Racecar Setup

Having just finished another Champcar race,  I am feeling the high.  We are getting much better as a team, but our car could definitely use some help.  Does anyone have any good car setup books or sources they recommend?    

Awesome, took me over ten years but I am finally out of reader status haha.  Maybe in another ten I'll be a full dork

Carroll Smith's Tune to Win is a classic place to start. Easy to read and covers most of the basics. 

All of Carroll Smith's books are excellent recourses. How to Make Your Car Handle by Fred Puhn(sp) is good too

+3 for Carroll Smith books. I also have a copy of how to make your car handle.

In reply to Tom1200 :

add my name to that list. 
 

But you should know there is more than one way to skin a cat. Both Ferrari and Cobra were winners. They didn't have the same suspensions or anything else.  

Learn how to use a tire temp probe.

That and a tape measure and a pressure gauge can get you 80% of the way there.  A good driver who can explain what the car is doing is about 10 more percent.

That's about what we do and we have about 7 or 8 wins under our belts and about 20 top 5s.

Andy Hollis has also written some good articles.  As has Dave Coleman. 

In reply to wvumtnbkr :

You are absolutely correct regarding reading tire temps and get the input from a good driver. The other part of the equation is the mechanic needs to listen to the driver and understand what he's trying to say or explain.  
Watch his body, some guys unconsciously swing their butt  trying to indicate oversteer or whatever else. Look at the feet, is he lifting or flooring it?  
A couple of cameras on the driver could give you even a better idea of what's going on. Plus there is a world of difference between a new driver just learning and someone familiar with racing. ( don't assume an experienced driver is always right though, some just learn wrong or develop bad habits )  a stop watch will tell the difference. 

You also need to experiment. You need test days. A chance to dial in a bit more/less toe and see what it does as far as handling and temperatures. You need a chance to mess with rake and ride height in general. You need to be able to cycle the drivers in and out of the car to see what people think of the changes. Good race teams have a ton of collected data and they still test as much as they can afford to. 

Since the driver element has been touched on.

When doing set up make sure that it results in consistent lap times; setting the car up so the driver can do 1-3 really fast laps but then drops off, because the car is difficult manage over longer stints, is useless.

Same goes for setting up for multiple drivers; if one guy can go fast with an edgy set up but the other 2-3 are scaring themselves and going 2 seconds a lap slower that is also useless. Case in point I set my F500 up really edgy for autocross because I'm Mr Oversteer. My son drove it and struggled so I dialed it back, at most I  gave up a tenth but he picked up a couple of seconds.

The other thing is someone needs to ask the driver(s) the right questions:

Driver says "it oversteers"

Mechanic/Engineer asks: "Turn in? mid corner? exit? On the brakes? steady throttle? full throttle? if you wind in more steering? over bumps?

Blessed with an abundance of natural talent and car control I used to just drive the thing as hard as it would go regardless of set up. Once I get into a proper single seat car my fabricator got me to think more about what the car was doing rather than compensating for the car.

+5000 on testing; I use the track days that I instruct at as my test days. I have multiple gearboxes I can use; two stock boxes and one close ratio. The stock box that appears least optimal on paper results in lap times 1/2 second quicker than the close ratio box (fewer shifts per lap).

Awesome, a lot of good info in here.  I'll definitely be getting a Carroll Smith book to start.  It would be nice to do some test days but that may take some time to make happen.  We are definitely a low budget team and are mostly doing this for fun.  Seeing how we are all fairly inexperienced drivers I know that is where most of our time is going.  But I have a feeling with a few adjustments on the car, we could be seeing another couple of seconds off our time. 

Invite an experienced driver to join the team for an event and ask for their feedback.  We ran an endurance race once so asked a Formula Ford racer if he wanted join us for the event in our Datsun 510.   He went out for some practice and was back after a couple laps to tell us the right rear shock was bad.  Car owner had never felt it...

Just some thoughts regarding car setup.

There is no one correct setup, you adjust the car to make the driver comfortable, but these adjustments are usually fine tuning.

