CDA4 Honda NSX GT3 EVO Release Notes

Welcome to the Honda NSX GT3 EVO release notes blog. In this page you will find the detailed notes compiled by the team after each session when creating the fast and safe variants of the new CDA4 NSX EVO GT3 setups. Please carry on reading below to see what our team found:

Brands Hatch

Stiff front springs to maintain stable aero through high speed corners.
Low rear bump stop range and high preload to provide rotation on power through the second part of the lap.
Soft front rebound is used to help stability in mid corner but causes slight bouncing when cutting T6.
Very soft rear arb and stiff rear dampers are used to control the rotation at high fuel load.
Bump Stops are stiff as the car was losing grip during high compression on the T1 exit kerb.

Misano

Medium anti-roll bars for more agility in direction changes and quicker load transfers
Increased rear slow bump to increase rotation on throttle
Lower differential to increase rotation in the off throttle phases, as the car was less nervous at Misano than at other tracks.
If you feel understeer on turn entry, lower the brake bias.
If you have understeer in medium/high-speed turns raise the bumpstops at the front, do the opposite in case of stability issues.

Nurburgring

The preload has been dropped to improve off throttle rotation in the narrow parts of sector 2.
The dampers have been adjusted to improve braking stability. This makes the car much more forgiving into heavy braking zones, but also makes it relatively stiff through the direction changes. This definitely makes the car responsive, but prone to understeer if overdriven.
If you find the understeer kicking in too often in faster corners, consider dropping the preload a bit more. This is especially needed if you prefer to throw the car into the corners more aggressively (the rear won’t kick out as often due to the current damper configuration, contrary to the expectation with lower preload).

Paul Ricard

Stiff ARB’s for stability through high speed corners.
In order to keep the car safe through Signes it is crucial to control the pitch by stiffening the front suspension.
Rear springs are soft to aid top speed. They can’t be at the softest setting as that unsettles the car on kerbs and causes roll.
Bumpstops are set up to provide stability at high speed and during compression but also to allow rotation at mid and low speed corners.
Front camber can be kept high as the tire wear remains even due to high speed and off-camber corners.

Silverstone

Although a fast circuit, cornering speeds are key, so a high downforce setup was used.
Due to its peaky aero nature, lower rake along with relatively stiff springs were used to minimise any variation in aero balance from braking and accelerating.
Short front bumpstops used to limit rotation on entry to gain stability.
Relatively stiff roll bars used to also improve aero stability.
Safe setup uses a softer rear roll bar and a few other minor adjustments to try to give a larger operating window.

Spa Francorchamps

The car was slipping at every corner, so we softened the wheel rate in both front and rear.
It worked well with wing 8, too uneatable with 7. 9 for safe setup, can move to 8 if confident.
The ARB softened makes the car better in corner entry stability. However, we needed to reduce the bump stop range to avoid hitting the floor.
Safe setup runs a more conservative wing and toe settings. We went more aggressive with wing 7 in qualifying.

Suzuka

The car needs to run stiff ARBs around Suzuka to keep the aerodynamic forces acting evenly through the high speed corners. The bumpstop rates have also been stiffened to improve roll stability and provide agility under direction changes.
However the car also needs enough traction since there are a few off camber corners present on the circuit. This has been achieved by increasing the rear bumpstop range and stiffening the dampers instead to control the roll of the car.
The stiffer front dampers help in maximising entry response and stability over the Degner curves.

Zandvoort

The anti-roll bars need to be set quite stiff around here to keep the aero balance stable throughout the track. It also helps in preventing excessive roll through the narrow bumpy sections of the track.
A higher roll stiffness around Zandvoort keeps the tyres in a better working range without adding extra camber gain, thereby maintaining a better temperature balance across the tyres. This means you can run a low brake duct combination and gain a little better performance overall. Going too stiff however will make the tyres saturate quicker giving a much smaller working window before losing grip.
The dampers have been adjusted along with the preload to improve stability over the hill at the start of sector 2.
In hairpins it’s best to focus on maintaining higher minimum speed as it will reduce TC engagement on exit. Enter the corner bit wider and cut in on exit to get a straighter line out.

