Setup Guide
Sim-neutral car setup concepts, explained the way a race engineer would: what each adjustment does, corner by corner, and what tends to happen when you change it.
13 concepts
Anti-roll bar
A torsion link between the two wheels of an axle that resists body roll without adding vertical stiffness. The front/rear split of roll stiffness is one of the primary balance levers: stiffening an end tends to make that end give up lateral grip earlier — a stiffer front tends toward understeer and stability, a stiffer rear tends toward rotation. Because springs also contribute roll stiffness, spring and bar changes should be considered together to keep the intended balance.
Read the conceptBrake bias
The share of total braking force sent to the front axle. More forward bias tends to make the car stable under braking but pushes the front tires toward lockup and adds entry understeer; more rearward bias helps the car rotate into the corner but brings the rear closer to locking, which is far harder to catch. The optimum moves with fuel load, tire wear and grip conditions, so treat it as a live tuning tool rather than a set-and-forget value.
Read the conceptCamber
The vertical lean of the wheel relative to the chassis. Negative camber (top of the tire leaning inward) tends to increase lateral grip because the loaded tire stands more upright mid-corner — at the cost of longitudinal grip for braking and traction, and of tire life when taken to extremes. Front and rear needs differ: driven and wider rear tires typically run slightly less negative camber than the fronts. Tire temperature spread across the tread is the honest way to judge whether the current value works.
Read the conceptCross weight
The share of total car weight carried by the right-front plus left-rear diagonal. At 50% a symmetric car tends to behave the same in left and right corners; above 50% it tends toward understeer in left-handers and oversteer in right-handers, and below 50% the opposite. On most cars it is not a directly-set value: it is the RESULT of the corner heights, adjusted in practice through diagonal spring-perch changes. Road-course setups normally aim for 50% unless the track is deliberately asymmetric.
Read the conceptBump (compression) damping
The damper’s resistance while compressing. More bump damping tends to speed up load transfer to the tire in transients — braking, turn-in, direction changes — which usually sharpens response and platform control while giving up compliance over bumps and kerbs. Less bump damping tends to recover mechanical grip on rough surfaces at the cost of a lazier, more floaty platform. Tune it for the surface and the transient behaviour, then let the springs carry the steady-state load.
Read the conceptRebound damping
The damper’s resistance while extending. More rebound tends to hold the platform down and settle body motions — useful for aero stability and for slowing the pitch change as brakes are applied — but too much keeps the damper from extending fast enough, momentarily unloading the tire and inviting oscillations. Less rebound lets the tire chase the surface at the cost of a busier platform. Balance it against bump damping and spring stiffness rather than tuning it in isolation.
Read the conceptDifferential preload
The baseline locking torque a limited-slip differential carries before ramps or clutches add more. Higher preload keeps the two driven wheels coupled earlier and more of the time: on-throttle it tends to add traction and stability, off-throttle it tends to stabilise the entry but resist rotation, feeling like entry understeer. Lower preload frees the car to rotate but can make the transition on and off throttle less predictable. It interacts with every phase of the corner, so evaluate a change across the whole corner, not just where it was aimed.
Read the conceptRide height
The static distance between the track surface and a reference point on the chassis. It sets both the aerodynamic platform (on most aero-dependent cars, running lower tends to produce more downforce) and the mechanical behaviour of the axle through weight-transfer geometry. The front-to-rear difference — rake — shifts the aero balance: more rake tends to move the balance forward. Ride height rarely acts alone: springs, perch offsets and wing angle all move the same platform, so change it with a hypothesis and verify the balance change on track.
Read the conceptSpring perch offset
The installed position of the spring on its damper, used to fine-tune the height of each corner of the car. Kept symmetric across an axle it adjusts ride height without disturbing the diagonal weight distribution; moved in diagonal pairs it is the standard way to adjust static cross weight. It is the mechanism behind several other settings — after a spring-rate change the perches typically need re-adjusting to restore the intended static heights.
Read the conceptSpring rate
The stiffness of the corner springs. Stiffer springs tend to hold ride heights more constant between low and high load, which favours aerodynamic consistency and platform control; softer springs tend to let the tire follow the road better, which favours mechanical grip — especially over bumps and kerbs. Spring changes alter both pitch and roll stiffness, so they interact directly with anti-roll bars and with the static heights the perches set. Match stiffness to the track surface and re-check the balance in both slow and fast corners.
Read the conceptTire pressure
The cold (starting) inflation pressure. Lower pressures tend to give more grip and build temperature faster while adding rolling drag; higher pressures tend to feel more responsive and roll more freely at some cost in grip. The working value is the HOT pressure a stint settles into — the cold value is just the way to aim for it. The cold-to-hot rise per tire is a useful load diagnostic: a tire building noticeably more pressure than its partners is working harder.
Read the conceptToe
The angle of the wheels relative to the chassis centreline when seen from above. Toe-in (fronts of the wheels pointing together) tends to add straight-line stability and calm initial response; toe-out tends to sharpen turn-in at the cost of stability and a little drag. Front and rear play different roles: front toe shapes steering response, rear toe-in is the usual stability margin for the driven axle. Large values at either end cost rolling drag and tire temperature.
Read the conceptRear wing
The angle of attack of the rear wing. More angle tends to add total downforce — and drag — while shifting the aerodynamic balance rearward; less angle frees straight-line speed and moves the balance forward. Because the wing and the ride heights both set the aero platform, wing changes are usually paired with a rake adjustment to keep the overall balance where it was. Judge a wing change by both sector times and top speed, not by feel alone.
Read the conceptThis is the general answer. Yours is more specific.
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