Before I start with this guide, I would like to remind everyone that though this is a guide meant for beginners, all can benefit from it as I will cover driving techniques employed in NASCAR and techniques for setting up a car, both of which can obviously help someone new to the sport, as well as someone looking for a new way to approach a current problem. For a quick brackground on me, I grew watching NASCAR since I was little, and currently attend NASCAR Technical Institute in hopes I will eventually work for a Sprint Cup team. Therefor a lot of the information in this guide not only comes from paying attention to broadcasts (which can be misleading quite often) and classroom material from the only institution offically backed by NASCAR themselves.

On that note, I'll go ahead and state what will be covered in this guide:

• What a NASCAR stock car is.
  
• The stock cars in the game and how they're represented.
  
• Stock car terminology.
  
• Techniques for driving and properly handling a stock car.
  
• What each adjustment for setting up a stock car does.
  
• Techniques for properly setting up the car to race.
  
• Race strategies.

Keep in mind that this guide is not some magical number guide, this is a guide to help those learn find their own magical numbers. I'll explain myself of why I say it in that manner later on in this guide.

Racing is everywhere, whether it's sprinting in track and field, horse racing, seeing who can get down the mountain the fastest, etc. Automobile racing however is probably one of the best known forms, and has been around since the very early days of the first automobiles. Which of course means that in today's world, there's many different forms. Open wheel such as IZOD Indy Car, Formula 1, World of Outlaw Sprint Cars, and then the endurance racing such as ALMS, LeMans, BTCC, V8 Supercars, and of course NASCAR. But what makes a car from NASCAR different from one, say from ALMS? Both the ALMS series and NASCAR Nationwide series both have the Chevrolet Camaro and Ford Mustang, so what's the difference?

NASCAR is probably the only motorsport that still uses the term stock car, despite how much different they are from their stock counter part. However, stock car is a class description of the car. ALMS has it's different classes of cars, Street, GT 1, 2, and 3, DP. And each model of car fits in it's own category. Stock cars however are meant to resemble their street counterparts, while at the same time being equal for terms of overall competition. Stock cars all have the same characteristics. They all have similar engine packages according to series competition rules, they all have similar frame builds for it's particular series, and the ever so noticable lack of doors and working lights.

A NASCAR Sprint Cup series car is easily one of the most powerful stock cars out there. Each engine is capable of putting out 850+ horsepower, reaching speeds up to 200 mph at some of the bigger tracks, and can also be destroyed easily while keeping the driver perfectly safe. These are cars that have no digital form of traction control, anti-lock braking, stability control... In reality, the only computing done on the car is the fuel trim as they are now electronically fuel injected and NASCAR's "black box". Each car is painstakenly built from the ground up and every part of the car has a tolerance of 1/4 of an inch or less. These are cars that truely are marvelous.

Every racing game has it's own style of what a car in the game and it's real life counterpart does. Forza and Grand Tursimo give driving aids for each car, even if it never had that technology to begin with. Need For Speed gives out nitrous oxide shots like they're super energy drinks. Point is that the Sprint Cup cars are represented differently in this game than that of other games. While each team has it's own resources, each brand of car has it's own signular resource. Toyota engine performance data equates to the Toyta TRD, Ford's from Roush, and Chevrolet from Earnhardt-Genasi. The handling characteristics are from one team however (which I honestly don't know). Even though this game is seen as a simulation from some, the handling characteristics are slightly different as the characteristcs can be changed dramatically from something simple a frame component placement as well as a fabricated piece of sheet metal. Therefor, the handling is based off of one car and how it was built as compared to the numerous possibilties out there. The mechanics are different as well, but those will be covered later on.

All forms of racing tend to have many different terms for different things, although some are universal and different terms actually mean the same thing. Here's a list of terms used in NASCAR explained:

• Loose: This is one of 3 major terms used to describe the handling of the car. It's a term heard often on broadcasts, used by those attempting to fix or adjust a setup, and is even heard in the game. 2 other words for it are free and the most common, oversteer. If you don't know the term by oversteer, this is what it means. Long story short, when you turn the car, the car keeps turning, even when you don't want it to.
  
  What actually happens with a loose car. A car gets loose due to a lack of traction in the rear tires. When your turning the car through a corner, the front tires are gripping the track, giving the car the traction to make that turn. If the rear tires don't supply the same traction, the rear end of the car will begin to slide out more due to the lateral forces being applied to the car. Several things can make a car loose however, so it's important to know what kind of loose you're dealing with. I'll cover those in driving techniques.
  
  
• Tight: 2 of 3 in the major handling terms. Also known as pushing or understeer, it's quite the opposite of being loose. Instead of the rear tires lacking grip, it's when the front tires lack grip. And if the front tires lack grip, then the car is going to have a hard time trying to turn since they can't grip the track. Once again, several things can make a car tight, and I'll cover them in driving techniques. But for now, just know that tight means the car won't turn.
  
  
• Snug: And 3 of 3. If the car isn't loose, and it isn't tight, then it's snug. A snug car is pretty much the center of loose and tight, meaning it will react the way you want it to without going crazy in the corners. However snug doesn't mean the car is perfect. I'll explain in, you guessed it, driving techniques.
  
  
• Aero: This is actually a short hand for the scientific term aerodynamics, or the physics of air and how it reacts. Aero can be used when talking about getting more speed out of a car, getting more grip out of a car, and can also give an extra description of car handling, like "aero loose" for instance. Aero loose or tight refers to when you're on the track with other cars and you get loose or tight from following other cars or having a car behind and even next to you.
  
  
• Draft: This isn't the letter or military type of draft, it's actually an aerodynamic exercise. Drafting is quite the artform in the respect that it takes time, practice, and patentience to fully utilize. What drafting actually is the way air reacts to two or more cars in a line. When you are behind a car, if you're following it's line, you're drafting. The car in front of you has to use power so that it can push through the air in front of it. Since you're behind the brick that's already moving, you don't have all that air to push yourself. This allows you to keep pace without using as much fuel or power, use the reserve power to make a pass, or even use that power to make the both of you even faster (a technique known as bump drafting).
  
  
• Groove: This is actually probably the easiest of terms to learn. The groove is the racing line. You have the inside/bottom, middle, and high/top of the track lines. Each one has it's advantages and disadvantages, and will be covered in driving techniques (shocker, I know).
  
  
• Round: This is another simple term. 1 round is equal to 1 turn of something mechanical. Those will actually be discussed not in driving techniques, but in adjustments.
  
  
• Wedge: Also known as bite, it's actually a reference to the cross weight of the car, which will be explained in both adjustments and setting up the car.

Drive fast and turn left. Isn't that good enough to race a stock car? Well if that were true, could the same be said for a guitar? Put your fingers in random places and go up and down with the other hand across the strings. Bam, you're an instant rock star. Well unlike my opinion on some of today's music, becoming a successful racer still takes a lot of practice at getting lines down to be fast and effective. And just like when learning the guitar, there's many different string techniques to getting the sound you want that people will want. So let's look at some of those different string techniques.

If you look at a majority of guides that demonstrate how to race, you'll see the most common way is to start wide on the opposite side of the corner, arc your turn so that you are at the middle or apex of the turn, and continue the arc so that you come out of the corner on the opposite side once again. Basically you're taking the shortest path that you can. Well the shortest path does make the most sense. If you go 3 feet, turn 90 degrees, go another 4 feet, you finish at a total of 7 feet to get from A to C, because you made a stop at B. If you avoid B, you only go 5 feet, making it not only shorter, but faster. In the world of stock car oval racing, the shortest distance isn't always the fastest distance.

As I had stated earlier in the terms section, there are different grooves to the track. There's the inside line, which is the line that circles the very bottom of the track surface, the middle line, which is just above the inside line, and finally the high line, that circles the the upper edge of the track surface. Quite possibly the easiest line to work when first starting would be the combination of the three. On the front stretch and the back stretch, travel along the high line close to the wall. When you approach the corner, arc your turn so that way you gradually come down across the track to the inside line so that from the middle of turn 1 or 3 to the middle of 2 or 4 you're traveling on the inside line of the track. At that point, you can come back up the track gradually to the high line. By doing this, you minimize the car the possibilities of the car being tight into the corner and being loose off the corner.

Another popular method is known as late entry method. Instead of gradually arcing down the track, you instead wait until you're in the corner and turn sharply into it. You can still drive along the inside of the track, however you do so in a later and shorter fashion. It allows for you to carry the most speed going into the corner, but allows a greater chance of the car being tight upon corner entry. The opposing method would be a early exit method, in which the process is seeming reversed. Gradually coming down the track upon entry, and then shoot up the track so that you're on the high line before the corner even ends. This allows for a faster acceleration out of the corner, but gives a greater chance of making the car loose on exit.

Each of these methods takes practice to get good at, and even more to master. The best ways to learn which method works best for you is to take each method slow and work up the speed. Even then, the lines I stated may not work for you at each track. The cornering method may work, but the lines don't. For instance, when I race at Daytona, I run the inside line at the whole track. When I'm at Bristol, I approach a late entry going high to low. At Las Vegas, I go through 1 and 2 on the middle line, but take 3 and 4 on the inside line.

Another important part of making the line you prefer to run work is how you use the throttle and brake. Daytona, all you use is the throttle and you never lift, and if you do, it's only to pit or avoid an accident. Bristol, you're either on the brake or throttle, and never at 100% of each (unless you can master these both). To make a line work best, you have to be able to learn the points of the track in which you must apply, ease, and let of the throttle or brake. If you're new to the track, it's not uncommon that you'll smack the wall or spin. Just keep in mind that depending on the car setup, too much throttle off the corner will make the car loose and cause it to spin, and too much brake may make the car too tight or too loose.

Now these are methods that work perfectly fine when you're by yourself, however when you're on the track with 42 other cars, you may have to change your lines up. There may be a car in front of you taking the same line you do. There may be a car behind you doing the same. The best way of dealing with these scenarios is patentice. If it's early in the race, let the car pass you, you can always find a way to get the spot back. If he's in front of you, just follow him, figure out his line, learn his strentghs and weaknesses, and use them against him when you absolutely need to push forward.

Once you get to the point of needing to push forward and make the pass to gain a spot or retake the spot you lost, there's a few different ways to do so. Each track has it's own features that allow for various options. Daytona allows for the slingshot. The slingshot is when you draft behind the car in front, and save your power. When you enter or exit the corner, pull to the inside or outside of the car infront while at full throttle, and through the laws of aerodynamics are able slow the car you are passing, while at the same time speeding your car up. Bristol allows for the bump and run, an agressive tactic when making a pass. This technique is done when you come up to the rear of the car you want to pass and give him a nudge with your front end. Unlike bump drafting in which you nudge the car in front to give it an extra force of power to push through the air. This nudge instead makes the car loose without directly spinning it. The driver then has to let off the throttle and chase the car up the track, allowing you to make the pass on the inside.

There are several more techniques to passing and even protecting your position. Some you can watch and learn from watching the race broadcast on television. Others you can learn from people you race against, whether they perform the move on you or help you perfect a move you want to try. There's even some you'll pick up from just being in the right spot at the right time. This entire section however comes down to one major, important thing: Practice. So hit the track, cause you're going to need a steady line to really make the rest of this guide work.

There are several parts to a stock car. There are several ways to build one. There are several ways to set them up. The possibilities of a set up is quite mind boggling because there are so many different ways and the combinations are pretty much infinite. There's truck arm eccentrics, wheel spacers, caliper offsets, Ackerman angles, so many things. Luckily, we don't have to worry about building cars in this game, and we really only have to worry about 47 of them. Yay! 47 out of hundreds, but that's still... Well... 47 things we have to worry about right? I mean there's gear ratios, spring rates, wedge, caster... So much for the yay, right?

Setting up a car can be a fun process for many, boring for others, but tedius for all. It's really hard to set the car up if you don't know what does what. Those 47 options? Well they really only come out to be 23, and these 23 are the ones that you need to know.

• Front and Left Bias: Well, these are honestly quite self explanatory. This is how much the weight is intentionally shifted towards that part of the car. If math isn't your strong suit, then allow me to help you. So a Sprint Cup series car must weigh 3400 lbs. The game figures you in for 140.4 lbs (what kind of diet are you on, seriously?) Each corner of the car due to how it was fabricated and put together is naturally as follows: left front - 886.5; right front - 883.7; right rear - 883.0; left rear - 887.2. Now let's shift the the front bias from 50% to 51%. We know that the front half weighs 1,770.2 lbs and rear half weighs 1,770.2 lbs as well. So if we shift the weight 1%, our new corners read as follows: LF - 904.5; RF - 901.1; RR - 865.5; LR - 869.3. Now lets go ahead and keep that same adjustment, but shift the left bias from 50% to 51% as well. Here's the new numbers: LF - 918.4; RF - 887.2; RR - 844.0; LR - 890.8.
  
  Okay, well now we know the math, so how does that affect the car? Well having more wieght to the front will help loosen the car since it takes weight off the rear wheels, while more to the back will help tighten the car for the same reasons. More weight to the left helps turn the car. If you're already turning left, you're going to want more assistance to keep turning left when you're attempting that turn at 170+ mph.
  
  
• Wedge: So you know what I just said about the front and left bias? Let's through a monkey wrench into all that. Wedge is also known as cross weight, which is what it actually is. Let's get back to our current setup. Now, we've got the front and left bias both at 51%, which is numerically on the tight side. When you look at the cross weights, they end up being as follows: LF/RR - 1,762.4; RF/LR - 1,778. So you have 49.8% and 50.2%. Well which one do you look at? Well the number you pull from is the cross weight typically up to the crew chief and how they apply it. But in the game, it's based on the RF/LR cross weight.
  
  Now I'm not saying this because I used the larger number, this is actually something you can calculate your self in the game. Just use (RF+LR)/(LF+RF+RR+LR) and you'll have the percentage match the wedge. So for this instance, the higher the number, the tighter the car, the lower the number, the lower the car. Now I say that our car is numerically tight, and it's because there's less weight on the RR tire than the RL tire. I'll explain how that works in setting up car. So back to our car, let's loosen it up a bit, shall we? Our wedge is already at 50.2% as is, so that's a fairly neutral setting. Let's bring that number to, oh, let's say 45%. That should loosen her up nice and plenty. So here's the new numbers: LF - 1010.4; RF - 795.2; RR - 936.1; LR - 798.7. Now that combination is going to make the rear end of the car swing like a baseball bat.
  
  So to sum it up, it's just the mathmatical number of the right front and left rear together compared to the weight of the car over all. A higher number tightens the car, and a lower number loosens it. Trust me, it's already confusing as is and I'm having a hard time trying to not drown you in information here. For now, you know what it is, how to calculate it, and what it means, but I will explain how it becomes utilized.
  
  
• Sway Bar: Sway bars kinda sum up their purpose in their name. They're meant to help control the sway of the car. There are obviously the front and rear, and that's what they correspond to, the sway of each end. What exactly is sway when we're talking about racing though? Sway is just a simple word to use instead of speed of weight transfer. There's several other ways to adjust the sway of the car, and the game only works with a couple, but these two are simple ways to do it. For those who don't work on cars, the sway bar works the same way in a stock car that it does in your personal car. It's a piece of metal that's specially fabricated so that it can twist. Because of this, it's actually a torsion bar, but because there's many different types of torsion bars in a vehicle, sway bar is an easy way to determine which torsion bar it is.
  
  How it works is simple. Depending on the size of the bar, the car will naturally sway the amount the bar allows. Think of it this way. Say you have a piece of cardboard tube, like the tube you have when you finish up the roll of paper towels in the kitchen. If you try and flaten it between your hands, it's tough to crush. But if you grip it and twist, it flattens much easier. Torsion bars act the same way. The harder you grip and twist, the more it's going to compact. Now imagine that cardboard tube was like a slinky. You've got it crushed up and it's destroyed. But this is a slinky cardboard tube, so it unwinds and comes back to it's original shape. A thicker bar is going to take more force to twist, so when the bar is done twisting, it doesn't snap right back so easliy. If a bar is too thin, it'll twist more easliy and then snap back pretty quick. Don't worry, I'll explain how to use them in the setup section.

• Gearing: This is simple gear ratio. NASCAR mandates that the gear ratios in the transmission are all the same, and they are not allowed to be changed. Well that makes it kind of a problem if the same transmission used at Bristol goes to Daytona right? This is how it goes down though. A gear ratio is a simple forumla of two different gears. You have the gear that's being driven and the gear that's driving. To find the ratio, it's driven over drive. So if you have a driven gear that consists of 100 teeth, and a driving gear of 10 teeth, it's a ratio of 10:1. This creates a mechanical advantage to get the wheels to move without destroying the driveline. The engine can rotate up to 9000 times a minute. If you're in 4th gear, that means the transmission is rotating the driveshaft 9000 times a minute, and the driveshaft is what goes to the rear tires. So what prevents the rear axles from rotating 9000 time a minute and not blow up?
  
  The rear end is what you change. When you change the rear end, you're changing the gear ratio of how fast the driveshaft can can turn the rear axles. This is what teams are allowed to change at the track, and while some teams can have multiple rear ends at a track with them, the game only gives you two options. A higher ratio can give you more speed, while a smaller ratio can give you more acceleration. However, this isn't always the case, as I'll explain later on. In either case, this is what the gearing option is, and that's all you have to worry about. The rest are just numbers that gearheads like myself can use for our uses in making setups.
  
  
• Steering Lock: Also known as steering ratio, this is measured in a few different ways. For those who've done iRacing, this is the same thing. In this game, it's measured in degrees. Luckily this is a simple concept to explain. When you turn the steering wheel, the tires obviously move as well. Well just like the transmission, your wheel needs assistance turning the tires, while at the same time making sure the tires don't attempt the 180 degree turn you're putting on your wheel. When you adjust the steering lock, all you're doing is allowing the tires to turn at a certain angle. A small angle allows for a large radius turn since the tires won't turn much where as a large angle allows for them to turn much more at a smaller radius.
  
  
• Brake Bias: Just as the wieght bias works for weight distribution, brake bias works in the same way. All this does is transfer the amount of pressure between the front and rear brakes, and is almost always is measured to the front. Also another simple concept. When you push down on the brake pedal, pressure goes to both sets of front and rear disc brakes. With more pressure to the front, the front brakes will start to apply before the rear brakes allowing for more weight to be transferred to the front of the car.
  
  
• Grill Tape: Another adjustment you hear on the television broadcast quite often, especially at superspeedway tracks. Just as name implies, this is how much tape goes onto the grill opening of the car. The radiator duct is where tape normally goes as there's a few openings in the front of the car. The radiator duct allows air to the radiator, keeping the engine cool, and the 2 openings that allow for air to enter the ducts to cool the brakes. As far as the game goes, let's just assume that the tape is only going over the radiator duct. Increasing the amount of tape allows for the car to go faster as with more tape on the duct, that's less air flowing into the car creating drag. Less drag means more downforce and thus allows the car to go faster. At the same time, less air flow will also mean that the radiator won't keep the engine very cool and you could risk overheating the engine.
  
  
• Front Splitter: This piece was added to the car when the Car of Tomorrow (the first version with the wing on the back) in order to attempt to add downforce to the front end. With air pushing on the front of the car, the splitter would be forced down the track, allowing less air under the vehicle in the chance it were turned around and attempted to become airborne. While the wing was removed, and that huge block opening was moved back forward, the spillter remained and still does what it was intended to do, add downforce to the front of the car. When you adjust this, you adjust how far it is off the ground. The higher up, the less downforce is generated and more air goes under the car, while the closer to the ground will create more and allow for more speed.

• Ride Height: Somewhat self explanatory, this is the height of the car. What's not self explanatory is where this measurement is take. Ride height is measured at the bottom of the frame rails in both front and rear. The distance from that spot and the ground is the height, which means that just because the ride height means is as close to the ground as you can get it, doesn't mean the rest of the car is at the same height. Typically a car that is low to the ground is a fast car, however the way this game is coded has ride height messed up and I'll explain why in setting up the car.
  
  
• Bump: This is part of the shock. Well, not really part of, more like an action of the shock. Shocks are a device on the car meant to handle how a car moves weight around while moving. Bump is the compression of the shock. Think of it this way. As the car goes into the corner and you apply the brakes, all that weight is going to go forward, which is just simple physics. It's Newton's first law, the Law of Inertia. As the front end shifts forward, there has to be something to ease the sudden wieght transfer, and it's not the springs (which I'll cover soon). The shock will compress, allowing the weight to be applied to the front of the suspension. Bump is just an easier way of saying compression rate. A smaller value means the shock will compress faster, and a larger value will compress slower, as more force is required to compress it.
  
  
• Rebound: Part two of the shock. If weight coming down compresses the shock, then when wiehgt goes up, the shock has to decompress so that it can be ready for the next weight transfer, and this is what rebound is. It works the same way as bump, but just in the way of decompression. Once again, smaller is less resistance, more is higher resistance.
  
  
• Spring: Ah, the springs, a fun and often misconstrued part of the car. For common people that don't know much about cars, the spring is viewed as what holds the car up and allows it to move up and down. But as I just explained, the shock is what allows the car to move up and down, controlling the weight transfer. So what does the spring do then? Well, in a really odd concept, pretty much nothing but just keep the car from slamming down to the ground. However, because of the fact that on Cup cars they're a coil spring, they're very important. Even though the shock will compress, that only allows for weight control. As the spring coil compresses, it exerts force on the tire. The number you see is the spring rate. Which means it takes that many pounds of force to compress the coil 1 inch. So a higher number means a stiffer spring, which in turn puts more force on the tire, where a smaller number is a softer spring, which doesn't put as much force on the tire.
  
  
• Trackbar: Also known as a panhard bar, this bar connects from the chassis to the rear end. It can be adjusted from both sides as one side is fixed to the chassis and can be moved by a bolt (typically the right side) while the other is fixed on the rear end and is adjusted only when the car isn't moving. What the trackbar allows is for the rear end to shift while going throught the corners. As the force of the car becomes greater, the car naturally wants to spin on it's heaviest portion, the front end. With the rear end being able to shift, it allows for the car to take those forces and control them so that the rear tires maintain grip. The numbers that you see are the heights of each side of the trackbar.
  
  A higher trackbar can allow for a looser feeling car as the rear end can shift more, while a lower trackbar will allow for a tighter feeling car as the rear end won't shift as much. Trackbar split refers to the distance between the heights of each side, which I would love to cover, however due to a glitch in the setup, the trackbar can't be adjusted separatly. Luckily, it can be during a pit stop, so I will later on in race strategies.
  
  
• Rubber: All this is a piece of material that is inserted to the spring coil so that the spring will feel stiffer as it actually stiffens the spring in the slot it's put in, but in the game, it just goes into the spring, creating a stiffer spring rate.

• Cold Pressure: Just as it states, this is the pressure the tire while it's cold. As the car runs, pressure will build up in the tire due to heat, but unfortunately we can't see that, so all we have is this. How pressure affects the car though is how the pressure inflates the tire. Even though the tire is one piece of compounded rubber that has been formulated to withstand high temperatures, it still flexes with movement. The smaller the pressure is in the tire, the more it'll flex as it sits. The higher the pressure, it'll flex more as it moves. With a lower pressure, the tire has the oppurtunity to grip more as there is more surface area against the track. With a higher pressure, there's less surface area for the tire to grip, so while it's moving it'll flex more to provide different areas of grip which can allow for more speed, depending on the amount of pressure.
  
  
• Camber: Camber is the angle at which the tire sits in relation to the car. When you look at a stock car, you'll see two things common with the front tires. The one on the left side seems to be angled away from the engine, while the right side seems angled towards the engine. Well you're not imagining things, that's actually how it is. As the car goes through it's forces, it will want to slide up the track with high banking. The camber acts as a wedge against the banking so that as the car attempts to go up the track, the tire will get a full contact patch on the track, providing the best grip it can. Postitive camber is normally on the left side of the car, and is measured at the angle away from the engine. The more positive the number, the further the angle is away from the engine. A negative number, normally the right side of the car, is measured at the angle to the engine. More negative camber, the more the tire is angled to the engine.
  
  
• Caster: This can be a difficult adjustment to grasp, but the idea is simple. Think of a bicycle. Now with a typical BMX bike, the handle bars are directly on top of the tire, and the tubes that steer the bike are vertical. With a typical mountain bike, the handle bars are behind the tire, and the tubes are angled back towards you. This is caster. The wheel of the tire connects to the chassis via the spindle, which is attached to the upper and lower A-arms by two ball joints (rotational pivot points). The angle of these two ball joints is caster. A positive caster is when the angle is pointed towards you, the driver. A negative caster is when the angle is pointed away from you. The mountain bike? Positive caster.
  
  So that's what it is, now what does it do? Well think of the bikes again. Which one is easier to steer? Well most people that never rode a BMX bike would say the mountain bike because it seems the BMX only seems like it would wreck when you turned it. Well as much as that is true, it's just as false. Both bikes have the same ability to turn, but that ability differs at speed. A BMX is a trick bike. That abscence of caster works because BMX bikes aren't meant to go fast, and because of the slower speeds, the bike could pretty much turn on a dime. At higher speeds though, the bike runs the risk of losing control. The mountain bike with it's positive camber becomes easier to turn, and allowing for more speed as it turns, and potential better control. But if the caster becomes too positive, then the amount of control can go away and the car becomes harder to steer and will give you even less control of the car if you need to react quickly.
  
  
• Toe-in: Well we've got the tire angled to or from the engine, the rotational axis of the tire higher or lower, and now we have what keeps the tire straigt. Toe-in measures how far the tire is pointed from it's centerline. Toe-in is positive toe. Toe-out is negative toe. So when you see a negative number, it's technically toe-out, so try not to let that confuse you. Positive toe is when the tire points to the inside of the car, and negative is the opposite. So how does that work then?
  
  Toe-in can help the car going straight down the track by keeping stable, allowing for more speed. While going through the corner, the right side tire, since it's angled in already, will turn better in the corner. Toe-out can cause instability down the straight, allowing for the loss of speed, but the turn in of the left tire will be better since it's angled to the corner already.

Okay, so now we know what each adjustment is, and what it's supposed to do on paper and in theory. Now we have to apply the theories of what they're supposed to do so that you can get a car to do what you want it to do, which should be fast and last the race. Remember back when I said that this isn't some magical number guide? Well here's Part 1 of that statement. There's plenty of places to get setups for each track you're looking for. There's the Community Hub in Steam, there's the NTG Forums provided by Eutechnyx, and then there's the huge contraption of every single thing ever concieved as an idea known as the internet and it's infinite amount of web forums. Now while for some people, setups found that way may work for them, and make others wonder how the hell the car can even go forward. Then there's those that don't have the time to make their own, so they find a setup they can work with and go with that. Now there's nothing wrong with using something that someone else made, in fact, it's actually not a bad idea to try. But there's always two problems when doing this. For one, it's the internet, and unlike our favorite blonde in advertising believes, everything on the internet isn't always true. So just cause the person says "I can do xx.xx and hit xxx MPH" doesn't mean you're going to do the same because that setup was made to make you intentionally slower (watch out for Admiral Ackbar, just sayin). And secondly, and 99/100 times the case, the setup was tailored to them, which means if you're going to be faster with it, you're going to have to change it. Now let's get to changing it.

If you're doing what I just stated and are changing a setup, just stick with me as I'm starting from the gound up for those who want to attempt their very own setup. But this can also help adjust different areas you're wanting to look at. Also, this is the way I like to make my setups, and is also a common way I've found out, and is also a good stepping stone for developing your own way of setting up the car.

Now the best way to do this is with a baseline setup, or what the car needs to be set at in order to pass NASCAR technical inspection before it even leaves for the track. But we don't get that luxury as there are two default setups for each track (even if it's night and day), qualifying trim and race trim. So all we have to work from are those setups. Now the qualifying setup is meant to be very aggressive, in otherwords you can drive the car like there's no tomorrow and just attack the track to get the fastest time in qualifying. There's only two laps to do it in, so who cares about tire wear? But if you can create a race setup that is fast and will last, then it can be used for a qualifying setup until you begin to modify it specifically for qualifying. So even though we don't really have a baseline setup, were just going to consider whatever the default race setup for the track our "baseline" setup.

After you've ran the track and gotten a feel for what the baseline setup can or will do, you're obviously going to have a few thoughts. More than likely it's going to be "I need more speed" but could also be "I'm loose through the corner" or "This car is just way too tight". Well speed is going to come from the corner, like I said earlier. The faster the car can get through the corner, the faster you're going to move around the track. In order to go through the corner fairly quickly, you have to put the correct amount of input into the car for it to corner smoothly. That brings us to our first adjustment, steering lock. Since this controls how far the wheels turn, it can honestly make the car feel entirely different. Now taking a step from the game, and into the real car, the steering wheel has a vast majority of rotation. These cars don't have power steering, so that rotation is going to vary from car to car, team to team, and driver to driver. In the game, you've only got one choice. 45* left, 45* right. Now steering ratio is listed as, well a ratio, so let's use 10:1 as an example. You turn the steering wheel 10*, the wheels turn 1*. That gives our car a total of 4.5* left, 4.5* right, or a total 9* sweep, which is what we're looking at in our game numbers. Look at Daytona for a second. The default lock there is 13*. After some math, that gives a steering ratio of approximately 6.9:1. Say you raise it to 15*. Thats a ratio of exactly 6:1. That's almost a whole degree of steering wheel movement there, which means you don't have to put as much input into the wheel. "Okay, that sounds great, let's just max it then!" Wrong. This is an adjustment based purely of comfort and experience level. If you're new and look online for a setup, a lot of them for Daytona show around 18*, some even up to about 20*. At 180M MPH with 18*, the second you turn that steering wheel, it becomes an automatic "Holy crap this is so loose, I can't drive it, the setup is completely wrong and sucks!" The setup may actually be pretty good, but you won't know unless you can steer it properly. Practice with different lock angles, and see what works for you as far as comfort level. Once you get that down, you can pretty much use that number for all the other tracks similar to the one you're on, and also move to the next adjustment, caster.

Caster is an adjustment that will not only help your ability to turn, but will also help you find your straightline speed. Now that explanation I just gave you on ratios, that's with a 0* caster angle, on both tires. Once you give the wheel a caster angle, that ratio doesn't fit properly. I'd love to give you a mathmatical example, but I don't have an engineering degree to show you one (if someone knows the equation, please let us know if you'd be so kind as to do so). Now remember the example I gave you, and brace yourself as I throw in a new term, caster split. Positive caster will allow for more speed as I told you. Great for the straight, but now you have to get the car to turn. Well the steering lock helped out with your input, but you've still got physics to overcome. You're rotating the car on the front left tire. That tire is going to travel the distance of the corner in which line you run. The right front tire is on the outside of that line, and is going to have to travel further that the left front. Look at the track map. Notice how the inside of the track is a shorter distance that the outside? Well that's the turn radius, and this is where caster split comes into play. A more positive angle on the right front will allow that wheel to travel farther than the left front. Keep in a very important note I said allow, not make. There is reason for that. Your caster spilt is going to be determined by track. Let's look a simple circle. Let's say the radius for the inside line is 5. The distance of that line is going to be 31.41. Now let's add 3 for the outside line. The distance is of that is 50.26. In other words, the right front is going to have to travel 1.6 further than the left front. So your caster split should be 1.6*. But that isn't exactly the case. Not every corner has the same radius on each track, and you've got several different lines you can run.

So how should you split the caster? By feel, comfort and speed. Set both numbers so that you can get the most speed you can down the straight, and then begin to adjust the right side so that the car is comfortable to turn. Now here's the first kicker. Remember that note I told you? Too much of a positive angle on the right front will start to force the car to turn left down the straight. Unless you've got excellent car control, this means you could lose speed by constant correction. Here's the second kicker. It may not be the right front you have to adjust. If adjusting the right front doesn't seem to help, lower the angle of the left front. Eitherway, the caster should be adjusted and split by feel and comfort. If you think you can get some more speed by increasing the caster, then go back and lower the steering lock. Both of those adjustments are entirely on driver feel and comfort, and once you get those, then setting the rest of the car up becomes easier.

So now the car feels better to control. And hey, you may have shaved 0.1, maybe even 0.2 seconds off your fastest or average time! Or you've probably lost some time and are starting to wonder "This guy seemed smart, but he must be stupid or something..." Well in order to make a car fast, you have to keep control of the car, and since you should hopefully have a better feel with the car, now we can start looking at getting more speed out of it. Let's start with the trackbar. Now this isn't really a by feel adjustment like the last two, but still goes by feel. So you want to include it with those two, then go right ahead. Now the trackbar should be able to adjust indepentently, but due to a code issue, it can't. So all I can really say for the track bar is the higher the track bar is, the more the car will be able to rotate in the corner, and give it a generally loose feeling. The lower it is, the less it will be able to rotate in the corner, and give it a generally tight feeling. However, this is why I bring it up after lock and caster. Tires. Way back in the beginning, I was talking about weight bias, and how wedge is a numerical figure of condition. Tight means the front doesn't have grip, loose means the rear doesn't have grip, blah blah blah, we already heard it. Now we need to see it. The best way to see it is by tire temperature, and this is very tricky to do. In the game, we don't get those numbers. We get indicators. And for those indicators, we have to watch them, which means we have to be on the track and driving. If you can pay attention to those while driving, well then that's great. If you can't, figure out a way so that you can see how you do it. A recording program or even just your cell phone (if you can prop it up) will help you out. As long as you have a way to view (or review) how those tires heat, it'll help you out.

So what does tire heat tell us? The amount of work load those tires are under. Generally speaking, if the right rear tire is glowing red before the right front, the car is on the loose side. If the right front is glowing red before the right rear, well then it's tight. "But the wedge shows that it should be tight, but it's loose! Y u make no sense???" Numerically speaking is far different than physically speaking. On top of that, where did I say that the loose/tight line of wedge has to be at 50%? So forget wedge until I bring it back up. Let's get back to the trackbar. So, if the tires indicate the car is loose, lower the track bar. If tight, then raise it. But keep it by feel. If you feel that the car has become harder to turn but the tires still say it's loose or tight, then keep it that way. The trackbar is there so that you can rotate the corner more efficiently and assist in getting the car into a snug state. So we've got the trackbar, the car is rotating the corner better, but we still need speed. Well let's give it some speed. Tire pressure. Remember, tire pressure equates to the size of the contact patch and how it flexes. Tire pressure also changes the natural stagger of the car as well. Like I had stated with the caster, the right side has to travel further than the left side. When you increase tire pressure, the rotational circumfrence of the tire changes as well. With a lower pressure, there more of a flat spot on the track. As the pressure goes up, that flat spot gets smaller and smaller, which in turn begins to make the tire seem taller, but in reality allows for the tire to travel farther. This is why the right side pressures are higher than the left sides.

So where's rotational circumfrence come into play with speed? Less resistance against the tire! But before we get that going, we have to make sure the tires are going to withstand it. After the trackbar, we got the car rotating through the corner better, but the car was still loose or tight. Well to bring it back to snug, we're going to change the corresponding tire pressure. If it feels loose, take air out of the right rear, give it some grip, and same with the front. "But the indicator shows that the tire is heating up faster than the other, now what?" Excellent point. I said feels loose. The lower the cold pressure in the tire, the more it will heat up (fewer air particles allowing for more movement, creating heat. Physics people, physics). If you lower the right rear to give it more grip and the car no longer feels loose, you now have to correct both right side tires. So if lower pressures cause more heat, raising them will decrease the heat. And raising the right sides equal amounts will not only assist in providing less heat build up in the right rear, but will assist in keeping the same amount of handling you just gained. This is where we start to gain speed. Higher cold pressures allow for more speed off the bat, and since they don't wear as fast, can keep the speed longer. But there does become a point in which tires start to lose speed if the cold pressures are too high, so keep that in mind. Now, back to rotational circumfrence. We've only played with the right sides, but that's only one half of the car. Once the right sides start to increase, they're going to travel faster than the lefts. And once you hit a point, the car is going to feel loose, because you now have too much rotation than you need. To offset that rotation, instead of lowering the right sides back down, start to increase the left sides equally as well. Continue doing that, along with right sides, and you'll eventually find some speed. Just remember though that once you start increasing the left sides, you're decreasing the amount of grip they have to hold the car on the inside, so you may either have to shift your line a little higher or call it good once the car begins to slide up the track.

Once you get the pressures there, now you can adjust the camber of the tires. Camber is going to help you get better grip of the tires and will result in more speed. Again, you still have to be able to view or review you indicators, but this time even more closely. The indicators are in three sections, the inner, center, and outer sections of the tire. The goal of camber is to allow the tires to heat and wear evenly while getting the most grip from the tires. On the right sides, if the inside of the tire is heating up faster than the outside, you have too much camber. If the outside of the tire is heating up faster, you have too little. On the left sides, the reverse is true, so if the inside is heating up faster, you have too little camber. Just keep in mind, once the tires begin to heat evenly, you may begin to lose some speed, but it's okay, you'll get that back. Also keep in mind that as you change left side camber, it will affect right side camber as well. So if you adjust the right side camber first, you may have to start dialing it back as you adjust left sides, as when the left sides start to grip better, the right sides will start to show if there is too much or too little camber.