Zolder

The setup used the Nurburgring race fast variant as a reference point with the damper and spring configurations being very similar to start with.
The rear dampers are run stiff for the setup to improve kerb stability. Additionally the ARBs are quite soft to ensure maximum compliance over small bumps on the track surface through the middle of high speed corners.
The preload is quite high as usual for the Honda, but still not as high as some of the other tracks. This has been done to improve turn-in into high speed corners, with the higher front ride height providing mid corner and kerb stability.
The dampers are very sensitive to changes and any click in either direction will have a strong effect on aero balance for the car. It is advised not to change the values too much with respect to the currently developed fast race setup.
The bumpstop ranges need to be high enough to prevent excessive actuation but still low enough to provide roll stability through the corners. In order to soften the impact itself, the bumpstop rates have also been adjusted.
Being a very complex track demanding many contradicting balances from the car, the setup has a very small working window. Hence the safe setup has a very small ride height adjustment and preload change, which would simply make the car more stable on entry everywhere, however be sure not to throw the car too aggressively into the corners as the rear will inevitably kick out.

Barcelona

Front arb is quite stiff to provide stability in the long braking zones
Pace at this track heavily depends on the TC. High TC values will heavily restrict available power on long corner exits.
High preload on race setups provides good on-power rotation through the fast corners like T3 and T9. It also stabilises rotation on entry. Q setup uses lower value to allow more rotation on entry.
Stiff dampers give more control while clipping kerbs in T7 and last chicane.
Q and RF setups require control of slight tire slip on exits in order to maximise the lap time.

Donington Park

The car seems to prefer a slightly lower wing setup at this circuit with 11.
To compensate for this, we are adjusting the Rear RH (Rear Ride Height) to 73mm. This adjustment aims to reduce drag and improve rear stability simultaneously.
For a safer setup, we are running the wing at its maximum to minimise the possibility of oversteer.
In order to improve rear corner exit, we are softening the springs as much as possible.
During qualifying, we are planning to raise the ride height at the rear for easier attacking.
Negative toe adjustments were made to ensure quicker tire readiness.

Laguna Seca

Positive toe at the rear to increase stability and traction.
Soft springs and bump stops at the rear for good traction, and stiffer at the front to fix excessive oversteer on turn entry.
Very high differential preload, the car was very nervous when releasing the throttle, this fixed the problem.
For qualifying, the springs have been softened to maximise grip, and the differential preload has also been lowered, resulting in a car that is a little more difficult to handle when releasing the accelerator, so if you have problems, raise the differential, maximum recommended value 200.

Kyalami

The Kyalami setup uses COTA as a baseline since the rapid direction changes and low surface grip are comparable between the two tracks.
The bumpstop ranges have been set quite high to provide enough compliance over the bumpy track surface without affecting the tyre grip over the kerbs.
Damper adjustments have also been made to provide as much stability as possible without venturing into understeer whilst going through the esses in the second sector and the long downhill right hander.
ARB stiffness has not been entirely compromised since response and direction changes are crucial around Kyalami. If the ARBs were too soft, either the aero would destabilise or the car would roll too much, engaging the bump stops too early and pushing the car to understeer.

Hungaroring

More neutral toe in front to provide more predictable behaviour on kerbs in the esses.
Staying in second gear through the chicane helps carry more speed through. Honda is very good over kerbs so make sure to cut them a lot to save time.
In T2 it’s best to go for a V line. This way you can maximise exit grip and get a good line into T3.
Bumpstops provide stability while braking but for mid corner a combination of preload and front rebound was optimised to make it easy.

Monza

The car felt very unstable throughout all the chicanes and had snap oversteer in the rear at low speeds. We found the best wing is 6, working well with low rake to have a good speed in the straights but also be drivable in the other corners.
We tried different combinations of wheel rates and ARB. We found a good balance over the kerbs with a bit lower in the rear than in the front.
The key to avoid understeer in the mid corner was to significantly reduce the bumpstop range. This way, when the car pitches, it reaches the limit soon and it doesn’t lose consistency.
For the safe setup you’ll feel less top speed since we increased the wing angle one click. Also reduced the differential and soften the springs to make it easier on the chicanes and traction.

Imola

The Imola setup uses Zolder as a baseline which makes the car have decent performance over the chicane to begin with, giving more room to focus on the technicalities of the circuit.
The ARBs are run quite stiff to provide enough response and stability through the very narrow esses present on the track.
Similar to other tracks the dampers are also run on the stiffer side. The bump stops however have been set up differently because of the difference in stiffness between the front and rear wheel rates. The stiffer rear wheel rate has been combined with enough rear range making the car rotate quite well without running into too many traction issues. The disadvantage is that this gives overall less compliance while accelerating off of kerbs, making the car a little more difficult to control if not driving smoothly (despite the traction itself being good).

Mount Panorama

High preload and stiff wheel-rate for increased stability.
Very low bumpstop on the front helps a lot to increase the stability of the car in the mountain section.
You can decrease the wing by 1 click in quali and race fast to increase the top speed, but the car became more unstable and very difficult to drive.
For race safe we increase the wing to the max to have more downforce on the high speed corners and in the dowhill, we also have also used stiffer wheel rates to have a more stable car.
Short shift in 5th gear before turn 10 to increase the stability of the car, same thing for turn 17, short shift in 4th.

