SimHQ.com - Motorsports Zone - Driving rFactor: A Fast Lap at Mills Metropark Long

Simulation Title: rFactor
Developer: Image Space Incorporated (ISI)
Racing Mod / Series: Kodi ZR (included in rFactor)
Venue: Mills Metropark Long
Location: Mills City, VA (USA)
Dimensions: 1.95 mi (3.149 km), 16 turns
Details: Short road course used for smaller cars, amateur/club racing (e.g. SCCA)
Rules: Full Flag Rules
Weather: Sunny, 14 PM, 25°C
Difficulty: Auto Clutch - ON
Comments: A great track for beginners, short and easy to memorize but with plenty of challenge. Skies, cameras and track textures by Hudson Kerr.

Introduction

We continue our series of fast laps, this time in rFactor with an outing at the Mills Metropark Long Circuit. The car used is a Kodi ZR which has been prepared in full race spec, featuring all available upgrades. The ZR is a very fun and rewarding machine to drive, proving that the ”retail” rFactor comes with some excellent vehicles.

The Traction Budget

We’ll be fighting for grip at this circuit trading between cornering grip, braking grip and grip for acceleration. There just isn’t enough grip available to do all things at the same time. So why not study the concept of the traction circle budget, or the friction circle as it is called in the telemetry package?

The traction circle budget (tcb) says that you have x% of total grip available, and you cannot exceed that amount. You can use it all up on either accelerating or braking or turning, only one at a time - or you can use less than all the available grip for say decelerating, and use the rest of the x % for making inputs to the steering.

The amount of G-forces you can pull naturally depends on the type of car, the track and the tires.

As the tires will at one point lose grip, the object of the exercise is to smoothly drive the car around the track just below that point of loosing grip. Naturally the closer to the edge you can go without exceeding it, the faster you will be!

The shape in the right hand section in the image above seems nice and symmetric when considering left hand and right hand turns. This tells me I’m pulling equal G’s turning right and left. When I first started analyzing my tcb in GPL, I found that that was not the case at all.

I can also see from the figure that I brake a bit harder than I had imagined, and in acceleration I’m not pulling as many G’s as I thought I would. This might indicate that I could gain some advantage by driving set ups that offer more grip when accelerating.

If you wonder how I got working telemetry in rFactor, check out this thread and install the contents of the download as per the readme that is supplied with the download.

Go To Page 2

Click here to go to top of this page.