Forums

I have been messing around with different setups, trying to get the best balance. Usually I would go for max handling (lowest weight, race tires, whatever power was allowed), but while that made things better in the turns I would get culo blasted out of turns and on straights. Keeping the weight low and dumping grip for power made the car unstable. Now I am messing with weight, keeping grip high with race tires and aero, but trading some weight for power. The cars don't turn too much worse, and I do have to be a little more careful on braking, but it does seem to help with top end.

What kind of balances are folks going for? I'm good for about a 1'57" in an average car on Mugello/Catalunya and down into the 1'55"s with something like an F50/Exige.

It really depends on what you want the car to do and on which track. I tend to build based on a car's weaknesses. If it's heavy, lighten it. If it's underpowered, beef up the engine. If it's riding on garbage tires, mount some stickier rubber. In reality, the best thing to do for a circuit car is reduce weight and take advantage of upgrades that will get the most out of the engine like a race transmission with adjustable gearing. The game seems to work a bit differently sometimes.

If you're looking to post leaderboard times, download the top couple of people's tunes and see what they did for a build. You'll at least have a starting point and can then tune to your driving style.

My favorite S700 tune I have right now is a Porsche GT2 with race weight reduction, stock-width slicks, and 475 horsepower. It is very quick, but doesn't do well on high-speed tracks like Nurburgring due to the aero.

Hope this helps and certainly let us know what you come up with.

Around Mugello you'll want race tires and weight reduction, then add as much power as you can. Sometimes trading a tire compound for more power can help, but that's typically for heavier cars that can run a lot of power. I'd say 70% of good S class builds use race tires though.

I played with my Gallardo last night. Like I said I'm usually good for low 1'58"s on Catalunya and I like to do my testing on that because it's an awesome track and it has pretty much every kind of turn.

Anyways my base tune for it was max grip and low weight with basically stock power (and RWD). It was OK. Nice and stable but frankly pretty slow on the straights. I tried sport tires with the low weight in the past and it was just a handful with the extra power. Last night I decided to bump the weight back up a bit to up the power. My thinking on that was once you get up above like 60 MPH you're really fighting drag, not weight. So more power would make for better acceleration, even with more weight. Lo and behold, with an extra 100HP and like 600 more lbs I got down into the 1'56"s. Acceleration was good, turning was good and stable... only thing that kind of suffered was braking, which the Gallardo never seemed that strong at in my experience. So now I'm kinda thinking about what other cars to mess with that way. Lot of folks have really fast C6 Vettes... I'm going to give one of those a try.

Just watch some replays and figure out builds from there. It's interesting that you needed to add weight to the Gallardo though. The race tire and weight reduction build is a top 100 car. Sometimes cars are harder to handle, but they're just faster that way.

I value race weight reduction highest. I'll leave off aero and everything to get race weight reduction in there. After that I'd probably say race brakes, ARBs, suspension and aero are what you need to get in there next. All those parts don't cost much PI and I'd say should be preferred irrespective of which track you're setting up the car for. The other parts are more track specific. Since you're talking about catalunya and Mugello handling is going to be important. Firstly I'd put max tyre widths, then upgraded compounds. In most of my cars I put a roll cage in, although whether a roll cage is better can only be found through testing. I wouldn't worry about it too much. I have a lot of S-class cars and there might be 1 or 2 with a race gearbox. That's to say, it'll hardly ever be a good use of PI to put a race gearbox in.

The Gallardo is a funny one. I don't like the car, personally. I never got it up feel the way I'd have liked but it does run top times. I think I came up with a bit of a unique build. I think I left off 1 front tyre width to get other engine upgrades in. I'll check tonight. I definitely put the centrifugal supercharger in. I know some people didn't.

I usually put aero on just about everything, especially when it drops the PI. Higher power cars benefit more from front aero than the max amount of tire widths available. Well, that's how my SSC worked in R3, and thats an extreme example, but I take it into account when considering a build.

How are folks building cars for fast tracks like Sebring and Road Atlanta? My fastest time there was in a handling biased F50, but I stopped using the F50 as it feels like cheating. It's like 1-2 seconds faster around every course than my other S700 cars.

Anyways with my handling cars there I can kind of make up ground in the handling sectors, but I get blasted on the ~3 straights by speed biased cars. I have no idea how to set such cars up... every time I try I just get boatloads of understeer and nowhere near the straight line speed those other cars have. I could just be slow and not know how to drive too. Any tips?

The speed cars are just a different driving style. You can't try to dig it into the corner; you have to brake a bit earlier than normal and then hammer the throttle as soon as possible to capitalize on the car's strong suits. However, there are some cars with a great mix of speed and handling, and they're awesome to use in public. The McLaren F1 GT downgraded to S class is one of my favorites in that category. It's extremely quick, yet it doesn't give you that guilty feeling the F50 does when you run it. Look into the '13 Viper as well.

Yea I am trying to adapt to the different demands. I just built a 997 GT2 and am putting down my fastest times ever on Sebring (ants farts away from 2'11"s). My fastest times before were mid 2'14"s. It requires so much more concentration though, I feel like in a lobby mixing it up will have me missing my braking points and destroying my times. The GT2 works OK though... gives me just enough grip through corners to make decent time and those 345s and engine hanging out back give it damn near 4WD traction out of turns. I will give the Viper a try too but that thing is pretty heavy... I tried one before and it wasn't that fast for me.

I didn't have much luck with it either, but I saw Dsquared run a 1:41.7 on Hockenheim with it, which is insane for a lobby car.

