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Assetto Corsa » How To Setup The Perfect Tyre Pressures In ACC
Find out how to set the perfect tyre pressures in ACC. Discover the ideal tyre temperatures for your tyres during along with how to adjust your tyre pressures for every condition.
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It doesn’t matter whether you’re using a downloaded car setup, the in-game default setups, or creating your own. One thing remains constant. And that is the need for perfect tyre pressures.
You tyre pressures are crucial to your pace in ACC, with cold or hot tyres not providing the ideal levels of grip. Setting the incorrect tyre pressures is often one of the main causes for overheating tyres, and its something we can learn to fix very easily.
In this setup guide, I’m going to look at why tyre pressures are so important. I’ll show you how to calculate the perfect tyre pressures in ACC, and how to find the perfect tyre temperature window.
Before delving into why tyre pressures are so important and how to diagnose any tyre temperature or pressure issues. I first want to show you the best tyre pressures for all cars in ACC. Aiming for the following tyre pressures after completing a few laps in a practice session will get you into the right tyre window.
The optimal tyre pressure range in Assetto Corsa Competizione is between 26.0 and 27.0 PSI, and this is the same across all car classes.
Car Class | Optimum Tyre Pressures |
---|---|
GT2 | 26.0 – 27.0 PSI |
GT3 | 26.0 – 27.0 PSI |
GT4 | 26.0 – 27.0 PSI |
The recommended optimum tyre pressure window above is based on the latest version of the DHF tyre compound that was introduced with the v1.9 patch in 2023. Previously, the old 2020 tyre compound (DHE) had a higher optimum tyre pressure range, and the ideal pressures were different for each class of car. For example, with the older tyre model, the GT4 cars had a lower tyre pressure window than the GT3 cars.
In wet conditions, the tyre pressures will need to be adjusted as your tyres will cool much faster due to the cold water. This requires higher tyre pressures as the cold track and air temperatures will result in lower pressures.
Car Class | Optimum Wet Tyre Pressures |
---|---|
GT2 | 29.5 – 31.0 PSI |
GT3 | 29.5 – 31.0 PSI |
GT4 | 29.5 – 31.0 PSI |
One of the most important things when setting your tyre pressures, is the optimum tyre pressures come after a few laps on track. You should not set your tyre pressures to the values recommended above in the pits.
When setting up your car for a practice, quali or race session, you will always need to set lower tyre pressures in the garage. You should be aiming for your tyres to be in the optimal pressure range after completing a few laps on track.
This is due to the tyres heating up as you spend more time on the track. In the garage, your tyres are colder, resulting in lower pressures. After 5 or 10 minutes on track, your tyres will have heated up, increasing the tyre pressures.
You should aim to have your tyre pressures in the optimal window at the start of any qualifying lap or hotlap. You should also be aiming to maintain your tyre pressures in the optimal range throughout a race.
Learning to set the correct tyre pressures in the garage, with the aim of hitting the optimal tyre pressure window after a few laps on track is a good skill to learn. It often comes down to experience and a little trial and error, although tyre pressure calculators do exist for ACC.
All cars in ACC will have a slightly different tyre warmup duration, with most cars getting into the optimal range within a few laps of leaving the pits. There area few key factors that affect how fast your tyres warm up in ACC, including weather conditions, car setup and your style of driving.
There are a variety of different factors that will affect your tyre pressures. Accounting for all of these different elements will provide you with information on how to correctly adjust your tyre pressures to get them into the right working range.
One of the biggest impacts is the direct relation between tyre temperature and tyre pressures. The hotter your tyres get, the higher your tyre pressures increase.
This means that cold tyres will be at a lower pressure compared to warm tyres. If you overheat your tyres, this can result in you losing grip as your tyres exceed the correct pressure window. As you set your tyre pressures during a practice session, always pay attention to your temperatures while on track.
