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Toe In (Degrees) Front

Definition: A measure of the angle of the wheels when the steering wheel is set to straight. Or, where the wheels are really pointing when you're driving straight.

I came up with my understanding of this setting based on a setup guide I read somewhere on the net. The guide was written by someone who had never actually set up a car in DTR, and was based on his experience with real cars. As such, I can't be sure that what I do with the setting is correct. To be quite honest, I haven't really played with this setting a whole lot.

The main reason for adjusting this setting is to affect the cornering ability of the car. Slight negative front toes (both tires pointing out just a hair) serve to make the car a little more responsive going into the corners. The downside is they also reduce top speed because your skidding the tires down the straights. Higher numbers (lower values) will make the car turn into the corners a quicker and help a little in getting rid of a push. Acceptable range is 0.0 to -0.4 with left and right being equal.

There is one other thing you can do with front toes which I haven't actually tried. If you were to set one toe negative and the other positive you could in effect introduce a left or right pull in the car. This could be useful on tracks like Wakeeny where you're turning all the time, or on the "D" shaped tracks where you've got a long sweeping curve. Like I said though, I've never actually tried this. If you'd like to, to introduce a pull to the left, set the LF toe to negative and the RF toe to positive, just the opposite for a pull to the right.

Definition: Same as above after omitting all steering references.

All information about this setting is taken from personal experience.

Rear toes dictate how the car is going to handle coming out of the corners. In effect, what you're doing by setting these to anything other than 0.0 is causing the rear-end of the car to pull one way or the other under power. You can use this pull to correct for the rear-end being too loose coming out of the corner. The downside is decreased top speed due to the fact the rear wheels are pulling somewhere other than forward when going down the straights. As such, for maximum straight-line acceleration, you want these numbers to be as close to 0 as possible. However, I've found that 0.0 is never the correct setting. A little bit of pull to the left on the rear-end (right on the front end, or a right turn) almost always improves lap times. To get that pull, you set the LR toe to a negative value, and the RR toe to a positive value. As a general rule, I never go below .4 (number, not value) and I keep the numbers same on Left and Right sides (ie -0.4 0.4). Those are the values I use when starting a new setup.

Once I start testing the new setup, I can usually tell immediately if I need to go higher on the rear toes. The easiest way to tell this is if you find yourself turning right coming off the corners in order to keep the ass-end from coming around. Any time you find that condition, increasing the rear toes will help. Keep in mind however that small changes in the numbers make huge changes in the handling! I usually go from .4 to 1.0, see if that takes care of the problem, then start fine tuning either up or down as needed. If you go too high with the numbers, you will introduce a right hand pull going down the straights. If you are having to keep nudging the car left on the straights, decrease rear toes.

Another affect of rear toes is to assist in guiding the car onto the straights. What I have found is that once I get the ass-end under control coming off the corners, minor adjustments in the rear toes will affect where the car wants to point coming off the corner and onto the straights. On some tracks, in order to get the best lap times, you absolutely HAVE to get all the way out to the wall on the straights (34 for example). The trick is getting smoothly and quickly out to the wall without actually hitting the wall. If you get the rear toes too high, you will find that your car wants to go towards the wall too quickly and usually slam right into it. I'd say this is where I spend the majority of my tweaking time, fine tuning the rear toes to get just the right amount of pull to put me out close to the wall in just the right spot.

The exact number to set these to is totally dependant on how you drive your car. Specifically, just how much you are turning the wheel in the corners and just when you get back on the throttle. What I have found is that these parameters change almost every time I set down to play the game. So, with the exception of a couple of tracks, I will usually tweak the rear toes a little each night after the first race at any given track. This setting is also one of the first ones to look at when attempting to fine tune a downloaded setup.

Wheel Offset (in)

Definition: A measure of the relative distance between the wheel and the frame of the car. Or, the depth of the offset in your rims.

My knowledge of this setting comes mostly from personal experience. In the setup guide I mentioned earlier, there was an in depth description of how offsets affect spring rates and how that affects the handling of the car. To be quite honest, I've never taken the time to re-read that and figure it all out. Based on what I do remember I'd say it has to do with very fine tuning as opposed to gross tuning. As such, I will preface this section by saying that I use offsets very seldom and only to do gross tuning. For fine tuning, I prefer to use Rear Toes which have much of the same effects.

