I’m timid to chime in, as this subject gets close to ones personal style and ego. But I have a few thoughts that I think are related to the threads question.
Tracks can positively be designed to induce different characteristics for your specific car or the way it is setup. For instance If your car is setup with a lot of negative camber for heavy load sidewall flex, and you go to a track with a slow corner or a corner that is too warn to grip well, then the tire wont roll enough to use it’s full width and may push. On the other hand if at a track that grips like crazy and uses all of the negative camber, you may find that your rears have less grip then the fronts. An example of this is skid pad testing. The speeds are too slow to use much camber, so your best results would be with much less negative camber then a normal race setup.
Another example might be exit types, where under steer is noticed vs. never a consideration because of the width of the track or amount of camber on the track.
Most of us try to round out our car so it’s good over-all, and then we use the techniques mentioned above to compensate in the abnormal corners. The great tuners will study the track, and may try to specifically tune the car for important corner. Those corners may not always be the turn before the longest straight, it may be a particularly troublesome corner for that car or the whole field, or they got an infraction or qualified poorly they may tune for a specific corner that’s good for passing. The point is that all tracks, conditions, and circumstances will constantly change. The people who can tune so the car does most of the work, are the ones who do great in points. Even though I understand the concepts, I’m sure not claiming to be one of the great tuners… I’m usually chasing down a problem rather then tuning. But when you do get the time, try some things and go past the point of good returns in both directions so that you know from experience what works. Teams that are the most prepared before they get to the track actually have time to tune and are usually the ones up front.
Another point is that as a driver you need better define the condition that needs correcting. Regardless if you’re doing the tuning or have a crew chief, saying that your loose in turn two is not enough. Were you loose on entry, apex/transition, or the exit. They all have different weight transfer and different adjustments that work best for the situation.
) and different cars behave in a complete different manner in the same turns. :wink:
