All News: Gale Force Racing

Commodore’s Garage #14 – Ride Heights, Perches, and Deflections

December 2nd, 2016 by Matt Holden

  The last major piece of the puzzle we need to look at before diving into building a setup are the three simplest things in the garage:  ride heights.  Older (and even some newer racing games) have a “Ride Height” adjustment in their setup garages, completely independent of the rest of the car.  Anyone who’s … Read the Rest »

Commodore’s Garage #13 – Tire Pressures

November 18th, 2016 by Matt Holden

  Tires are a racing vehicle’s only form of contact with a race track and, as a result, can be the reason why a car is a race-winner or a mid-fielder.  Many factors can determine how well a tire is gripping the track surface, from tire compound, to load, and especially its own behavior when … Read the Rest »

Commodore’s Garage #12 – Tire Data

November 4th, 2016 by Matt Holden

Whenever we put a race car on track, be it real or virtual, we have two things that can give feedback on how the car is performing:  The driver, and the tires. Drivers are usually very literal when they communicate what the car is doing. If it’s starting to spin, they’ll say it’s loose or … Read the Rest »

Commodore’s Garage #10 – Track Bar

October 9th, 2016 by Matt Holden

  Before moving into initial setup options on our cars and how to go about getting what you need to race, we still need to cover the “bars” in the car.  Stock cars typically have a front sway bar and a rear track bar (or Panhard Rod), while road racing cars have a front and … Read the Rest »

Commodore’s Garage #9 – Bump Springs

September 30th, 2016 by Matt Holden

So far we’ve gone over how the main springs work on the car, but we still need to cover secondary springs, or “bump stops”.  iRacing has recently overhauled the Gen 6 Cup cars and the Xfinity cars to use bump springs, but those still fall under the category of bump stops.  To understand why the … Read the Rest »

Commodore’s Garage #7 – Selecting Springs

September 16th, 2016 by Matt Holden

  Last week we looked at how springs work, how they’re rated, and the different types of springs that may be available on our virtual race cars.  The big question, however, is always “What rates do I use?”  Older sims had flaws in the physics, so spring choice was simply based on what you could … Read the Rest »

Commodore’s Garage #6 – The Spring

September 12th, 2016 by Matt Holden

In the history of sim-racing, nothing has been more associated with chassis setup than the springs.  At the same time, nothing has been more misunderstood than the simple coil spring.  There are countless different kinds of springs, from coil, to leaf, to torsion springs, and everything in between, and racing series regulate them heavily.  When … Read the Rest »

Commodore’s Garage #5 – Roll Stiffness

September 2nd, 2016 by Matt Holden

When we watch a car go around a corner, we almost always take a note of how much it rolls over, or lifts the inside of the car, but how much do we really think about what’s happening?  In the yester-years of NASCAR, it was probably never given a second thought to how much a … Read the Rest »

Commodore’s Garage #4 – Aerodynamics 101

August 19th, 2016 by Matt Holden

Aerodynamics:  the one word that spawns happiness in engineers and dread in race fans.  In the past 50-or-so years, aerodynamics in motorsports have done nearly complete 180° turn, going from slippery, super-low-drag vehicles to high-downforce behemoths with the sole purpose of bullying air molecules into doing work that they really don’t want to do.  Want … Read the Rest »

Behind the Scenes: The NASCAR PEAK Antifreeze Series powered by iRacing.com – Making the Best of Very Little

August 16th, 2016 by Matt Holden

It’s been a long time since we had one of these articles.  It’s no secret that, while Gale Force Racing has flourished in the Class B and Class C series this year, our NASCAR PEAK Antifreeze Series efforts have been less than stellar.  In the 2014 season, the #05 car wasn’t off by much, but … Read the Rest »