https://simracingarnout.shop/b/Zbemj

Read more

“Does the front anti-roll bar remove my oversteer?”

Yes.

“But does it also create too much oversteer somewhere else?”

Yes.

“So do I need to change something else to offset that anti-roll bar change?”

Yes.

“But what?”

It depends...

And this is where I stop typing, because it becomes a maze of explanations that even a 110-page book cannot fully cover.

A big question I keep asking myself is whether the default setup provided by a simulator is the right starting point.

It comes with a set of parameters, and that becomes your baseline.

Maybe it’s a good baseline. Maybe it’s not.

The point is that everyone starts from that default configuration, depending on the simulator and the car.

My first solution was the Art of Car Setups and its 7-Step Process.

You follow a build order and search for specific clues while tuning the car.

The goal is that you successfully tune a car and feel it becoming different as you apply each change.

But after building hundreds of car setups for ACC and LMU, and now exploring PMR and AC Evo.. no, I’m not married to LMU..I started seeing connections between settings.

A stiff front ARB combined with more rear ride height, stiff rebound and positive brake bias gives the car a specific rotation profile.

But how do I explain that to someone?

There is another problem with always building from the same baseline.

Certain settings can lock or prevent other changes from working properly.

For instance, with Hypercars in LMU, if the coast value on the differential is too low, you’ll be chasing your tail because the car keeps spinning in slow corners.

It’s actually Step 1 in the Art of Car Setups Hypercar Edition: increase the coast locking as you progress through the six steps of that guide.

I digress.

So how can we solve this?

I created Entry Points for car setups.

Instead of reading a dry definition of individual parameters, you can copy an Entry Point and start building from an entirely different foundation.

This example is the Stable Entry preset.

It aims for stable entry through:

• 60% rear rebound

• 70% front bump

• Stiffer front springs

• A stiffer front ARB

• A safe brake bias

Depending on the car, it could still rotate nicely because of the rake and 80% rear wing.

Take note: this might not be the case at all.

If you copy this into LMU, ACC, PMR, AC Evo, rFactor or AMS2 or even Raceroom, you may need to push certain values even further.

But based on real race-car theory, these settings AIM the car towards safe, stable entry.

These Entry Points are not finished setups.

They are deliberately different starting philosophies that allow you to make changes differently and give you a new perspective on the existing setups.

So many times, I created setups and completely forgot that my brake bias was too low. It forced me towards other settings that weren’t optimal.

If I had started with a different set of parameters, I could have shaped the car differently instead.

Maybe into a setup that was both more stable and faster.

The Stable Entry preset is only one of the seven Entry Points.

Inside the Art of Car Setups, I’ve added six more:

• High-Speed Stability

• Mechanical Rotation

• High-Downforce Rotation

• Kerb and Bump Compliance

• Top Speed

• Aggressive Baseline

Each one gives you a completely different foundation before you begin the 7-Step Process.

Instead of always trying to repair the simulator’s default setup, you can start from a setup that already aims towards the behaviour you want.

PS

In less than 24 hours, the price of the Art of Car Setups will increase because of all the editions and material added over time.

Get the Art of Car Setups before the price increases.

[Start building your own GT3 Car setups with a system]

Already own the Art of Car Setups?

The Entry Points are included in your update. Open your original purchase receipt and use the download link again to get the latest version.

Cheers,

Arnout

But how can you understand what the current setup is trying to do just by looking at it?

In this newsletter, I want to teach you a new concept:

that will help you understand car setups better and make faster and more informed adjustments without wasting time

CAR SETUP AIM

Before I can explain Car Setup Aim, you first need to understand slider behaviour and how setup ranges differ between simulations.

Let’s use rear ride height as an example.

In LMU, it might say 7.0 cm.

That number by itself tells you almost nothing.

But then you discover that:

• The minimum is 5.0 cm

• The maximum is 7.5 cm

• The current value is 7.0 cm

Now the number means something.

The rear ride height is sitting close to the top of its available range.

In AC EVO, this is easier to see because the setting is displayed as a slider. You can immediately see whether it is near its minimum, around 50%, or almost maxed out.

Now apply this thinking to every adjustable value on the setup screen.

Each parameter sits somewhere within its available range: 20%, 50%, 90%, minimum or maximum.

But that still doesn’t tell you whether the setup is good or bad.

It is simply a collection of values that work together to create a certain type of car behaviour.

And in a good racing simulation, the strength of those effects will differ between cars.

For example, adding 10 mm of rear ride height to the Ferrari 296 in LMU is a massive change. It can make the car extremely unstable through fast corners.

Adding the same 10 mm to the Lexus might do surprisingly little.

The strength of the effect is different, but both changes have the same basic aim:

More rear ride height aims the car toward oversteer.

That does not guarantee the car will oversteer. It means this individual adjustment is pushing the balance in that direction.

And that distinction is the foundation of Car setup aim.

Setup aim is not the setup result

A high rear ride height may aim toward oversteer, but the setup could simultaneously have:

• A high rear wing

• Soft rear springs

• A soft rear anti-roll bar

• Plenty of rear toe-in

Those settings all aim toward rear stability or understeer.

So the car might still understeer, despite having a rear ride height that aims toward oversteer.

You are not looking for one magical number.

You are reading the direction in which every parameter is trying to push the car.

An oversteer-aimed Setup

Imagine you open a setup and see:

• Soft front springs

• Stiff rear springs

• A low brake-bias value, moving the bias rearward

• Very little rear toe-in, or even slight rear toe-out

• More than 3 cm of rake between the front and rear ride heights

• Reduced rear spring travel (added packers lmu)

All these settings aim to make the car rotate more easily.

This does not guarantee that the car will oversteer. The car itself might naturally understeer, or other parameters may counteract these settings.

But by glancing at this configuration, you can see that the setup is aimed toward oversteer.

The same principle works in the opposite direction.

An understeer-aimed setup

Imagine you see:

• Stiff front springs

• Soft rear springs

• Very little difference between the front and rear ride heights

• Maximum rear wing

• A large amount of rear toe-in

• More rear suspension travel from using fewer rear packers

• A high brake-bias value, moving the bias forward

These settings generally aim to make the rear more stable and reduce the car’s willingness to rotate.

The car might still oversteer because of its underlying characteristics of that particular car

But the setup is aimed toward understeer.

What Does This Tell You?

Let’s say you drive a few laps and find that the car understeers.

You open the setup screen and see almost no rake (front & rear ride height difference), soft rear springs, a high rear wing setting and plenty of rear toe-in.

Now the behaviour makes sense: the car understeers because much of the setup is aimed toward understeer.

But what if the car still understeers while the setup is already aimed aggressively toward oversteer?

That tells you something completely different.

You know the obvious adjustments have already been made. You may need to push the setup aim even further, investigate which parameters have the strongest effect on that specific car, or accept that some of the understeer comes from the car’s underlying characteristics.

This is why understanding Car Setup Aim is so useful.

You are no longer looking at every setting in isolation. You are reading the setup as a complete direction:

Is this setup trying to make the car rotate, or is it trying to keep the rear stable?

Once you can see that direction, the setup screen stops being a wall of meaningless numbers.

Want to stop guessing which setting to change?

The Art of Car Setups gives you a clear system for building, changing and testing car setups.

It’s an interactive PDF with video links and unique explanatory models that shortcut your understanding about car setups in racing simulations

without forcing you through 497 pages of dry definitions.

P.S. Next week, the price increases to reflect everything that has been added

[Learn The Art of Car Setups here]

Cheers

Arnout

How do you know when you’ve gone too low?

And why would you ever raise the front if a lower car should theoretically be faster?

Let’s start with why we want the front low in the first place.

First reason: Center of gravity.

Think of the center of gravity as the average height of the car’s mass above the track.

The higher that mass sits, the more the car wants to transfer load from the inside tires to the outside tires when cornering.

Lowering the car lowers its center of gravity, reduces this load transfer, and generally helps the car produce more cornering grip.

Second reason: Aerodynamics

Imagine the front splitter of a GT3, LMP or Hypercar and look at the small gap between the splitter and the track.

That gap is extremely important.

As you lower the front of the car, you can improve how the airflow interacts with the splitter and the floor underneath the car.

Get the front ride height into its optimal aerodynamic window, and you can get:

• More front downforce

• Better airflow underneath the car

• More high-speed cornering grip

• A more consistent aerodynamic platform

But there is a limit.

Lower is not always better.

Front ride height is constantly changing

Changing the front ride height setting isn’t your only way of controlling the actual ride height of the car.

Imagine the splitter at different moments around a lap.

The car might have 50 mm of front ride height while standing still.

But under heavy braking, load transfers forward and compresses the front suspension. That 50 mm might suddenly become 20 mm or even 15 mm.

At high speed, aerodynamic load can also push the car closer to the track.

So the actual front ride height is constantly changing depending on:

Speed, braking, acceleration, bumps, aero load and suspension movement.

This is where spring stiffness becomes important.

I recently did a lot of retuning on the Lexus GT3 in LMU. On many tracks I ended up running slightly more front ride height combined with stiffer front springs.

