I’ve recently decided to kick the difficulty up to Unbeatable with all assists off in a effort to rejuvenate the game. It’s working as I’m having a great time trying to understand how each element of tuning effects the car and it also emphasises the differences between the various styles of car and racing available in FH3.
However I’m wondering if there’s a particular go-to courses (or courses) you guys use when trying to make fairly balanced builds? Right now I’m just working on a car at whatever course happens to come next until I get into the top three, but I’d like to take a more logical and controlled approach.
Personally if I am doing a short track build I go to Suzuka short, Mugello Short, or Catalunya School, Medium I run Nordschleife and make sure the gearing works between the 2 carousels, Long/Fast Watkins
I like Brands Hatch for elevation changes, (check your suspension travel) off camber, trail braking corners, (tune brake balance, deceleration, on/off throttle oversteer) and carousel (turn in and deceleration). It’s a handling track so I my builds favor handling over speed, but that’s ok with me.
Catalunya National is #2 for me, does everything but elevation changes, favors speed a touch more.
New to tuning and far from an expert at it, but I found Suzuka west alt. to be my go to test track. Good variety of turns from 130R to the hairpin and following chicane, also has varying camber and kurbs in a short layout.
Bathurst tends to my favorite with its multiple elevation changes, high speed back straight, and offset corners. I usually tune most all around tunes here and they seem to fit in nicely to other tracks. Another good track is Road America, very fast track with going from very high speeds to very low speeds.
To flesh out a tune I like Alps Stadtplatz Reverse. Lots of elevation changes and bumps in the turns. You don’t waist a lot of time driving strait and not really evaluating the tune. Multiple long corners to tell the difference between entry, mid, & exit. When you get the tune right it can be worth seconds on lap time. Positive changes have large noticeable impacts on time and negative changes don’t get masked by driving inconsistency. Results might be over damped with too much camber for some tracks. Final brake setup at Bathurst or Road Atlanta. Resulting tune is normally lacking in low speed cornering and not suitable for Yas/Sebring/Long Beach.
My Watkins Glen tunes were usually decent on a lot of tracks in FM6 but I haven’t tried it much with the new pavement in FM7.
I tune mine at Silverstone. It has the straights and the turns. My second will be Catalunya. Most tracks with elevation will be almost track specific (the alps coming to ming). I think the alps and Nurb, thus far, are really the tracks that requires most work. Most tracks you get you can use an all-around tune.
100% has to be a track you are consistent at but obviously not like rio mountain unless you are building for that track, if its something your not consistent at you won’t notice if you are finding time you could just be improving at the track.
I tend to use Silverstone GP Circuit to get a good all round base for the car, as it has good sweeping bends to check for overall balance, fairly bad curbs in places so you can check if the car can handle the curbs everywhere & it has both slow and fast sections so you can get a good idea on gearing, though I do also do my gearing on La Sarthe.
For general or base tunes I like Catalunya full because it has basically has every kind of corner you’re going to come across elsewhere with only a few exceptions. It has a super tight hairpin so you can see how willing the car is to turn at low speeds, it has a tight chicane so you can see how quick the car transitions, there are multiple high speed sweepers, one good off camber turn, one really long straight and a couple of high speed braking zones. What it lacks are decreasing radius corners, elevation changes, and rough pavement. But… aside from special cases like Rio’s rough pavement or Suzuka’s insane string of decreasing radius corners, if a car handles well on Catalunya it’s probably good anywhere.
If I’m building and tuning for specific environments I just go to those places.
I’ve used a number of other tracks for this, but I’ve found the best results with my initial dial-in with Catalunya.
I normally use Road Atlanta because it has a nice mix and I can drive it consistently with my eyes closed.
Once that is ok, I usually add Sebring to the mix. But Watkins Glenn and Suzuka are becoming more interesting.
I look for stability, drivability, consistency and neutral cornering. From there try to add speed and gain laptime without compromizing the earlier work.
i personally use watkins full alternate to test out all-rounders, as it has long hairpins, tight 90 degree corner, and long straights for power. also excellent for drift tunes
The (nurburg)ring. 7-9 minutes with your car to figure out exactly what makes it tick, tack, and toe (as it were).
No but seriously now
Tip - For a general tune, stay away from tracks with what I refer to as “defining features”
Defining features are track-specific landmarks or points that make it immediately identifiable, there was one of the car showcases that mentioned this, and I’ll use his example - The massive downhill-uphill after turn 1 in Spa (It has a name I just cant remember it)
Brands hatch with it’s sweeping downhill turn 1
Mugello’s first and last turns
Silverstones horrible last turn
tracks that I’ve found good for tuning -
Virginia international raceway patriot - if you can tune a car to throw down here it can throw down on any technical course - also, run it at night to cut down on any off-track distractions
Suzuka short - middle ground between VIR and YM, straight allows you to tune for speed and the consistent turns allow you to tune for technics
Yas Marina Short - You hate it, I hate it, but it’s one of the best top speed short tuning tracks.
Medium/long
Yas Marina, Circuit of the Americas, Monza
These tracks are noteworthy for being computer generated (literally, the plans were drawn up on a computer, that’s unique for a racetrack) and so if there has ever been a “vanilla” race track it has got to be these. You probably hate them for that reason, which is what makes this so hard to recommend, and so easy to tune on.
Monza is great for top speed tunes with the fast chicanes to make sure you got your sway bars right.
Though really, as another response in thread said, find one you like. tune for that one. Find another you like, tune it for that one
Figure out if there’s any middle ground you can reach.
There you have it.
Monza was built in 1922, it was not computer generated. It’s of the old school, very high speed variety built for when street cars weren’t capable of hitting 250 mph.