One of the biggest things that affects tyre temperatures in ACC is the track temperature. A hotter track in the middle of the day will result in higher tyre temperatures compared to a cooler track at night. This may result in you having to lower your tyre pressures during hotter conditions to get back into the optimal tyre pressure range.
The air temperature also has an affect on your tyre pressures in the same way as the track. Hotter weather conditions will result in hotter tyres, leading to increased pressures. As a rule of thumb, use our guide of lowering your tyre pressures by 1 PSI if the ambient air temperature increases by 1°C. Or increase your pressures by 1 PSI if the air temperature drops by 1°C.
One of the major variables which affects your tyre temperatures is the weather conditions. In dry conditions your tyres will be much warmer than in the rain, due to the cold water cooling your tyres down. During wet races or mixed conditions, you’ll almost always require higher tyre pressures to keep your tyres hotter with the wet track and cold rain constantly lowering the temps.
The time of day will also affect your tyre temperatures with colder night races resulting in lower tyre pressures. During a completely dry race, the air and track temperatures will be much lower when the sun sets compared to midday.
If you are endurance racing, this time factor is something you really need to be conscious of. You will find that you will have to increase your tyre pressures as night arrives and decrease them as the sun rises in the morning.
Your brakes are one of the closest parts of your car to your tyres. This means that hot brakes can cause some ambient heat to spread to your tyres. You can adjust your brake duct setup to change how hot or cold your brakes are, which in turn can have a small impact on your tyre temperatures and pressures.
Your HUD in Assetto Corsa Competizione has a range of information, including a tyre temperature widget. This is very helpful when setting your tyre pressures, as it shows you the current temperature of each tyre on the inside, center, and outside along with your current tyre pressure.
This widget changes colour based on the temperature;
Not only are tyre pressures crucial for maximising your grip and tyre life. They also affect your whole car setup. With this in mind, you can adjust your tyre pressures to introduce or remove certain characteristics that your car displays.
Understanding how your tyre pressures affect your car setup in Assetto Corsa Competizione allows you to set up your car with certain characteristics. Your tyres are the one area of your car that touches the surface of the track, and how much of your tyre is touching the surface dictates how much grip you have.
Over-inflating reduces the contact patch between your tyres and the track surface and makes your tyres much stiffer. The perks of this can be that your car is more responsive with higher tyre pressures.
Under-inflating your tyre will mean that more of your tyre’s surface is in contact with the race track. This is ideal for slower tracks, or for improving rear traction. Running lower tyre pressures also softens your tyre, giving your car more bounce. Very similar to softening your springs and dampers.
What we as sim racers want to achieve is that perfect balance between too soft and too stiff. Getting just the right amount of contact patch giving just the right amount of grip and tyre life. So let’s look at the setup characteristics of an under-inflated and over-inflated tyre.
Tyre pressures are one of the most important parts of your car setup in Assetto Corsa Competizione. It is one of the quickest and easiest ways to gain lap time and preserve tyre life throughout a race.
If you are racing with incorrect tyre pressures, even if its only off by 1 PSI, you open yourself up to a few negative scenarios. However, the most crucial negative of running incorrect pressures is that you will almost always be losing lap time.
Now, I want to show you my process for setting the correct tyre pressures in any situation. I use this exact process during most race weekends, leading to optimal tyre pressures for qualifying and the race. This process allows you to quickly set the correct tyre pressures in a few easy-to-follow steps.
The first part of your tyre pressure setup will be to load up your setup, whether the safe or aggressive preset or one of our setups from SimRacingSetup.com. Try to match the fuel load with the fuel load that you’ll be racing or qualifying with.
Ensure the track conditions match those of your upcoming race or qualifying setup. And then take to the track for a few laps which we refer to as our “baseline run”. Drive at least 3 laps, but ideally 5 plus to get a baseline tyre pressure reading.
Have the tyre pressure readout displayed on either the HUD or on your dash so you can see the pressures after your baseline run. After completing your baseline run, note down the tyre pressures of each tyre and head back to the garage.