Why?

Because I wasn’t just trying to raise the static ride height. I wanted to control how far the front of the car could compress dynamically.

Previously, the front could get too close to the track and start bottoming out.

And when that happens, you can get:

• Top-speed loss from excessive drag or floor contact

• Loss or instability of aerodynamic performance

• Strange oversteer behaviour during corner entry

• An unpredictable rear in high-speed sections

So sometimes the solution isn’t simply:

“Raise the front ride height.”

It can be:

Raise the front slightly + increase front spring stiffness or/and a few mm of front packers

Now you’ve changed both the starting position of the aerodynamic platform and how much that platform moves around the lap.

So what’s the perfect front ride height?

There isn’t a number.

The perfect front ride height is as low as you can run it without bottoming out or making the aero platform unstable.

Start by lowering the front as much as you can. This helps keep the center of gravity low and can improve aerodynamic performance.

Then test the car.

If you start seeing:

• Bottoming out under braking

• Unstable high-speed corners

• Strange entry oversteer

• Top-speed loss

You’ve probably gone too low.

How do you stop it from bottoming out?

Instead of immediately raising the front ride height, first try controlling how much the front compresses.

• Stiffer front springs reduce dive under braking.

• Front packers limit suspension travel before the car reaches the floor.

• More bump damping slows how quickly the front compresses into heavy braking zones.

The goal is to keep the splitter in its optimal ride-height window for as much of the lap as possible.

Want to actually build a GT3 setup?

I made a full video showing you the 3-step process I use to build a GT3 setup from scratch.

And I created a free one-page build-order cheat sheet you can keep next to you while setting up the car.

Watch the GT3 setup video + get the free build-order guide

https://simracingarnout.shop/b/3step-system

Cheers

Arnout

A quick reminder about the LMU GT3 V3.0 upgrade codes.

On August 12, all current upgrade codes will be disabled, including the 100% free upgrade codes and loyalty discount codes.

Why am I removing them?

These codes were created specifically for existing customers who purchased previous versions of my setup packs.

Unfortunately, I’ve started seeing codes being used by people who were not previous customers.

This is especially a problem with the 100% free upgrade codes. Once a code gets shared, I have very little control over who uses it.

So instead of leaving these codes active indefinitely, I’m going to disable all current V3.0 upgrade codes on August 12.

If you legitimately received a 100% free upgrade or loyalty discount code from me and haven’t used it yet, you have 3 days left.

Didn’t receive your code?

Some of my original upgrade emails bounced.

If you believe you qualified for a free upgrade or loyalty discount but never received the email, please reach out to me.

I don’t want legitimate customers to miss their upgrade simply because the email didn’t make it through.

If you’ve already upgraded to V3.0, you don’t need to buy anything again.

Already on V3.0?

I’ve recently made a lot of setup changes to the BMW and McLaren GT3 packs.

If you already have the V3.0 version, go back to your original purchase receipt and redownload your setups to get the latest versions.

Keep an eye on the update log or Discord to see if your setup packs have received any recent updates here

PS

The next newsletters will be back to the good stuff: car setups, setup engineering, car behaviour, and getting faster on track.

More setup knowledge coming soon.

Cheers,

Arnout

If you want to know what will happen to your setup packs over the coming months, you’ll want to read this article.

Back in November 2025, I launched the GT3 Skill Level V2.0 setup packs. These are premium car setups spread across five skill levels, bringing a hierarchy of configurations that you can use to either find lap time or gain confidence in the rear of the car.

After the launch, Le Mans Ultimate introduced a completely new tire model just one month later. Since then, I’ve updated every setup pack, added new tracks, improved the setup solver, and continued learning through league races, sprint races, and endurance events. Along the way, I received a lot of customer feedback, which helped me keep improving the setups.

I also added a race strategy guide, and for most GT3 cars I’ve included wet presets.

In April 2026, I started creating the V2.0 Hypercar Skill Level packs as well, and more recently I added the first LMP3 packs. There are still two LMP3 cars left to finish.

Creating a Skill Level pack takes a lot of time, but it’s also something I enjoy greatly. It allows me to create five different versions of the same car that match different skill levels and driving preferences.

Skill Level setups aren’t special in isolation.

Their strength comes from the spread between the five levels. You jump on track, try a few levels, and immediately have a hierarchy of aggression to choose from before joining a race. My goal has always been to serve the 90% of casual sim racers who don’t want to spend hours creating setups themselves.

Why V3.0?

A Porsche setup pack that was originally created in November 2025 can’t realistically be updated forever.

That’s where the V3.0 setup packs come in.

With the LMU 1.4 update introducing two new tracks, I decided it was the right time to create a new platform for future updates instead of endlessly expanding the original packs.

The V2.0 packs still work perfectly fine.

However, ongoing maintenance, future track additions, setup improvements, and new content will happen in the V3.0 packs. If you’re happy with your current V2.0 setups, there’s no pressure to upgrade. But if you want future track releases, ongoing refinements, and the latest improvements, V3.0 is where all future GT3 development will take place.

Whenever you receive an update, you can simply go back to your original receipt and download the latest version. Every ZIP file contains the date of the last update, and on the website you’ll find an update log showing exactly what has changed for each setup pack.

This Is Just the Beginning

The current V3.0 setup packs include the two new LMU 1.4 tracks: Daytona and Laguna Seca.

Although the new tracks are finished, my work on the GT3 packs certainly isn’t.

Over the coming months, I want to continue testing every GT3 car. After hundreds of hours of driving and testing, I already know that some cars could benefit from different traction control settings, fuel ratio tweaks, small damper adjustments, and many other refinements to make sure you’re getting the best possible configuration for every track.

I also want to create new knowledge videos for most GT3 cars.

Loyalty Upgrades

Last week, everyone who purchased a GT3 setup pack within the last 90 days received a free upgrade to V3.0.

Customers who purchased their setup packs in Q1 2026 received a 50% loyalty discount on upgrades.

You should already have received an email about this.

Unfortunately, some emails bounced, and that’s something I still need to improve. At the moment, if an email bounces, I have no way of reaching you.

If you didn’t receive an email but think you’re eligible for a free or discounted upgrade, please send me a message on Discord or contact me using another email address.

The Goal

The V3.0 packs will continue to receive updates, and every change will be listed in the update log.

The setup video attached to each car will also be integrated into the Setup Solver instead of being a separate video.

Please use the Setup Solver to make your own adjustments as well.

The goal has always been to give you a setup pack that gets you started with a car, after which you can bend and tweak it to your own preferences instead of relying entirely on me for every small update.

The truth is, if you’ve driven the Mercedes GT3 for 300 laps around Laguna Seca, you’ll probably have more experience with that specific combination than I do. The Setup Solver is there to help you translate that experience into setup changes without having to start from scratch.

My goal has never been to sell a setup pack and move on. I want these packs to continue improving as Le Mans Ultimate evolves and as I continue learning. Every update, every test session, and every race teaches me something new, and whenever those lessons are worth sharing, they’ll find their way into the V3.0 packs.

Hypercars

The Hypercar packs will remain on V2.0 for the time being, and I’ll continue updating those as well.

One of my next goals is to create wet setups for every Hypercar before moving them to the next stage.

Thank you again to everyone who has supported my work. I hope these setup packs continue to make your racing more enjoyable, and I’m looking forward to improving them even further over the coming months.

P.S.
Not everyone qualified for a free or discounted upgrade, and I didn’t want those customers to miss out completely.

If you’d still like to move to the GT3 V3.0 packs, here’s a 15% loyalty discount.

Coupon code: ACKT3ZO5CU15 (expires in 14 days)

https://simracingarnout.shop/collection/lmgt3-setups-v3-0

Arnout

Brake Thermal System

The braking behavior in LMU, especially in the LMP3 cars, has sometimes felt inconsistent.

You could brake at the same marker for lap after lap, only to suddenly lock a wheel on lap 10 without changing your inp…

Read more

Long before I started my YouTube channel, I was racing in Assetto Corsa, iRacing, and eventually Assetto Corsa Competizione.

I never felt truly confident in most cars.

Some would snap over a kerb.

Others became nervous through high-speed corners.

Some felt comfortable, but they were simply slow.

Like many people, I bought “fast setups.” They helped a little, but I was never really confident in the car I was driving.

I also wasn’t someone who could practice five hours every day.

I raced two evenings a week, maybe a weekend, and spent most of my time in ACC on Low Fuel Motorsport.

I’d often qualify in Split 2 or 3 out of 10 splits. The pace was there.

Then, five or ten laps into the race...

I’d lose the rear.

Spin.

Race over.

Meanwhile, everyone around me seemed able to keep their cars under control.

I assumed they were simply better drivers.

So I searched YouTube.

The advice was almost always the same:

“Just learn to drive better.”

“Setups only matter when you’re already fast.”

I think that idea held me back for years.

I didn’t need setups to become faster.

I needed setups to build a car I could actually trust.

That completely changed how I approached sim racing.

Going Deeper

I started experimenting with every setup adjustment I could find.

