The 1983 1000 km of Nürburgring saw the overall lap record of the Nordschleife broken by German driver Stefan Bellof with a time of 6:11 in his Porsche 956. That lap record, as well as his race lap record of 6:25, still stand to this day.
I was hoping to approach this article with a celebratory mood, bragging that I’ve slaughtered the factory Porsche driver by several seconds, but I’ve run into one minor problem:
I can’t beat Stefan Bellof.
Wikipedia describes the Porsche 962c as as replacement for Bellof’s 956 that became successful through private owners and enjoyed a long career that lasted into the mid 1990’s. 16 cars were used by the factory team, while a whopping 75 were sold to customers. Due to the high demand for 962 parts, some aluminium chassis were built by Fabcar in the United States before being shipped to Germany for completion. Derek Bell, a 5-time Le Mans winner, drove the 962 to 21 victories between 1985 and 1987, remarked that it was “a fabulous car, but considering how thorough Norbert Singer and the team were, it was really quite easy to drive.”
The car in Assetto Corsa comes with a fantastic default setup, but for the Nordschleife, some adjustments obviously had to be made. I dropped the ride height, jacked up the downforce as much as I could on both ends of the car, softened the suspension all around (referred to as wheel rate in Assetto), and used the same bump settings as I did in my Brazilian Stock Car – 10 up front, 3 in the rear. I also softened both anti-roll bars, the front more so than the rear.
Several attempts and a few catastrophic Teamspeak meltdowns later, Bellof had the upper hand by a mere two tenths of a second. In settings designed to replicate a Qualifying session for the 1983 1000km of Nurburgring (fast track grip), the German driver was just a hair faster. Reducing the aero by just a tiny bit for more speed on the straights saw my time drop down to a 6.11.3, but that wasn’t fast enough. I needed a 6:11.1.
To appreciate just how fast the lap record is, even in ideal conditions with as many tries to get every corner right as I wanted to, on a track accurate down to the nearest centimeter and zero opponents to get in my way, someone went even faster on the real thing.
So maybe one of the PRC.net readers can help out and find the extra two tenths. The car is obviously a rip from Forza Motorsport 4, but the physics are damn good, the setup values reasonable, and while it won’t make you many friends among those who cry foul over illegal mods, this one’s worth adding to your collection. Below is a link to the car itself, the setup I used, and a replay of a lap with the full downforce:
Click HERE to add the Porsche 962 to your Assetto Corsa car roster.
Awesome, dude. Thanks for sharing the Porsche.
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Mmm yeah, I don’t think I’m going to be breaking that record.
I really like the point of comparison though, those are incredibly *similar* times!
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Stefan was the very REAL deal – gone too early RIP – may his record stand forever in the real world and pretend world too!
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That default setup is AMAZING, just drove this car around 88 Spa a few times and It really was a blast!
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You’ve now written three articles about ripped mods, how about actually covering scratch-made mods made by the pillars of the community? The McLaren MP4-13 for AC is a fantastic mod that hasn’t been covered by a single one of the main sim racing sites.
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nobody except your self righteous brigade cares if mods are ripped or not as long as theyre good as the last few have been
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honestly scratch made mods are few and far between, you have a dedicated team of 3 dudes constantly fixing the garbage conversions that come out of russia.
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What about the devs that originally made the car? I’m sure they would like to kick any ripper in the face.
When someone rips the car from another modder, it’s not ok, but when it’s from a game, it’s ok?
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I’m not part of the self righteous brigade, I like and use ripped mods, but a news source giving them attention over scratch-made stuff isn’t right. Plus it’s an affront to Turn 10 Studios, who would be completely justified in DCMA-ing this article. There’s a place for ripped mods, and it isn’t here.
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well, uh, obviously the place for it is here, because, well, here it fucking is.
quit fucking crying.
if james cared, he wouldn’t post about it in the first place.
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That one should be talked about though. Weird how some slip through the cracks.
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There’s no main-stream coverage because they’re all busy shilling, be it for developers (like PD & GTPlanet) or their own interests. (RD)
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Wait so on a track that demands much more ground clearance than normally in some places you did every little bit possible to scrape the ground more ??
By softening the suspension you effectively stiffened it out by riding the packer springs and bumpstops earlier, and even earlier with higher downforce, and even earlier with lower rideheight, and even earlier with less ARB.
At this point using welder would not change the suspension much… that said it could be good for aerodynamics, but if we are talking realism you’d loose vision at high speed due to vibrations :P
But who knows, i haven’t tried the mod yet…
Also Illegal mods are bad and you should feel bad, but some illegal cars do have awesome scratch made physics and with that said, thanks for giving them some light :) definitely trying it out!
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I was also wondering about that.
Normally green hell automatically means I’m going to be increasing suspension travel and properly suspended travel in particular. Otherwise, the car tends to get twitchy in the rough turns and scrubs exit speed.
Could very well be something funny with this car in particular.
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Welp for ground effect cars aerodynamics was everything, and it was said that if the rest of the car components could handle it, stiffening and lowering the car as much as possible was best for laptimes.
In the sim car case the actual effective range of setup options pretty limited (basic springs and wings could be uninstantiated and the car would still drive ok haha) and with relatively stiff packers only the rideheight could mess stuff up hard… :D
Frankly twitchyness in rough turns could have more to do with too high rideheight and aero stall than any bottoming out :P
After driving it it felt like the car had somehow more stiffness than stated… low 6:07 on fast track for me hehe :P
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Tried car… Ehh.
Sounds are bad, and obvious and easy to fix faults being left doesnt give me faith in the rest of the physics being any good.
Not only did it auto blip the downshift, but it bounces off the Rev limiter when it does, but this somehow doesn’t affect the car at all.
Odd
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