Thursday, January 31, 2013

Handling and Tyre wear patterns

Racing last night at Bashley the car was still quite unstable. For the last few races I have been changing one setting at a time to pin down which are making improvements. So far I've stiffened the front springs, moved the shock positions on the rear and toed out the steering a little. The car was better but still quite hard to tame the back end..
If you look closely at the tyres you can just about make out that the insides of the tyres are a little duller meaning that the majority of the cars weight has been on the insides even during dynamic handling. This is a big clue to start looking at the camber adjustments.
Camber is the angle of the wheel relative to the track looking from the front of the car. 0 degrees means the wheel is dead vertical. -5 degrees means the top of the wheel is angled toward the centreline of the car. A little negative camber can be useful, but evidently I had too much. I rather unscientifically reduced the amount and in the next heat the car was far more controllable with more power going to the track.