days in my Mustang. Good sim, but for me it fell victim to overabundance and a full hard rive.

I admit I am not the best at explaining myself, specially things that I am still trying to figure out and/or new to LOL. Ok, let me try that again...

- I would think the car oversteers as It turns quickly, or you can easily point the front to where you want to go (more less as not like a F1). But If you´re corner entry Is to fast because you didn´t make a good entry, the car will go wide and If you try to rectify while you´re in the middle of the corner, you will lose you´re rear end traction. So while It oversteers In entry, you´re speed on entry Is crucial If you don´t want to get cross sided in the middle of the turn. Exiting Is quite controlable as long as you don´t have consecutive corners to drive through. In that situation you also have weight shifts to deal with. Going In to fast Into a corner and trying to break fast to remedy the Issue will also get you Into trouble (spin). Downshifting to slow the car down In a straight like Indy 500 will also cause the car to do a "s" on you In a straight line, It´s quite cool!

Overall, It´s quite a fun car to drive. It has that character which makes It challenging to drive. It´s one of the better payed addons from the rF2 catalog and a respected one by the community too.

Jens, there´s always something going on with mods In rF2 thankfully.

Oh yes! those old sportcars are very lively. and lovely.





Forgive me if tell you something you already know, I don't want to come across as lecturing, or worse. And I must also qualify this by stating that I do not own the M2 in rF2 qnd I haven't driven it in RR.

I think what you are experiencing is a combination of a couple of factors:

New car/track combo; So you want some time to adjust your input to brakes and steering and get to know the car better. You want to make sure you are not over rotating the car. You still want to be able to rotate in order to get the car through the turns.
Weight transfer; As you get off the throttle and brake, the rear end of the car gets light thus increasing a tendency to induce turn-in/lift-off oversteer. As you accelerate the weight goes to the rear axle and this might cause wheelspin (does the car have traction control?) I suspect the M2 is heavy in the front and light in the rear thus making it a spinmobile due to this weight distribution.
Track contours; I find it very hard to see if a track has a downhill gradient and/or a negative camber. All this will increase the likelihood of losing control of the car if you're not aware of this sort of flow of the track.

Driving-wise I'd make sure that my front-wheels are pointed absolutely straight ahead when braking. Any tendency to lose the rear end under braking is increased drastically if the front wheels aren't pointed straight ahead. I'd also make sure not to downshift while turning. In RR several of the cars bite me if I downshift, and since I'm not good at matching revs I break the traction and spin out if I'm in a turn. Better then, to delay the downshift until I'm out of the turn and need the higher revs for acceleration. Sometimes the differential can be tuned to counter this tendency but I would rather adjust my driving because I feel that I learn to become a better driver that way.

Check if the brake balance suits you. If you never lock of the front wheels you are either not braking hard enough, or you can bring the balance forward a notch. That will negate any tendendy to spin out during braking but will result in a car that will be harder turn in. I suspect that most sims will by default provide a setup with plenty of forward brake balance.

I'm unsure about this next step so if Derek wants to chip in please do so.

Should you experiment with softening the springs and dampers in the rear a bit? this might give you more traction but will also make you slower. But if you soften the suspension, wouldn't you need to build in bigger bump stops, to avoid the springs crashing into the chassis?

Really good post Jens.

Brake bias is such a personal thing. You want efficient braking, and there is going to a be a perfect balance that maximizes braking power and minimizes lock ups. But I also want it for car balance, shifting it rearwards from default to help rotate the car under braking. I always reduce pressure and shift balance back a few clicks before I've turned a lap in a new car.

A car over-rotating is a common problem, I've talked about fixing this often in my posts. Lift oversteer I call it. You lift and brake and the car wants to dive for the kerb on the inside. This one is easy to fix, and I do it either through stiffer front spring, which reduces the weight coming off the back and going forward, and also though engine braking, differential and preload. Cars that have adjustable engine braking are nice, because this is one of the few settings that only effects a single cornering phase, corner entry. Virtually every change you do has a consequence, for every action there is an opposite re-action. But engine braking is rather unique. If the car over-rotates on entry, increase engine braking to dial it out. If it pushes, reduce engine braking to help the car rotate.

Thanks to both!

Do need to practice (experiment) with what´s been said here which will take a bit. Not sure this car has engine breaking, have to jump back In and see what you can actually tweak. But yeah I think that If I digest these "smaller" steps In setups It makes for a better understanding and not so overwhelming, Instead of trying to understand It all at once. With regards to break bias, which Is something that I have been monitoring more on LMU due to the tire model, and how to manage It´s grip and flat spots, It Is something that I am actively working on, along with TC (Traction Control). Taking things In small steps as I said, so yes thank you!

I am kind of confused with TC Cut, Traction Control, and Stability Control which confusingly all seem the same.

In RaceRoom anyway, TC cut is how much the traction control system drops power when it engages, so a Cut of 100 is full power cut when engaged. 80 leaves 20% power and so on. There is also a setting to determine how much slip you allow before the TC kicks in. The presets are stepped with increasing allowable slip combined with lower power reduction, and you can cycle through these in the cockpit. You can also fine tune these values in the setup on some cars that have TC. I fool around with this, but not much. At Sepang I found some time in one of the 911s and the 296 by allowing more slip and reducing cut in TC 2, but it was minor tweaks. If you turn laps and keep kicking it up a notch through the settings you can feel how it works, and at TC 6 the car might no longer be controllable as the TC takes forever to kick in. For me, TC 2 is the starting spot in most cars. It's a little faster in the main, and isn't so restrictive when you want a little oversteer to get through the corners faster.

Stability control is a gameplay assist? or maybe some classes of cars have this? The traction control I'm talking about is the system in the cars that have it in factory setting.

Not all cars have a variable engine braking setting, but in RaceRoom most cars seem to. It's really handy at the Nordschleife since getting your corner entry balance is so important to get around that track in good time. It allows you to get the overall balance right, and your exits good, and can then go either way on your entries, either increase understeer or oversteer to fine tune it.

New RaceRoom competitions are up

https://game.raceroom.com/competitions/

Some tasty combinations there. I still have not been able to get Zandvoort to load and I might have to skip that one. Love that track too, but mystified as to why it won't load for me.

Hopped on last night and gave Pau a go in a couple of cars, including the Formula 3. Also hit Nordschleife in the new BMW M2. This car kind of floats a bit, like my mom's '76 Buick Electra lol. Drives like the family saloon, but after one tour I had the feel and turned some decent laps.

Good luck gentlemen!

All those look like fun! BTW Derek, my first car was a Buick Apollo. It was this lemon/lime color and I was embarrassed to drive It as a teen LOL, so I tinted the side windows haha! Yeah that thing had a sofa In the front Indeed.

Same, good luck!