SimHQ.com - Motorsports Zone - Ralph Hummerich 2004 Season: A Few Words on Setups

The EMACF1 release of the highly anticipated RH 2004 Season by Ralph Hummerich, Matthias Marquardt and their highly talented group marked something special, not only in terms of highly accurate car shapes and liveries. This release also had reworked physics by daHas!

In this article I'll attempt to briefly describe what was changed in the physics, at least as far as I know, but more importantly what the changes mean and finally I'll try to present a process for setting up a car using RH 2004 Season.

If you're already experienced in setting up a car in F1 Challenge '99 -'02 (F1C), you will probably not learn much new, but if you're looking for a place to start and really not quite sure which setting does what, hopefully your appetite for spending more time in the garage area will be whetted.

Why the Cars Seem to Have More Grip

The following quote is from a post on the High Gear Forum, explaining what changes were made to the physics in RH 2004 Season by daHas:

".new stability is reached by almost doubling the inertia values and reducing center of gravity by 2x! That's why it's absolutely stable.

2002 / 2003RH Ferrari:
Inertia=(506.0, 575.9, 116.9) // all inertia except fuel
CGHeight=0.2408 // height of body mass (excluding fuel) above reference plane

2004 RH Ferrari:
Inertia=(1256.0, 875.9, 106.9) // all inertia except fuel
CGHeight=0.1168 // height of body mass (excluding fuel) above reference plane".

This is not the place to discuss how the team arrived at these values or how well they correspond to real life figures.

What this means to you and me in comparison to the other EA F1 Season offerings, F1C has more grip. Loads of it in fact!

And I really like the changes in the car-feel that this update has caused. One of my biggest problems with the F1 200x / F1C series has always been a lack of feel for these cars. To me they felt much too light and excessively prone to terminal and unsaveable understeer (car turns much less than you want it to).

If I entered a corner a little too fast, or slightly off-line I'd be in a terminal understeer situation. Even backing off the throttle completely or turning the steering wheel more, did not result in any kind of front end grip returning — not even marginally.

This is not the case with the RH 2004 Season update. You might say that I am just a crappy F1C driver, but one thing that has also benefited enormously from the update, is the changes I can do with the setups now and feel a credible and gradual or progressive effect in the car handling.

In all other Formula 1 F1C seasons, I've been frustratingly trying to find a setup that suits my driving style. I like a car that is slightly oversteery (car turns in readily but may be more prone to spinning out). When trying to make a setup that would suit my driving style, I always ended up being left with one of two choices: Either I had to drive an understeery but stable (and slow) setup, or I would find myself driving a car that would be incredibly nervous during braking and turning, snapping almost digitally away from under me with no prior warning.

This has changed completely with RH 2004 Season. Let me talk a bit about developing a setup for a Season 2004 car and rest assured I won't go too technical on you as I'm definitely not a setup guru.

Real experts might disagree with some of the things I say, but I think everyone has his or her own approach to making setups and areas in the setup where we are more comfortable than others.

So this is by no means the only truth, in fact it might not even be part of the truth, but just an example that will hopefully encourage you to enter the garage area in F1C and start playing the race engineer / mechanic. It's a time-consuming but very rewarding and educational experience.

I'll skip, or not deal with a lot of settings because there are guides on the net written by far better drivers and setup guys than me. Hopefully this article will serve as an appetizer for you to go into the garage and play with the setups and appreciate the kind of work that the modders do. Just imagine the amount of testing that must go into each mod!

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