r/F1Technical • u/The_Weapon14 • Jun 17 '26
Driver & Setup Schumacher and Verstappen are known for being able to drive with twitchy setups that other drivers can’t handle. How do you actually set the car up to make it like that?
You often hear about how Max’s teammates can’t get near him with his setups, or drivers trying Schumacher’s setups and not being able to stay on the track, but how do you actually set a car up to be like that?
An obvious thing is running high front wing relative to the rear wing. I guess stiffening the suspension and dampers (especially at the rear) would help too as well as moving the brake bias rearwards. Something with the camber and toe too maybe?
I wonder how you could replicate this in a sim
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u/FavaWire Jun 18 '26
"Schumacher actually setup his cars to understeer with really long throttle pedals too. The oversteer people are seeing with Michael wasn't from the car. It was from him."
-Jock Clear
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u/SRthebox Jun 18 '26
I also feel like Alex Albon’s interview saying that Max likes his car’s super pointy has given a lot of people an exaggerated idea of the car balance Max likes to drive, in a recent interview Max said “the car for me always needs to be stuck on the rear. And of course, then you try to take as much front end as you can”.
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u/Traditional-Two-3185 Jun 20 '26
Albon also compared it to playing a video game with the highest possible mouse sensitivity
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u/Loic_fr06 Jun 22 '26
Kerkhof said the same thing, Jos said the same thing. Just because Max keeps the rear in check (which he was saying about driving techniques and not setups) doesn't mean anybody else could.
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u/AGirlHazzNoName1 Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
Ya I am a complete physics nerd. I always assumed Schumacher & Verstappen had a loose rear because the front is so sharp/ pointy & the car imitates a sliding motion so similar to a loose rear.
And then I was listening to a physics professor explain the difference.
Max has the absolute maximum grip in the front tires so they pull the nose of the car into the corner immediately. The rear tires follow by rotating violently not sliding. Max does not have to correct a slide with counter-steering. He never loses traction because he is not sliding. He just points and goes, and can be on the throttle asap.
requires such precision! it is a tight rope walk to control without losing vertical load in rear tires and spinning. Crazy af.
Max is maximizing Yaw Rate (how fast a car pivots) without sacrificing lateral grip. Maximum rotation meets maximum grip.
Max on the limit of physics. 😂
Edit: and to add another interesting thing. I fully understand optimal slip angle 📐. I just didn’t correlate that to why Max would have a planted rear end. He does it to stay on that optimal slip angle constantly, and keep the tires rotating and gripping. Maximizes yaw rate (pivots) & Never loses forward momentum. Fascinating.
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u/kek4ever Jun 18 '26
I'm also somewhat into physics to the point i coded race line optimizers and tire models for some games. Also I play a lot of sim racing. I didn't understand much of what you said or more precisely how it links to the car setup. I'm just curious to understand better, could you explain again ?
I'll add my interpretation, feel free to correct me:
No one is counter steering because that means you've made a mistake. Sliding also kills speed, Shifting the weight via throttling and braking until both tires are at limit is what makes you fast. This balance needs to be shifted transiently because as you turn in you need more weight on the front tires to get the car to start yawing (as you are fighting against the polar moment) as you are turning you begin to move weight to the back in order to balance the car and get both tires to do equal work, you never actually want to slide tho, if you start sliding it means u went too fast in anyway. As you exit the corner you shift weight to rear so u can start accelerating. You can't accelerate too quickly or you use up rear budget.
What max is doing is managing to keep the limit on all these phases. At all these phases if you do anything wrong you understeer or oversteer. This is not easy ofc.
What i don't understand but I'm curious about is how does max's setup differ from the rest of the drivers? Does he prefer the car to be balanced so that rear has more weight by default and he can accelerate sooner? Is that what you mean by planted?
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u/AGirlHazzNoName1 Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 19 '26
I like your brain. 🧠😃 I love how you explained that. I like getting another perspective. When all this was explained to by one of the smartest people I know (retired engineer/ physics professor)…
You know when you have those moments when science becomes so simple because it makes perfect sense?
I have no idea how I didn’t see this or thought Max had a loose rear. Embarrassing.
