Dampers
You can look at dampers in two ways.
- Road connectivity through road surface. The tires need to follow the surface. The more actively the tire can follow bumps and the road texture, the more effective the tire will be.
- Fine-tuning car behaviour. When hitting the brakes, you want the car to pitch, but pitch a bit more slowly, for example
For point 1, we can lose out on a lot of lap time if we use the wrong settings.
For point 2, we’re fine-tuning. If your car understeers on 40% of the track, you don’t use dampers to tune that out.
Another note on histograms: chasing perfect bell curves might look nice, though I’ve had plenty of cars with great histograms that still didn’t feel right.
It doesn’t always mean you have a good car setup.
If your particular sim treats dampers realistically, here’s what you can do to tweak them.
A base rule for dampers is: the stiffer you are on your springs, the stiffer you should be with your dampers.
Bump (compression) is how fast the spring is allowed to move in.
Rebound (extension) is how fast the spring is allowed to move out.
Fast bump/rebound refers to even higher velocity movement.
How to tune them?
Set a bump value and let rebound follow closely.
Have 10 clicks of bump? Then try 11 of rebound.
Why?
When springs compress, you want them to compress a bit more slowly — otherwise, the car pogosticks, and you lose tire contact.
When you have very high rebound damping, you also lose tire contact because the tire can’t land properly on the road surface.
If you really want to go deep into dampers and how to tweak fine car behavior, check out The Art of Car Setups guide.