INTRODUCTION

Now that the NASCAR Racing 4 Demo has been released and we have gotten a glimpse of the incredible setup screen, you all know this is something completely different than previous NASCAR Racing releases by Papyrus. Before in Papyrus sims, the shock settings were represented by percentages. Now I am willing to bet that if you walk into any pit area at any local race track or NASCAR race track, you'll never hear Billy Bob say, "Larry, let's throw uh 67 percint shock on thar right rear... she's uh little loose with that 70 percinter..."

Of course not! Another misconception about shocks is that they are equivalent to their street counterparts, shock absorbers or dampeners, in the fashion that they "absorb shock." Imagine that. Shocks on race cars are nothing but TIMERS! That's right. Drivers set out to get their shocks dialed in just right to control how the car reacts at different phases of the lap. Race car shocks have two different settings which can be adjusted to make the car do something totally different at two totally different times. Fun isn't it? A lot different than throwing an 85% shock on the LR and giving it a whirl.

On race shocks there is a knob on the bottom of the shock body where the shaft enters the cylinder, where you can adjust the compression and rebound. Usually on the shocks I work with, there are 4 different levels of compression and rebound: 0, 1, 2, and 3. On NASCAR Racing 4 the settings are 1 through 9 instead, with 1 being the softest and 9 being the stiffest. Let's check out what those two different adjustable settings mean.


COMPRESSION AND REBOUND

A. Compression: This is easy enough. Try to think of how a piston in an engine compresses the air and fuel right before ignition. A shock has a piston inside of it as well that compresses the shock oil much like the piston in the engine. As a car goes into a corner, at the trasition from throttle to brake, or lifting off the gas, the rear weight from acceleration shifts to the front of the car as it slows down. That weight compresses the front shocks. Likewise, as a car is exiting the corner under acceleration, the weight once again transfers to the rear of the car and compresses the rear shocks. Simple enough, right? Read on.

B. Rebound: Rebound is the opposite of compression. Think of when you open a screen door with and the shaft pulls out of the cylinder. When the car is in transition to braking from throttle, as I said before, the weight tranfers to the front shocks. The rear shocks are rebounding at that point. As you get back into the throttle, the weight shifts once again to the rear of the car and now the front shocks are rebounding as the rear shocks are compressing to accept that weight transfer.

Now the fun part. To get the car to handle properly on entry and exit to the corner, the weight transfer must be ballanced properly to provide good handling. Like I said before, racing shocks are nothing but timers. They time when the weight shifts. A softer shock setting either receives weight (compression) or it dumps weight (rebound), faster than a stiff shock does. If I had a shock set up for a compression of 9 and a rebound of 1, I would practically have to sit on the shock to get it to compress, and even then it would do so very slowly. When I would let my weight off the shock, it could be pulled out quite easily by the force of a weight transfer at speed, due to the softer rebound setting. If it was set up for a compression of 9 and a rebound of 9, once you got the shock compressed, it would rebound very slowly with the rebound setting of 9 compaired to the softer rebound setting of 1 earlier. So if I wanted SLOW the rear weight from transfering to the front too quickly, what adjustments do you think are available?

Remember the compression and rebound rules. If you desire to keep the rear weight in the rear for a longer amount of time, you could do many different things. You could stiffen the rebound of the rear shocks or stiffen the compression of the front shocks. Just remember this key rule:

STIFF = SLOW weight transfer

SOFT = FAST weight transfer

With that in mind, you can address many different handling problems. All handling problems are nothing but wrong weight transfers for the speed you are going around the corner.


SHOCK THERAPY

Ok, so you don't care, you just want a guide that tells you what to do? Ok. Let me show you some things you can do with shocks to help address certain handling problems.

Here is a table explaining what to do to the shocks when certain handling problems are experienced:

Pushing on Entry                      Loose on Entry

Increase compression rate of LF               Increase rebound rate of LR

Decrease compression rate of RF          Decrease rebound rate of RR



Increase compression rate of RF              Increase rebound rate of RR

Decrease compression rate of LF          Decrease rebound rate of LR



Pushing on Exit                      Loose on Exit 

Decrease rebound rate of LF           Decrease compression rate of LR

Increase compression rate of RR              Increase rebound rate of RF



Decrease rebound rate of RF          Decrease compression rate of RR

Increase rebound rate of LF          Increase compression rate of LR

LF                    RF 

Increase compression rate:       Increase compression rate:

Tighter on entry.         Looser on entry.

Decrease compression rate:  Decrease compression rate:

Looser on entry.          Tighter on entry.

Increase rebound rate:     Increase rebound rate:

Looser on exit.               Tighter on exit.

Decrease rebound rate:      Decrease rebound rate:

Tighter on exit.              Looser on exit