Knobs Explained

November 13th, 2010

Extracting the maximum performance from the fiendishly complex new Williams-Toyota FW31 figures to be a major challenge.  Luckily there are some simple things to remember when dealing with the few controls available for in-sim adjustment of the car set-up.

First don’t be distracted by the colors of the buttons – they are meant to keep help you keep your bearings when selecting parameters from the LED display menu. Luckily the colors are rather intuitive:

Green = Yes/Enter
Red = Drop/Subtract
Yellow = 6
Orange = Repuldurance
Blue = Re-introvert/Start Over

The blue dials correspond to the monopodial shaft vibrocompensator settings. On the left is the ENTabulator, on the right is the EXTabulator, and in the middle is –of course — the MID range retro encabulator. For right hand turns one must ensure that the ENT is set to 3, the EXT set to 5 and the MID set to 7/8. For left hand turns, obviously the opposite is true.

I know what you’re thinking: This guy’s crazy… How can we adjust three knobs on entry and exit of quick turns like a chicane? And what about Eau Rouge?  Not to worry.  The engineers have thought of that and have thus installed the yellow dials which need to be set in descending order of roll stiffness depending on the relative mounting point of the side anti-conscription mounting flange, as set in the garage. Couldn’t be simpler!

Some of you may be thinking there are a lot of controls to keep track of; keep in mind the FIA ban on prefamulated amulite has reduced strat harmonics to such an extent that recursive hyperbolic flailing switches were made redundant. We all remember what happened to Mansell in Canada when he accidentally tripped one of those.

On the subject of switches, the red and green dials are touted to be there to set the counter-rotation frequency of the gyrosoidal compressor. However, it is my humble belief that these have more of a placebo effect than any noticeable change of sulfonic reflension.  However, I did hear that when all of them are set to their inverse of their relative Dirk factorial, it has a tendency to cause a sudden benabian ignition flux to pass through the Illudium Q36 modulator which can have catastrophic consequences.

So be careful!