Assetto Corsa Competizione Anti Roll Bars
After watching the accompanying video It’s best to physically go out and try these changes
yourself, see how the car feels to you as the driver.
Learning to interpret different handling characteristics will undoubtedly increase your
understanding of how to adjust the car to better it’s performance.
As with the video, try and start with either the safe or aggressive preset. Generally the aggressive
preset will require more skill from the driver with it being looser, and less forgiving. The safe
setup will be geared more towards understeer and higher downforce to promote a safer balance
in the car. But this may well be slower overall.
I’m yet to drive all the cars in the game and all the different presets, but it is a general belief that
the aggressive setup would be faster but require more driver skill.
Starting out with adjustments
I’d recommend running a number of laps as cleanly as possible once you know the circuit and are
able to lap consistently without spinning out. If this is an issue I’d suggest swallowing your pride
slightly and go a little slower. Often the issue can lie with the driver and not the car.
Anti Roll Bars (ARB) generally don’t fall under the category of changes that increase grip. These
are more like tire pressure or camber setting, aero and possibly even toe or caster settings.
ARB’s allow for adjustments in the cars balance to better distribute grip through steady state
cornering. A shift in balance that promotes oversteer or understeers is only going to reduce
overall grip and performance, & a balanced neutral is what you’re trying to achieve.
Changes in the ARB settings can also effect how the car leans through a corner. In turn this could
also effect how much camber is needed or how the car handles bumps and undulation in the track
surface.
Changes to the cars suspension usually offer a similar effect to the Anti Roll Bars
adjustments...but, the ARB’s can usually be adjusted with greater ease and can sometimes be
altered during a race to counteract changes in weather or tyre performance. You may also notice
changes in balance as fuel is used.
Over longer duration races you may choose to adjust the balance of the car as the tires start to
wear more. Being able to adjust the ARB’s on the move can offer greater confidence in the cars
balance as conditions change and handling characteristics alter.
Understeer
This is where the front of the car refuses to turn into the corner or starts to lose front end grip in
the middle of the corner.
Whether it’s corner entry or mid corner understeer, I’d be looking to adjust the front Anti Roll Bar
and make it softer. Depending on how many adjustments are available, for example 6 clicks max.
I’d tend to remove 2 clicks at a time then do 4-5 laps of testing. If you have 30 -50 clicks of
adjustment I’d do 5-6 clicks.
Then it’s down to you as a driver to see how the car feels, is it still understeering??? Only you can
know the difference it feels as a driver. If you’re braking to late for the corner and running wide
then as much as the car is understeering, you need to know if it’s through driver error or car
performance.
Continue to make front adjustments till the car stops the undesired effect and starts to produce
the opposite effect of oversteer. That way you know you’ve gone to far and can back off slightly to
a balanced setup.
If the car already has it’s Anti Roll Bar set as low as it possibly goes, then you will need to start
increasing the stiffness of the rear ARB. As before, do a few clicks and take the car out for testing.
Oversteer
This is where the rear of the car starts to rotate to much on corner entry as if you’ve applied the
handbrake to perform a turn. Or as the car reaches lateral grip levels it loses traction and starts to
slide at the rear during steady state cornering. This might also be down to not enough negative
camber or aero performance or even a brake balance issue, but hopefully I’ll cover these in later
video’s.
Oversteer is tackled just the same as the above description by softening the rear ARB. If the rear is
already as soft as it can go, then start with stiffening the front ARB.
Understeer = Soften the front ARB or Stiffen the rear
Oversteer = Soften the rear ARB or stiffen the front
Final Comments
Just remember that this isn’t an adjustment you’re going to do just once. As your setup
progresses and new adjustments are made that effect the balance of the car. The ARB’s will
possibly need readjusting to better the distribution of the newly available grip. If you change the
ride height or the camber settings, the aero or damper settings… All these things will change the
available grip levels. This is why in-car adjustments to the Anti Roll Bar settings are so beneficial
during a race. During testing we want to be able to study the tire degradation by sticking with
adjustments and seeing the results which will give you a far better understanding of the effects
between certain adjustments. It’s time consuming work but very rewarding… Enjoy!!!