So now that we've gotten the caster, pressures, and camber of the tires, there's only thing left to do on the tires, and while it's something that doesn't exactly have to be done now, it's something we may as well do now since we're just about done with the tires. Toe. Remember what i said about it, and that's really all that needs to be said. It's referred to as toe-in in this game, so I'll keep the numbers to reflect it, even though there's only two options in the game anyways, and that's 1/16" or -1/4". 1/16" will help the right side rotate better but slow your straight speed and -1/4" will help your corner entry and help your straight speed. Like I said, you can do this later if you want when you get to the point of breaking down the corners, or you can do it now. Just keep in mind that a possible caster or camber change may be needed.

Okay, so we've just gotten the tires out of the way. Done with those right? Well not exactly. Tires are always something to come back to from time to time. You may want to check them after a ride height adjustment, or a spring adjustment, maybe even a brake bias adjustment. How often you check them is entirely up to you, but just keep in mind that tires are not a one touch adjustment. Just like your steering lock and caster, tire temperatures are going to change as you make other adjustments, and are always something to look at if some changes aren't doing what you think they should be doing. It may just be a pressure change on one side needed, it could be a camber change in one tire, or it could be that both pressures and cambers need to be changed, in all four tires at that. The main thing is, don't forget that tires are the most important thing on the car. You can have all the power you want, but if the tires aren't there, then the car isn't worth a damn.

If the tires are the most important part of the car, then the suspension is the second most important. Some of you have probably gained a 0.5 or even a good 0.6 of a second from where you've started and some of you have only gained about 0.1 - 0.3 of a second. But you're still wondering what needs to be done because you're still close to a second behind the lead cars, and yes, that just simply won't do. I can almost promise you that you'll gain that second plus some as we start to adjust the suspension. Now I say almost, because a lot of this also depends on you. I've told you that you need to practice your lines, get your marks, find what entry works for you, learn when you can get on the throttle in the corner, and to ignore wedge. Now this is where you're going to be thrown around, lose control, hit wall, lose patience, and get damn near confused to the point you want to tear your hair out of your skull. You're going to have to change your line, some a little, some a lot, you're going to have to change you braking and throttle points, and you're going to have to pay attention to all of your adjustments and the analysis page. And if you haven't been taking notes on which adjustments work for you, then you better start taking them now.

First up on the suspension chopping block are the springs. Springs are something that a new team can spend seasons on trying to figure out a package on. Springs will give you grip, control, and speed just as fast as they can take those 3 things away from you. Now before I go into the game, let's look at the real car first. Springs come in many different rates. The lower the rating, the softer the spring, and the higher the rating, the stiffer they are. A stiffer spring will exert more force on the tire it's over, causing more grip and a softer spring will take some force off of it, allowing more travel for the tire. The rating of the spring will also change the height and weight of a car in that corner as well. A spring that's rated at 1500 means that for every 1500 pounds of force that is exerted on it, the spring will compress 1 inch. So a spring that's rated at 500 will compress and extra 2" if 1500 pounds of force is applied to it. Remember the wieght numbers on the car from way earlier? Let's take the front right corner, which at 51% front and 51% left, was at 887.3 pounds. Well here's something I left out of that equation: the right front spring rate. The rate is at 1100 lbs/in. So standing still, that spring is only being compressed 13/16". If we were to take that spring and adjust it to a rating of 890 lbs/in, then it's compress a full inch right? Wrong. The weight of that corner would change drastically. Because the spring is softer, that corner would compress more towards an inch yes, but because the ride height wasn't changed to counteract that, the weight would also drop in that corner, along with the front end, and raise in the rear, and wedge would change a good amount as well.

Now here's the saving grace we get in this game. Ride height is adjust by a bolt attatched to the frame that has many different names, but that bolt has a piece at the bottom of it that helps hold the spring in place. When you adjust this bolt, you change both ride height and preload of the spring. When the spring goes to a softer rate, the corner drops to rest on the spring, and ride height lowers. So for actual effect, the ride height has to come back up, and then the spring will compress that one inch. The game automatically does this for you. So while the original wrong answer still holds true, the game helps you so that you can say yes, the spring has now compressed and inch. Now let's make that spring compress another inch, so a spring at 450 allow that right? Well with the game's help, yes it does. And what's the major change? The front right corner now weighs in at 886.7 pounds, and the spring has compressed 1 15/16", dropping wedge down to 50.1%.

So what the hell does that all mean anyways? This goes to show you spring rates and what they do. If the rate of the spring goes below the weight of that corner, the corner weight itself will lower, and affect the other corners. So let me run you some numbers here. Default at Daytona are FB 50.0%/LB 52.0%/W 51.1%/LFW 901.9/LFS 1100/RFW 868.4/RFS 1100/LRW 942.7/LRS 550/RRW 827.5/RRS 550. If I change the front springs to match those corner weights, I now get FB 50.0%/LB 52.0%/W 51.0%/LFW 903.0/LFS 900/RFW 867.2/RFS 870/LRW 941.5/LRS 550/RRW 827.7/RRS 550. Notice that the weights changed within a few pounds on each corner, but the springs are compressed and inch in the front. Now let me do the same to the rear. FB 50.0%/LB 52.0%/W 51.2%/LFW 900.3/LFS 900/RFW 869.9/RFS 870/LRW 944.2/LRS 940/RRW 826.0/RRS 830. So what have I just done? I have effectively lowered the car a complete inch, give or take 1/16". And I didn't even do a massive change to the weight of the car. And that inch means a lot a Daytona. Now I'd probably go back to my tires and change a pressure or two, and maybe the camber, but only to make sure I had the same handling, but I would have more speed out of it than I did before.

Now hopefully you have a much better concept of springs than you did before, and now you can learn how to adjust them. If you truely want to make sure that you get the best out of your springs, you're going to to have the time and patience to do so. A point to start with this is to do what I just did. Match your spring rates to your corner weights, and only compress them that one inch. This will allow you to have a balanced car that should still have close to your original handling. Now should is the key word, which means it's going to be different. It much it varies will depend on the track and your current line. This is where the anaylsis screen comes into play. On that screen, the line you want to look at is your Highest Lateral G's. A G for those who don't know isn't a "ganster", but a gravitational force. 1 G is the equivalent to the gravitational force applied by Earth's gravity. Lateral for those who didn't pay attention in science (or geography for that matter) is sideways.

So how do gravitational forces work with adjusting springs? Simple. Standing still, the car weighs only so much. Going 200 MPH in a straight line, the force against the air, also known as dowforce, is going to add weight to the car. Going 200 MPH in a corner going to shift that weight to the side. Now we don't know what the car weighs with the downforce at speed is, simply because we don't have access to that data, and even very few teams can even come close to that data on the track. So that hurts us in trying to figure out what our springs really should be, but hey, that's what makes setting up a car so "fun". We can however figure out how the weight is shifting in the corner, and that's by Lateral G's. Let's go back to our current example numbers right now. LFW 900.3/RFW 869.9/LRW 944.2/RRW 826.0. If we take the corner and we experience 1 G, then nothing's changed. If we experience 1.25 G's, then the weight has shifted to the right side 1 1/4 times, meaning that our weights in the corner will be LFW 675.2/RFW 1087.4/LRW 708.2/RRW 1032.5. Well now we can see that the left side springs aren't compressing a full inch and the right sides are compressing even more. So you have two options, a big bar small spring or a coil bind setup. Coil bind setups involve matching the right sides so that there is maximum compression in the springs, so the end result is that your right side spring rates will be smaller than your left sides, as the right sides compress as much as they can and the left sides keep pressure on the tires and compensate handling with the shocks. Big bar small spring setups involve having soft springs all around, and compensate handling with the sway bars. BBSS setups right now are the current trend in oval racing in general, but it also depends on the track you go to and the style you like to run.

