Indianapolis 500: The Simulation Full Guide Version 3.3 -------------- NOTE: You can distribute this document freely, but it MUST be whole. If you wish to change it, e-mail me at KoD_e946@yahoo.com. Include the website you will have it on and what you wish to change. This document is (c) Elliott Mahler (KoD e946) 2002, and may not be changed without my consent as said above. -------------- Indianapolis 500: The Simulation is a game for DOS and possibly Linux made in 1989 by Papyrus Design Group, who no longer owns the rights to the game. It has surprisingly good graphics for its time, and is very realistic, down to short bursts of wind jolting you towards the wall, and vacuum suction, pulling you towards other cars. Contents 1.0 Forewords 2.0 The settings 3.0 Making your own car 4.0 Driving Short Races 4.1 10-lap Race 4.2 30-lap Race 5.0 Driving Long races 5.1 60 lap race 5.2 The 500 6.0 Answer table 7.0 Driving tips 8.0 The starting grid 9.0 Contact info. 10.0 Coming Soon 11.0 Version history *=Coming soon 1.0 Forewords: NOTE: LF=Left Front, LR=Left Rear, RF=Right Front, RR=Right Rear About pressures, they rise after a few laps. The ones I provide are the ones you should start in the pit with. They will raise at least 5, which are supposed to happen. The Fuel Laps are how long it takes the car to run out of gas with those exact settings. Tire laps are the amount it takes for a tire to pop with the exact settings. A pit window is when you should pit in a long race. This is the same thing with engine durability. That is the amount of laps the engine can go until blowing out under those settings (can be increased by reducing turbo). 2.0 THE SETTINGS This area contains configuration settings that will get you by. I have tested them, and they all work, but may not be suitable to all people. I left Shock and Ant-Roll Bar information out, because those are different from person to person. All of these need a joystick. Car 1 Settings: CAR: Penske/Chevy FUEL: 5 gallons WING: Front: 3 from top. Rear: 3(or 2 for VERY good drivers) from top RUBBER: RF: soft, RR: soft, LR: soft, LF: soft STAGGER: + 1.00 inch PRESSURES: RF: 23, RR: 26, LR: 26, LF: 28 CAMBERS: RF: -.50, RR: 0, LR: +1.75, LF: +.50 GEARS (4th gear): 3.90 TURBO: 9 Stats: FUEL LAPS: just over 4 TIRE LAPS: 8-10 PIT WINDOW: -- ENGINE DURABILITY: Unknown AVG. SPEED: 230 MPH COMMENTS: Only use this one for qualifying. Experts only, the fuel only lasts until turn 1 after you finish qualifying (if you are very good). If you make a few tweaks to this (increase fuel to 15, make the RF tire Medium rubber), then you can probably win a 10-lap race, starting from 1st. Car 2 Settings: CAR: Penske/Chevy FUEL: 40 gallons WING: Front: 4 from top REAR: 3 from top RUBBER: RF: medium, RR: medium, LR: soft, LF: soft STAGGER: + 1.00 inch PRESSURES: RF: 25, RR: 25, LR: 24, LF: 27 CAMBERS: RF: -.50, RR: +.25, LR: +1.50, LF: +1.00 GEARS (4th): 3.90 TURBO: 9 Stats: FUEL LAPS: 32 TIRE LAPS: 52-56 PIT WINDOW: 30-32 ENGINE DURABILITY: entire race AVG. SPEED: 218 MPH COMMENTS: I had to modify this car, and it isn't as fast as the original, but it was so unstable that I had to change it. The handling is a lot better now. For a lap after pit stops, the car is loose, and for a lap after yellow flags, the car is tight. Car 3 Settings: CAR: Lola/Buick FUEL: 40 gallons WING: Front: 6 from bottom, Rear: 7 from bottom RUBBER: RF: medium, RR: medium, LR: soft, LF: soft STAGGER: +.60 PRESSURES: RF: 25, RR: 23, LR: 23, LF: 27 CAMBERS: RF: -.50 RR: +.50 LR: +1.75 LF: +1 GEARS (4th): 3.30 TURBO: 6-8 Stats: FUEL LAPS: 33-35 TIRE LAPS: 60-70 PIT WINDOW: 32-35 ENGINE DURABILITY: entire race, if boost is kept below 8 AVG. SPEED: 209 MPH COMMENTS: It may not seem good at first, but it has GREAT handling. I recommend this to everyone, because it is a good car to practice using the anti-roll bars. This car is designed for 30-200 lap races. Car 4 Settings: CAR: March/Cosworth FUEL: 40 gallons WING: Front: 4 from bottom, Rear: 5 from bottom RUBBER: RF: Medium, RR: Medium, LR: Soft, LF: Soft STAGGER: +.10 PESSURES: RF: 24, RR: 22, LR: 23, LF: 26 CAMBERS: RF: -.25, RR: +1.00, LR: +1.75, LF: +.75 GEARS (4th): 4.60 TURBO: 7 Stats: FUEL LAPS: 33 TIRE LAPS: over 40 PIT WINDOW: 28-32 ENGINE DURABILITY: Entire race, if boost is kept below 7 AVG.SPEED: 210 MPH COMMENTS: Handles GREAT. I enjoy doing 200 lap races in this more than with the yellow car. 3.0 Designing your own car! So you have tried the defaults and my settings, but they just don't suit you? Do something about it! Make your own! 1st, you need to pick a car. If you are planning to do short races or long races at a slow pace (has its advantages too), then pick the Buick. If you want to go fast, are used to the controls, can handle random changes in controls, and a little sliding, then pick the Chevy. If you are new and want a car that handles good and doesn't change around as much, then pick the Cosworth. 