Oval Setup Guide

Setting up a car to turn left is an entirely different kettle of fish to setting up a road course car. Asymmetrical setups are black magic and can be quite daunting without a little help. In this article, I'll try to demystify oval tuning.

This guide primarily deals with stock car setups and was designed using RFactor2 stock cars as a reference, but a lot of this stuff can be applied to open wheel TurnLeft as well.

I have added links to some handy sheets and guides which this guide was based on.

Before We Start: GET GOOD

This isn't a meme. 90% of all perceived setup woes are actually driver errors. If you can't drive the car properly, all the tuning in the world can't help you, and in fact will probably make the car handle worse. Before anything else, you need to learn how to run the track and how to feel the car. For rF2, most ISI and 3PA tracks should have decent default setups for the stock cars, so go ahead and run nine hundred billion zillion laps to learn the track and the car before trying to tune. If you're completely new to turning left, iRacing has a ton of helpful instruction videos on youtube, and there are tons of guides to be found online. Also, don't be afraid to ask around in mumble for help.

Oval Setup Tuning

Step 1: Cambers

Camber is an extremely important factor in any oval car for adjusting for tire wear and max grip. As an oval car moves through the corner, the car will roll to the outside. To compensate for this, oval car cambers are offset. What this means is that the inside tires have a ton of Positive Camber, meaning the top of the tire leans away from the car. The outside tires, meanwhile, have a ton of Negative Camber, meaning the top of the tire leans inward toward the car. As the car rolls in the corner, the tires also roll to the outside, providing a larger contact patch with the road.

The end goal of tuning cambers is to get your tire temps even across the contact patch. Any sim worth its salt will list your "last tire temps" somewhere in the setup menu, and will list them in terms of Outside, Middle, and Inside. The goal is to get your outside and inside tire temps as even as possible. As you'll never get the temps exactly even, the left hand edge of all four tires should be the hotter side, and never hotter than the right side by more than about five or six degrees.

What you want to do is run about five to ten laps at race pace (do not hotlap). These need to be consistent, consecutive laps. If you skid or flat spot the tires you'll mess up the temperature readings and have to start over. Once you've done this, go back to the tuning menu and check your temps. Adjust your camber angles as needed on all four tires. Then, go out and run ANOTHER five or ten consistent laps and repeat the process. Keep repeating this process until your temps are even.

The Camber process is the most important part of this process, as you will repeat the camber process after every other setup adjustment in this guide.

A Quick Note About Tire Pressures

You should adjust your tire pressures so that your middle temperature is near the midpoint of the outside and inside temps. This however may lead to goofy tire pressures that negatively affect handling. A good guideline is to make sure that your inside pressures are never higher than your outside pressures.

== Step 2: Crossweight and Wedge Crossweight is the weight between the LF and RR or LR and RF. "Wedge" refers to an adjustment wherein the right rear