SHIFT 2 UNLEASHED Tuning Tips: Stance

While shooting sparks may look cool when they’re shooting up from behind your car in SHIFT 2
UNLEASHED, chances are you’re losing valuable speed at the same time. That being said, if you
can minimize bottoming out while still keeping the car low, you’re in the best position to
succeed.

Many of the body kits put your front splitter and rear diffuser a mere inch from the ground.
Lowering your stance too far in the front or rear can result in one of those pieces scraping the
asphalt during weight transfers or a bump on the track. A low center of gravity is paramount
when cornering. If your car is as high as it can go, there will be an increase in body roll and a
lack of stability, which will certainly harm you when cornering.

The Audi R8 Coupe 4.2 FSI quattro is one of the most balanced cars in the game, but set the
front and rear ride height to 10.00 and all of a sudden, you’ll find yourself fighting the car to
stay on the track. Take them both down to 0.00 and I found I had mixed results. The car
handled a little better, but any bump on the track caused sparks to fly out, essentially indicating
extra friction and drag that I didn’t need.

Stance can be important with any car, but I wouldn’t recommend tinkering much with it.
Making a minor change, then adjusting the bump stops is the best combination I’ve found to
keep the center of gravity low without bottoming out. If you’d like increased grip, lower the
front to about 2.00-4.00 and that should be plenty.

General Rules:

-Raised Stance: More acceleration, increased body roll, less traction

-Lower Stance: Better center of gravity, more grip, chance of bottoming out

-Don’t lower to less than 2.00

-If front and rear aren’t the same, keep the front lower than the rear

Tuning Tips: Aerodynamics

One of the most important terms in racing verbiage is downforce, which is a major part of your
car’s aerodynamics, and is vital whether you are cornering hard or trying to reach top speed.
In SHIFT 2 UNLEASHED, controlling your car at 200mph is a must. No one wants to scratch that
beautiful paint, right? At high speed, adding downforce can certainly help you corner. What
you’re doing is pushing the front or rear of the car into the ground, giving you more traction.

With the lovely BMW 3.0 CSL Gr. 5 that came in this week’s Legends DLC, adjusting the
aerodynamics can make a big difference. By increasing front and rear downforce, you gain
much more grip when cornering, but trim your top speed because you’ve created more drag.

The opposite is true as well. I set the front and rear downforce to 0.00, and the top speed
increased about 4-5mph; however, these settings made the car difficult to control, making the
tracks feel more like a skating rink than tarmac.

Setting the front to 0.00 and the rear to 10.00 gave me loads of understeer, making it nearly
impossible to turn, whereas dialing the front up to 10.00 and the rear to 0.00 gave the car
massive oversteer. It handled just like a drift car (hint hint!).

In the end, I settled on a front downforce of 8.00 and rear of 5.00. I prefer a little less traction in
the back as it allows me to get the tail around on highly technical tracks.

As you can see, large changes to the aerodynamics can cause problems; however, adding or
removing a little downforce can shred at least a second off your lap time.

General Rules:

-Increased downforce (Front or Rear): more grip, less speed

-Decreased downforce (Front or Rear): less grip, more speed
-Lots of front, none in the rear: Massive oversteer, drifting
-Minimal front, lots of rear: Understeer, push
-Small adjustments equal faster lap times

Tuning Tips: Tires & Brakes

Everyone knows a car doesn’t perform well when it’s got a flat tire, let alone four flat tires.
Using that as an extreme example, one can understand that by slightly adjusting tire pressure,
you can improve the handling of a car.

I wouldn’t recommend solely increasing or decreasing tire pressure. It should be used in

conjunction with the other tuning aspects offered, some of which I’ve already described. I want
to reiterate that going overboard with one area can affect the rest of your tuning in a negative
way. Making small tweaks to different parts will almost always garner better results than
maxing out the settings on just one.
I’ve tuned a Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG fairly well, but I still feel some minor push in the corners.
After manipulating the springs to my taste, I began fine-tuning my front and rear tire pressures.

I decreased the front to 40.00, and increased the rear to 55.00, promoting oversteer. This
immediately helped bring the rear-end around in the middle of the corner, getting the car
pointed quicker, essentially allowing me to get back on the accelerator sooner. Anything larger
than 10-15 in either direction is generally too much.

Whereas the tire pressure seemed to help in the middle of the corner, I still felt I was having to
over-slow for the entry. By increasing the rear brake balance to 55.00, my entry improved
enough to where I felt the car was helping me turn, instead of working against me. That being
said, I wouldn’t advise going any higher than that. Couple your brake balance with a brake
pressure between 10.00-15.00, and you should find the car acting more like it should.

Again, I can't stress enough that while changing tire pressure may seem minor, small changes to
multiple areas result in a better tuned car than giant changes in the more important areas.
Make enough small changes and you’ll find yourself rising higher and higher on the Speedwall.