2nd, you should run a few laps around the track. Find out how the car handles, and look for problems with the design. 3rd, you need think of what you want the car for. If you want it for qualifying, then settings will be different than if you want it for a race 4th, press f4 to look at your wing settings. Lowering the bar on the front will make your car turn better, but slow it down. Raising the bar on the rear will make you turn better, and speed you up a little bit, but doing too much of both will make you oversteer. Raising the bar on the front will fix oversteer, and speed you up, and lowering the bar on the rear will do the same thing, except slow you down. But, doing too much of these will make your car not turn enough. Generally, you want the bar in the middle to be straight or nearly straight, and the rear to be higher than the front if it isn't straight. If you are qualifying, and you are a good driver, you probably want these as high as they will go. 5th, come back in. If the change helped you, then try doing it a little more, and go back out and try it again. Continue this until you feel comfortable driving your car. 7th, you should work on gear ratios. Raising it (to a certain extent) generally increases speed down the backstretch, but you lose more speed in the corners, while with a lower one, you get better gas mileage, and lose less speed in the corners, but can't accelerate as fast, so you get a lower speed at the end of the long stretches. Work on these, running a few laps at a time, until your gas mileage stays between 2.1 and 2.3 and you the most speed that you can. If it is a qualifying car, try to keep the mileage between 1.95 and 2.15 at all times, to get the best lap time. Here, to turn better without having to have more wing, increase the stagger. 8th, run 30 laps then pit, but do not change the tires. In the pit, look at the tire wear. The more the tire is worn, the more of it is lighter gray. If less than one third of the tire is worn, then make it softer. If a tire pops before you finish the 30 laps, then make that a harder compound. 9th, you need to work on shocks. These work similar to wings, by helping you turn. Stiffer shocks (all around) make the steering reaction better. The left shocks should be set a little stiffer than the left. Setting the rear shocks stiffer than the front will make the car over steer, just like increasing the front wing, or decreasing the rear. The opposite comes from setting the fronts stiffer. 10th, Look at the tire compounds again, after all of these changes using the method described above. 11th, if you're impatient and are not planning on doing long races, then skip this step. Run five laps, and then press F7. You should be at the tire pressure screen. Each change raises/lowers the temperature by 5-10 degrees, so change accordingly. Run two more laps, and look at the temperatures. If the middle is relatively close (within two) of the other two, then you're fine. If the O and I temperatures are very different, then make the inner match the higher temperature. Press space to move on to the next tire, and repeat the process for all four tires. After this, go to Cambers (kam-burs) (F9). This is a little harder to use. On the first tire, if the temperature next to the letter "I" is hotter than the rest, then add camber. If the temperature next to O is hotter, then take some out. If they are equal, then move on to the next tire. Repeat this process on all four tires, going around THREE times to make sure. NOTE: the entire purpose of this step is to make the tires last longer. 12th, I suggest you save the design of the car, and then repeat the entire thing over from step 2. 13thyou need to mess around with the anti-roll bars. The keys to control the lever farthest from the dials are - and =. The keys for the lever closest to the dials are [ and ]. These work like shocks, only you can change them in the middle of a race, which is the most useful thing in the world (My yellow car listed above becomes tight right after yellow flags and loose right after pitting, so I need to make it more stable). Pushing the ones close to the dials forward will make the car tight (under steer), while pulling it back makes it loose (over steer). The opposite works for the ones farther from the dial. Try to keep them pushed as far forward as you can handle. You will probably only be working with the lever closest to all the dials. Last, run the car out of fuel, and keep in mind what lap you ran out on. You're done! 4.0 Short races If you're new, you will generally want to drive short races, seeing as you cannot damage the car by hitting walls or other cars. Note: If you are designing your car, get the settings just right so you will go fast, and last just more than 10 laps or so. Especially with the red car. 4.1 The 10-lap race This is a really fun kind of race. You should modify your car so it will last around 15 laps. You do not need to qualify anywhere specifically, because I have won from last before. Starting from 33rd should be a practice routine for the expert, especially at turn 2(if you have a fast enough car) you will come up to a HUGE group of cars that you must pass in the middle of the corner if you want to win from 33rd. One fun thing to do is to qualify on an end in the THIRD OR FOURTH LINE and slam into the car next to you. Spin around a few times, and then attempt to make it through without hitting anyone. This will help you judge where crashed cars will go in longer races in a huge NASCAR- style pile up ("The Big One"), as well as provide some good entertainment. 