Okay, so I've avoided saying how to adjust springs it seems, but when you look at it, I've explained them exactly for what you need to adjust. What you need to look at now is handling, speed, and tire wear. Softer springs generally run faster, as they are able to compress more and lower the car. A car lower to the ground will go faster since there isn't as much turbulant air underneath, and tends to handle better as downforce is able to help keep the car pinned to the ground. Now here's a big note on what I just said. I'm sure there's some of you who just read that and thought to yourself "That's totally wrong, you don't keep the front end all the way down, you raise it all the way up. That's what everyone else says who plays this game, so this guy is an obvious idiot who just likes big words like downforce and gravitational..." First off, STOP that thought. Secondly, those guys found a poor line in the code. And thirdly, while there is SOME truth to that statement, it is MUCH MORE FALSE than true. I will explain this later on, so please keep reading. If you still think I'm an idiot, then I'm sorry for wasting your time, just go back to wondering why you don't see Jimmie Johnson, Kyle Busch, and Matt Kensth running their cars looking like they be in outer space right now.

Now back to point (if you couldn't tell, I can't stand ignorance and stupidity), a lower car will go faster. At the same time, stiffer springs allow for more force on a tire, so for the right sides, adjusting the springs in those corners can help you fix your condition of being tight or loose. And the whole while, you have to pay attention to tire wear. If the tires are wearing out faster than your previous runs, then look at your notes and notice where wear rates were at with lower wear. If the speed wasn't there, then consider your line. Maybe change your braking point so you're not as hard on them, or maybe change your line in the corner. Instead of trying to hold the inside line consistantly, try running a little higher. If a track can hold cars 4 wide, then you've got 4 different lines with many different braking and throttle points. If you think that you may need change your line up a little, go right ahead, there's plenty of track to do so. After you figure out your springs, look back at your tire temps and make changes to pressures and camber, as now is a good time to do so.

So now we've got the springs set after quite some time (or to the point where you needed something else before you started seeing springs in your dreams), let's move to ride height. Now as I just covered in the springs, changing ride height is going to change the weights of your corners. However, this change is going to more dramatic in weight than what the springs did (thanks to how the automatically adjusts those bolts), so beware when you make changes in ride height. A simple change of 0.2" could easily be more speed or your car in the wall. Again, the lower the car, the faster it can go. Now, I've been saying this quite a few times, and I've made my point against those who believe that the car should launch into outerspace, so let me use this as the point to further explain how this isn't a magic number guide. A big factor of ride height isn't just the front end, but more the rear end. And the reason the rear end is a bigger factor than the front is because of the spoiler. That spoiler is a major component of drag and loss of speed, but one of the biggest things to help you turn. Now for short tracks, it's a good idea for the rear end to higher that the front end as the spoiler will help you turn in after the short burst of speed. A little lower on the 1 and 1.5 miles as it'll still help you turn in, but with the longer straights, you'll need more speed to stay on pace. And on 2 miles and the superspeedways, you want it out of the air as much as you can.

Now here lays the split line for the bigger tracks. There's a large group of people that set their cars up so that the front springs are very soft, the front of the car is all the way up, the rear springs are just low enough for something just barely able to be called control, and the rear end all the way down. It's also been called a SpongeBob setup due to how the car looks like and sparks like the meme of SpongeBob's boat that goes stupid fast. Now there is some truth to this, as car with more pitch can gain more speed with the spoiler out of the air. For this to work though, the car has to be built and fabricated for it, and still pass tech. Which means that there's no way whatever team gave assistance to Eutechnyx shared their secrets on how to do this. But the developers still applied the factor that a car with more pitch can produce more speed. "Wow, you just called yourself an idiot and admitted that you know nothing, you're pretty stupid..." Tell that to Chad Knaus, one of the few crew chiefs to have multiple championships, and the only one to win more than 3 consectutively. Tell that to Darian Grubb, who out of nowhere, while still knowing he wasn't going to be there after the season, helped the 14 team to go from what Tony himself said "A waste of a chase slot" to become the first crew chief to win the championship after Chad held the spot for 5 years. Look at the 48, 24, 18, 20, 14, ah hell, let's just make this short, all 43 cars on the track at these tracks and tell me which ones look like they're trying to launch into outer space. You won't find any.

So what allows this? A poor spot in the coding. Games are hard to develop, and Eutechnyx is still fresh to the NASCAR scene, so there's spots they're not going hit very well, on top of the fact that with NASCAR games are a hard game to get published anyways (between the intricacies of what goes into them, marketing, and it's not a FPS or RPG) so resources don't always go to where they probably should. So if you decide that you want to use that kind of setup, I advise you to just go find one on the internet, and then learn how to "properly complain" when someone wrecks you due to close quarters racing. I did create one to see how it works, and then created a "traditional" setup (what you'd see on television or in person), and found more people actually liked mine because they could actually control it. SpongeBob setups are fast, I can't deny that. But they are highly unstable and can get wrecking loose in a real quick second if the car becomes upset. Traditional setups don't quite hit the speeds by themselves that a SpongeBob setup does, but keep pace in the draft, are much more controllable, and are much harder to upset so that they don't become wrecking loose. And to explain why, this where I get back to the point: Front ride height.

As the car goes forward, it's got to push through the air, obviously. Well the air is respectively going to go where it's easiest to go. Through the grill is the first main spot, then over the hood, flowing over the car, then the sides, and finally under the car. Well since the under the car is such a small space, the air become extremely turbulent. And turbulent air is going to make the car very upset. Now the cars are built so that air can escape from underneath and create stability, but the less under there allows for a more stable car. A car with a lower center of gravity is a car that will grip the track more efficiently, and in turn, will result in a faster car that will do what you want it to do. So here's the point to adjusting ride height. Get it as low as you can while avoiding the bottoming out of the car (where it scrapes the track and sends sparks everywhere) on a consistant basis, and so that you can still turn the car without it being too tight. The lower that spoiler goes will give you more speed, but more speed also means an earlier braking point. So if you get it so low that you have to let off the throttle or brake much earlier than everyone else, then the rear end is too low. Remember, you have two other ways to lower the car, tire pressure and spring rate if you feel the need to. After you adjust the ride heights, look at the tire temps and adjust accordingly, and if feel the need to as well, make a few changes to the springs as changing your ride heights will affect corner weights.

So that leaves shocks and rubbers left in the suspension page, but we'll hit those later. We're about half through this and we've got a majority of the hard stuff out of the way. Most of the rest are simpler to adjust and don't take but a few runs to figure out. Now that we've got the car handling like we want, and hopefully a lot more speed out of it in the process, now we need to fine tune a little more speed out of it. First up, let's work the gearing. Remember, the only thing you can change is the rear end as the transmission gears are set by NASCAR. And you get two options, A or B. Either one of those is going to be up to you and what you're okay with, but in either case, you want to be close to, if not already redlining on the tachometer when you reach your braking point. If you're not there with either gear set, then you need to adjust your line (or readjust) your line so that you can be on the throttle earlier out of the corner. If you feel that one gets your engine temperature too hot, then use the one that keeps it cooler. If both get the engine warmer than you want, then use the one that gives you better acceleration out of the corner, and move to the next thing. Grille tape. Grille tape will also give you more speed as it provides better downforce and limits the air going through to the engine, but keep that in mind that you're limiting the engine cooling ability. You'll want as much tape as you run while keeping the engine cool. Next to that will be the splitter. Just like I said earlier, the splitter is that piece that helps split the air as the car goes forward. Here you're able to choose how close it is to the ground. If you already have your ride heights set, you probably won't want to adjust this, but it never hurts to play with. Just keep in mind not to have it consistantly scrape the track otherwise you'll end up damaging it and slow yourself down.

