SETUP GUIDE

FORMULA HYBRID 2017

Written by David Domínguez

24/03/2017
FORMULA HYBRID 2017 SETUP GUIDE

In this document, we’ll provide some information regarding the car and basic setup
recommendations.

Important
First of all, the baseline setup is pretty balanced. Before you make any change, do some laps and
get used to the track, until you can manage to repeat the same laptimes.

It’s also very important, when adjusting the car setup, to make one change at time. If you make
several changes, it will be difficult to understand the effect of your changes, in contrast to
adjusting one by one. Also, a setup is always a compromise; sometimes when you improve one
area, the car may get worse in another area.

Tyres
Make sure you use the tyre blankets, always. The ideal tyre pressure is around 24 psi, and
optimal tyre temperatures are the following:

Compound Temperature
UltraSoft 94 ºC
SuperSoft 97 ºC
Soft 100 ºC
Medium 103 ºC
Hard 106 ºC

As you can see, there is a gap of just 3 degrees between compounds. Also, optimal window is
quite wide, meaning that managing the temperatures isn’t as important as in past seasons. The
time gap between compounds is around 0.4-0.6 seconds.

Besides peak characteristics, changing tyre pressure will also change the tyre stiffness; think
about this like if you change the stiffness of a spring. Less pressure = softer spring rate, more
pressure = higher spring rate. At 20 psi, the spring rates of the tyres are 288 N/mm for the front
tyre and 340 N/mm for the rear. Each additional psi will add 12.75 N/mm and 13.5 N/mm
respectively.

Alignments
Essentially, adding more camber (towards more negative value) will add grip, especially during
turn in and mid corner. If you need more front grip at mid corner, then increase front camber or
reduce rear one, and the other way around if you need more rear grip to add extra stability.

Toe represents the direction of the tyres pointed in relation to the center-line of the car. For
stability reasons, it’s desired to have a bit of toe-in at the front (negative value) and toe-out at
the rear (positive). Toe is a good tool to adjust the behavior in straight line and corner entry.
Suspension
The Formula Hybrid features 4 corner springs, 2 heave springs (or also called 3rd spring) and two
antiroll bars. We recommend to use corner springs and ARB to adjust the behavior on roll, and
use the heave springs to adjust the car heights at speed in straight line.

A stiffer car will help the car aerodynamics, keeping a more constant ride height, and softer
suspension will provide more mechanical grip. Depending the circuit characteristics, you may
need stiffer or softer settings (stiffer settings for tracks with fast corners, and softer settings for
tracks with many traction and slow zones).

Aerodynamics
Downforce levels have increased massively compared to past F1 seasons, which will allow you
to take high speed corners at amazing speeds.

The front wing has 30 standard settings, giving plenty of room to adjust the aero balance. The
rear wing has just 4 settings (very low downforce, low downforce, medium downforce, high
downforce). Higher settings will bring more downforce, but also more drag, or in other words,
the car will be able to go quicker through corners, but slower in straight line. Low settings are
recommended for tracks with long straights and few corners, and high settings for tracks with
many corners of medium and high speed.

For each rear wing setting, we recommend the following front wing angles, to maintain a similar
aero balance:

Front Wing Rear Wing

Ride heights are also an important aerodynamic feature. Peak downforce happens with the car
pitched down, with the front kissing the ground and the rear at about 70mm. You are obviously
not going to corner at those heights, but at initial peak braking you won’t be far. To change the
aerodynamic balance, lowering the front will move the aero balance to the front (more
oversteer at speed), and raising it will have the opposite reaction. The rear isn’t so sensitive
aerodynamically as the front (1mm change at the front equals to about 3mm change at the rear),
but it’s important to keep a similar pitch angle as the default setup.

Brakes
Brake balance is another tool to adjust the braking of the car. If you lock the fronts too much,
try reducing the brake pressure, and/or move the brake bias to the back. If the rear is unstable
on straight braking, then move the brake bias to the front (bigger number).
Differential
The differential can adjust the car behavior on and off throttle. To adjust the behavior on power,
focus on the Diff Power values. Lowering the values will give more power to the non spinning
wheel, adding traction. And if you want to focus on what happens when you release the throttle,
then tweak the Diff Coast settings. Higher values will make the car more stable off throttle,
adding some entry understeer. Lowering the values will have the opposite result, making the
rear more lively and moving the balance towards oversteer when you release the throttle.

ERS modes
Our car has different settings. We added 3 settings for race conditions (low, medium and high),
and a specific ERS mode for some tracks. This will make the ERS usage more effective over one
lap in those tracks. There is also a mode named “charging” where the car won’t use the electrical
power at all.

Steer Assist
Steer Assist is an option that we added in our mod that allows you to control the FFB curve. As
the dynamic range of forces is very high due to the huge downforce levels, some may find the
FFB weak in low speed corners. If that’s what you feel, then lower the Steer Assist value in order
to boost lower forces! In the following chart, you can see the effect of Steer Assist over the final
FFB output when using different values (10%, 20%, 40%, 60%, 80% and 100%, which is linear).