4.2 The 30-lap race This kind of race is a good introduction into long races. You will be nearly out of fuel, so you learn to conserve, and you cannot go as fast as you can for as long as you can. This is what makes it fun if you are used to 10-lap races. Set your car up so that it gets about 35 laps on boost 9. 5.0 Long races These are fun, but only for the more advanced. They require a LOT of patience, and a LOT of strategy (I have never gotten past lap 110 in the 200-lap race). 5.1 The 60-lap race This one is the most fun for me. It provides challenge, yet isn't too long. You will have to plan it to make only one pit stop. Try to conserve before your pit stop, then pit around lap 35. Then let loose and do everything you can to make the car go faster. Remember, there is only ONE lap in the entire race that is important to lead on... the last! So don't risk crashing, and hang back. Just try to be at most 20 seconds behind the leader. If you get more than that, forget conservation and GO!!! If you get lapped and you're going for the win, game's over. IMPORTANT: NEVER BLOCK THE LEADERS IF THEY TRY TO LAP YOU!!! THAT IS A GUARANTEED WAY TO CRASH!!! 5.2 The Big 500! Sorry, but I have never finished one of these. All I can tell you is to take it easy until about 50 to go before you really start racing. This one takes a TON of patience, and I doubt many will finish it. 6.0 Answer list Before you can enter the main menu and begin racing, you must answer an incredibly hard question about the past winners of the race. Because this is so hard, I have decided to include a table of the cars, the driver names, and the year of the race. Unfortunately, you must guess at which I am talking about, but I will try to make it clearer. Here are the first 12, in this order: Year, Driver's last name, AVG. speed, Time, Team number, Sponsor, Other 1911, Harroun, 74.59, 6:42:08, 32, None, Looks like a metal trash bin with white wheels. 1913, Goux, 75.93, 6:35:05, 16, None, One person behind the huge steering wheel, other standing behind the car next to him. 1915, DePalma, 89.84, 5:33:55, None, None, Looks like a boat with wheels. 1919, Wilcox, 88.05, 5:40:42, None, None, Car is sitting in front of a brick wall with windows. 1921, Milton, 89.62, 5:34:44, None, None, Looks like a cigar. 1923, Milton, 90.95, 5:29:50, None, None, Scaffolding in background, nothing else. 1925, DePaolo, 101.13, 4:56:39, 12, None, one person in a white suit standing behind the car right by the 12, all white. 1927, Souders, 97.545, 5:07:33, 32, None, Four people in white suits clearly visible behind car. 1929, Keech, 97.585, 5:07:25, None, Simplex(hard to see), A tree off in the distance. 1931, Schneider, 96.629, 5:10:25, 23, (in a black circle) Seal Fast, "winner" written directly below the driver, looks like car is in an open field. 1933, Meyer, 104.162, 4:48:00, 36, None, Two people in the car, car is in the same field as the one listed above. 1935, Petillo, 106.240, 4:42:22, 5, None, Flames painted on coming out of a heart-shaped grill in front. 1937, Shaw, 113.580, 4:24:07, 6, None, Sitting on the track (bricks). 1939, Shaw, 15.035, 4:20:47, 2, None, grandstand in background, the stands are not raised at all. 1946, Robson, 114.820, 4:21:16, 16, None, Car is black. 1948, Rose, 119.814, 4:10:23, 3, None, number is in the far front, car is very shiny. 1950, Parsons, 124.002, (2 or 3):46:55, None, None, Nothing outstanding in this picture. Just hope this guy doesn't show up in the questions. 1952, Ruttman, 128.992, 3:52:41, 98, None, Exhaust pipe leading from the front of the car, near the top, to the rear of the car behind the wheel. 1954, Vukovich, 130.840, 3:49:17, 14, None, Car is a perfect tube. 1956, Flaherty, 128.490, 3:53:28, 8, None, Black stripe down the lower middle, Writing below left rear tire. 1958, Bryan, 133.791, 3:44:13, None, None, White. 1960, Rathmann, 138.767, 3:36:11, 4, None, Looks silver in photo. 1964, Foyt, 147.350, 3:23:35, None, None, Nose bends downwards. 1966, Hill, 144.317, 3:27:52, 24, None, 2clearly visible exhaust pipes sticking out back. 1968, Unser, 152.882, 3:16:13, 3, None, Front wheels unusually far back, exposing a long nose. 1970, Unser, 155.749, 3:12:37, 2, None, Last of the 'tube' cars, number 2 is in a square with lightning coming from it on front. 