If you're still having troubles after changing the gearing, tape, and splitter, don't automatically change them back. Move forward first to the weight bias. Keep in mind that as you change those, you may have to adjust spring rates again to keep up with handling changes, as well as ride heights to keep handling changes within reason so that you don't become too loose or too tight. Just don't touch the wedge. Let the wedge adjust itself as you adjust the rest of the car. Next, let us play with the sway bars. Now if you've gone with the BBSS setup, I'm hoping that you've already tried to play with these, if not, then that's fine. Just like the description a thinner bar will loosen the front end and tighten the rear end, a thicker bar will tighten the front end and loosen the rear end. You can use these to continue to adjust the handling of the car without adjusting the weight. With a BBSS setup, you're going to wind up using a thicker bar as the front springs will be soft enough that the car would be loose without a thick bar. The rear sway bar will be very thin, and that's if you even use it to begin with. That leaves us with two adjustments left, the brake bias and shocks. Brake bias is simple, a lower number will allow more braking power to the rear, helping tighten the car into entry for a smoother entry, while a higher amount will put more power to the front, loosening the car providing a later entry, but beware that too much could either cause the car to spin upon entry or end up causing premature wear on the front tires. Now before we move to the shocks, make sure you have your springs where you want them, because the shocks are going to make you second guess them.

Shocks, like stated earlier, are a weight control device. Now I explained how they work. But the question here is how do you adjust them. Well this is where don't have a full explanation and here is why. On the real car, a shock is built. There's a few different ways to build them, and there's plenty of options. Once the shock is built, it's tested on a dyno and data is grabbed from it (which actually a pretty cool process watch and perform, but hey, I'm not just a gearhead, but a tech nut also), and then tested on the car with in shop car dynos, and after they find what they like, the team has a shock package for each type of track, if not every track. Then when they get to the race weekend, the shocks become fine tuned by a couple of little adjusters. These adjusters are done in clicks (the actual term as when you rotate it, the piece gives an audiable click) and the control how fast the shock compresses (bump) and decompresses (rebound). But unlike the game, there's not 100 something clicks. As much as I would be glad to give advice on how much you should be looking to adjust these, it's pretty difficult when the development team won't say how they based their numbers. One would simply say those numbers are a fine tuning in the amount of force that it takes for the shock to move, but those numbers go into the triple digits very quickly, and 32 pounds of force on these cars is nothing for the shock. So that puts the shocks in the game a very lengthy feel adjustment.

Just because I can't fully explain how they translate to the game doesn't mean I can't give you advice though. I may not know how to correlate the numbers, but they do adjust in the same manner. Here's a good tip to remember as you adjust these. Bump is for driver comfort, rebound is for weight control. Let's break this down to understand it better. As you go down the straight away and approach the corner, the shocks are virtually static. They're not really changing drastically, only changing with the surface of the track. An older track will have more bumps, while a repaved track is going to be pretty smooth. Eitherway, if your shocks are tuned right, you're not going to feel alot of them unless it's a major feature (such as tunnel openings, as those will have slight rises in the surface, or seams on the track like those found on Michigan). But as you get to the corner, when you let off the throttle, the sudden stop in acceleration is going to cause the car to shift forward. Once you start to apply the brake, no matter what the bias is, the car will shift even more weight to the front. That's when the front shocks will compress. If the front shocks are too soft, they won't be able to support the weight transfer and you'll feel like the car is going to turn sideways and flip over. If they're too stiff, it'll feel like the car didn't even stop moving and you'll find yourself too tight. So once you figure out your front compression rate, you can have a smooth entrance. Now you have to get off the corner with throttle. Since you're already off the brake, you won't have much weight transfer forward if any at all. But once you get on the throttle for exit, the car is gonna shift it's weight backwards. If the rear shocks are too soft, it'll feel like the car is being slammed back and it'll become extremely loose since the rear tires were still trying to turn. If they're too stiff, then it'll feel like you have no power at all, and make it seem like you can't get speed off the corner. So bump is for driver comfort.

Rebound is for weight control. Well when you go into the corner the rear end of the car comes up due to the sudden weight transfer. If the rear shocks are too soft, then the car will launch the rear upwards and you actually will be loose and spin on entry. If they're too stiff, then they won't decompress fast enough and the rear end will start bouncing up and down, making you loose and causing you to spin from the constant bouncing as the car tries to settle itself after entering the corner. This will be an odd spin though. As you go through the corner and the rear end starts bouncing, the compression will make you feel very loose, and you'll probably try to correct yourself by turning the wheel to save yourself. Well that'll stop the loose feeling because the car will finally stop bouncing. But if you turn the wheel too much, once those tires make contact if you're still in gear, they're gonna grip and you're going to go in the direction you're turning, sending you up into the wall. Once those shocks are set, you've still got to come off the corner. Well getting on the throttle you should be set. But the front shocks still have to decompress. If they're too soft, then it'll push the front end up causing you to either be loose off the corner or tight, depending on your exiting line. Loose down low, tight up high. If they're too stiff, the front of the car is going to lift up with acceleration and the front end is going to bounce around causing to you to get loose off the corner and let off the throttle to settle the car down as you slowly ease back into it. Each shock is dependant on the weight it's trying to control. If you have low weight on that corner of the car, then the shock can be soft. If it's more weight, then the shock can be stiffer. But that will still depend entirely on your line.

Once you finish tuning your shocks, feel free to hit back on any area that you can't adjust on the track, such as your front springs, caster, camber, or anything else. Especially your tires, never forget those. And here's the great thing about this process. As long as you kept your notes tidy, you can use them to make the other tracks faster. If you follow the season, Daytona is first. Use those notes when you get to Talladega, and you can set the car up faster. Pheonix is next, so use those notes at Richmond, since they're similar tracks. Las Vegas, use them at Kansas and Kentucky. Texas, well it's great for Charlotte and Atlanta. While the setups won't be the same, they'll be similar so each time you go back to those tracks, you can get quicker at setting up the car and focus on getting faster and faster as you fine tune each track.

Now I'm gonna go ahead and assume you worked this setup while you were the only one on the track, and that's perfectly fine. You have a setup that's quick, you can control, and hopefully last on the long run. But now you need to see how it's going to run with 42 other cars on the track. Keep those notes handy because you may have to change items such as ride heights, caster, or even the springs again. It's best to do it during a practice session so that if you make the wrong adjustment, it doesn't cost you the race. Also keep in mind the track conditions. As the track heats up, it'll get slick, so if you're getting onto a hot track with fresh tires, it'll feel like you're loose. At night the air is cooler and the track will tighten up, so it can make you fast, but you could feel like you're either too tight or sliding all over the place depending on your setup. Notes will help you out in order to make the proper adjustments. Eitherway, you don't want to use a day setup in a night race and vice versa. Now there's one type of track that will make you want to say "What the hell, these notes are useless, I have no idea what to do..." and we both know the type. Because of the left and right turns, it's best to keep as much as you can even on the left and ride sides for a road course. Keep your front suspension adjustments even on both sides, and your rear adjustments even in the rear. Elevation changes will make the front and rear different, but keeping the left and right equal as you can will help you out on those. When setting up for those tracks, set it up for the two toughest corners of the track. Watkins Glen will be Turn 1 and the Bus Stop. Infineon will be 4a (which leads to the shute) and 11.

(Work in progress)