Some changes worked.

Others made the car worse.

Most explanations stopped at “this adds understeer” or “this creates more rotation,” without explaining why.

So I went deeper.

Far deeper than sim racing.

I started studying race engineering instead of sim racing tutorials.

Tire dynamics.

Vehicle dynamics.

Aerodynamics.

Even educational research on how experts learn complex systems.

The deeper I went, the more one thing became obvious.

Car setup isn’t difficult because each adjustment is complicated.

It’s difficult because everything works together.

Every adjustment influences several others.

Beginners don’t know where to start.

So they change everything.

Then they have no idea what actually solved the problem.

You need to understand the whole system.

But beginners don’t understand the whole system.

And even when experienced engineers do understand it, they often struggle to answer one simple question:

Why are we changing the differential now?

Why not brake bias?

Why not dampers?

Why this adjustment before another?

That missing order frustrated me more than the technical knowledge itself.

The sequence didn’t exist.

Or at least, nobody had explained it clearly.

The Turning Point

After hundreds of videos...

Thousands of hours of testing.

Countless mistakes.

I finally understood why I was making each change.

For the first time, I wasn’t guessing.

Instead I could think:

• High-speed instability? Look at rake.

• Nervous corner entry? Dynamic rake and spring travel

• Poor low-speed traction? Differential and rear suspension.

The list kept growing.

The car no longer surprised me over kerbs.

High-speed corners stopped feeling dangerous

Trail braking became something I could lean on instead of fear.

If the rear stepped out, I usually knew why.

And more importantly...

I knew where to look first.

The confidence changed everything.

Not just my lap times.

My racing.

I could attack every lap knowing what the car was going to do before I turned the wheel.

Once I stopped thinking about surviving the car...

I finally had enough mental capacity to become a better driver.

I began noticing other cars struggling.

Drivers fighting unstable entries.

Snapping on throttle.

Correcting slides that I no longer had to think about.

Some were still faster than me.

But many weren’t finishing races.

I realised the biggest advantage wasn’t raw pace.

It was trust.

A predictable car lets you push closer to the limit, lap after lap.

Why This Channel Exists

That obsession eventually became this YouTube channel.

I wanted to explain car setups the way I wished someone had explained them to me years earlier.

Not as isolated adjustments.

Not as lists of “add understeer” or “add rotation.”

But as a logical system.

One where every adjustment has a purpose.

One where you always know why you’re making the next change.

I’m still learning how to teach it better.

I’m still refining that system.

And I’m still applying it across every sim racing title I can get my hands on.

Because the goal was never to build the fastest setup.

It was to build a car I could trust.

That way of thinking eventually became two different projects.

If you simply want a car you can trust, my Skill Level Setup Packs are built around exactly that idea. Stable, predictable setups that match your experience level instead of chasing one qualifying lap.

https://simracingarnout.shop/

If you want to understand why those setups work, I wrote The Art of Car Setups. It’s the engineering system I wish someone had taught me years ago. Not a list of setup changes, but a way of thinking that helps you approach any car with confidence.

https://simracingarnout.shop/build-your-own-car-setup

Whether you want to drive faster today or learn the engineering behind it for years to come, both exist for the same reason:

To help you stop surviving the car, and start trusting it.

I raced the MX-5, spent time in the Skip Barber series, and drove the F3 cars quite a bit

But when my second son was born, I simply ran out of time. The constant subscription costs, buying tracks over and over again, and eventually the rise of Assetto Corsa Competizione and Le Mans Ultimate through LFM made me slowly move away from iRacing completely.

Today, after spending well over 1000 hours in both ACC and LMU, I get asked this question a lot.

So in this article, I’ll explain why I will probably never touch iRacing again.

For reference, I still have a B License, around 1600 iRating, although that has been dropping for years now.

The last time I jumped into the new BMW GT3 at Spa, I managed a 2:17.4.

I honestly have no idea if that is still considered fast.

Car Setups And Driving Style

One thing that frustrates me in iRacing is how little influence I feel I have over the car.

The setup parameters often feel like they have very limited effect, especially compared to ACC or LMU.

And then there is the tire model.

I know this might upset hardcore iRacing fans, but I personally cannot stand the way the cold tire behavior works.

Apparently, you can’t spin the tires leaving the pits to heat them up, because when the outer tire surface gets too hot compared to the carcass temperature, you lose grip.

To me, that simply feels fake

Then, once you actually start driving, I constantly feel punished.

Steer too aggressively?

Spin.

Ask too much from the front tires?

Spin.

Push slightly over the limit?

Spin.

And maybe that is realistic.

But to me, it feels like the sim forces you into becoming a passive driver.

Always under the limit.

Always careful.

And I know people will argue realism.

But let’s be honest.

Not a single sim is truly realistic.

I personally dislike the fact that I need 4 laps just to get tires into a temperature window where I can finally feel whether an anti-roll bar adjustment actually changed something.

I simply do not enjoy that experience.

Once the tires are working properly, I understand why people love it.

The force feedback becomes rewarding.

The car starts communicating.

I get why people enjoy it.

It just is not for me.

And this still is not even the biggest reason why I stopped playing.

Stopping The Car

Another thing I struggle with is braking.

In iRacing, you often cannot brake at 100%.

And this makes very little sense to me.

From an engineering perspective, race cars running 200+ km/h have massive brake discs and huge brake pads for one reason.

You need enormous braking force.

In real life, when entering a heavy braking zone, race drivers hit the brakes extremely hard.

Yes, as speed decreases, you start bleeding off pressure.

That part makes sense.

But the idea that I should never hit maximum brake pressure simply feels wrong to me.

If I am driving a race car, I expect to slam the brakes hard.

That is part of racing.

Immersion

The immersion simply does not connect with me.

The sound feels flat.

I constantly find myself late on upshifts because I struggle hearing the engine properly.

There is not enough depth in the experience.

When I drive Hypercars in LMU or jump into Assetto Corsa EVO, I genuinely believe more that I am driving an actual race car.

Now to be fair:

One thing iRacing absolutely does very well is VR.

VR performance is genuinely excellent.

And honestly, that is one of the only reasons I occasionally tiptoe back into iRacing just to test visuals. Because I want to keep testing these Pimax headsets.

But beyond that…

The graphics feel outdated.

The lighting looks old.

The shadows feel flat.

The track environments no longer feel premium to me.

Price

This is not even my biggest issue.

But when I combine everything I already mentioned…

The pricing becomes very difficult to justify.

Monthly subscriptions.

Buying cars.

Buying tracks.

Constant spending.

We all know how expensive it gets.

And when I compare that to the actual experience I get…

I simply disagree with the value proposition.

Focus

This is the real reason.

Trust me.

When you run a setup shop, offer private coaching, race competitively, create YouTube content, write newsletters like this, and continuously study vehicle dynamics…

You quickly realize that focusing on multiple simulators spreads you thin.

How can I truly go deep into a simulator if I try doing all of them?

My setup shop and premium guides make the content possible.

They make this lifestyle possible.

And if I suddenly start supporting iRacing as well…

Everything suffers.

The quality drops everywhere.

This is ultimately the biggest reason why I do not play iRacing.

This is the determining factor.

When Would I Play iRacing Again?

So what would make me return?

I would seriously consider coming back if the following happened:

• Major improvements to the tire model and physics system

• A complete graphics overhaul with modern lighting and visuals

• Better netcode and collision behavior during close racing

• A pricing model where I no longer have to purchase every single track separately

• Serious failure of competing sims like Assetto Corsa EVO or Le Mans Ultimate

• Better setup freedom and clearer feedback from setup changes

• Faster tire warm-up behavior that allows meaningful testing immediately or tire warmers option.

Final Thoughts

I do not want to offend iRacing fans.

If you enjoy the platform, that is completely fine.

This article is not meant to be hostile.

I fully understand why many people love iRacing.

But after years of driving other simulators, learning car setups deeply, and building my business around sim racing…

I simply prefer other platforms.

That is how I see it.

For now, I’ll continue focusing heavily on LMU and AC EVO

And if you want to experience the result of thousands of hours of testing, you can check out all my setup packs and premium setup guides below.

https://simracingarnout.shop/

Cheers,

Arnout

And I couldn’t disagree more with my first runs with every LMP3 car.

We currently have the Ligier, Ginetta, Duqueine and the ADESS.

In this article, I’m going to explain my first experiences, my frustration, and solutions so you can actually enjoy them best.

Default setups:

Imagine the following: you start racing on default setups, and any LMP3 car does the same frustrating thing. Like me, I kind of only drove the Ligier on the ELMS release.

So I drove out, started calm, driving intentionally under the limit, feeling the downforce.

Where to brake, how much steer lock can I use, how to hit the throttle, and these were my findings on pretty much all the cars:

LMP3 cars have a much greater downforce element compared to GT3, though once you drive slower, that downforce starts to disappear and your grip is reliant on mechanical grip.

Think anti-roll bar and spring (damper) settings.

