Indy seems like an easy track, but once you get into it you find it isn't, it's actually quite difficult to find the right lines through each of the four corners, and have the car sorted out to give the best speed possible. I haven't spent a lot of time here in the past but I did at least have a rough setup to start with from some past fun races. I would prefer to run the Ferrari as I suspect the V12 engine would give a higher speed than the DFVs, but I know the Matra MS80, and after all these years the car just suits me. Not only is this a race with the 69x F1 cars, but also this race will be done with the new pitstop patch which allows proper pitstops for fuel only to be done, so that has to be installed and tested. Thankfully it works well, as long as you remember to raise the drivers arm when you stop bang on your pit board to start the process.
Anyway, the important thing is the setup, and adding tyre pressure gives a small bump of speed but also less grip. A lot of time has been spent getting the car to run through the corner with the minimum amount of wheel angle. Less angle results in less scrub which looks after the tyres. It takes about 5 laps or so to get the tyres into their proper temperature range so each setting change takes a lot of patience to then properly evaluate. In the end I got to a car which certainly feels very fast, turns into the corners with a lot of speed, and has a good balance on the front right and rear right tyre. At the moment we seem to evolve from a neutral balance to a slight understeer in midcorner after 5 or so laps, which then evolves to a more loose oversteery balance - even perhaps needing a small lift before the apex to keep the rear calm.
The main issue I think will be having a car that can keep up with the lead draft, allow different lines through the corners, and stays stable at draft-influenced speeds into turn 1 and 3. Staying calm will be crucial.
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