The Fastest Classic - Porsche 962c

[Spiny Anteater]

Yes, the random number generator has sent me back to R1 - perfect practice for Pete's Clios!

To be honest, initial impressions are not great. It gave away 4mph top speed at the Speedway, and didn't keep up with the Audi or Peugeot on the twisty stuff. Which is a shame because to me this is by far the best looking R1 car.

I get the feeling that that huge turbo isn't helping either - you have to run quite a short 1st gear to get off the line halfway decent, but then short-shift to second to stop those rear wheels spinning up. But, you've got to love the sound of those wastegates

[Spiny Anteater]

Speedway tune (F/R)

Tyres: 28/28
FD: 3.23
1-6: 2.65, 2.06, 1.63, 1.32, 1.08, 0.90
Camber: -0.9/-0.8
Toe: 0/0
Caster: 5.4
ARBs: 22.24/20.53
Springs: 425.1/421.3
Rebound: 8.9/9.6
Bump: 4.4/4.6
Aero: 136/317
Brakes: 47% Balance/110% Pressure
Diff: 37%A/25%D

Benchmarks:

0-60: 2.761s
0-100: 5.383s
Top Speed: 198.3mph
60-0: 79.7ft
100-0: 199.2ft
g's@60: 1.50
g's@120: 1.83

[Spiny Anteater]

Tsukuba Full Track Tune.

Bold = changed parameter
Red = worse than Speedway tune
Green = better than Speedway tune

Tyres: 28/28
FD: 3.23
1-6: 2.65, 2.05, 1.65, 1.35, 1.13, 1.01
Camber: -0.9/-0.8
Toe: 0/0
Caster: 5.4
ARBs: 22.24/22.13
Springs: 425.1/421.3
Rebound: 8.9/9.6
Bump: 4.4/4.6
Aero: 317/950 (max)
Brakes: 47% Balance/110% Pressure
Diff: 37%A/25%D

Benchmarks:

0-60: 2.608s
0-100: 5.000s
Top Speed: 182.3mph
60-0: 74.1ft
100-0: 179.4ft
g's@60: 1.55
g's@120: 2.04

Comments tomorrow, but I will probably major on the braking.

[Snyder005]

I reccomend you try out iCam's tune, just as a frame of reference.  The tune is from the Time Trials and is just made perfect for Nur, not so good for anything else though.  Would be a good comparison and might give you some ideas for gearing and such.

[Blooze]

It will be interesting to see how this one plays out.  Like you, I have found the car wanting in most categories.  But, the car's affect on one's Time Trials ranking forces me to deal with it.

Good luck with it!

$

[Spiny Anteater]

I'll have a look at the iCam tune and see how it compares to mine. My only qualm (and I haven't looked at it yet so this might not be the case) is that some of the top tunes seem somewhat unrealistic. Personally, i want to feel that I'm making the best of a car rather than exploiting some loophole in some computer coding. (Please don't anyone take this as some sort of dig - it's just the way I like to play the game). But, it will certainly be interesting to see how my (rather lightly tuned) car compared to one of the top sets.

So far I've only run this at the Speedway (44.123s which puts it 0.8s behind the Audi) and the Twisty Rank tracks (Mugello Short, Tsukuba and Boomslang). It lost out on those tracks too with a TR of 117.282s compared to 116.061s for teh Audi and 116.240s for the Peugeot. Although that doesn't surprise me (that massive turbo lag seems to be the main hindrance), I am hoping that it can be more competitive on the power or flowing tracks or it won't be long before I move onto the next car. But I'll definitely be giving it a go at the 'Ring - that Time Trial time turns out to have been set in an untuned car (whoops!) and I know it had a couple fo seconds penalty time in there too

[larryCR]

But I'll definitely be giving it a go at the 'Ring - that Time Trial time turns out to have been set in an untuned car (whoops!) and I know it had a couple fo seconds penalty time in there too

Now I'm depressed.

[Spiny Anteater]

I don't think there's be that much time left in it - the R Class cars seem pretty well sorted by and large and I've only made minor tweaks to this and the R3 NSX. I suspect the main impact will come from having reasonable tyre pressures rather than 30/30 so I shouldn't be running on overpressured tyres. Might make it a bit easier to keep on the track too!

To be honest, I'll be pleased if I can gain 5 seconds - I often find that when I get to the higher classes the car is faster than my reflexes so any improvement is purely because the car requires less correction than before.

[fndrbndr]

Well said.  Seems once you get out of R4, I don't have the reflexes for it anymore.  I can't even keep up with the hard AI in R1.

[Spiny Anteater]

The main problem I have with the hard AI is that they always brake where I least expect it. Once you run into them, your aero gets damaged but they seem to be like KITT - you cannot damage their aerodynamic ability whatever you hit them with. That means they then walk away from you on the straights, only to brake test you again in the corners.

The alternative is the old favourite where they just don't bother to apply the brakes - bang goes your rear spoiler and your back end is all over the place and you struggle to get the power down at the start of straights. Meanwhile, Alpha Indigo carries on his merry way with not even a scratch on his paintwork.