You feel confident in faster corners, you start to feel the wheel get heavy in high downforce sections, and you start THROWING the car into corners, because the cars can do it with the downforce. Here is also where lap time comes in.

After 3 to 5 laps I start pushing harder, and harder, there seems to be no limit to this.

But then you shift a braking point a bit later, and SNAP… gone car, into the barrier, and I’m dead.

No warning.

No sign of lock up.

No FFB signal hinting that this would start to happen.

Even with the FFB app that could warn you better, you still have to have ninja reflexes to catch that entry snap.

I’ve been sim racing for years. I’m not esport material, but I did over 3k hours of racing and I’m always driving in the highest split. And when cars act like this, I just know that my community and others will face this horrific character of these cars, and they all do it.

How do you solve this?

By being a better driver, and getting this snap experience 89 times, then you can build on memory that you should not brake or turn in like that.

And that is not racing, that is memorization. Cars should warn you. Maybe it’s real, but it is a killer for enjoyment.

The easiest thing you can do, and this applies to every LMP car, is adding brake bias. Most of my runs I had to add +2 points to the front bias, meaning 48-52 needs to become 50-50. And for exits adding +1 TC cut helps a lot too.

The problem with this is that your higher speed entries are also going to suffer understeer, which forces you to throw the car more into the corner, which costs you time, and forces you to push your rear tires over the slip angle limit, which was something you were trying to solve with brake bias.

You see the irony here?

The only way to truly solve it is to create a softer rear suspension and a stiffer front suspension.

LMP3 cars are mega sensitive for road elevation changes, they are like go-karts, there is no suspension, they are mega stiff. When you jump over bumps or drive Sebring it just doesn’t want to drive there, they jump weirdly, and never settle after a kerb.

If you soften rear ARB, rear springs, and stiffen up the front, you introduce an environment where the rear tires will have more road contact than the front tires.

If you then brake hard, or trail brake into corners, the rears stick, and the front locks up when you overdo it. This way you slightly overbrake, but you can keep going.

You lose out on lap time, but the default setups have pretty much always guaranteed an entry snap on every race that I did. Trust me, I see lots of LMPs spin for this reason. Being safe, and a bit slower, will make you win, unless you are a born LMP3 talent, which most of us ain’t.

With all the stiff front suspension on the front we get a lot of understeer in the car, it doesn’t want to turn that nicely.

When running a higher rear wing, you add the max rear ride height and lowest front, most of that understeer will disappear.

Together with a 4-7 or 5-7 TC the car rotates nicely on throttle.

This way you have a mega safe LMP3 that you can actually enjoy.

The best car I think is the Ginetta, but only on your own setups. It wants to rotate greatly, but it does have the snap tendency; setups can save the car. I think it’s the best one, because you’re sitting on the left, which we all should sit anyway…

No offence

As for the safest default car I pick the Duqueine, and the slowest car seems to be the ADESS, but again, default setups, limited time driven.

If you are constantly fighting random entry snaps, spinning under braking, and simply not enjoying these cars…

Stop blaming yourself first.

Default setups can make these cars unnecessarily difficult to drive.

Download my free setups below, and if you like what you feel, I included a discount inside (valid till the 10th of July)

Free Silverstone Ginetta pack

Full skill level setup pack LMP3 Ginetta

Cheers.

Arnout

“Your driving style doesn’t fit the car.”

“You need to change your driving style.”

“That setup works for my driving style.”

But what does that even mean?

Because most of the time, driving style is used as this vague magic word.

Like it explains everything.

But if we want to actually improve, we need to break it down.

Because you cannot change something you cannot see.

Or even worse.

If you cannot identify your habits, you will keep repeating them forever.

Driving style is not one thing.

It is a collection of hundreds of small decisions you make every lap, every corner.

How early you brake.

How hard your initial brake input is.

How quickly you release brake pressure.

How much steering angle you use.

How aggressively you apply throttle.

How much speed you carry into the apex.

How you shift gears.

How much rotation you ask from the rear of the car.

But these are the obvious ones.

The subtle ones are often what define driving style the most.

How fast do you apply steering lock while releasing the brakes?

Does your brake release have a sudden drop at the end?

Do you trail brake simply because you know you should…

Or are you actually using it intentionally to control the behavior of the car?

Do you downshift early to use engine braking?

Or do you let revs fall and aggressively downshift multiple gears?

Why Is Driving Style So Hard To Change?

We are creatures of habit.

When we first jump into a simulation, we start driving.

And because we are new, we make mistakes.

Big ones.

No one gets it right the first time.

Some people have more knowledge.

Some have more talent.

But eventually, we all start learning the same way.

We make an input.

The car gives feedback.

We react.

We adjust.

And over time, those adjustments slowly become habits.

But how exactly do habits form?

Imagine a groove carved into a piece of wood.

You drag a knife through it once.

Then twice.

Then fifty times.

Then hundreds of times.

Eventually the groove becomes deeper.

And now the knife naturally wants to follow the same path.

That is exactly what happens with driving.

You repeat certain inputs over hundreds of laps.

And eventually those patterns become automatic.

Without even realizing it, your brain starts defaulting to those same habits over and over again.

That is your driving style.

The Dangerous Part

Most drivers think they are consciously driving the car.

But a huge part of what you do is automated.

Your brain is no longer actively thinking about every single input.

You have built patterns.

And those patterns now control how you drive.

I notice this myself.

Because I switch cars constantly.

One thing I sometimes struggle with is my initial braking phase.

Sometimes I hesitate slightly on the first brake input.

Sometimes the bleed-off is not smooth enough.

And because I have repeated that behavior enough times…

My brain keeps falling back into that same groove.

That same habit pattern.

Even when I know I should be doing something else.

And this is why changing driving style is so difficult.

You are fighting a habit that has been reinforced hundreds or thousands of times.

Why Setup Still Matters

At this point you might think:

So if driving style creates these behaviors… setup does not matter?

No.

Because changing driving style is hard.

Your habits are built over hundreds, sometimes thousands of laps.

You do not suddenly wake up and brake differently.

Or release the brake more smoothly.

Or stop overdriving the corner entry.

That takes time.

But the setup?

That can change instantly.

And this is where setup becomes powerful.

A driver who brakes aggressively and overloads the front tires often needs a more stable car.

A smoother driver can handle a sharper, more aggressive setup.

Neither driver is wrong.

They simply interact with the car differently.

This is exactly why I build setup levels.

Not every driver should use the same setup.

A lower level driver often has habits they are not fully aware of yet.

And an aggressive setup will simply punish those habits.

A more forgiving setup gives confidence.

Consistency.

And room to improve.

One of the biggest mistakes in sim racing is chasing the fastest setup.

Instead of chasing the setup that works for the driver you are today.

Because changing your habits takes time.

Changing your setup takes five seconds.

The Way Out Starts With Awareness

The first step is awareness.

Stopping the autopilot.

Most drivers finish a lap and immediately think about lap time.

Very few drivers think about their own inputs.

What did I actually do there?

How quickly did I hit the brakes?

How much pressure did I apply initially?

How long did I stay on the brakes?

How fast did I release?

Did I apply steering lock too quickly while still carrying brake pressure?

Did I panic and add more steering because I felt I would miss the apex?

Did I coast?

Did I brake again?

How consistent are my downshifts?

Am I using engine braking intentionally?

Or am I simply reacting?

This is where something as simple as an input overlay becomes incredibly valuable.

Not to look at speed.

Not to look at lap time.

But to observe your own behavior.

A Real Example

Last month I gave a few coaching sessions.

One of the drivers was running one of my Level 4 setups.

A nicely balanced setup that works well for most drivers.

After evaluating his inputs, I noticed his entire corner entry behavior needed work.

The way he was braking.

The way he was bleeding off brake pressure.

The way he combined braking with steering.

After changing those habits, something interesting happened.

He suddenly found a much more natural rotation in the car.

Enough rotation for Level 4 to actually become too aggressive.

He had to move down a setup level.

How to change your driving style?

So how do you carve a new groove?

How do you actually change habits that have been repeated over hundreds of laps?

First.

Focus on just one input.

Not everything.

One.

For example.

Steering speed.

The next time you drive, ask yourself one simple question.

How fast am I steering?

As you approach the corner, notice what happens.

How quickly are you applying lock?

When you start unwinding the wheel, how fast does it come back?

Can you physically feel your left arm pushing the wheel upward?

Or your right arm pulling it down aggressively?

Most drivers have never consciously thought about this.

They simply do it.

And that is the entire problem.

Changing driving style requires conscious effort.

You need to interrupt behavior that normally happens automatically.

Try focusing on one input and start observing what you are doing unconsciously.

Another thing I personally do not use enough myself…

Watch your own replay.

Look at your steering.

Look at your brake trace.

Look at your throttle behavior.

Because very often the car is simply reacting to patterns you have repeated for hundreds of hours.

Using Setup To Shape Driving Style

This is exactly the philosophy behind my setup levels.

Because changing driving style takes time.

But setups can immediately change how the car reacts to your habits.

So there are two ways to use them.

Option 1.

Pick a lower setup level.

A more forgiving car.

A car that works with your current driving style.

This gives confidence.

Consistency.

It allows you to race comfortably without the car constantly punishing small mistakes.

Perfect for racing.

Option 2.

Move to a higher setup level.

A more aggressive car.

Maybe the rear becomes more nervous under braking.

Maybe corner entry suddenly feels unstable.

Maybe throttle application becomes more difficult.

Because the setup is forcing you to adapt.

You can no longer rely on old habits.

You are forced to become smoother.

Forced to improve brake release.

Forced to become more precise with steering.

In other words.

The setup starts training new behavior.

So think about setups in two ways.

One setup helps you race consistently today.

Another setup forces you to become a better driver tomorrow.

One gives confidence.

The other forces adaptation.

And understanding when to use both…It

is one of the fastest ways to improve.

Find Your Setup Level here

Cheers

Arnout

Every sim has its own simulation and feel to it. Some you might like, some you don’t, and some feel outright broken.

And I think for a lot of people…

This is frustrating as hell.

You spend hundreds, sometimes thousands, on a direct drive wheelbase.

You hear everyone say “this feels amazing.”

Then you jump into a sim…

and something feels wrong.

The wheel feels numb.

Or way too heavy.

One YouTube video tells you to add damping.

Another says remove friction.

Another guy says crank the force to 100%.

So you spend hours changing settings…

and slowly start convincing yourself your wheelbase has a problem.

Or the sim has bad force feedback.

Or worse…

You have absolutely no idea what you’re even supposed to feel in the first place.

My Experience

I’ve been sim racing for years.

Assetto Corsa,

Assetto Corsa Competizione,

iRacing,

Le Mans Ultimate,

and atm a few runs in Assetto Corsa EVO.

I’m using a Moza R9 V2 already for a long time.

I use pretty much the same base settings for every sim.

Building Reference Feelings

If you clicked on this article to figure out the best settings, I’ll leave you disappointed.

What I want to do instead is explain my take on it.

When you’re new to sim racing, new to using a wheelbase, or maybe you simply lack experience in a simulation and are basically a blank slate…

I suggest first getting used to your wheelbase.

To build reference feelings.

What are reference feelings?

Well, you hit the brakes…

start turning the wheel before a corner…

And you might feel your wheel giving resistance due to load transfer on the front wheels.

Overdo this…

And the wheel might give slight hints that the car is oversteering.

What The Wheel Is Telling You

Now you’re trying to change the car direction.

If you hit the throttle with a certain amount of steering lock…

you feel the wheel getting lighter because load transfers to the rear.

And this reduction in resistance gives you the feeling of understeer.

With high downforce cars, under high speed the steering gets heavier the faster you go.

Kerbs, banking in corners, bumps, or elevation changes…

all force the wheel in certain directions.

First Check Your Settings

To start exploring these feelings, and if you’re new with your wheelbase, make sure of 2 things first.

First, the lock of steering is 1 to 1 with the car and your sim.

Meaning your wheel lock degrees in-game match the software.

Second…

You want to make sure you’re not exceeding the FFB gain.

Meaning the game puts out a force, but your wheelbase cannot fully produce it due to a lack of NM.

For instance, my R9 has 100% in the Moza software.

But in-game it’s around 50%.

If I put the game at 100%, I’m clipping the wheelbase and losing feedback.

I still get the max 9NM…

but all the smaller details inside that force get lost because I maxed out the wheelbase.

Stronger wheelbases have advantages.

Not because you need crazy force…

But because you preserve more detail.

Build Experience First

If you got these things dialed in…

You need to start driving.

Get a feel for your wheel.

Get a feel for the simulation.

Try different cars.

Try different tracks.

Do races.

BUILD.

Build a reference for what you feel.

Use ChatGPT to explain what a certain setting does.

Only after dozens of hours…

You can maybe start making a tweak.

Because now you actually have something to compare against.

If you were already using 5 different settings from other people…

You get confused about what you should feel to begin with.

But after using default settings for dozens of hours…

You can actually compare.

And think:

well…

YouTuber X… Or platform Y

Your settings are good.

Or not.

Different Sims Feel Different

Different simulations give completely different force feedback.

And this part is highly subjective.

Some people claim Le Mans Ultimate has amazing force feedback.

Others say it’s disconnected.

And many people still say the original Assetto Corsa has the best force feedback ever made.

For instance, in Assetto Corsa EVO, there is this heavy cornering feeling the wheel gives in fast corners.

That feeling is something I don’t really get in Le Mans Ultimate, and I can’t fully pin down why.

Because people expect every sim to communicate the same things.

But they don’t.

Force Feedback Expectations

I made this simple spider chart to give you an idea of how force feedback feels across different simulations.

Not to say one SIM is better than another.

But simply to give you an expectation of the type of feedback each simulation gives.

So when you jump into a new sim…

You understand that a different feeling doesn’t mean something is wrong.

High speed detail is the general FFB feel I get at high speed.

Low speed detail is when my wheel clearly tells me that I’m traveling at low speed, and I can feel the characteristics of driving at lower speed.

Load transfer is that I consistently feel the front loading up during elevation changes, banking, inertia of the car, combined with caster and wheel alignment.

FFB depth is the overall force feedback that I feel throughout different speed states and changing car dynamics.

Center detail is the amount of detail I feel when having a steering lock close to 0 degrees, and when I start turning on long straights.

For instance, the FFB in Le Mans Ultimate on fast straights gives me a great feel in the first couple of steering degrees, showing me how the car starts rotating.

Both in GT3 and Hypercars, and in Hypercars, it feels even better.

In Assetto Corsa Competizione, this feels much more deaf, and lacks detail.

Again, I want to point out that this is just a general feeling that I’ve tried to put down into a chart, which might need iterations.

This is highly subjective and depends on car choice, wheelbase, settings, and personal preference.

If you want my settings for my Moza R9 V2 in ACC, LMU, and AC EVO…

Download link here on this drive.

PS:

I’m doing a lot of wet-weather testing in LMU. Some GT3 cars already have wet presets

Check the update log on the website

Cheers.

Arnout

In that slow hairpin.
In that fast corner.
Or when you took the curb a bit too harshly.

The first option you have at this point is to adapt your driving so you avoid the spin or the oversteer.

Let’s be honest, when you are already mid-race, you don’t really have a choice.

The second option is to increase front brake bias and add TC.

But these are only limited solutions that are not optimal.

Forward brake bias gives understeer where you might not want it, and it doesn’t solve oversteer when you hit the power or when you are coasting.

TC settings can slow you down, and don’t solve oversteer in fast corners or under coasting.

So here you are.

After the race, your car needs a setup tweak.

It oversteers somewhere.

How do we solve it?

Because setup parameters are all connected, we don’t want to get rid of all the rake, because now we might understeer a lot and lose rotation and lap time.

Rake

Rake means front and rear ride height differences.

When you oversteer, you can reduce rake in a few ways.

The simplest way is to reduce rear ride height.

But you can also reduce front spring travel to reduce rake under braking.

The red sections on track will show you where you get the effect of that change.

Rake in a GT3 or downforce car is one of the biggest changes you can make.

Example:

• Front ride height 52mm

• Rear ride height 72mm

• Front spring travel max (no packers), max bumpstop range

• Rear spring travel max (no packers), max bumpstop range

If entering the red parts on Sebring and you face oversteer on entry, adding front spring travel packers, or reducing bumpstop range, reduces rake under braking.

My entry gets fixed.

If facing understeer on exits on the red parts, but you want to remain stable on the red part entries, adding a few packers on the rear springs, or reducing bumpstop range on the rear, can help you get rotation without making the entries dangerous.

In the image above, you can see how a suspension style can give you different behavior on slow corners

NOTE: Spring stiffness can have a big influence on fast corners, too, depending on the simulation you drive.

Suspension Style

When we talk about suspension style, it’s about spring stiffness and anti-roll bars combos

Example style 1: Neutral balance

• Front springs 50%

• Rear springs 50%

• Front anti-roll bar 60%

• Rear anti-roll bar 20%

Example style 2: Stability balance

• Front springs 80%

• Rear springs 20%

• Front anti-roll bar 70%

• Rear anti-roll bar 10%

Example style 3: Entry aggression

• Front springs 20%

• Rear springs 60%

• Front anti-roll bar 20%

• Rear anti-roll bar 60%

It’s not about one being better than the other.

But the combination of these settings.

A lot of explanations go into what an anti-roll bar does, but we need to look at them holistically.

Now add your spring travel and rake to the suspension styles.

When facing oversteer, you need to question this:

How soft are my front springs?
How much rake do I use?

The question I ask a lot of times is:

Does suspension style 3 allow me to use more rake in the car?

Yes?

Then am I faster and still safe on that setup?

If not, should I use a stability style 2 with more rake?

That way, I can start to understand my car setup in a new way.

Instead of just seeing these changes as separate parts.

Once you get to this level, car setups start to make sense, and you shortcut a lot of unnecessary testing.

If you just want to drive, my setups are spread out in levels.

