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What Kind Of Player
Are You?
If you decide to run in F2 races, you need to make one change
to your personal player.ini file (in GPL's "players"
folder). You can of course drive a F2 in the solo Training sessions
simply by checking the Advanced Trainer box, but you can't race
anything except F1s unless you edit the line (in the "[Personal
Information]" stanza) that reads "driverRating = ",
changing the "3" to a "2". (Perversely, if
you want to race F3s, you change the number to a "1,"
i.e., the opposite of what logic would tell you to do.) I recommend
establishing a player dedicated to F2 racing so you don't have
to keep editing your .ini file to change classes. I use "Formula
2" as a driver's name, which appears as "F.2"
in most in-game menus. (This will also keep your Best Laps list
from being corrupted by F1 times...and your normalized player
time--in your player.sts file--from being influenced by your
F1 hot laps.)
If you want to develop your own F2 setups, you can follow the
general guidelines I outlined in "Four-Wheel Drift"
for the F1s (as to methodology, technique, etc.), but there are
a few differences. 1. The gearing is obviously different. The
F2 "spec" engine seems to peak at 7500 rpm, and the
rev limiter cuts in at 8000 rpm. The F2 engines' fragility, however,
seems still connected to that of the donor chassis. Thus, the
Brabham will succumb to abuse before the Lotus, which is about
as brittle than the Eagle, while the Ferrari is the most robust
of all (another reason it's eminently suitable as a beginner's
car). 2. With more power, the F1s will squat more under acceleration,
so you can get away with one click less SRH (static ride height)
at the rear of your F2s. 3. The diff settings will likewise behave
differently with less power (you can run a "tighter"
diff with the F2s--higher clutchpacks and lower ramp angles--without
the car being whipsawed by small throttle changes). 4. The F2s
also have slightly less grip (modeling smaller tires), so you
get less chassis roll, hence less camber gain, so you need to
start off with slightly more negative camber than the F1s, the
way you would on a heavily banked track (like the old Glen).
Or you can simply download
the 50-odd setups I've sweated and slaved over for the past
month and see if they work for you. I'm not the fastest knife
in the drawer, nor the slowest. I'm somewhere between a talented
amateur and a professional dilettante, so your "mileage"
won't be the same as mine, but it's a starting point. |