Chapter 86 - 16: Race Car Tuning

Chapter 86: Chapter 16: Race Car Tuning

Wu Shi smiled. These setup changes were conclusions drawn from his past life’s experience and the driving he had just done. After all, it wasn’t as if he had never driven an F3 before. Although the two F3 cars were vastly different, some of the experience was still transferable.

"Fine," Alan said, shaking his head in resignation. They had the whole day anyway, so they might as well get it done in the morning.

The technicians spent a considerable amount of time implementing the requested setup.

"Test it for two laps first. And remember, don’t do anything stupid!"

"Got it!"

Wu Shi nodded, climbed into the car, and drove out of the pit lane.

After the setup change, the car’s overall feel was completely different, from the feedback coming through the tires to the response of the steering.

Just like on his previous laps, Wu Shi’s speed approaching Turn 1 hadn’t changed much. However, because the setup was biased toward oversteer, the car’s steering was now much more responsive in a high-speed corner like this.

He turned the steering wheel, and the nose of the car pointed steadily toward the apex. The rear wheels lost a little bit of grip, but all he had to do was ease off the throttle slightly to let them bite again.

Through that corner alone, his time improved by about two-tenths of a second.

"He didn’t make all those changes just for this one corner, did he?" a technician muttered as he looked at the data.

Compared to before, both the pressure and duration of Wu Shi’s braking were reduced here. That meant he had just entered the corner at a higher speed.

And according to the data, the tire temperatures weren’t rising any faster than before. In other words, he’d gained those two-tenths for free.

"I don’t know. Let’s keep watching," Alan said, not wanting to jump to conclusions, even though he felt the same way as his colleagues.

The following Turn 2 was also a high-speed corner. He didn’t even need to brake; a slight lift off the throttle was enough for the car to pass through with ease.

Approaching Turn 3, the brake pressure spiked instantly before gradually decreasing.

"That braking point is so late."

"But his trail-braking is excellent. That braking curve is perfectly linear!"

Hearing his colleagues, Alan paid close attention to those parameters. They were indeed shocking.

By now, Wu Shi had entered the short straight between Turns 3 and 4. Here, the car needed to move quickly from the left side of the track to the right, then navigate the next turn at the slowest speed of the entire lap.

Wu Shi did the same thing as before, greedily snatching a moment on the throttle in the middle of the sequence. The speed change might only be a dozen or so km/h, and the time gained might seem better than nothing, but accumulated over ten laps, it would add up to several tenths of a second.

Exiting Turn 4, the car accelerated before heading into Turn 5.

In the future, with the advent of DRS, this section would become a DRS zone. Unfortunately, he didn’t have that toy now, so when he floored it, he didn’t get that explosive burst of speed that breaks past the limit.

WHOOSH!

Through the next several corners, Wu Shi was consistently faster.

"It seems he’s completely comfortable with oversteer!" a technician exclaimed.

"Yes, I’ve noticed. He loves braking late. To make the corner entry, you have to have oversteer, otherwise you’ll never make the turn."

Alan nodded. He was finding it harder and harder to understand this genius youngster from Hua Country. ’Is he completely self-taught?’ Alan wondered. ’How else could he tune a car to perfectly suit him in a single attempt?’

After all, many top-tier drivers, even with a decade of experience, could only give vague feedback when asked to participate in tuning sessions.

There was, after all, a massive gulf between driving a car well and understanding *why* it could be driven well.

"How is he managing to keep it from spinning out?" someone asked.

No sooner had the words left his mouth than the car on the track’s tail kicked out.

"Looks like he doesn’t have it under complete control after all. That driving style is too risky. Any little bit of extra steering input and the car will spin out of control."

Alan shook his head. ’That driving style is just too dangerous,’ he thought.