The big stuff is limited usually by budget or rules.

Shocks and tires are huge factors. <<< no short cuts here

In most racing you want to adjust the car and improve the slowest corners without giving up too much on the fastest. The less you have to slow down for, the faster you will speed up.

fiesta54 for an upcoming event decide to throw it away in the name of testing. You'll still get to run the event, instead of finishing position, focus on improving the car and drivers. One of the biggest benefits of test days is that it takes away the pressure to compete and allows you to think about what's going on with the car and driver. 

You can do things like switching out video cameras (provided you have video) as you switch out drivers and reviewing the videos. Since you mentioned experience level; are you doing basic things like missing apexes, turning in to early etc. or is it a case of lines are good but you may be rough with your inputs (too aggressive on the throttle or popping off the brakes rather then smoothly trail braking into the corner).

If you don't have video then observe as many corners as possible. Example, driver complains about understeer and you observed that the brake lights go out as soon as they turn in (that's the driver) if you observe the brake lights all the way into the apex (driver trailing the brakes) then it's set up.

At my home track you can observe 3/4 of the track and the same goes for the others I go to. At the worst of them you can still see 1/2 the turns. Take cell phone video if you have to and play that back. you are lucky in that multiple drivers can go out to multiple corners.

Now with all that said make sure you are still having fun; it's very easy to turn this into work in the quest to do better.

 After tires and wheels you should do as much as you can afford to improve your suspension.  New stock bushings or poly after market if you can.  Learn about aligning your car. What can be adjusted as stock and what mods you can do that allow adjustments beyond that?  Just making sure that the camber and caster it the same on both sides will make a huge difference. This means that the car will be handle the same both right and left in theory. Vehicle weight and where it is on the car will effect this. Make changes to the toe setting and see how this changes how the car responds. FWD cars tend to like toe out and RWD cars less so to the point that many will have toe in.

Changing springs is the next thing to do. Without a starting point it may be hard to know what you need other then stiffer or softer.  But how much?  That's where someone with a set of scales can help. A spring can be checked for rate using one scale of a 4 wheel scale set. I won't go into the details of how here. And getting your car weighed will also help determine ride height and spring rate needed.

Last you need good shocks and struts.  Gas pressure units are a must.  Koni  and Bilstien are my perfered brand but KYB has some that are OK. For some cars raced in Lemons or Champ the better brands may not make any that are "bolt on" but don't let that stop you. With some mods you can fit a shock or strut from some other application to yours.

Either try to volunteer for a top team or just shadow them like a hawk.  It's been a few years since I ran with Champcar, but we had to split pit stalls at RA one year and we were paired with a front running team.  I learned as much from sharing a pit stall with them (and trying to stay out of their way) in one race as I had in all other races up to that point.   

I also was honest with myself that a casual effort, no matter how well-executed, wasn't going to get it done.   That means a team with all top drivers,  faultless car prep, and a sound strategy -- then  everyone has to execute the plan.  Even then, the last 10% is lady luck.  

So basically, I would need a whole new, less-boozy team.   Decided I'm okay with a top-10 finish with all my drinking buddies.

In reply to Tyler H :

This sums up our efforts the best.  Our primary goal is to have fun and get track time.  I doubt we will ever be chasing a couple hundredths of a second.  That said, I know we have seconds left on the table between driver skill and car set up.  It would be nice to chip away at those, since battling with others on the track is half the fun!

What kind of car? If it's one of the more popular models, usually the recipe is pretty well refined. It's the odd balls that can take a bit more work to settle on a good setup.

In reply to ross2004 :

A mk2 VR6 swapped jetta.  Standard stuff really.

Check this out: https://www.fwdracingguide.com/

Your tricycle looked pretty good out there. We were in the orange Prelude. 

In reply to ross2004 :

Wouldn't be this one would it?

And that looks like an awesome source!  Just sent it out to the team.  I'll have to go through it more tonight.

Since you have a FWD car, you need the FWD Racing Guide by Ogren & Ogren.