Ride heights set the height of the car when it is standing still. How many millimeters (or the measuring point used) might not always be clear.

For example, in iRacing they describe it as “Increasing Offset: LOWERS the ride of the car,” while in other sims you typically see it expressed in millimeters or centimeters of ground clearance.

A common piece of advice you’ll hear is to run the car as low as possible.

Lowering ride height usually improves both aerodynamic and mechanical grip — but only up to a point.

You have a few options when it comes to total ride heights:

• Running very low ride heights gives you a super low car, great for smooth and flat tracks. This provides an aerodynamic advantage.

• However, a very low car cannot use much spring travel. On bumpy tracks like the Nordschleife or Sebring, a bit of extra ride height can be beneficial. It allows the suspension more room to move, helping the tires maintain better contact with the track surface throughout the lap.

Another detail is that ride heights also influence the roll center of the car. The roll center is the point around which the chassis rotates in a corner. Changing ride heights shifts these roll centers, so the height you choose is not only about aerodynamics and suspension travel but also about how the car feels when it leans into corners.

In The Art of Car Setups I’ll show you exactly how to connect all these parameters and turn them into strong, reliable baseline setups you can use on any track in any sim.

In the dynamic rake section, we talk about this more deeply. If we set the ride height front 50 and rear 50, we have 0 mm of rake. If we raise the rear ride height by 20 mm, we now have 50 front and 70 rear, which gives us 20 mm of rake.

There is no specific target number for rake. What it does is set the baseline for how the car feels in high-speed areas. As explained in the wing settings, when running a high rear wing we typically need some rake in the car to create proper balance.

Increasing the rear ride height makes the car more dominant on the front tires. In my guide The Art of Car Setups, I explain in detail how, aerodynamically, the aero box shifts forward. On some cars, sims, and track combos, too much rear ride height can upset the diffuser, causing a sudden loss of rear downforce.

Some cars are very sensitive to this, while others are not.

In practice, this becomes very noticeable in high-speed sections. There is less effect in medium-speed corners, and often almost no difference in very slow corner behaviour.

This, of course, depends on the sim and how it interprets ride height changes.

In this example, we are going to make the assumption that the front and rear spring travel have the same value. When the car is traveling at high speed, downforce is produced, and the springs compress under the airflow. If the front and rear spring travel are different, you can see how rake would change under acceleration, top speed, or braking.

A good example is watching the rear camera on an F1 car. When they accelerate, you can clearly see the suspension squatting on the rear axle down the straights, and then how it unloads under braking.

This video goes even deeper into ride heights