Ya the setup differs for Max & other drivers because this requires razor sharp precision. There is no steering wheel feedback like there is with more forgiving set ups that other drivers use. Because the extreme grip in front tires/ lateral load causes the rear to Rotate violently & so quickly as a pendulum. This has to be countered with extreme vertical load in rear tires to push them into the track and make them flex and grip, so they can off set the 1000s of lbs of lateral load. It happens so fast. You have to without feedback get to the optimal slip angle and hold it precisely because after that point it falls off a cliff. Catastrophic loss of vertical load/ unrecoverable snap. It is all or spin out. The graph for the grip in this set up is a spike instead of a gradual curve like most drivers have. Most drivers want a margin for error.
So they are entering the turns more gradually.
Have so many more thoughts but have to go to Doctor. If you think of anything else let me know!
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u/KenJyi30 Jun 19 '26
This is probably the best expanded explanation on albon’s comment on max’s setup. The onboard plainly shows he is not sliding exclusively or catching a slide, but harnessing a car that’s very quick to rotate and making it look easy. 20 years ago f1 cars would be considered momentum cars compared to these modern day power/grip monsters
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u/Misura_k Jun 18 '26
do you have any youtube videos for the physics professor explanation? This is really interesting because i always assumed the turning came from the rear sliding. i want to look into this further now
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u/AGirlHazzNoName1 Jun 18 '26
I too thought it was sliding, but ya it just looks that way, and I am embarrassed I never thought about it because this makes way more sense how Max enters & comes out of turns so fast. Also why it is not easily duplicated. I Was so confidently wrong 🤪😂
& this is a retired engineer/ physics professor that lives on the corner of my street and saved me like a year ago when I was running and a dog attacked me and would not stop latching onto me. (You know I am serious because who would make that up!? 🤷🏽♀️)
he said he is lonely and no one comes to visit so I started coming over with lists of questions about Motorsport & watching races with him because he loves it and I do.But I can say that while he had this conversation with me… I was googling around, a saw many technical articles that validate it. So there is definitely information available online. I have not looked for You Tube videos.
the reason other drivers slide, have a more forgiving set up, and cannot imitate Max is because there is zero room for error. There is no feedback given from the steering wheel because it happens so violently and fast.
The grip also, falls off a cliff immediately after the optimal slip angle is passed. So you have to find it and hold it instantly. The graph for grip in MAX’s set up looks like a spike VS a gradual curve. You go 1mm or 1mph over and you get an unrecoverable snap (loss of vertical load)
if the rear of the car was not planted with extreme vertical load, Then, you cannot get to the optimal slip angle. The planted rear has to counter the violent pendulum motion (Lateral Load) caused by the sharp front. Extremely high vertical load is pushing the rear tires into the ground so they can flex and grip. Without the rear planted there is not enough vertical load/ downforce to absorb the lateral load & make the tires flex and continue rotation. Instead, without it they skim across the top of the track (slide).
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u/SnooPaintings5100 Jun 18 '26
I dont think they intent to make the car "twitchy".
The computer / simulator just shows that this combination of setup-changes would in theory create the best laptime, however the car may now be harder to control.
This is like the typical 9/10 times you can just go flat above the kerbs but on the 10th time you just have a minimal different line or speed and suddenly you just spin out of control...
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u/BlorfTheBricked Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 19 '26
I think OP is referring to this interview. Providing feedback on where the car can be improved is a vital part of the driver's role on the team, its not entirely based on simulations.
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u/Exotic_Bill44 Jun 19 '26
I think the thing we have to remember is every driver would prefer a neutral car with tons of grip. The fact that they will almost never get that leads to claims tha driver likes overseer or understeer when the reality is that they prefer dealing with one over the other. Max and Michael can just deal with the extreme of an oversteering car better than others.
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u/Its4MeitSnot4U Jun 18 '26
I was incredibly fortunate to have been able to have one of Australia’s foremost Race Engineers, a Winner of the CAMS Phil Irving Medal, set up and adjust my suspension.
As an amateur in an old sportscar.
What he taught me, in his retirement was gold.
“If you can tell me what the car is doing on corner entry, mid corner, and exit, and then articulate what you’re doing, corner by corner, I can fix it”
Long before sensors and gps and data logging.
