Conclusions, its kind of a hard test to keep consistent because the more laps you do with any given percentage the more you end up adapting to it. These were the fastest laps, but consistency was within a tenth of the others.
It was an interesting test but in the long run quite useless. In a racing scenario, everyones in the same boat and will have the same respective grip levels. These tests were in a static way, during a race the rubbering would increase so its irrelevant to compare 0 and 100%.
There is a difference so thats cool but its not one that would mean much of a difference. The only thing would be if practice starts at 0% and you decide to set your qualifying lap that early youd be leaving time on the table, so a later qualifying attempt would be better.
This is why i think doing the same turn over and over with replay, then keep track of peak lateral Gs is the way to go about testing this. Probably do it with an understeer prone car too.
Is far fewer variables then comparing entire laptimes, the only downside is you’d have to record gameplay and go through to look at gs after the fact
Yea but like i said it realistically means next to nothing. Its just another variable during a race like tire wear and fuel weight. If you were hot lapping in rivals you dont have a choice in any of these variables. The differences ive found with the varying rubbered levels are pretty minimal, probably pretty similiar to different fuel levels.
You can do more testing if youd like with replays and g meters, but im personally satified by what i found. In the long run its not something that would ever effect a race, other than the qualifying scenario i mentioned above.
Fuel can be pretty significant supposedly for some cars like the ferrari F1 car. At least thats what @SuperHornetA51 told me when i was talking to him after a race where he finished like 80seconds ahead of me, despite starting 10 positions down haha.
Fuel does have an effect, but its not a magic bullet. If someones fast theyll just be faster with less fuel, if someones slow theyll just be slower with more. If he beat you by that much it wasnt the fuel that did it.
Is it actually meant to be a brake light though or just the FIA-mandated rain light?
Can’t ever remember F1 cars having dry-weather brake lights, but the rain light has been there since the early 70s (but only for when wet tyres are fitted, and when the pit-lane speed limiter is engaged but that wasn’t introduced until at least the early/mid '90s)
I think the McLaren is the odd one out here then, not the Ferrari, as the Lotus 98T’s rain light doesn’t illuminate under brakes either (in general, no Formula car of any class has ever had traditional brake lights, and the newer ones are used for indicating energy harvesting etc as well as flashing in the wet and when the pit limiter is engaged)
A quick look at archival footage of the MP4/4 (even modern stuff from Goodwood etc) doesn’t show the light coming on under brakes either, so I’ve got no idea where T10 got the idea from.
Well, the idea (IRL) is, at the speeds you’re traveling in an F1 car, brake lights are pointless because if the person behind you waits until they see them illuminate before they hit their brakes, it’s too late.
People driving a real F1 car in anger generally know the tracks they’re driving on like the back of their hand, and know where the braking zones are without looking at anything more than maybe some brake marker boards or other trackside objects as reference points. And, crucially, they can predict fairly accurately where their opponents will brake because they’re all in very similar machinery with very similar capabilities.
And I think therein lies the problem you’re having: a mix of driver abilities and track knowledge, as well as a mix of different vehicles with a large variation in capabilities. This is a recipe for collisions with any car class, but especially so the further up you go.
I think a lot of it comes down to people just not knowing how to race in traffic either - not realizing that if there’s a car in front of you, you can’t just drive like you’re hotlapping and brake when the driving line turns red…you need to back off a bit and hit the brakes earlier.
I’m not expert but I’ll start coasting if im less then two cat lengths behind someone. Makes it much easier to match their braking and not cause a collision.
Track rubber should NOT reset/buildup during practice.
Casual players get used to their cars handling a certain way at the end of practice, then all of a sudden 20% of their grip is gone and they can’t take the corners at the same speed (including turn 1)
Whilst I agree to an extent, since most people leave quali until the end of the session they’re usually running low fuel loads and soft tyres (where applicable) yet at the start of the race they’re on full tanks and harder tyres, which changes handling significantly even without any rubbering-in.
It’s not irrelevant, the change to the track rubbering isn’t the only factor that affects car speed between the end of practice and the first lap of the race.
ie this will still be a problem (to some degree) even if track rubbering-in was fixed. Not in every race, of course (in short races in lower classes you are often qualifying in the same trim that you’ll start the race in), but in a lot of them.