On friday evening I went to Ribble Valley Radio Controlled Car Club, for some GT12 racing. I always enjoy going back here as its the first every club I attended, and spent years here practising before going anywhere else. You can find this club in Leyland, Lancashire.
Its changed a huge amount from when I started, although many familiar faces still go every week. The biggest change has been the change towards running 1/10 offroad as the most popular class. The club do a great job of including many features on a track which can also cater for GT12's with several different gates in the layout. This club regularly has a maximum entry of about 60 racers and friday was no different! http://www.ribblevalleyrccarclub.co.uk
This week was particularly unusual I'm told, as the grip level was the lowest it had been due to using a new layout, on a recently flipped over carpet.
Setup Tips
There were several challenges because of this. The first was a pretty extreme lack of forward traction. This means that from a stand still, or coming out of a corner, the car struggles to push itself forwards without trying to power-slide or 'drift' from the rear axle moving around.
Many people think this can be down to using a 'cheap' tyre. I don't really agree with this. Most importantly the rear tyre just has to be soft enough. Selecting a cheap 'A' foam or 'Q' foam type tyre is fine for this so long as its soft enough. In the case of clubs using control tyres, you could achieve this by putting additive on for much longer, maybe 1 hour before going to the track. (only on the rears)
The other cause that make this problem with forward traction worse is a car with an aggressive front end. By this I mean a setup which has loads of steering in the corner. If your exiting a turn with a front end that's really working and making the car turn hard on power, it can make this lack of forward drive feel even worse, so a setup with more under-steer will instantly help this issue.
When the grip is low on the carpet, its not just forward traction that is a challenge. In terms of driving, it is far more difficult to get around a track when the rear is lacking traction than when the front is. Therefore, again, accepting the grip is lower and taking even more away from the front end or trying to give the rear as much grip as possible is the way I'd go to ensure the car drives in a predictable manor.
Below is a list of some things that I either did, or recommend to achieve the following for these conditions:
Larger rear tyres - Making a bigger difference between front and rear tyres provides more rear grip. I ended up running 45mm rear, and 41mm front.
Weight Rearwards - Moving the weight rearwards helps give more weight on the rear tyres, meaning its easier to put the power down without this saliding. (Improved forward traction) I ran a fan mounted on the rear of the chassis, and fully rearward lipo with a 1mm brass weight under it.
Less front camber - I ran 0.8 degrees. Less camber takes some grip away from the front to help in the way mentioned above.
Larger Rear Wing - As mentioned above, find ways to give the rear end as much grip as possible.
Softest Side springs - Use the kit, black, softest springs to give the rear as much roll as possible. This gives more rear grip.
Additive Preparation - As mentioned above. Increase rear additive time to as much as 2 hours to soften the rear tyres more. In the same way of thinking, a short front additive time (1 minute only) or only covering the inside 3mm - 5mm can make the front end less aggressive, and help too. In the final on friday, I didnt even put on front additive in the final. This is for extreme cases only.
Tight Differential - This will prevent the rear becoming loose and snapping mid corner as badly.
Unscrewing Side springs - Making more float and less compression (ie none with a gap) on the side springs can make the car feel easier to drive, similar to going to softer springs.
My dad raced for his second ever night racing on friday. It was great fun using some of the above advice to help my dad with his Atom Pro. The other thing we did was set his power to around 50%. I was proud of how he did and that he was able to not finish last and beat several people :)
I used the top setup listed to the left of this page, 'Atom CC BRCA 18/19 Prima' with some of the changes I suggest above added to it:
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