General Rules:

Tire Pressure:

-Increased Front: Promotes Understeer

-Decreased Front: Promotes Oversteer

-Increased Rear: Promotes Oversteer

-Decreased Rear: Promotes Understeer

Brake Balance: Higher will lead to more movement in the rear, making it easier to turn, but
more unsettled

Brake Pressure: Adds or removes "bite" when braking

Tuning Tips: Springs

Continuing from where I left off last week, I thought I would finish the Springs category. Sway
Bars deserved their own blog because I feel they have a far greater impact on handling than the
rest. That being said, once you have your sway bars tuned properly, adjusting spring rates and
bump stops can act as a complement to them.
I’ll come right out and say it: I love the GUMPERT apollo. I’m not sure if it’s the looks, or the
absurd Performance Index the Works conversion gives it (2354!), but I love it as an alternative
to all the Lamborghinis and Paganis I see. That being said, I spend about half of my energy just
trying to keep the car on the track. The back end simply has a mind of its own.

Adjusting the sway bars helped, but there was still more to do. I needed to tone down the
movement of the rear-end, while still maintaining the ability to turn into the corners.

Stiffening both springs to 6.00 essentially turns the car into twitchy, uncontrollable
jackhammer. Trying to hit a high-speed sweeping corner with stiff springs will send you
shooting into the wall due the wheels having zero give. Every bump in the road is felt, and you’ll
find yourself skipping outwards consistently as the tires lose contact with the pavement.

Softening both springs to 0.00 will cure the twitchy feeling, making it easier to control on the
straights, but the turn-in becomes much more difficult since there is a lack of responsiveness
and slight increase in body-roll.

My personal preference is that I’d rather have to catch the tail trying to step-out, than wait for
it come around in a turn. I found comfort in a setting that gives me a responsive front spring
rate 4-5.00, and 3.00 in the rear. If you don’t like trying to tame oversteer, set the rear a bit
softer.

With that fixed, I moved onto bump stops which cured one of my biggest annoyances with the
apollo: Bottoming out. With the Works package, the GUMPERT sits extremely low, and
constantly scrapes on rough sections of the track. By setting the bump stops at 15.00 in the
front, and 20.00 in the rear, I fixed bottoming out altogether.

The trade-off here is that I gained precious MPH, but the car becomes a little bit squirrely. If you
find sparks shooting out from underneath your car regularly, increase your bump stop on the
front and rear until they stop, just remember that the higher you go, the less control you have. I
would only recommend adjusting bump stops if your car rides extremely low.

A well-balanced car like the BMW 135i Coupe has a ride height that’s fine, negating the need
for bump stops (or a change in ride height itself). That being said, it really isn’t as responsive as
I’d like in corners. After playing with the sway bars (Front at 6.00 and Rear at 3.00), I set both
Springs at 3.00 which resulted keeping the car balanced, giving me a little bit more turn-in, a
touch of controllable oversteer, and more speed out of the corners.

If all else fails, keep remembering the three parts to a corner: Entry, Apex, and Exit. Each needs
to be smooth in order to be fast.
General Rules:

Stiff Springs - responsive, but twitchy

Soft Springs - Less responsive, easier to control

Bump Stop - Raise it only to the point where you stop bottoming out, any more than that and it
becomes extremely difficult to control

Tuning Tips: Sway Bars

As any driver will tell you, there are (at least) three parts to a corner: The entry / turn-in, the
apex, and the exit. What’s great about SHIFT 2 UNLEASHED is that each car reacts differently to
corners. In general, you want your car to have the fastest exit speed possible, but some suffer
such bad understeer or oversteer that you spend precious time correcting your steering instead
of getting back on the accelerator. At the forefront of this issue are the sway bars.

When tuning, adjusting the sway bars can mean the difference between your fastest lap and
the gravel trap. There are front and rear sway bars which react differently based on their
stiffness. A soft front sway bar will cause oversteer, while a stiff front sway bar will cause
understeer. The opposite is true for the rear sway bar. Therefore, by setting both of these to a
certain point, you can find a happy medium with your car.

The Need for Speed SHELBY Terlingua Mustang, for example, along with most of the muscle
cars in the game, has horrible understeer. Its big, heavy engine block makes the entry to
corners much more difficult, especially on a technical track like Laguna Seca. I knew thatsetting
both sway bars to 0.0 would shoot me right off the track with massive push, while leaving the
front at 0.0 and setting the rear at 10.00 would cause the Mustang to act like a drift car. Here’s
what I love about tuning: Tiny adjustments can make all the difference. Instead of going
overboard as previously stated, I made a small tweak to the front sway bar, softening it from
6.0 to 4.0, and all of a sudden, the car was dialed in. I shed nearly 1.5 seconds off my lap time.

