I’ve run some tests before and after gear ratio changes, and the changes seem to make no difference. I upgraded the F50 to the best transmission which allowed me to adjust each gear, but changing them seem to make no difference in how fast I could accelerate. I also tried changing the “final drive” ratio which is supposed to affect all gears, but again it made no difference. Is the difference tiny, or should I be able to measure it?
I started from a stop and did a full acceleration, but always ended up at right around 147 MPH at the same point of the track no matter what I did with the gear ratios. The only thing I noticed it actually having any effect on was my top speed. But it made no difference with acceleration.
I’m by no means an expert, but I’ve noticed that the differences can be very small and hard to detect. What I do when I’m tuning a car is take it to the 1 mile drag strip at the test track. I write down all the times and the overall time to complete the mile. I keep adjusting until I get the fastest results. I use that track because, other than Old LeMans, I don’t think there are any straights quite that long on the other tracks. I’ve found the differences to be pretty small with gear changes, however, over a long track with a lot of corners, it can make a big difference in your lap times. Again, this is just an amateur’s opinion, I’m sure someone else who knows a lot more than me will respond.
You see i think it makes a big difference, cars like the Audi R18 don’t pull off with out stalling and you need to adjust them so it will and some cars have this problem and tuning the gears stops this. you will find gear adjustments will makes the biggest difference from wheel spinning and not on pull off and makes it better round corners low gears will make the wheels spin more where high gears you will find taking corners alot better. i shorten my gear 5&6 down and so that all 6 are on the board because what the point in having 6 gears if you can only reach 4 of them on most tracks. Most car will only go as fast as what you get before tuning you mite squeeze out a few mph, gears are not just about acceleration and speed they can play a big part in making a tune go from not drivable to great
Now, when you tuned the gearbox how many gears did you run up to? 4, 5, or 6? Some cars benefit from any of those, the prototypes in the previous game were faster with a 3 gear setup.
There is an info pane where it gives you your 0-60 mph time and 0-100 mph time. On most cars, changing your gears can shave off between 0.1 and 0.25 seconds on your 0-60, which while it won’t seem like a lot, beating someone on the quarter by a 1/3 of a second in equal cars is a nasty spanking indeed. If changing first gear no longer improves your times, adjust second and third until you get the lowest possible time.
Tire pressure, springs, damping… all affect this number, however maximizing your 0-100 mph time may limit your car’s other characteristics. Hope that helps. Also, sometimes cutting the 6 speed down to 5 speeds will reduce the amount of shifts, and subsequently improve overall acceleration and limit the amount of gear changes in turns, especially long turns.
The best way isn’t by looking at 0-60, that is all launch. You can really skew 0-60 and 0-100 times by moving 1st gear no matter what the rest are.
What you should do is take 0-100 and subtract the 0-60 time. This will give you a more true acceleration improvement by eliminating the launch of the vehicle as you are essentially getting the time from 40 mph between them.
Example:
Cars stats are 4.0 in the 0-60 and 6.5 in 0-100.
You move the gearing around and get 3.5 in the 0-60 and 6.2 in the 0-100 times.
Improvement right? 3.5 and 6.2 are obviously faster than the previous total times but when you look at the split between them the stock gearing gave you a 60-100 time of 2.5 seconds. After the change it has given you a 60 -100 time of 2.7 seconds. That is at minimum two tenths you have lost every time you exit a slow corner onto a straight that goes to 100. Over a lap you are looking at a second per lap, over a 4 lap race being 4 seconds behind is substantial.
Always suspected that for circuit racing, and if you’re using TCS then yeah that’s absolutely true all the time. On the venom without TCS, throwing 1st gear up to 100 and 2nd to 140-150 can make it much easier (for me at least) to push the throttle down sooner and subsequently extract more performance from the car out of the turn at sacrifice of some straight line acceleration. Considering the car already dominates the straights, that’s a trade I’ll take on that car on most tracks.