Snetterton

Bumpstop ranges are higher so that they don’t limit grip in hairpins and instead control the stability at higher speed.
Fast damping is stiff to keep the car compliant going over kerbs on exits
Rear gets a lot of centrifugal force at high fuel loads. Multiple changes were done to keep the rotation of the car manageable. Mainly soft rear arb, high preload and rear damping are responsible for easy turn in and mid-corner.
Safe setup focuses on making mid-corner even easier with the help of softer front rebound. Front of the car has also been raised to limit ground collisions and be more forgiving.

Oulton Park

The narrowness of Oulton Park makes it quite a tricky track for the Honda. The car generally has a small operating window before the tyres get pushed over the limit.
To help in rotation into high speed corners while getting off the throttle the preload has been reduced a bit compared to the Kyalami setup which was used as the baseline.
This combined with damper changes on the rear have helped in maintaining decent rotation without snapping the rear end into the corners.
The kerbs are not the best for the NSX around the track and the fast damping changes that have been done provide a decent level of grip. However optimising the entire setup to attack the kerbs would induce severe understeer and cause unresponsiveness, so this compromise has been kept in mind while setting up the suspension.

Watkins Glen

Stiff front arb is necessary to keep the car stable while turning in for Bus Stop at high speed.
Stiff dampers to provide a stable car over the kerbs in bus stop
Soft springs and stiff front rebound are used to gain rotation instead of rake which gives the car more traction in slow sections of sector 3.
Rear springs are soft to aid top speed but going too soft can cause understeer during high compressions.
Low camber is used as there are a couple of off-camber corners which heat up the tire unevenly.

COTA

The car is fundamentally quite stiff so it is quite sensitive to direction changes if made too quickly. In order to help in general compliance while changing directions in the first sector the ARBs have been softened quite a bit. The car also runs a softer wheel rate combination to ensure maximum mechanical grip through the slow sections of the middle and final sector.
Pitch control and braking stability on the other hand are controlled by a stiff damper configuration which ensures that the stiff chassis doesn’t destabilise the car too much whilst running on a soft suspension setup. Contrary to the expectation, stiffer dampers don’t overdamp the car with this particular soft spring setup.

Indianapolis

The ARBs have to be run very low on this car around Indianapolis to optimise the grip on all the bumpy low grip sections of the track, despite being a flat track surface in general. This is because the surface itself is quite slippery which makes any undulations all the more aggressive on the tyres.
The wheel rates have also been softened for the same reason. The dampers instead have been stiffened to maintain optimal response through the faster corners.
Aero changes have a very small effect through the main straight, so the focus has primarily been on maximising grip through sector 2 in the direction changes and on the kerbs.

Valencia

Lower than usual camber as the inside of the tire was getting really hot and was causing snappy traction loss.
Lower preload to provide easy rotation through the tight corners. A slightly positive toe also helps keep the car at a reasonable yaw angle.
Front springs are kept stiff to provide stable aero in T1 but the front arb was softened to get enough front grip for the rest of the track.
Low preload and high rear bumpstop range provide good grip on tight exits
Quali setup uses an aggressive TC setting to make all the power available at the cost of traction. It can be reverted to the TC from race setups if needed.

Team List

Please note, sessions with no engineer shown were solo sessions:

Track	Driver	Engineer
Barcelona	Hubert Szymanski
Hungaroring	Hubert Szymanski
Imola	Luka Berk	Miguel Jimenez
Kyalami	Chris Hack	Saiduth Ramesh
Laguna Seca	Amedeo Castorino
Misano	Amedeo Castorino
Monza	David Pertile	Miguel Jimenez
Mount Panorama	Amedeo Castorino
Nurburgring	David Pertile	Saiduth Ramesh
Paul Ricard	Hubert Szymanski
Spa Francorchamps	Amedeo Castorino	Miguel Jimenez
Suzuka	David Pertile	Saiduth Ramesh
Zandvoort	Hubert Szymanski	Saiduth Ramesh
Zolder	David Pertile	Saiduth Ramesh
Brands Hatch	Hubert Szymanski
Donington	Luka Berk	Miguel Jimenez
Oulton Park	Chris Hack	Saiduth Ramesh
Snetterton	Hubert Szymanski
Silverstone	Luka Berk	Rob Taplin
Watkins Glen	Hubert Szymanski
Indianapolis	Chris Hack	Saiduth Ramesh
COTA	Amedeo Dekeyser	Saiduth Ramesh
Valencia	Hubert Szymanski