A small car like the Lotus Elise has the opposite issue. Every time I came tearing around the
corner, the rear-end felt like it was going to step out on me. I was so busy worrying about
oversteer, that I would take each corner much slower than I needed to. The rear sway bar was
already pretty soft, but I tried making it even softer (0.0-1.0). The result was a car with great
turn-in, and the wheels would just barely stick through the corner, never breaking loose. It felt
like I was racing right on the edge through each hairpin, kink, and chicane, which is exactly
where I want to be.
The key to sway bars is to make small adjustments, don’t do anything drastic. Heavy muscle
cars tend to push while the lighter cars want to fishtail. Make a few small corrections and they’ll
all be handling like the well-balanced race car you want.

General Rules:
- Softer front: Oversteer
- Stiffer front: Understeer
- Softer rear: Understeer
- Stiffer rear: Oversteer
- Make small adjustments: No more than 4.0 in either direction
- Heavier cars: Tend to have understeer
- Lighter cars: Generally have lots of oversteer

Handling Setup 101

When you do the evaluation race at the beginning of your career, you’ll get a recommended
set-up based on how you performed in that race. But that’s not written in stone, so feel free to
tweak and tune to get the controls and cars to feel just right for your driving style. As you get
more comfortable, you’ll be able to tune every car in the game to its unique specifications. But
early in the game, as you’re more focused on earning XP and leveling up, I recommend some
quick adjustments to get you on the track sooner.

For example, in OPTIONS, highlight GAMEPLAY, and set the HANDLING to Novice and turn your
STEERING ASSIST on. You can also turn on BRAKING ASSIST if you have issues slowing down for
corners, however I left this off as I was simply concerned about keeping the car pointed
straight. You’ll now have a great foundation to tune from. As my crew chief always says, “It’s
much better to tune a car to improve it, than to tune a car to make it less-worse!” In this case, I
couldn’t agree more.

Go ahead and try out these gameplay settings and if you have any more questions, feel free to
leave them in the comments and I will try to answer them as soon as possible.

Tuning Tips: Drivetrain

’d like to begin by discussing one of the simpler, yet extremely valuable, changes you can make
to your car: Gear Ratios. Gear Ratios can be one of the easiest fixes you can make to slice
precious seconds from your lap time. Depending on the track, giving your car taller or shorter
gears can make a huge difference in top speed and acceleration. Like any bit of tuning you do,
it’s going to be give-and-take. You give up top speed, but you get acceleration and vice versa.
For example, I like to use the Porsche GT3 Cup R and race in the FIA GT3 category. While the
Porsche is fantastic in the corners, the power of the Lamborghinis and Corvettes allows them to
walk away when we hit the straights at Road America. To counter this, I shortened the Final
Drive of the Porsche from 4.0 to 2.0, giving me more acceleration out of the turns, allowing me
the quickness to keep up with the others as they power down the straight. (In the beginning,
stick to adjusting only the Final Drive to avoid messing up your shift points!)

As further proof, I tried setting the final drive to 8.0 and did a few hot laps. The result: I was
10mph faster at the end of the straights, but I was so slow accelerating out of the other turns
that I was about 1 second slower on my lap times. (For fun I also took the Porsche GT3 R to
Hazyview and ran .3 seconds quicker with 0.0 gears.)

I use Road America as an example because it only has medium-length straights where you can
allow yourself the ability to trim top speed in favor of acceleration. At tracks like the Dakota Tri-
Oval, Enna Pergusa, or Monza Jr., set your gears to a taller setting (6.0+) because those
extremely long straights will give your car the time to climb up to those high speeds.

To see the most dramatic change, take a Class D car and shorten the final drive as far as it will
go. I took a bone stock, Volkswagen GTI and set the final drive to 0.0. The result from a lap
around Mount Panorama was 3 seconds quicker! The Class D cars take so long to hit their top
speed, it’s better to just give them a lot of acceleration because it’s rare you’ll find a track you’ll
be pinging the rev limiter down the straightaway.

It’s a delicate balance, but there is a sweet spot on almost every car and track that will
maximize your speed and minimize your lap times. Utilize the live tuning options and find what
works!

General Rules:

Short Gearing (2.0 and less):

- Class D cars
- Short tracks with short straights and/or lots of corners (Hazyview, Suzuka, Brands Hatch,
Riviera)

Average Gearing (2.0-6.0):

- Any car Class C and above
- Tracks with a lot of variety (Laguna Seca, Road America, Dubai Autodrome, Shanghai)

Tall Gearing (6.0 and higher):

- Tracks that favor extremely long straights or constant high speeds (Dakota Tri-Oval, Enna
Pergusa, portions of the Nurburgring, Monza Jr.)