A setup for the Ferrari 312 Giovanni 'drive it like you stole it' Tifosi explores the setup menu

The New Ferrari

First of all I would like to thank Ricardo, and all the others that were involved, for their informative input, "what if's", test driving, and general "keep after it" attitude during the past couple of months. (yes Martha, I'm still not the fastest kid on the block, but they let me hang out with them.......)

This most recent update of the "universal" Ferrari is the result of many hours of research, theorizing, testing, (and wrecking), many variations until a satifactory balance could be acheived. So I am pleased to announce the release of my most current version of the Ferrari, (fuzzy dice not included).

Included in the download package you will find one "baseline" chassis setup, (from which the others were derived), and four track specific setups that show what small variations can do in different situations.

The baseline setup is a culmination of research into things like ride height, camber settings, use of toe, gearboxing, balancing of the springs an swaybars, and damper testing. All things combined have made dramatic improvements in reliability, consistancy, and yes, it's even a bit better according to the stopwatch. If you have the previous universal setup, this will seem a bit strange at first, but I am confident that you will find things much improved over a very short amount of seat time. The baseline setup in and of itself is quite good for general "all round" usage, but in the other examples you will find some very subtle, (and some blatantly obvious), changes in various aspects of the setup to gain just that little bit more. The track specific cars are faster and about as reliable as the baseline, (which in itself is a better car than the original universal, IMHO), but sacrifice some of their "drivability" to gain this, that just seems to be the way things have to be. They are not "difficult" to drive, just a little more attention needs to be paid to your surroundings.

Initial setup configuration was done in the area of ride height and spring/swaybar settings, (if you care, there is only a .2% variation in spring/swaybar weight distribution). Primarily on track adjustments were made to the gearboxes, at the intermediate through top gear ranges, to get better performance from the engine. There is better usage of them in all of the cars in the package, with several having "track specific" settings already incorporated.

Next in line were the camber settings to keep those narrow little wheels under the thing in the corners. Now given the variety of corners involved on some tracks, (Spa), you will note that the camber remains somewhat equal on both sides of the car. This was done because there is no one specific turn at tracks such as these tracks to "make your lap count", they are ALL important and a three-tenths gain in one turn will not make up for two turns in the opposite direction losing two-tenths each. The Monza and Glen cars do in fact have corners where asymmetrical camber can be utilized, to great benifit, and are adjusted accordingly.

You will also note that some setups have asymmetrical damper settings front to rear AND left to right, (Monza for prime example). This was done to aid in crossweighting the chassis to get a little more grip mid corner, and to reduce power on understeer at the apex. (you might think you're gonna hit that armaco, but you won't, honest)

Finally all the "little" tweaks were done in the areas of differential clutches, front toe, and brake bias to make things a little more comfy and drivable. These were all set to my personal preferences because of my own little qwirks in driving style, and differ form setup to setup/track to track.

The package does not have a setup for each individual track because I wanted to treat the track specific setups as examples of what you can do with just a little work in different areas, with the baseline representing the "all round" anytrack setup. I can assure you that it has been tested EVERYWHERE, and all the test drivers feedback about different things was taken into serious consideration, and corrected to the best of my ability.

Again, Thank you to all who participated, (your checks in the mail), and I hope you all enjoy the new setups.

Giovanni Tifosi

Download

Giovanni Tifosi's Ferrari Race Setup - A race setup for the Ferrari 312.

What you will find inside are 4 track specific setups +1 baseline rig. All were developed from "baseline x" and once gearboxes, brakes, camber &c were worked out, they recieved the "trackname x2" designation.