Car too aggressive? Go down a level.

Need more rotation and lap time? Go up a level.

https://simracingarnout.shop/

Or if you want to understand the full system behind why these changes work together.

Check out The Art of Car Setups below.

PS:

I added an AC EVO translate sheet to the Art of car setups, GT3 edition.

This creates clarity on building setups in AC EVO using the 7-step process

https://simracingarnout.shop/build-your-own-car-setup

Cheers

Arnout

Cheers

Arnout

Read more

Another LMP3 car.

LMU is known for listening to the community and giving people what they want. Apparently, what we needed was another LMP3 car.

Car Setups

We now have 2026 cars in the car selection menu. I tested the Evo cars yesterday, and I don’t think the car models are actually new. It looks more like a visual update for some of the existing cars.

I saw they changed the weight distribution for the Corvette GT3, but the change isn’t significant enough that setups need to be adjusted. I might change my mind after more testing.

I’m currently adding WET presets to the GT3 cars, so keep an eye on the update log on the website.

Please keep checking this. I'm constantly adding B levels, changing ratios. Use the receipt to redownload your setup pack

https://simracingarnout.shop/setup-update-log

This Update

If I had to boil it down, the update felt a bit underwhelming.

One thing that does stand out is that you’re now able to change brake duct blanking during a pit stop. This is important when racing at night or in cold temperatures because it allows you to generate more tire heat. That’s something the sim has been missing.

They also said in the video that we’ll get more updates in about a month.

Let’s pray for more tracks and more bug fixes.

Because there are still too many issues to name.

Cheers

Arnout

It makes you less dependent.

Less dependent on setup shops.

Less dependent on YouTube videos.

Less dependent on copying whatever the fastest driver is using.

Because once you understand what creates rotation, stability, tire temperature, confidence, and balance, you start making decisions that fit your driving style.

And that skill follows you into every simulator, every car, and every update.

Here are 10 advantages of having car setup knowledge that have nothing to do with finding a few extra tenths in laptime.

1. Drive any car you want

Most sim racers avoid difficult cars.

The Porsche that wants to rotate on entry.
The front-engined monster that snaps on the throttle.
The nervous hypercar that nobody can tame.

Setup knowledge gives you the ability to transform these cars into something that suits your driving style.

Instead of choosing the easiest car, you can choose the car you actually love driving.

And once you realize you can shape a car around your needs, you stop relying so heavily on other people’s setups.

2. You’re not dependent on setup shops

Game update?

New tire model?

Physics change?

If all your performance comes from downloaded setups, you’re forced to wait for somebody else to solve the problem.

With setup knowledge, you’re never stuck.

You can immediately adapt and continue driving.

You can also appreciate a tire model update more clearly, rather than simply saying it feels better or worse than before.

And that understanding leads to something even more valuable.

3. New knowledge creates new lap time

Every driver eventually reaches a plateau.

At some point, simply driving more laps stops producing results.

Setup knowledge opens new doors.

You start seeing opportunities that were invisible before.

Sometimes the next tenth isn’t hidden in your driving.

It’s hidden in your understanding.

The more knowledge you accumulate, the faster you can identify what is holding the car back.

4. Faster problem solving

Beginners change one setting and drive six laps.

And that’s exactly how you should learn.

But as your knowledge grows, you start recognizing patterns.

You drive three laps, feel the balance, open the setup screen, and immediately understand why the car behaves that way.

What once took hours can take minutes.

And once problem-solving becomes easier, something interesting happens.

5. The car becomes yours

No two drivers are identical.

Different skill levels.
Different hardware.
Different driving styles.
Different strengths and weaknesses.

The perfect setup for somebody else may feel terrible to you.

Setup knowledge allows you to shape the car around your own needs instead of adapting yourself to somebody else’s setup.

That process teaches you far more than setup changes alone.

6. You become a better driver

Car setup knowledge and driving knowledge are deeply connected.

As you learn about suspension, aerodynamics, differential settings, brake bias, tire behavior, and weight transfer, you begin to understand what the car is doing underneath you.

The result is better decision-making.

You know why the car reacts the way it does, and that makes you a more complete driver.

And a driver who understands the car is usually a more confident driver.

7. More confidence behind the wheel

Confidence is one of the biggest performance gains in sim racing.

A car that constantly surprises you forces you to leave margin.

A car that behaves predictably allows you to attack.

Setup knowledge helps you understand what creates confidence and what destroys it.

Instead of hoping the car behaves, you know why it behaves.

That confidence doesn’t just create speed.

It also creates consistency.

8. Better consistency

Many drivers chase the ultimate pace while losing consistency.

A setup that gains one tenth but costs three mistakes per race is often slower over an entire stint.

Setup knowledge allows you to build a car that works lap after lap.

Not just on your best lap.

But on your average lap.

And average laps win more races than hero laps.

An important reason for my own consistency is the predictability I have in my cars. Even when I make a mistake, I usually understand exactly why it happened.

That ability becomes even more valuable when switching cars or simulators.

9. Faster adaptation to new cars and Sims

Every simulator is different.

Every car has its own personality.

A driver without setup knowledge often starts from zero every time.

A driver with setup knowledge quickly identifies the strengths and weaknesses of a new car.

You understand the language of vehicle dynamics.

Whether you’re driving GT3s, Hypercars, LMP2s, touring cars, or a completely different simulator, the principles remain the same.

And eventually, you stop seeing setups as a tool for speed alone.

10. The simulation becomes more enjoyable

Most people only see setups as a way to become faster.

But understanding setups adds an entirely new layer to the hobby.

You stop looking at the setup screen as a collection of random numbers.

Every click has meaning.

Every change has a purpose.

You start understanding the engineering, the compromises, the character of each car, and the depth of the simulation itself.

The simulation becomes deeper, more interesting, and ultimately more rewarding.

Because you’re no longer just driving the car.

You’re developing it.

That’s exactly why I created The Art of Car Setups.

Not to give you another setup.

But to teach you a build process that helps you understand what to change, when to change it, and why you change something.

The GT3 Edition covers the principles of GT3 setup building across different simulators.

And for Le Mans Ultimate drivers, there’s a dedicated Hypercar tuning guide built around the unique challenges of the Hypercar class.

Link here>

Cheers

Arnout

Bottoming Is Everything

If you dig through real racecar theory, you’ll quickly notice that the Hypercars in LMU are extremely sensitive to bottoming out. They are all different, but you’re constantly juggling the same question:

Can I lower the springs?

Yes.

Do we bottom out?

Yes.

Hmm... then we need to raise the car a bit.

That was pretty much the conversation happening inside my head while setting up these cars.

Corner Springs, Packers & 3rd Springs

Corner spring packers are mostly used to fight bottoming.

In GT3 cars, you can also use them to fight oversteer on fast entries.

With Hypercars, however, increasing the front 3rd spring is often a better way to prevent oversteer in high-speed entries.

Fixed TC Settings Are Better Than Expected

The fixed TC settings turned out to be more useful than I expected.

Whenever you go too low on any TC value, you quickly discover that the rear wants to spin on corner exit.

For most cars, I aim for a TC setup that has a bit more TC slip.

The Peugeot Feels Broken

Performance-wise, these cars are all over the place.

When I started tuning the winged Peugeot 9X8, I pretty much destroyed all of my personal bests compared to the other cars.

The amount of aggression you can build into that car is insane compared to the rest of the grid.

I’d honestly say it’s completely broken and massively overpowered.

That doesn’t mean it’s always the fastest car, but if you put a gun to my head and told me to pick one car for an entire season, I’d choose the Peugeot for performance, and the Aston for prestige.

The BMW Surprised Me

The BMW is the car that feels best under braking.

By default, it’s twitchy, nervous, and very snappy.

After tuning, however, it became one of my favorite cars in the entire class.

Brake Bias & Brake Migration Matter More Than You Think

Brake bias values vary massively between cars.

Some cars are perfectly happy at 53-47, while others will immediately try to spin you at 55-45.

Remember: a higher front brake bias value is generally safer.

If you’re constantly snapping on entry, try moving the brake migration further forward.

The front axle suspension setup will also have a big influence on this behavior.

Rear ARB Stays On P1

The rear ARB should stay on P1.

When tuning Hypercars, I also like to put the front ARB somewhere around the middle of its range, roughly 50%.

This gives you room to adjust the mechanical balance during races.

Rear Ride Height Works Differently

Rear ride height has much less influence on high-speed corner rotation than it does in GT3 cars in LMU.

The Search For Top Speed

Top speed is found by lowering the car right to the edge of bottoming out.

You can often hear the floor hitting the track.

If you hear that happening consistently, you’ll usually see the delta start to go the wrong way, and braking performance suffers.

At the same time, running the car too high also costs top speed.

Finding that sweet spot is one of the biggest challenges when tuning Hypercars.

When these cars go lower, everything tends to get easier.

Braking improves.

Cornering improves.

The whole car becomes easier to drive.

Wing Versus Springs

The Wing ultimately determines the car’s top speed.

However, running a slightly higher wing allows you to use more aggressive spring setups and more aggressive 3rd spring setups.

