MONSTER's NASCAR 3 Help Page

MONSTER's

Hi all. This first section is here as a helper for people who aren't quite sure where to begin upon setting up their chassis for a race in NASCAR 3. I am not claiming to be an expert on this, but merely have a little bit of practice, seeing that I owned NASCAR 1 & 2. Let me start by saying that these tips may not work for everyone, and a lot of it could be found in the manual most probably.

The other sections will be created as racing tips to help people with the theory of stock-car racing. Again I am by no means an expert in this, but placing well in a lot of races means I must be doing something right, eh?

Anyway, let's get down to it, shall we?

The first thing I want to tell you is that this is a trial-and-error procedure. You will spend a lot of the time testing the car and not liking it at all. You must run about 10 practice laps or so to really tell what the setup is doing to the car. If you pull out of the pits, and the car spins out right away, don't immediately rush back to the garage wondering what you did wrong. You probably asked the car for too much, too soon. Let the tires get some heat in them, and wait one or two laps. If after 5 laps, you are still losing control at that same spot, try to understand why. Is it because you are carrying too much speed into that turn (or out of it?) Is it the back end that goes first or the front? These types of things will help you to diagnose the problem and fix it, rather than blindly changing settings "hoping things will turn out for the best."

I will mention this here, as it may be of interest to people who wish to glean as much info on car setups as they possibly can. My page is not a complete set-up guide, so I will include this link to Team-Lightspeed's Quickfix Guide. Here you will find a series of solutions to various handling properties of a not-so-great setup. However, this is not a very in-depth discussion of handling problems.

I would like to explain is my theory on what is important in a setup, and why. To me, cornering is the key to a good fast lap. Top speed down the straights is great, but what good is that speed if you are slowing way down upon entering the turn? And fighting the car all the way out to the other side? Once you have a car that corners fast, the top-end down the straights will come, due to the fact that your exit was a bit faster. Also, your entry was a little smoother because the car bit the line nice and tight, and wasn't giving you fits into turn 3...

The first thing that I adjust are the sway-bars. I prefer a car that is a little tighter in the turns, because (for me) it holds the line much more predictably than a loose car. In order to tighten up the car upon entry into the turn, you would raise the value of the front sway-bar. Now, the car can become too tight, leading to the back end getting a little "squirrely." If this happens try taking the front sway-bar value back down one. A larger diameter sway-bar has an opposite effect on the rear of the car. If the car is too loose upon the exit of turn(s), you would drop the value of the rear sway-bar. The same thing above is true here...if the car becomes too tight, raise the value of the rear sway-bar a notch. Pretty soon, you will know where the sway bars need to be in relation to the line you drive around the track.

OK, so now you have a car that is predictable into (and out of) the turns. What next? Next I would suggest tinkering with the front-rear weight bias, and the spoiler angle. These two could be considered somewhat related, because the more weight up front, the less 'grip' the rear tires are going to get. You can regain some of this 'bite' with an adjustment to your spoiler angle. This is not quite so important on the larger tracks, as the banking and speed do not require you to adjust the spoiler angle other than putting it to its lowest setting. But some of the mid-sized tracks can give you fits as you try to set the car up for the turns. If you put more weight on the front, try bumping the spoiler angle up a little, too. More weight in the back, and you can probably gain a little straight-away speed by lowering the spoiler angle. There is a tell tale sign if the car is nose-heavy and needs more rear down-force (through either more spoiler, or rear weight.) Going into the turn, the car will 'wobble' a bit when you slow down. In my experience adjusting the front-rear weight bias towards the back a little helps. Or leaving that setting where it is and raising the spoiler angle a couple degrees.

Now, when you run a few practice laps in the car, where does it want to go? Does it stay right in the 'groove' around the turns? Or does it feel like it slides towards the outside? (and getting uncomfortably close to the wall...) If the latter is the case, then you might consider a few things. The most obvious is cross weight (or wedge). On the banked turns of most ovals, you could try moving some weight toward the negative side of the car, thus increasing the grip that the left rear tire provides. This would also help a front-right tire that is heating up a little too quickly. This adjustment should be in minor increments, as not much weight is needed to drastically change the cars behavior in the turn. On turns where there isn't a whole lot of banking (Homestead is a great example,) a little positive wedge can help a lot to keep the car in the racing line by giving the front right tire more 'bite'.

Another thing to try is toying with the shocks. This has an effect on two things... tire wear and handling. Stiffer shocks will provide more speed, and quicker tire wear. Softer shocks will provide a more 'forgiving' chassis, and provide better handling in the turns as well as longer tire life. Most of the races I run are 10% in length, so I tend to setup with faster (stiffer) shocks, although as a rule, I set the right-side shocks a little softer than the left. This provides more weight transfer to the left side of the car in the turn. As with everything, there are exceptions...the most notable being the road courses. In that case I tend to set the rear shocks softer than the front, but this may change as I am still searching for a good setup on the road courses.

Tire pressures are a setting that should come into play after you have a good feel for the car, and it is behaving pretty much the way you want it to. It can help shave a couple hundredths of a second off of lap times, and is a setting that you can change in-race with a pit-stop. The higher the tire pressure, the faster that tire will run, and the sooner it will heat up and wear. A lower setting will give the tire more of a "sag", where the tire will create more of a "contact patch". As you have four tires on your stock car (hopefully), you have four contact patches. You want to find a happy medium where the tire generates enough grip to actually help with handling. Checking tire temperatures (F4 key) while running practice (and race) laps can help give you an idea where the setup is and what needs to be done. Ideally, you want the temperature across the tire to be the same (inner, middle and outer temp.) On long runs it is also a good idea to check tire wear via the F5 key, to see if one tire is more stressed than it should be.

Tire camber is another setting which can help you utilize your tires more effectively. It is the measurement of the angle that the tire meets the pavement. It is measured as an angle off of perpendicular to the road. You can only adjust the camber of the front tires. If the outside edge of a tire is running a lot hotter than the inside edge on the left side, add positive camber to even the temps out. Opposite for the right side, you would move the camber towards the negative side of perpendicular. Pretty soon, you will have a tire that provides a bigger contact patch. This does have a tradeoff in the sense that straight-away speed may slow (very minor) due to the fact that you have more friction from that contact patch. However, turns will benefit from the added grip. And if you go back and adjust the pressure, you can almost always gain that straight speed back, with only a pound or two more PSI in the tire.

Once you have gotten the best setup for the track, you should move to adjusting the amount of grille tape. This is one of the last adjustments to make, and you should be careful with it. The only thing that will really benefit is your straight-away speed. The more grille tape, the less air is getting into the engine compartment (and thus rushing over the radiator to cool the engine.) This creates more down-force on the front of the car, and creates less drag as the car cuts through the air. The biggest problem with this setting is the danger of overheating (and blowing) the motor. If you play with this setting, keep in mind that the engine may not overheat for quite a few laps, which means for a short race, it may not be a problem. However, in a long run it could come into play. Make sure you take this into consideration when testing the setup. If you plan on running long races, it is a good idea to have long practice runs.

Well, now you have a car that should be able to power through the turns and still maintain decent control. I have not touched on a lot of the other settings yet, as I am not positive as to what exactly they do entirely. As I find these things out, I will pass them on to you.

That is all I have to add for now. Check back when I am a better driver :-)