The five setup changes worth making before you touch anything else
I see a lot of posts where someone changes eight things at once and then can’t tell what helped. Here’s the order I’d work in, and why.
1. Tyre pressures. Everything else sits on top of the contact patch. If pressures are wrong, every other change gives you a misleading answer. Target the hot pressure mid-stint, not the cold number.
2. Brake bias. Costs nothing, changes the car more than most people expect. Forward for stability and understeer on entry, rearward for rotation. Move in 0.5% steps and do three laps between changes.
3. Ride height and rake. Sets the aero platform. Get this wrong and your wing changes do something other than what you expect. Lower usually means more downforce until you start bottoming out — and bottoming out costs more than the downforce is worth.
4. Anti-roll bars. Now you’re balancing front against rear. Softer front for more front grip, softer rear for more rear grip. One end at a time.
5. Differential. Last, because it’s the one that masks other problems. Coast ramp for entry rotation, power ramp for exit traction.
Wings and dampers come after all of this, and honestly for most people dampers are a waste of time until the rest is sorted.
One change, three laps, write down what happened. Boring, but it’s the only method that works.
What order do you work in? Curious whether people who came from real motorsport do it differently.