Those combinations are usually superior in cornering situations.

At Monza and Le Mans, running P3 or P4 rear wing instead of the absolute lowest setting might cost around 2 km/h on the straight.

But that same choice can easily gain half a second in the final sector at Le Mans.

The Biggest Lesson

Tuning Hypercars has made me a better racer.

It challenged my brain far more than GT3 setup work ever did.

I’m now getting to the point where I can look at a setup screen and feel a bit like Neo in The Matrix.

I look at the numbers, the combinations, and the interactions between settings, and I immediately start seeing what they mean.

Do you want to own every Skill Level setup for every Hypercar and progress through the class at your own pace?

Get 30% off the complete Hypercar Bundle. Only 3 discounted spots are available, saving you over $100 compared to buying everything separately.

Use code: 30HYPER at checkout.

https://simracingarnout.shop/collection/lmp-hypercar-setups

Cheers

Arnout

I already understood the differential, but I couldn’t really explain it.

Until now.

You want to read this newsletter because it will improve your understanding of how to use the throttle pedal, how to adjust differential settings, and how to spot differential-related problems. It may even get you to the point where you can judge whether a car simulation feels fake or realistic after going through this article.

This all starts with a grip circle and a grip budget that we can spend.

A tire can only do so much acceleration and cornering at the same time.

But a grip circle works fluidly. It is constantly changing as conditions change and your inputs change.

So you can’t always put down a definitive answer to a question.

In the next slides, I’ll try to shortcut some of these explanations about the differential and help you understand why the rear of the car snaps or feels unstable under certain conditions.

When we hit the throttle, in a hypercar for instance, and I’ll talk about GT3s later too, we have a gazillion horsepower trying to speed up the car.

But the tires simply cannot deal with all that power.

So the TC prevents the wheels from spinning when we’re driving very slowly or standing still.

Once we speed up, very quickly we no longer have enough power left to make the rear tires spin.

We have rolling resistance, wind resistance, drag, and downforce working against us.

At that point, we’re simply lacking the power needed to push the rear tires outside of the grip circle.

At even higher speeds, this becomes even less of an issue.

Yet we still have our foot down.

Now we can corner the car hard with all the available downforce, and acceleration has drastically less effect on the rear tire workload.

This is the first layer of throttle input understanding.

The way you drive in a high-speed state is by putting your foot down, steering hard, and remaining in control.

Once we’re driving slowly, we have to respect the engine power.

Let’s use the purple line to explain how different power settings in your differential affect the car's behavior on corner exit.

This is important when making setup tweaks, but it’s also important when analyzing your driving.

Once you understand this, you’ll know how much throttle you can apply on corner exit, and you’ll start to predict how the car will react rather than relying heavily on TC or game assists.

When we drive in a slower-speed state with a low differential power setting, the differential is more open.

That means the wheels can rotate independently from each other.

This is important because the outside tire needs to travel a longer distance than the inside tire.

When we talk about a low power setting, we have low locking in the differential, so the tires are relatively free to rotate at different speeds.

You turn the wheel into the corner and hit the throttle.

The inside tire, which is unloaded due to load transfer, escapes the grip circle first and starts to spin. Meanwhile, the outside tire remains within a safe operating window.

The result is safe cornering, but with less power being transferred to the track.

Your TC system activates quickly to prevent that inside tire from spinning excessively.

From the top view, it looks like this.

What if we take the same low power setting at higher speeds?

Because the acceleration doesn’t push the rear tires out of the grip circle anymore, we can enjoy the open diff, low power differential setting for rotation.

We can hit the gas, and the car becomes very alive to our steering inputs as we apply the throttle.

We have the blue box on top of the car (Aerobox) that explains downforce.

Together with a balanced aero platform and a low power diff setting, the car is super free on rotation.

Note: this could be too free. The rear can be very alive at this point, maybe too alive.

Let’s close the rear power differential, meaning a higher value and a move towards a locked diff.

When we’re coming out of a slow corner, the inner unloaded tire (blue arrow) isn’t spinning up.

That wheel no longer rotates faster so quickly, and the acceleration is being pushed to the outside tire as well.

First, this creates understeer, and it naturally forces you as a driver to steer more because the car tends to understeer on corner exit.

But what quickly happens then, often out of the blue, is that you push your outer loaded tire outside of the grip circle, resulting in a sudden snap of power oversteer.

This can be beneficial for powering out of corners once it is controlled, and it helps the car rotate on the throttle.

But some cars just don’t like it, or you, as a driver, can’t deal with the sudden snap that some drivers don’t feel coming.

https://simracingarnout.shop/b/raRlY

This link will send you to make this graph alive. It needs some tweaking, but it's great to see the power effect of the differential setting

This graph shows when your car starts getting into rotation, and the rear tires are being challenged by both cornering and acceleration.

The low power diff has less rotation, but it has a more predictable yaw response. Sure, with enough aggression and speed, you can snap a low-power diff setting, too, but you’ll feel it coming.

With a high power differential, it can occur out of the blue.

TC settings can still save you here during the snap, but they really hurt your exits because you get a power cut right before you leave the corner, and that pain carries all the way down the next straight.

At high speed, with lots of aero, we can have a very planted car with a higher power differential setting, to the point where we might even feel understeer because the rear tires just don’t allow different rotational speeds, preventing the car from turning.

Note that these situations have a lot to do with how the tire is loaded and how much torque the wheel receives. High torque is coupled to low gears and slow speeds. Once we reach higher speeds, we have less torque, and that changes the dynamic of the differential settings.

Another note: when driving well under the limit, you don’t really feel the differential as a determining factor, and not every corner is heavily influenced by it.

But once you’re driving closer to the absolute limit, this setting becomes very present and noticeable.

Coasting is a different beast. Why?

Because we’re braking too, and at very high-speed braking zones, we tend to brake in a straight line.

But we do have corners where we only want to lift off the throttle, and when that happens, you can change the rotation of the car as you come off the throttle.

Now the coast differential setting is going to determine how much the car wants to turn in.

If you lose the rear at high speed while coasting, and you’re already running a high coast differential value, there are other parts of the setup that need fixing. Your rear wing or rake might be set up too aggressively.

An idea to help you get your head around taking lines, trail braking, and coasting into corners is the following:

Imagine a trail braking corner, like this, you enter, and it's all smooth, you off the throttle.

You full release throttle, and you kind of don’t get the turn in you want. You might understeer.

If you were coming off the brakes with a lower coast setting, then you would immediately start to feel the rear coming around.

This might be too much, and you could lose the rear.

Touching the throttle at this point gives back stability because you start to lock the differential again through the power setting.

However, some drivers don’t prepare for this, and it feels counterintuitive to hit the throttle as you lose the rear of the car.

Another effect of touching the throttle is, of course, that the load transfers slightly rearward.

But I always see this advanced technique as the differential and load transfer working together.

On this slow hairpin, you could encounter that you can’t rotate the car enough for a good exit onto the second part of the chicane.

A lower coast setting allows the rear to move more freely while coasting, which could create the following:

By lowering coast, you can see that the red part makes us corner a lot more, but here you run into the issue that you can spin the car in a slow corner if you carry too much speed into the second corner.

This is all great when driving hypercars in LMU, or cars that have these settings, but what about GT3 cars in LMU, ACC, AC Evo, or other sims where we only have preload?

Most GT cars have a limited-slip differential. It means the coast and power settings are fixed.

What percentages they are, I can’t tell you, but you still have preload, which works as follows.

Imagine you had a coast value of 80% and a power diff value of 30%.

If you hit the throttle while cornering, you go to the 30% power differential value.

If you then add preload to this, more torque is needed to bring that differential to 30%. See it as a damping effect on that 30%.

High preload on the throttle, therefore, means more locking.

The same goes for adding preload for the the 80% coast value.

If you corner the car with low preload, the diff quickly and freely shifts to 80%. But if you start adding a lot of preload, then this locking happens more slowly because the preload is preventing the differential from moving as freely.

When you face that snap on entry while releasing the brakes or while coasting, increasing preload helps to stabilize the rear.

But as you increase preload, the car also starts to understeer on exit.

If you face a lot of understeer on entry, and you’re already running a soft front suspension, high rake, and low wing, the solution can be to lower preload, allowing the coast differential value to come in more quickly and add rotation to the turn-in.

See the situation as follows: if you hit the throttle fully and then release it fully as you go through a long, round corner, with high preload you get more understeer on throttle and more understeer off throttle.

When running low preload, you might not feel much when applying throttle, but when you release the throttle, you should feel more lift-off rotation and turning.

Again, a rookie who misses every apex might not feel a preload setting.

Once you start finding rhythm in the car, you can begin to feel whether you’re running too much preload or not enough.

There isn’t a right or wrong answer here, but to give you an experiment to try, set preload to the maximum and soften the front suspension slightly. Then see how your entries and exits feel.

Or go very soft on preload and maybe lower the rear ride height a few clicks.

The goal isn’t to find the “best” preload setting.