As for front offsets, I haven't done a lot of experimenting. I can say that making large changes in the numbers makes large changes how the car handles, but that's about it. As a general rule, I set front offsets somewhere around 3.0-4.0, always symmetrical, and leave them there. The reason for the minimum of 3.0 sounds a little silly, but it works. With a 3.0 offset, when you go out and lightly touch the wall the tire touches the wall before the body and you get a softer "bounce" off the wall which is much easier to recover from. Don't believe me, go to 34, set the front toes to something less than 2.0 (the actual limit is somewhere between 2.0 and 3.0 so I just say 3.0 is minimum to be safe) and try skirting the wall. Then set them to 4.0 and try again, I think you'll see what I mean.

Rear offsets are quite a bit more important. The net effect of asymmetrical rear offsets is pretty much the same as rear toes. It causes the car to pull one way or the other under power. For instance, if you have a higher right rear offset than left rear offset, all other things being equal, you will cause the car to turn quicker coming off the corner and to pull to the left on the straights. Conversely, if you have a higher left rear toe, you will cause the car to push a little coming off the corners and pull to the right a little on the straights.

This is one of the areas where I need much more experimenting (and/or input). For now, I set the rear offsets to something higher than 3.0 (based on the crash recovery explanation above) and usually symmetrical.

Tire Pressure (psi)

Definition: A measure of the pressure of the air in your tires. Or, what the tire guage reads when firmly pressed against the valve stem.

My basic understanding of this setting comes intirely from the explaination I read in the setup guide mentioned above. I use the settings he recommended and haven't gone much beyond that point with experimenting. This is why, when looking at my setups, you find that almost all of them have indential tire pressures (10.5 12.4 9.7 10.5 or something very close). I do have a few under-tested "real world" theories, but I'm not sure if these apply to DTR cars or not.

In theory, lower tire pressure will cause more roll distortion in the corners thereby increasing bite. Conversely, higher tire pressure will cause less bite.

In theory, the higher the tire pressure the larger the circumference of the tire and the higher the top speed.

And last but not least, in theory, higher tire pressure will cause a more curved tire surface and a narrower contact patch, thus resulting in the less bite.

Once again, much more experimenting is needed here.

Wheel Size (in)

Definition: A measure of the diameter of wheel and tire combined. Or, the size of the wheel (sorry, couldn't think of anything better).

This one is easy, bigger tires are faster, stagger usually not needed. I did have someone question the first part of that recently. They stated that bigger tires simply changed the overall final gear ratio and did not necessarily mean faster. I didn't have a good answer for that at the time, but I have since formulated an explanation to justify my assertion.

Given that a car has a maximum attainable RPM, a minimum available 4th gear, and a minimum available final drive gear, all other things being equal, at that maximum attainable RPM with the minimum 4th gear and minimum final drive gear, a larger tire will travel farther in a single revolution than a smaller tire. Given that speed is a function of distance over time, and time is constant, a farther distance traveled per revolution of the tire yields a faster top speed.

Yes, if you are not at maximum RPM, minimum 4th, and minimum final, you can offset the speed decrease caused by lowering the tire size by changing gear ratios. However, I find it easier to just assume larger tires are faster and 1.00 is the best 4th gear, then adjust the final drive gear accordingly (moving to adjusting 4th if I run out of range on final).

The other main topic relating to wheel size is stagger. The original setup guide I read talked quite a bit about stagger and how it is very important. I used that information when I first started creating setups. However, after extensive testing and experimenting, I found that stagger tends to slow the car down on almost all tracks. As such, I very seldom ever use it. If you should decide you want to use it, here's an explanation of how it works.

As stated above, a larger tire travels farther per revolution than a smaller tire. Therefore, if you put a slightly smaller tire on the left side of the car, the net effect will be a constant left turn. The greater the difference in the tire sizes left and right, the greater the pull. When adjusting the tire size however, you must also adjust the gear ratio. DTR seems to use the smallest tire (or possibly an average of the two) when calculating it's final gear ratio. Therefore, the smaller the tire you put on the rear, the more RPMs you will turn at a given gear ratio. The easiest way to adjust this is with the final drive gear, when you decrease tire size, you should also decrease final drive gear.

