F1 22 - setup changes make no difference to me

@D34THNO1EInteresting you say this as secretly I find this totally relatable. I've been spending time doing Monaco in F1 2021 as it's my weakest track. I've been doing time trial and I've been swapping recommended setups out back to back with my own and honestly, when using a setup tweaked with own preferences I've got faster but I don't feel any massive difference in the way the car feels. So I've come to these conclusions;

1. I can take a car and adapt to it however it feels. Listening to how a Haas engineer talk about Magnussens driving approach when it comes to setups, K-Mag prefers to do many runs so he gets accustom to the car and gets faster.

2. I can't extract the most out of the car with my driving skills. It all feels the same as I don't know where the limit is and I can't push aggressively enough.

3. My wheel is rubbish in comparison to more expensive counterparts. I use a G29 and the FFB just doesn't have the detail to allow me to feel the differences between setups.

I've got a feeling it's a heavy dose of 2 with a bit of 3 on top! I'm just not good enough to really feel it 😅

Well, we're not alone.

As a matter of fact, in extreme circuits such as Monza, Monaco, Singapore, I do feel difference from the standards presets to those you can easely find on internet, youtube or from the time trial leaderboard. But If I'm to compare among, let's say, 3 setups from pro/elite drivers I can't feel any difference. Maybe for the same reasons you guys said.

Only thing I concern myself of to get a setup designed for races as the time trial ones use to not work properly under long races.

i really wanted to be able to use the setups to make useful adjustments based on “real world” setup wisdom.

When I would pick something off the leaderboards, sometimes I could make it work, others not, but I couldn’t really adapt it any further, since many of these use some “meta” that exploits the edge of the setups. And the canned setups seemed aimed at pad users - same problem, extreme settings

I have a wheel - DD Pro 8 - so is there is enough useful feedback to tell the difference? yes but its not massive - lap times and overall feel/consitency during the lap are still the main measure

So I decided to try an experiment. I created a setting where the aero, camber, toe, supsension, tire pressures were all set mid way. Makes no sense to do this to the trans or brakes.

Suprisingly it drives decently on many tracks. I then started just tweaking single settings. High/low Aero is kind of obvious depending on the track, but in setting a difference between front and rear that I found I could feel the results of a tweak in cornering. Same w other settings.

Working from the mid range made it easier to feel the effect and see the time results of those changes.

Brake pressure I found helpful to back off a bit, as I’m not running ABS, so it gives a bit more range before locking up. Bias I sometimes add a bit of rear bias if I’m locking up too much, even tho this does reduce overall breaking ability.

I did most of this in Time trial, as it takes tire temps out. Then went to practice sessions to adjust tire temps and balance of temps L/R. I use my best setups for starting points on similar tracks.

I've seen a World record set with 50/50 wings and 10/11 ride height!

That is against everything I've been told about this game.

Where is Menza with his code breakdowns when ya need him? 

This is why I bang on about the game settings such as POV and FFB wheel rotation:  Because on last year’s game mario  tested RRRR CCCC LLLL And found little to no difference.  And around that time I watched Marcels camera settings video and tried his settings and instantly found myself lapping 2ish seconds a lap faster on virtually every track.   And also just prior to that @BarryBL  posted his basics thread which included his controller settings and found they  helped  riding kerbs.  So every track Ii spend more time during practice i spend abit pff time fine tuning my camera and ffb settings 

Hello, then on the setup we need to make a more general speech in my opinion.

First of all, you can really work on the setup only after a few hours of play, after having refined the driving for that circuit. Sure in the meantime you can make some changes, but until you are close to your limit, changes to the setup are not really noticeable. Sometimes a change is more evident, objectively (eg 0-0 vs 50-50 in Monza) or subjective (based on your driving style), other times less so. Sometimes you even have to go back because what seemed faster in learning can become slower once you get to the top, and vice versa.

Once you have reached a good level of driving on a specific track (only then) it is time to seriously put a hand to the setup. At that point we can say that the most noticeable changes in F1 22 are given by the

1) ride height -- it gives the level of downforce front/rear, and it's the main source of downforce this year, (as an effect the more the car is low at the rear and high at the front, the faster the car is);

2) front/rear wings and the following balance.

All the other settings more or less is to refine the balance you have found and improve your personal feeling with the car. This does not mean that one setting is good and another is not, it is always a question of compromise. For example, a 6-2 anti-roll bar can give you a better insertion of the front, especially in fast corners, conversely a 1-4 gives you a better ability to turn especially in tight corners. And it's possible that at the end of the lap the time is very similar, because pros and cons_ in the different parts of the track.

Having saying that is true that a single parameter modification  has less impact than in the past games because the downforce level is mainly given the ride height.

Regards,
Nuv