The goal is to teach yourself what preload actually feels like.

Because once you can feel preload, you’ll stop copying setups from other people and start understanding why a car behaves the way it does.

And that’s ultimately what I’m trying to teach with all of my setup content.

Not what to change.

But why.

If you enjoy these deep dives into car setup theory, you’ll probably enjoy The Art of Car Setups, where I break down the entire setup process step by step using the same approach.

For Hypercars in LMU here

For overall GT3’s here

Cheers

Arnout

But to explain that, I kind of have to tell a part of my gaming story, and how I got to this conclusion.

And also the nature of AI compared to us as humans.

I’ll be real, I tried doing these newsletters with AI generators.

But after some time, it just started spitting out SLOB. Boring, repetitive, and predictable content.

At the same time, I still work a lot with AI to speed up my workflow and brainstorm ideas.

And at the time of writing, I’m starting to understand why AI on track will always have a mega important limitation compared to real human behavior.

To enjoy ourselves in a racing game, we need a certain entry point. A certain skill level to start.

If it’s too hard, you quit because of overwhelm.

If it’s too easy, you get bored.

We are all somewhere on a spectrum of what challenges us, how good we are, and what our interests are.

When you start out in a racing game, most people begin with a single-player race against AI. And if the AI is good, then we can enjoy it.

When I started my first racing game back in the day, and this is a LONG time ago, it was Geoff Crammond’s Grand Prix on PC.

There were difficulty settings for the AI, and I spent hours and hours on them.

Later, we got Grand Prix 2, which felt like a game 10 times better than the first.

But the point here is the AI.

At that stage, driving against those AI cars was great in my experience. I honestly have 0 memory of it being bad.

But over time, something changes.

And this is also, by the way, why we are still superior to AI in a few areas.

At the time of writing, racing AI is probably WAY better than back then, and the simulations, visuals, and everything else are on a completely different level.

But when you have a decent amount of experience in racing games, you start seeing the AI becoming predictable.

And sure, there are levels to this.

But AI needs to follow a script, a set of rules, an algorithmic structure.

And it doesn’t matter how many rules you feed into the AI, it can never truly have taste, fatigue, emotion, or random behavior like a human would.

Let’s first talk about what good racing AI actually does.

It will not hit you, or maybe just give a small touch.

It wants to overtake.

It doesn’t drive around in weird trains like older F1 games did.

Back in F1 2017-2018, for example, overtaking on lap 1 was ridiculously easy because every AI car just sat in line into turn 1. Not sure how it is now.

The AI driver, supposed to be the best on the grid, is slightly faster.

It keeps outperforming its teammate.

It speeds up near the end of the race.

The backmarkers are actually a full second slower per lap.

And a couple of these things help create immersion.

But after competing against this AI long enough, no matter how advanced it becomes, you start seeing the predictability.

You start seeing the rules.

Not:
“What is this AI going to do?”

But:
“This is how the AI overtakes.”
“This is how the AI goes to the pits.”
“This is how the AI defends.”

And to me, these patterns become very obvious.

We, as humans, spot patterns quickly.

I even think we can already spot AI text, AI images, AI videos, and whatever other AI slob gets created nowadays.

We recognize it quickly.

And it becomes boring.

Because what we actually want on track is a layer of unpredictability.

Not knowing exactly what comes next.

Not to the extent that it becomes a complete disaster, but enough to create tension.

Like P5 suddenly making a mistake that an AI would never make.

Or someone suddenly losing performance for no reason.

Or the guy behind you randomly finds an insane pace.

These random and unpredictable moments are what make racing fun.

And these are exactly the things AI struggles to recreate naturally.

Think about it.

Unpredictability is everywhere in sports.

I’m currently coaching my kids’ soccer team, and I see the same thing there.

Even though some of these kids are predictable most of the time, suddenly one of them does something completely unexpected.

Yesterday, one of the kids who normally can’t even pass a through ball suddenly made an insane assist out of nowhere, somehow he started to see the through ball!

And there is such beauty in that, something an AI could never truly do.

That unpredictability is part of what makes it interesting.

Racing works the same way.

A funny example of this is Assetto Corsa Rally, where sometimes a person crosses the track during a rally stage.

The first time I saw it, I thought:
“Oh, that’s actually really cool.”

But after seeing it 30 times…

You already know it’s going to happen.

And that predictability slowly kills the feeling.

Note that it's not my goal to kill the enjoyment of AI races for you.

One could argue that AI races are more enjoyable because you can't find a decent online race against humans in maybe lower splits, due to all the inexperienced drivers.

But you get the point.

And maybe that’s the funny contradiction in all of this.

We WANT unpredictability in racing.

Just not from the car itself

We want:

• unpredictable opponents

• unpredictable moments

• unpredictable races

But we still want the car to feel stable, logical, and trustworthy underneath us.

And honestly, that’s also why I build the Skill Level setups the way I do for Le Mans Ultimate and Assetto Corsa Competizione.

Level 1 gives you a safer and more predictable car

Level 4 or 5 gives you more laptime potential, but also more movement, more rotation, and more punishment if you get things wrong.

Because racing is already chaotic enough.

The car itself doesn’t always have to be.

Skill level car setups

PS:

I truly appreciate the reviews on the site. Jean went back to the site 6 months after his purchase just to leave one. Thanks mate.

Cheers

Arnout

What headset should I start with?
What PC do I need?
Is my GPU strong enough?
Do you get sick in VR?
How long does it take to set up?
How long until it feels normal?

And honestly… these questions are hard to answer.

VR is one of the most subjective experiences there is.

And to be real, these questions get even harder for me now because I’m spoiled with the best headsets and one of the strongest PC systems you can buy.

But if I had to answer all of those questions again from zero?

I’d tell people to buy a second-hand Meta Quest 2.

In my country, you can sometimes pick one up for around €100-120.

Yes, it’s outdated.

But that’s where I started my VR journey, too.

You’re Not Buying A Headset. You’re Buying Answers.

For someone who has never experienced VR sim racing before, it’s almost impossible to explain what it’s actually going to feel like.

Be warned, though: some people can never go back to screens after trying it.

And in VR terms, €100 is cheap.

But what are you really buying?

You’re buying answers.

You’re saving yourself months of wondering if VR is actually for you.

The moment your brain sparks that idea of wanting to try VR, just pick up that second-hand Quest 2.

Because within a few days, you’re going to learn:

• How to set up VR

• How to wear the headset properly

• Whether you get motion sick

• How your PC actually handles VR

• What depth perception feels like in racing

• What it’s like to truly sit inside the car

• Whether your lenses fog up from sweat

• How demanding VR really is on your GPU

• Whether immersion matters to you more than graphics

You learn all of this very quickly.

How I Fell Into The Rabbit Hole

I was lucky.

A buddy of mine already had VR in the early days.

I knew absolutely nothing about it.

But the moment I tried it… I was sold.

At that point, I didn’t even have a proper wheelbase, a decent rig, or a strong PC.

A few weeks later, I mentally spiraled into the hobby completely.

I bought my first real PC: a 3080 system for around €2800 back then, basically the best you could get 4-5 years ago.

I bought a Quest 2.
A Fanatec DD wheelbase.
Some old Thrustmaster TLCM pedals.
And I built my first stainless steel rig.

And what did I get from all of that?

For the first time in my life, I could truly race.

With precision.
With immersion.
With depth perception.
With pressure.
With competition.

I wasn’t just playing a game anymore.

I was on track.

Building setups.
Battling other drivers.
Learning tracks.
Improving lap after lap.

And time disappeared.

Why VR Hits Different

That’s the real thing people don’t talk about enough with sim racing and VR.

Why do we actually do this?

Because life is heavy sometimes.

You have work.
Responsibilities.
Family.
The household.
Stress.

But people need a window for themselves.

A place where the noise disappears for a few hours.

A place where your brain locks into one thing only.

Competing.
Driving.
Improving.
Escaping.

And VR sim racing does that better than almost anything I’ve ever experienced.

The Dangerous Part About VR

Let’s imagine you have a 3070 GPU, or the AMD equivalent, together with a Quest 2.

And despite the blurry image, the smaller FOV, the compression, and the occasional framedrops… you are completely sold on the experience.

Now imagine upgrading from that.

Imagine an image that suddenly becomes razor sharp.
More FOV.
Better lenses.
Better colors.
No random framedrops.
No compromising the hardware anymore.

That’s when VR changes again.

Because yes… if you move to a 5090 together with something like a Crystal Light, or you go completely all-in with an OLED Super headset, it genuinely looks 10 times better than a Quest 2.

And that’s the dangerous part.

Because once you experience high-end VR, your baseline changes forever.

A Quest 2 already lets you experience what VR sim racing actually is.

But high-end VR?

That starts feeling less like gaming and more like escaping the sludge of real life for a few hours.

VR Buyer Guide

If you’re curious about the Pimax ecosystem, GPU expectations, headset differences, and what I would actually recommend depending on your budget and system, I made a full buyer’s guide below.

https://simracingarnout.shop/virtual-reality

Cheers

Arnout