Of course, the 3rd trick is very special. That's where they brake test you, you go into the back of them and your rear spoiler turns yellow

[BarbecuePete]

Of course, the 3rd trick is very special. That's where they brake test you, you go into the back of them and your rear spoiler turns yellow

LMAO... That sure is one good trick they pull off there...  They can also hit the back of you and turn the front bumper yellow too...   

(R-class Carrear races are the main source of annoyance in my Forza time!!!)

[Spiny Anteater]

Well, I was going to discuss the benchmark figures today, but as I ran the Time Trial last night I figure that is further to the front of my mind at the moment. Maybe I'll go onto the benchmarks tomorrow.

The good news is that tuning the car knocked about 7 seconds off my time bringing it down to a 6 minutes, 23.832 seconds, although I think about 2 seconds of that improvement was down to the fact that I kept the thing on the track this time.

After that I tried out the iCam tune. When I looked at it, it looked pretty promising at first with realistic tyre temps and the gearing didn't look bad either (I allowed the very close 5th and 6th as that was very close to the Caspita from the old Sega GT 2002 game). But I didn't think the positive toe (0.3/0.2 IIRC) or incredibly soft springs were very realistic.

The first impression was that it had a slight straightline speed advantage - not surprising considering that it was running less rear downforce. The second thing to strike me was how well it turned in - much better than mine and so I ended up taking way too much kerb in the first few corners. However, that turn-in was at the expense of being able to keep the back end under control exiting corners. If you hit a bump wrong, the driven wheels would spin up and you had to work to get the car under control. I can see why iCam and Snyder ran it with TCS - for me running with no TCS those two factors seriously reduced the consistency.

By the 3rd lap it was looking as if this tune was about 5 seconds a lap faster than mine, but that loose back end meant I had to be constantly on the alert for the back wheels spinning up over bumps on corner exit. That had already killed my first two laps, when it happened halfway round my 3rd lap when I looked to be about 3 seconds ahead of my ghost was the final straw - I decided I don't have the patience to wrestle a recalcitrant car around a 7 minute lap when I already have a time I'm fairly pleased with. I think the problem is partly me not using TCS, and partly to do with the fact that I don't have fantastic reflexes (as mentioned above, R1 cars are faster than me). The iCam tune is a better hotlap car than mine, but I'd rather race my tune which does what I expect and doesn't need me to be constantly watching for it to bite.

I also started on the FR tracks last night, and while I couldn't catch the Audi on Suzuka East I did knock off over half a second at Road Atlanta. As the 962 was about 6 seconds faster than the Audi around the ring, I may have finally found its forte - it's a surprisingly good flowing track car as neither the lower top speed or huge turbo boost really get chance to impact on the lap. I'll try Maple Valley Short tonight, but I have a feeling that the 962 is not going to be dumped just yet - there's a few more flowing tracks to run just yet

Yuk, that turned into a bit of an essay - I won't blame anyone for avoiding that wall of text...

[Snyder005]

I can run it pretty consistently without TCS, but i found with a big track like that i didn't want to risk screwing up if i got overeager, like i usually do.  I guess it the tune fits my driving style real good, though i would be faster with it if I had the wheel, which may also be an issue that is effected you Spiny.  I would think that you could be smoother with the wheel when exiting the corner. 

good luck with the car, its my favorite R1 car!

[Spiny Anteater]

I expect it's not too bad to drive on the shorter tracks - it was the bumps that did it for me. The car would be accelerating fine, then you hit a bump and the back wheels would spin up - with the rear end being stiffer than the front that tended to bring the car around on itself . With my tune the bumps can still lead to the wheels spinning up (although it does take more to make it lose traction) but it's easier to hold the car when that happens.

As for my comments on those benchmark figures, the main thing which struck me was the 100-60 braking figures (I think Blooze might have touched on this before). To me, this are more useful than the figures required to bring the car to an absolute stop as you rarely stop totally while racing.

Speedway tune (min d/f): 119.5ft
Tsukuba tune (max d/f): 105.1 ft

That means the high downforce tune can go from 100-60 in less than 90% of the braking distance of the low downforce setup. Now I have to confess that I was aware of the improved braking performance with high downforce, but I had always thought it played a very minor role in the times you could set. Seeing these figures though makes me begin to think that theincreased braking is a major part in why most cars seem to run faster on most tracks with socking amounts of downforce added.

As for the car itself - I ran it through the QR tracks plus the PR, FR and TR tracks, the Speedway and the 'Ring. It ended up behind the Audi on all three groupings (hence why I am moving onto the next random car, which turns out to be a stablemate of this), although it did beat the Peugeot on the flowing tracks (mainly down to Road Atlanta as it was slower on the other two) and on the power tracks. The improved Power Rank compared to the Peugeot was almost entirely down to Sunset Peninsula Short where it was the fastest of the 3 cars, although it did beat the Peugeot at Silverstone too. That Sunset result was probably down to a change of aero strategy on my part - I moved from minimum downforce to having the settings at 50% of maximum and gained more time on the turns than I lost to the Audi on the straight.

The big surprise though was the 'Ring - I still don't know how it can be 6 seconds faster than the Audi around there when it loses out on 8 of the other 10 tracks I tried. But, I suppose that suggests T10 were being kind to us when they chose this car for the 'Ring Time Trial. Still don't don't what excuse they have for inflicting that Supra on us at maple Valley though