iRacing : I Can Get Used to This! (DW12 @ Mid Ohio)

Описание: I FREAKING LOVE THIS CAR. I've done a metric ton of laps around Mid Ohio, and enjoyed it pretty much the whole way except when Josh Chin showed up and put a voodoo curse on me. But anyways, read on below for more thoughts on the DW12 after a full week of racing on both road and oval series.

Before we begin, I'm an Indycar fan as I've said for a long while. So yes, I really want to like the car. It isn't "initial impressions" when I've probably driven it as much as I've driven the Ruf for example. I put a LOT of time into this car by my standard over the short time it's been available.

First, let's start on the oval, because that is where I started the week.

The car is fast, hugely fast. We originally had 65 F mostly cloudy weather, which meant good power and good grip / downforce. Speeds in the open series were above 240 MPH at the end of the straight, which was ridiculous. After the weather change, things were brought back a bit to reality, though still a touch too fast - I feel because we can run so close to one another with comparatively little issue it artificially raises speeds, better drafting, less wing to maintain handling. Thankfully though, it isn't a crank all the wing out affair, at Michigan I was running -1 degree front IIRC, -5.5 rear and won my split on Monday in Open and was competitive all race.

Then the weather changed to default 78 F partly cloudy, which put more emphasis on handling and brought speeds back to reality. As I had shipped my virtual self off to Mid Ohio by that point, I can't really give you an accurate opinion on that.

Now, onto the road side.

So I was watching the real race earlier today, and sure enough, the word "understeer" was uttered about a million times. People have been complaining about a few things on this car in iRacing - generally understeery, poor turn in, poor stability over bumps, inside front wheel lock up and carrying that wheel through the corner.

Which are valid complaints. It does do that. Yet now that I've taken some time, worked on the issues with my setup and driving style - well, how many times did you see inside front wheel lock up in this video? It's all setup related, and in my opinion the baseline set is quite poor in those regards. However, there are several setups on the forum - including the exact one I'm running in this video - which will fix a lot of those issues.

I can hear it now - I don't make / know / understand setups. Well, tough luck, honestly. Did you expect a ground effect open wheel single seater to not require setup work? Did you expect a 1600 lb car on harder tires to turn in better than the much lighter FW31?

On that note, tire wear. I've heard a couple of people mention they are really struggling with it. In the several races I've done, I've had ~93-95% tread remaining after the first stop - slight lap time drop off, but not major drop off or balance change. Meanwhile, I've heard a few people mention being into the high 80s on the front - which tells me they are using the fronts a lot more - creating more turn in understeer. More wear issues, more understeer, like I said - alter your setup, alter your style.

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  / emptybox_007