CTK, don't feel bad using an F50. While undoubtably one of the elite cars of S-class there still is many cars that will run with it, and some that will smoke it on certain tracks. It's one of the nicest cars to drive, and easy. It's not a lotus or Alfa 33 stradale. There's no track where it has an unfair advantage IMO.

Good suggestion the '13 Viper. Arguably the best lobby car for online racing. Rolls with the punches. It just drives over curbs and everything. I have a replay of me running a 41.5 on hock in a collisions off race with the beast. I think the F1 GT might be more of an advanced drivers car. I'd strongly recommend the '99 Viper as an easy car that runs.

I played with the '13 Viper. Not too shabby. For **** and giggles I built a '99 ACR. Someone mentioned something about centrifugal superchargers so I threw one of those on. Stock weight, race everything, just over 700HP and about 3500lbs. Thing ripped through Catalunya.... just broke into the 1'55"s without too much effort. Not too hard to drive either once you hit the braking points... it puts the power down.

I am starting to feel like FM4 penalizes weight a little too much on PI. I am going to build some more cars with stock weight and see what happens. I have tried a lot of these cars before with huge weight reduction and they just weren't that quick. Only benefit seems to be better braking, but on the flip side again lighter cars seem very unstable and I guess I don't have the skills to capitalize on that yet.

It depends on a car's stock stats, really. For example, it's beneficial to use weight reduction and race tires in lower class, particularly with the small cars, because they're already so light, so handling upgrades don't take up as much PI, yet it makes the car significantly faster. However, if you try to add power to those cars, it can go up an entire class just for 30 HP or so. It depends on the car, but more importantly on what is faster for you.

The Viper's have been great cars in both FM3 and 4. They unfortunately earned the moniker of LB car in FM3, as they dominated the S class leaderboard, so it was frowned upon if you pulled one out in a public lobby. I think that rep may have carried over into FM4. I've always liked them myself. They have a ton of natural downforce and generate alot of grip. They're a blast to drive and as stated above, are an excellent car for those who are not as skilled with the "twitchier" cars. That growl from the engine is just beastly as well!!

In the real world, weight reduction is everything, hence every racing series strict specs on weight. As we all know, the game doesn't always follow real world physics. The key is balance. As long as you have sufficient power to move the weight, the car will be competitive. Overpowering a light car will make it very difficult to drive most of the time. Two key stats in the game I have found are acceleration and grip. A power build may work on speed tracks like Laguna or Road America, but in the hands of a skilled driver a handling build will trump a power build on a more technical track every time.

Man I caught Dsquared in a lobby last night.... dude was at least 6-8 seconds down from my lap times, it was amazing to watch. I was in my AM Zagato on Catalunya and knocked down a mid 1'56" with relative ease; though that car has a greasy rear end no matter what I do.

Laguna is a weird track. I figured because it was so small and tight it would work better with something like a 2 Eleven.... and for me so far it did.... but with all its hills and little straights it may be better suited for something like a Speedster or some other car that is a mid-speed rocket. You prob won't see over 150 (unless you are Dsquared lmao) and there are no real long fast sweepers so out of corner punch and acceleration may be the key. I'm gonna give the Speedster, my regular F1 and prob an AWD 510 a try. I've seen 510s decimate Laguna.

Edited by user Thursday, February 12, 2015 4:42:14 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

If you run a 510, make it RWD. AWD will hurt more than help. The 2-Eleven is so much better at handling than any other S class car that it can hold its own on Laguna, but anything else might need a bit of a power boost.

As it happens most people that have ran the 510 on Laguna in S-class run it AWD. It runs very competitive times AWD.

my tuning methods seem to differ alot than the norm that all of you are doing. i focus my energy on suspension only. My builds are race brakes suspension and gear box straight up and then aero and race tires on stock wheels. then I tune my car focusing on spring rates damper rates etc to suit my driving style which is grip focused.
I tune my s class cars on suzuka i do 5 laps in test drive and then evaluate myself. If I feel that the car is oversteering i tune my spring rates to produce more understeer then I take 0.1 degrees of toe to increase turn in to compensate then i do another 5 laps its a long process to get the stability i want but it makes me a very consistent racer i feel. not the fastest by a long shot i can get myself into the top 2% on most tracks ive attempted at leaderboard times. once i have found my car is totally stable for me i add power and re test again. although recently i found out that a car that i tuned for suzuka and it was stable on that track wasnt very stable on others especially nurburgring. im gonna start tuning my cars for that track i think. anyway i hope my little rant helps at all

Race gearboxes are mostly useless... Most cars that are used in S class are relatively quick stock, so they'll have decent enough transmissions out of the box. And I'll compare the AWD to RWD, D. Thanks for the tip!

Thanks for the shout out, haha.

The VX220/speedster is indeed a monster car on Laguna! Easily top 100 capable in the right hands. Probably in my top 5 Laguna cars. Yet this car is a horror to drive and tune. If you struggle with light cars this one will just kill you. Laguna is the home of light weight cars though, so you're going to struggle in general. I'd suggest the corvettes but mainly the C6 GS as it has good gears for Laguna. Not light but runs good times and easy to drive.

I've seen them run 26s at Laguna and I've heard they're good for 57s on Nurb GP. I've no interest in AWD though so never tried. I'm sure you could get a RWD 510 to run times just as quick but the AWD version will be much better for online racing.

I think you're barking up the wrong tree here and it's better if someone makes you aware of that. It can't be a coincidence that all the best drivers hitting the best lap times are using cars with race weight reduction. If race weight reduction wasn't better I think we'd have figured it out by now. Get the aero on, get the weight reduction then start thinking about everything else.

That last sentence is exactly what I discovered. The RWD one has better stats, but it's so hard to drive and so bad at putting the power down that the lap times are extremely similar.