When in the garage, calculate the difference between each wheels tyre pressure and the optimum range stated above. From there, either increase or decrease your tyre pressure in the setup menu be the difference.
Once you have adjusted your tyre pressures by the difference between your baseline readout and the optimum pressure. Head back out on to track for another run of at least 3-5 laps.
Again, pay attention to your tyre pressures to ensure they are closer to the optimum range. If they are still out, head back to the garage and repeat this step.
Once you have the perfect pressures to keep your tyres in the optimum range, you should complete a longer run. In this run, you should check your tyre temperatures to ensure they stay in the optimum window.
The main purpose of this run is to ensure you aren’t overheating your tyres which will result in a loss of tyre life.
You can monitor your tyre temperatures using the HUD, which shows a live reading of your tyre temperatures. The colour of the tyre in the HUD will change with the temperature.
If your tyres are too cold or losing temperature, they’ll appear blue. Your tyres will often be blue when you leave the pits. If they are in their optimum temperature window, they’ll be green. And if they are getting too hot, they’ll appear yellow.
You’ll also see your brake temperature with the smaller HUD icon beside each tyre. If your brakes run cold, you can lose heat from your tyres. And if your brakes are consistently hot, the heat will bleed into your tyres.
As a final note, you should be consistently checking your tyre pressures and your car’s behavior after making any setup changes. Adjusting different parts of your setup, including your tyre pressures will affect how your car handles and behaves. This means that further tweaks may be required after making setup changes.
For sim racers who don’t fancy manually adjusting their tyre pressures, there are a couple of options. You can download one of our ACC car setup bundles which come with optimal tyre pressures already set. Or you can use an ACC tyre pressure calculator.
While the rule of thumb of adjusting your tyres by +/- 0.1 psi per 1°C of ambient temperature change is a good rule to use if the ambient temperature changes in between sessions. A tyre pressure calculator can take away this guess work.
Our recommended calculator for automatically adjusting your tyre pressures is called the ACC setup tyre pressure adjuster and is available on RaceDepartment.
This calculator is a simple tool which you can load your car setup into and it will create a new car setup with the new ideal tyre pressures. To use this calculator, follow these steps;
All of our ACC car setups come with optimised tyre pressures, meaning you don’t need to worry about large tyre pressure changes. Our setup bundles include both dry and wet car setups, both with adjusted tyre pressures perfect for jumping straight into a race.
You can use the links below to shop for your favourite sim racing products, or for any products that we may have recommended. These links are affiliate links, and will earn us a small commission, with no additional cost for you.
The ideal tyre temperature in Assetto Corsa Competizione is between 80-90°C. This is the optimum range where you will have the most grip, with the working temperature window between 70-100°C.
A new set of dry tyres can last between 60 and 90 minutes in ACC, depending on conditions and your driving style. As a rule of thumb, you should change the tyres when you pit for fuel. This could mean one tyre change during a two-hour race.
There are a few ways to heat up your tyres in ACC. You can increase the tyre pressures to increase the temperature. Driving more aggressively also increases tyre temperatures. Getting temperature into your brakes by braking hard will allow some of the heat to transfer to your tyres, warming them quicker. Move your brake bias rearward during your warmup lap to heat the rear tyres better.
The V1.9 update for Assetto Corsa Competizione saw a big change in the tyre physics and, in turn, the tyre pressures. After the V1.9 patch, the optimum tyre pressures are between 26.0 – 27.0 PSI for all cars including GT3, GT2 and GT4 cars.
Rich is the founder, F1 car setup creator and content writer for SimRacingSetups. With over a decade of experience as a graphic designer, marketing director, competitive sim racer and avid motorsport fan, Rich founded SimRacingSetup.com to share his passion and knowledge of sim racing and Formula 1 with other sim racers. Regularly writes for sim racing website SimRaceReviews.com
View all articles written by RichFind the latest sim racing car setups to always have the advantage on track, with the best ACC car setups, iRacing setups and F1 24 setups.
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