1972, Donohue, 162.962, 3:04:05, 66, None, First of the 'modern' looking cars, still has an old look to it. No central hump. 1974, Rutherford, 158.589, 3:09:10, 3, None, You can tell that the car is yellow. First modern car with a central 'hump' in the car. 1976, Rutherord, 148.725, 1:42:52(this number should be at least an hour and a half higher, so I don't know), 2, cant read it, the side facing you is heavily shadowed. 1978, Unser, 161.363, 3:05:54, 2, cant read it, white stripe running along the side of the central hump 1980, Rutherford, 142.862, 3:29:59.56, 4, Pennzoil, rear wing supported on sides, not in middle 1982, Johncock, 162.029, 3:05:09.14, 20, STP, STP can be seen on the front just above the front wings. 1984, Mears, 163.612, 3:03:21.660, 6, Pennzoil, you can tell that the car is yellow 1986, Rahal, 170.722, 2:55:43:480, 3, Budweiser, not much outstanding here 1988, Mears, 144.809, 3:27:10:204, 5, Pennzoil, black sreipes on all the edges 1989, Fittipaldi, 167.581, 2:59:10.049, 20, Marlboro, c'mon, it's a Penske car! 7.0 Driving Tips During practice, after you are done making changes to your car, practice coming into the pits at full speed, braking at a certain point, and sliding into the pit. The people in the grass are great reference points. Try braking when you reach a certain person. You will make your pit time even less during a race, but you cannot do it of any of the 6 cars who pit behind you are there. For longer races, you will need to pit every 25-40 laps, depending on turbo and cautions. If you are low on fuel, and want to stretch out your fuel to the max, then wait until you have 3 gallons. On the middle of the 4th turn, if you DO NOT have 2 gallons of fuel, then pit. If you do, then you can choose to go another lap or go in at that time. For longer races, set our turbo lower than 9. If you are in the red car, then I suggest lowering it to at most 5 for the first 20-30 laps. The engine will last longer, your fuel will last longer, and you probably won't be lapped. After your first pit, raise it to 6 or 7, and you will last even longer. For people driving the yellow car in first, set turbo to 9 until you get to traffic (slower cars) then you can lower your turbo to 8 or 7. The other cars still will not be able to keep up. If you are not good at pitting, then pit on lap 15 or so. Your schedule will be different from all the other cars, and you will be able to pit freely. A joystick makes this game considerably easier. Every time you play, before you qualify, run a 10-lap race from the back of the field. This will help you race in heavy traffic if you need to, as you will be forced to pass all the slower cars. For shorter races, if you are using the red car, test to see what the highest gear ratio is that will get you past 10 laps without blowing the engine. For experts, the blue car can be very good, if set right. Don't abandon it! I have won a 60-lap race with it! THE COMPUTER IS OUT TO GET YOU!!! No joke. It was made that way to keep you on guard all the time. Sometimes, cars will pull out in front of you etc. The bright red car has slammed into me deliberately twice in my time racing, and has pulled in front of me several other times. When racing long races, accept being lapped. Holding the leaders back is GUARANTEED to get you crashed. If you want to change your car while in the middle of a race, when you pit, press 'P'. Now do the change. You can take as much time as you want changing what you want. Press 'P' again when you are done to continue racing. 8.0 The Starting grid When I get this in, it will show the name of everyone that is in the 500 portrayed in the game. 9.0 Contact info. If you wish to reach me for any reason, E-mail me at KoD_e946@yahoo.com, and have the topic be FAQ or INDY or something like that. If you want to submit a good configuration, email all the stats in that email, in the format that I used, excluding comments. For the fuel laps, I ask that you run the car out of gas with the current settings, and tell me what lap it was on, and how much the tires were worn (if you manage to pit) so I can at least make a guess. Thanks! 10.0 Coming soon! *the starting grid 11.0 Version history 2/19/03 Version 3.4 I finished the answer list (finally) and added the 500 race tips. 1/1/2003 Version 3.3 I mostly revised and made things clearer, but added the 60-lap race tips and cancelled the crash paths. 7/19/2002 Version 3.2 Revised a little, added a few comments to the cars, added more answers to the questions. 6/26/2002 Version 3.1 Added to the Driving Tips section, added to the answer table, and added the 30-lap race tips. 5/8/2002 Version 3.0 Mostly revised, added the answer list section and the 10-lap race section. Added the version history. 4/13/2002 Version 2.0 Added the How to Make a Car section, revised a little bit. 2/?/2002 Version 1 Created the document with Driving tips, Prefab cars.