In this Project Cars 2 Tuning Guide, we will guide you on how to properly tune your car for racing in Project Cars 2.
Project Cars 2 is a racing sim and it has different types of racing disciplines for you to test out your mettle on. They range from tight short circuits to long high-speed sprints to off-road Rallycross tracks. Every track and car requires a specific tune according to the current situation.
Project Cars 2 Tuning
Selecting Tires
Of all the parts of the car, tires are the only component that comes in contact with the surface of the track directly and hence you must pay special attention to them. Project Cars 2 offers you a variety of tire choices to choose from.
To choose tires, your first observation should be the track type and the condition in which you are going to race. You can choose from Slicks, Wet, Ice and All-Terrain Tires.
Now, when choosing tires, check out the track whether it has some off-road sections or just road. If it is all asphalt racing then go for Slicks as they offer the best performance on the road. If there are some off-road sections such as in Rallycross events, you will need some rugged tires to handle the rough terrain. Use All-Terrain for maximum grip here.
Similarly, Ice tires are used when racing on Ice. Depending on the Weather conditions, you can choose Wet tires if there is a possibility of rain or if the track is already wet and it is raining.
Each set of tire comes in two further variants, soft and hard. Soft tires give you better handling and they heat up quickly but they do not last long for endurance races so you need to do some early pit stops. Hard tires heat up slowly, provide less grip than soft tires but they last very long so they are a good choice for endurance races.
What you can do is choose hard tires for early laps and then switch to soft tires in the last laps when you need quicker lap times and better handling.
Using the Race Engineer
Project Cars 2 has a very helpful tool for newcomers to the Racing Sim genre. The Race Engineer is like your tuning assistant who will guide you how to tune your car.
Simply answer the questions it asks you and it will tune up the car for you. You can share all the details with it regarding what problems you are having with the car, whether that are related to braking, not reaching Top Speed or any such problem. Simply share them with the Race Engineer and he will tune the car for you.
Try out the new tuning set up and if you are still not satisfied come back and ask for more assistance. Observe the tuning method and the things that the game tweaks after your every feedback. This will eventually teach you how to tune your car when a specific problem occurs or how to counter a specific issue on a track. This is a very useful tool and highly recommended for people new to the racing simulation genre.
Setting Up Gear Ratios
Gear Ratios are simply the time when your car’s transmission switches to the next gear. They are set by default for every car and they are not always suited for the track you are racing on Stock gear ratios are set by the factory to give an optimum performance in diverse situations but in Project Cars 2, you do not want just optimum performance. You want to push your car to the limit.
Therefore, for this purpose, you need to set the gear ratios selectively for every track that you are about to race on. Make this your habit and you will have the perfect car for every race. Each track has a different layout. Some are high-speed sprinters while some will be short-curvy tracks while some are the combination of both these tracks.
You need to check the track first; you can practice running a track before you start the main event so you have an idea about the track. During the practice run, you will get to know what type of track you will be racing on.
Once you figure it out, it is time to set your gear ratios. If you set the ratios close and short, the car will accelerate quickly but will have a less Top Speed. If you set long and far off Gear Ratios, the car will reach a higher Top Speed but the acceleration will be slow.
Time to implement this knowledge according to the track. If the track has a lot of quick corners and sharp turns, you will need to accelerate quickly out of them to set your gear ratios short and close to maximizing acceleration. Similarly, for long high-speed sprint track, set your gear ratios long so that the car is able to reach higher speeds during those long sections.
If the track has a combination of both low and high-speed sections, then you need to set balanced gear ratios, which favor both acceleration and a decent top speed. You cannot have both so choose the gear rations wisely according to the track you are racing on.
Rallycross Setup
Rallycross events are very challenging and they offer a completely new level of tuning expertise. These events are held on tight and close circuits with a lot of sharp turns and quick acceleration sections. Two most important aspects of your car that you need to focus here are the quick response while turning and acceleration out of corners.
For acceleration, you will need to set short and close gear ratios so that the car can quickly accelerate out of the sharp turns. For the suspension, you want to make sure that your car’s center of gravity is as close to the earth as possible.
To achieve this, you must lower your car’s height as much as the car allows without bottoming it out. Set the rear suspension one step higher than the front one as it is will make sure that maximum downforce is applied to the front under hard braking while approaching a corner.
You also want to make sure that your dampers are set to stiff so that the suspension does not compress too much as to bottom out during jumps and other uneven surfaces during the off-road sections. Your front end needs to be as nimble as possible to minimise the time it takes for you to exit the last corner and enter the next one.
Practice with the tuning a bit and eventually, you will find the best Rallycross setup that suits your driving style.
This concludes our Project Cars 2 Tuning Guide. If you want to add anything to this guide, feel free to use the comments section below!