Here's one other thing to consider. Since tire size and gear ratio are directly connected, a change in one for the better can be accomplished the same by changing the other instead. Here's an example. Let's say you've got a setup with both rear tires at 30". You decide to add some stagger by making the left rear tire a little smaller but you don't adjust gears. The setup handles about the same, maybe a little worse, but it is quite a bit faster on lap times. You would assume that the stagger helped, however, I would put forth that it wasn't the stagger, it was the change in gear ratio caused by the stagger. If this is the case, putting the tires back at 30" and increasing the final drive gear a notch or two will have the same effect. However, if the car handles a LOT better with the stagger, then it probably was the stagger that helped. Basically, stagger is for handling and not speed, if you change it and handling doesn't improve significantly, put it back and change gears instead.

Brake Strength

Definition: A measure of the relative percentage of total braking power applied to each wheel. Or, ...OK, that's getting old, time to stop it.

According to some, when racing, you should always either be flat on the floor or on the brakes. If that is the case, then yes, brakes are important and the ability to change brake strength by tire is also important in configuring the car to turn while under braking. However, I disagree with the initial assumption. In my opinion, you should never have to use brakes in the course of normal racing. This does not however mean you should set brakes to 0! Sometimes when things get abnormal (like when a crash occurs in front of you), brakes become very handy things to have! As such, I set mine to something other than 0, usually pretty strong. The exact numbers are meaningless to me.

If enough people request it, I can provide a detailed explanation of how to set up the brakes to cause specific behaviors, but since I don't actually use this ability, I'm not going to spend the time to type it all out.

Tire Compound

Definition: A measure of the relative hardness (or softness) of the compound of rubber used to produce the tire in question.

Here's another no-brainer. Softer tires are faster. The reason, softer tires get more grip thereby transferring power to the dirt more efficiently. However, softer tires also wear quicker. If you find you are burning up the tires on a given track at a given wetness, you have three choices. You can increase the wetness (which usually pisses people off and slows everyone down), you can go to harder tires (which usually slows you down), or you can better tune the setup and your line to minimize tire spin and skid thereby slowing the wear. As you might guess, the last option is the best.

Any time you see puffs of dust coming off the tires your either spinning or skidding. It doesn't really matter which it is, both wear out the tires and limit maximum speed. Therefore, any time you see puffs of dust, you need to tweak something (either setup or line) in order to correct that. The challenge is figuring out what to tweak to eliminate the puffs. There is no substitute for experience when it comes to meeting that challenge!

There will be times however when tweaking isn't sufficient and you will still burn up your tires. Specifically, on longer, higher speed tracks like Brewerton or Jackson. I have yet to find a setup that will hold the tires at Brewerton at 48 wetness. In those cases, you have another choice. You can either run fast laps until the tires burn up and fade at the end, or you can go to a harder compound, which will cause slower laps but stay consistent at the end of the race. Which option you choose depends on who your racing against and what your goal is. If you goal is to win (which is not always my goal), and you know you are going to face a close battle near the end of the race, you're usually better off to go with the harder tire and hope you can stay close enough to take advantage when the other guy's tires fade at the end of the race. If you don't expect a close challenge near the end of the race, you're better off to go with the softer tires so as to get a killer lap time.

There is one other topic with regard to tire compound which I feel I should cover for the rookies. That topic is number of laps. Yes, in a "real world" situation, a given set of tires is good for a given number of laps. However, the programmers of DTR seem to have overlooked that fact when creating the game. In DTR, number of laps is NOT related to tire wear at all! You can take a given tire compound at a given wetness on a given track and they will wear the same total amount if you run 2 laps or 40. If you don't believe me, try it. Look at the color of the tires at the end of 2 laps, then at the end of 10 or more. Assuming you drove the same line with the same setup, they will be identical. So, what it comes down to is wetness. The question is will a given setup hold tires at a given wetness, laps don't matter!

Steering Lock (Deg)

Definition: Defines what angle the wheels are at when the steering wheel (controller) is a full turn. Or, how far you can turn the wheel.

This is pretty much the only setting in the game I completely ignore! I have tried a lower lock than default on two tracks, on both I hated the results. For some though, steering lock is very important, most notably keyboard racers. With proportional steering, how much turn is better handled by fine tuning how much you move your controller. However, if your only option is straight or maximum turn, how much turn is out of your hands and steering lock becomes very important! Put simply, the lower the number, the less you turn at maximum. As for what number is best for what track, I have no idea. But, I am sure it is completely a matter of personal preference so I would suggest experimenting.