Our resident driving expert and Forza 2 overlord Albus (look him up on the scoreboards) has imparted some wisdom for all players on how to tune your car for 10/10ths performance on the track. Here it is, completely unabridged and mostly unedited. He sends these blog entries over in email fairly randomly so I can say that we're going to have more of these -- I just don't know when!

Enjoy...

Car Tuning - A Way of Life
By: Albus

Read: “Drive to Win” – Carroll Smith  (he also has a “Tune to win” book, but the Drive to win has enough to go on.  It’s like $14 at Amazon.com).

None of the cars in Forza 2 require a great deal of tuning.  The default setups are 85-90% good… but 10-15% of time is HUGE on a race track.  So, there is significant advantage to be gained by tuning your car.

Bang for buck:

• Gear Ratios  (almost always too long… you lose acceleration for sake of top speed you never hit).   Gear car so you hit the last gear (5th or 6th) at red-line at the end of the longest straight away.  Then you’ll be setup well for acceleration (make sure to get clutch & tranny upgrades if you do this though since you’ll be shifting more often).
  
  
• Downforce – I use GOBS of downforce.   I’m slower in a straight (and you can pass me there) but I’ll kill you in the corners.  Get it, use it, love it.

Dealing with oversteer and understeer: To increase understeer (same as decreasing oversteer) push all the “Front” sliders to the right just a little (bigger values) and reduce “Rear” sliders to the left (lower values) about an equal amount. Try to move sliders in both/opposing directions until you get a neutral car… I.e. if you’re going to add +5% to spring rate in the front, subtract -5% from the rear.  Add +5% to the bump stops and rebound for the front, and subtract 5% from the bump stops and rebound for the rear.   Think symmetry and you’ll stay “safe”.

Camber and caster: Next deal with camber and caster. These affect the "turn in" speeds of the car. You get better turn in the bigger these values are, but you reduce the traction-patch, so your braking is worse and your tires wear/heat up excessively on the insides. But you get better grip in turns… guess which Albus likes?   Grip in turns.  So I add camber and caster on all my setups.

Toe-in-out:  You can mess with Toe… most people don’t. Think of your tires like your feet, if you are bow-legged and your toes point away from your ankles, that’s “toe out”.  If you are “pigeon toed” (toes point towards each other) that’s Toe-in.  Toe-in helps you get bite on corner entry.   Toe-out adds stability to a “rowdy” back end (oversteer).  Keep in mind that any degrees of input here actually slow you down in a straight line… you’re creating “rolling friction” for sake of stability and better turn in.  Other elite drivers don’t have use any or much “toe”… I actually use it to gain stability.   My “speed” is not about quickness but consistency.  You can win the best lap of the race… I just want to win the race.

Brake balance/pressure:  I play with these but most folks don’t.   I actually like reducing the brake pressure 5-10%... it helps me (manual braker using a wheel) not lock-up as much.   Brake balance is very car specific… in a long wheel-base car 50/50 is fine, you can even push it forward a bit (better braking, a little less stable back-end under braking) but if you have a short wheel-base car, I like to add +1 or +2% rear brake balance which helps keep the car’s rear end from wanting to switch ends with the front when you brake and turn at the same time (which I do a lot as I “trail brake”).   If you’re ever past 5% from 50/50 you’ve probably gone too far.

All that being said… here’s my best tuning advice…

Go to Multiplayer Leaderboards, find the car you want to tune (in the appropriate class) and download setups (from the people honorable enough to post them) and “tweak”… anyone on the leaderboard (Top 10) probably had to do some amount of tuning (or plagiarizing) to get where they are. Leverage their tuning ability and try out their setups. If you don’t like it, try someone else’s… almost assuredly, you’ll find a setup that “feels good”… now go look for more setups by that person and in other cars and classes… they will probably feel similar.

I know that my Albus setups have a very similar flavor/feel because I want my cars to behave very similarly.  I like a touch of understeer while many other fast drivers favor what I would consider aggressive amounts of oversteer. I drive with an MS FFB wheel, many other drivers use a gamepad. With a gamepad you can catch an oversteering car much more easily than you can with a wheel. Hence, their ability to deal with aggressive amounts of oversteer. With a wheel you can handle high-speed turns/sweepers much more delicately than a game pad user can so I can be more precise/consistent. So, even though guys might be right next to each other (with the same car) on a leaderboard, they could have very different feeling setups.   Find a “personality” you like in a setup and then explore with minor changes… you might create something of your own that works even better for you.

That’s my quick ‘bang for the buck’ primer on tuning.