Setting Up Your IndyCar

If you are racing in the great new F1RS sim, see my page with setup tips for Formula 1 cars.

Having a good car setup for each track is critical to enjoying the sim racing experience. However, most racing sims come with default setups that are far from ideal. Most are barely adequate for getting around the track; they are twitchy, hard to drive, and slow. It can take a long time to develop a good setup, even after you have developed a technique for doing so.

To shortcut the setup development process, you can grab setups from a number of experienced sim racers. Here is a list of URL's for sites with setups for Papyrus' IndyCar Racing 2:

• Velocity Motorsports
• Snake Racing
• Sim Cyberworld
• The Sim Project

You can also develop your own setups. This is not a trivial undertaking. I've put together some pages which should help you get started on learning how to do this:

• Overview of Vehicle Dynamics
• Shane Pitkin's Setup Advice
• Setup Advice from rec.autos.simulators Readers

I suggest you first review my overview, for an introduction to the behavior of racing vehicles and factors which the race engineer can use to modify this behavior.

Next, I highly recommend Shane Pitkin's excellent setup advice. Shane knows what he's talking about: he has posted a collection of superb setups at his site, Velocity Motorsports, which you can download.

Finally, check out my collection of very useful setup advice posted by experienced sim racers to the Usenet racing simulation newsgroup.