NASCAR 25 Tuning Guide by IceMan PJN

Ovals aren't my primary form of racing, but I'll take a whack at a rough tuning guide for NASCAR 25. Our resident Ghostwriter put together one but I wanted to do one, as well. I suppose Ghostwriter offered something to fill in the void while mine was absent, and while it works I'm afraid it was a bit more vague than players may want/need.

On the plus side, we shouldn't need a tremendous amount of tuning setups for NASCAR 25 as we would with something like Assetto Corsa, Project CARS, Gran Turismo, or Forza Motorsport. These other games have a much greater variety of cars and of tracks, and seemingly unlimited combinations of car builds. NASCAR 25 seems to make no distinction between car makes, so it's basically just four different NASCAR series, and tweaking them for different types of tracks - short ovals, medium ovals, superspeedways, and road courses.

I won't go so far as saying a specific setup is perfect for everybody for this car and for that track. We all have our own driving styles and preferences for car feel. Instead of telling players to set everything up a specific way, this is more about how does the car feel to you and what do you want it to do different. The most basic, easiest way of tweaking it is with the game's basic setup tweaking the overall setup all at once between more loose (oversteer) and more tight (understeer). This may be fine for most players, but more competitive players, especially online, may need a bit more fine-tuning.

Starting Point

A prevailing opinion is that the default car setups in NASCAR 25 lean a bit tight. To those of us more accustomed to other racing series on road courses, like Formula 1 or sports car racing, that's understeer. The game's basic handling slider is a good place to start, even if we're wanting to tweak the settings in greater detail. A safe bet would be to adjust this slider slightly towards "loose" (oversteer). I assume the game defaults a little tighter (understeer) to make it harder for inexperienced players to spin out, which could frustrate them. From my experience, more experienced players are generally more frustrated with a car that feels unwilling to turn into the corners.

So, let's start with tweaking the handling slider like 25% towards "loose". Depending on how competitive you want to get, this might be all the farther you need to go. Then again, if you're reading this, I'm assuming that we want to dive a bit further into it.

• 25% loose, then tweak from there

Wedge

Wedge is a chassis adjustment to the rear springs shifting weight distribution across the four tires. Adding wedge tightens (understeer) the car while removing wedge loosens (oversteer) the car. Make slight adjustments in increments of just one or two clicks at a time and see how that feels. When watching an actual NASCAR race, you will inevitably hear talk about wedge adjustments, and now we're doing the same thing.

• Car is too tight (understeer) = decrease wedge

• Car is too loose (oversteer) = increase wedge

Tire Pressure

Decreasing tire pressure can add grip, to a point, but increases heat and wear. Increasing tire pressure reduces rolling resistance, which increases speed on straights and superspeedways.

• Car is too tight (understeer) = decrease right front and left rear pressure

• Car is too loose (oversteer) = increase right front and left rear pressure

Springs

Springs control how the chassis leans (rolls) into corners. When racing on counterclockwise ovals, we want to lean left. This means we want softer springs on the left and stiffer springs on the right side of the car.

• Car is too right (understeer) = decrease right front spring rate (softer) and increase left rear spring rate (stiffer)

• Car is too loose (oversteer) = increase right front spring rate (stiffer) and decrease left rear spring rate (softer)

Gear Ratios

Short tracks will favor shorter gear ratios where you should be doing more accelerating and won't be hitting really high top speeds. Intermediate tracks should be more in the middle. Superspeedways don't see much accelerating, but a lot of time at top speed, so we want that to be high, meaning we're going to want long gears. Regardless of the track, we should aim for our final (5th) gear ratio to have us approaching maximum RPMs at the end of the straights where we're fastest.

Track Types

Different track types will favor different setups. As a general rule of thumb, short ovals will favor cars turning in more, so you'll probably want a more loose (oversteer) setup. Conversely, superspeedways don't require much aggressive turning, but will favor higher top speeds, so longer gears will outshine shorter gear ratios.

• Short oval = more loose handling, shorter gears favoring acceleration over top speeds, as you won't be hitting 200 MPH on a short track

• Intermediate oval = balance is king here

• Superspeedway = turning isn't as important as stability, and focus on higher top speed with longer gears, higher tire pressure, and reduced downforce