I’ve only just found out that adding ballasts always brings your cat closer to a perfect 50/50 weight distribution. Is this something every tune should strive for? Or are there exceptions?
Thanks.
You don’t need perfect weight distrubution. If you have to add several hundreads of kg you have to brake much earlier, have worse acceleration etc. i mean how should it help if your car gets slower?
If it’s only a tiny bit you have to add then sure it makes sense, but not if it’s too much.
Although getting closer to 50/50 can make your car handle better, and using parts like reinforcement and weight reduction to do so is quite efficiency way of tuning, using weight balast is totally inefficient, making your car slower overall, if u are not forced to, don’t use weight balast at all.
For eg if u have already car with 50/50 and u can’t put race weight reduction on your car to fit into specific PI, then u have 2 options, 1 install sport wr, or user weight balast to reduce pi, and from these 2 options, using sport wr will make your car lot faster than when u would use weight balast (u can also look at power to weight ratio and see difference)
Thanks
50/50 can be good for balance but having a rear bias to the weight can help the car rotate better. The weight balance works like the fulcrum on a lever, if you move it rearward it becomes easier to rotate. This is why Porsches with such a high rear bias are so prone to oversteer, likewise this is why front wheel drive cars and all wheel drive cars are prone to understeer due to their heavy front bias.
Weight is what effects your mechanical grip so you want to have weight on the wheels that need the most grip. And then balance the settings out with spring rates for low speed and aero for at speed.
It’s a shame the game doesn’t allow us to choose where we get to place the ballast
But it’s inconsistent.
I agree that on most cars ballast isn’t PI efficient. Easy to validate by picking a certain PI and then achieve this PI with weight reduction alone and once with ballast. The ballast build will have worse power/weight ratio - at least in most cases.
The McLaren GT for example is different. With ballast 1 & 2 it’s possible to improve power/weight while also improving weight distribution.
There was another car that I have but I can’t remember.
Problem with the McGT is that it sounds fantastic (one of the few) but when you think, let’s drop this baby down a class and win… well
The whole ballast thing is kinda pointless… and then you start to think, what else is pointless 
There is so much potential but it seems to be completely thrown out the window, nothing actually gels properly in the game.
If ballast was to be an actual meaningful thing Turn10 would have given us the choice on where we would place it, not just some randomly useless number to add to our vehicle to drop it down a notch. That’s just Sad boring coding that pandas to the “New to” types.
Everything that FM8 or the all new Forza Motorsport gave us is pretty much Tech Demo ideas of what a good racing game could be…
& in saying that there are some really good takeaways from FM8, it’s just a shame that FM is going to take soo long to get there and that most of the “Team” that worked on the game were not full time employees
i remeber one porsche was similar, but it will make car slower anyway, since having some weight on rear helps with cornering.
Besides the horizontal distribution, you might consider the vertical distribution.
I cannot confirm this because the information isn’t available in game, but IRL if you add ballast, you would add it lower to the ground, lowering the center of mass, and a lower CoM is generally better for everything. On a car that isn’t very-well balanced vertically, ballast might actually be a benefit.
I played with the Clio V6 and it felt to me that it benefited from adding ballast. This is a car where the engine is high up (because the Clio was never designed to have an engine in the boot), and the CoM should be wack as a result.
On a variety of other, more sensibly-engined cars, I didn’t really notice much of an impact from adding ballast. Could be that CoM is already low enough that there isn’t much to gain.
But it’s also possible that the perceived increase of performance (or lack thereof) is solely due to the parts I install to compensate the PI loss. But I think it’s worth testing when you’te trying to optimise a build.
My McLaren GT is a de-aspirated V6 TT A700 detune so it’s possible that the engine trickery botched the calculation.
Sport tires, full weight reduction, no aero and then ballast 2 to install race brakes made it 1kg lighter, better balanced and gave improved braking. ~ 2,5 seconds faster on the Nordschleife than the no ballast build with stock brakes.
Hmm 
I will look into it, maybe weight balast is not so bad for rear heavy cars.
once your car is already 50-50 the balast is cheaper. You pay even more in PI for getting closer to 50-50, I use it when I want it like for better items like race tyers or dropping down a class or starting top of class, most of my cars have at least some. Also you can use it to tune the though the build a little.
I also use it to keep the balance the same when upgrading a whole class or two so the tune is mostly works.
If you have a car with a heavy bias and it’s causing handling problems then definitely use it. It can make a huge difference with certain cars. Just be sure to do a little weight reduction with it if possible.
I can confirm it that on “new” Porsche 911 '14, after RWD swapping, weight balast improves power to weight ratio, looks like Porsche and some other rear heavy cars can benefit from weight balast, tho for all other front heavy cars it’s better to just avoid using weight balast if possible.
I’ve been struggling with that car in the MP series, ill try a rwd setup. What level balasts did you use?
I had to max it out to level 49 (basically 50) to make it truly good, with sport tyres max width, race weight reduction, race suspension, race ARB, 1st level of balast (just to fit in V8 centrie), RWD swap, V8 swap + centrie, full Forza aero including race bumper.
Max/mid aero, default-ish ARB (my calc increased front ARB and decreased rear ARB by ~2), default suspension except for camber ~-2.2/-1.5, some gearing Magic and 100/0 diff, and brakes around 45/105
Tho I play with gamepad and with sport tc and abs, so yeah, this tune is not for everyone, car likes to slip a bit while trailbraking, but that’s how u drive Porsche 
With max balast u can almost put in viper V10 with centrie xd but car too heavy
I have a very good way of tuning for this and all my sims as well as arcade style. Began using method related to Isaac Newton, which is proven. I basically add front and rear spring together, then multiple by front/ rear distribution to get the equivalent ratio. The damping is pretty similar, but changes a bit between games. For Forza, it’s actually quite easy; flip between both pages to match the bump with the spring on the sliders. Rebound is usually 1/4 to 1/3 higher than bump, but will slow down the car’s response when it’s really high.
I find myself sharing this concept with everyone so I figure what the heck? It’s been a proven method for me for years. Hope it serves you. Almost forgot; ride height matters here. I always keep it exactly the same by numbers- not the sliders. Sometimes that means readjusting spring rate (usually 1% for every 1/2" from default). It will make a world of difference!