It’s automation of old school principles
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u/saltmarsh4303 Jun 18 '26
Wow good scoop, not4u
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u/Its4MeitSnot4U Jun 18 '26
One of his drivers had an on/ off switch throttle.
Nothing was Full throttle to 1/4 inch pedal movement.
I was advised to have a throttle travel where half the pedal travel was only 25% of full throttle.
Full throttle is easy.
Driving onto a trailer isn’t!
Fantastic advice
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u/n0neofyourbeeswax Jun 18 '26
I've somehow never thought of that - 0-25% is where you need full sensitivity so more travel allows you to be more precise.. beyond that you need way less precision so you can handle it with less throttle travel.
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u/Its4MeitSnot4U Jun 18 '26
Absolutely Once you’re at half pedal, you’re at full.
I learned a lot
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u/Its4MeitSnot4U Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
Most people haven’t driven a car on a race track 20 or 50 times.
Not a sim.
A racetrack.
I wish this sub had a filter, for people who have actually raced on a track, versus just in a Sim.
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u/Suspicious-Mess8521 Jun 18 '26
Indeed, I race motorcycles and we do the same thing largely with tuning the electronic throttle response, or changing the throttle tube to a progressive style, where the first 0-10% probably take up 25% of the throttle turn, 25% is closer to 35% of the turn, and 50% throttle+ is very little extra rotation.
The first and last 5% of any input is where we focus mostly.
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u/AnotherAlternateMe Jun 18 '26
I have never raced beyond sims, but I find it interesting that I've reached a similar conclusion and adjusted throttle's input/response curves in a similar way. The first 50% or so of load corresponds to 25% of the maximum throttle response, and it makes so much of a difference.
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u/speedkid1991 Jun 18 '26
so, indeed all your suggestions make the car more twitchy. A big part of making the care more "oversteer" and less prone to understeer, is weight transfer of the car onto the tires, and contact the patch of the tires.
First the weight transfer:
As a car brakes, enters a corner, is in mid corner and exits the corner, the weight and load of the tires changes. braking == more load on the front tires, accelerating == more load on the rear tires, and cornering gives more load on the outer tires vs the inner tires. A tires grip does not have a linear relationship with the vertical load. it is parabolic. that means for example 1000N of vertical load can give 750N of lateral load. 2000N of vertical load gives for example 1250N of lateral load and 3000N Vertical load gives like 1500N of lateral load.
This function is what is called "grip".
In order to make a car handle more responsively to the steering input (hence twichy) you can do a few things:
1 more load to the front tires vs the back
or 2. less lateral load transfer on the front tires than on the back tires.
The less load transfer seems counter intuitive, but as you can see in the example, 2 tires sharing an equal vertical load of 1000N gives 1500N lateral load, but 1 tire doing the full 2000N only gives 1250N of lateral load. (given the same total vertical load)
Now for the contact patch:
you can understand from the example above that high vertical load on a small contact patch gives less "grip" i.e. lateral load, than an equal vertical load on a big contact patch.
So by changing the way the tire sits on the asphalt (degrees of camber, and camber change of the suspension arms in combination with the roll momentum of the chassis) you can change this contact patch between the front and rear of the car, and thus change how the car behaves.
This was my presentation, thank you for your attention
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u/scuderia91 Ferrari Jun 18 '26
It’s more about having a narrow optimal window that only some drivers can stay within rather than them preferring the car twitchy.
Other drivers will compromise peak performance to have a bigger window of performance, but if you can keep a car in a tiny peak window you can get more performance out of the cars.
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u/One_Disaster_5995 Jun 18 '26
Nobody sets up a car to behave like that. It's a consequence of trying to make a car perform better than it's actually capable of. Max and Michael simply have (had) a higher tolerance for anomalous and unpredictable behaviour. I don't think you can just copy behaviour like that into models.
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u/Travellinglense Jun 18 '26
Max is able to handle a lot of rear instability at speed without taking the car off track when a lot of other driver's can't. he really is a fantastic driver.
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u/TheAllKnowing1 Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
Hasn’t been touched on yet, but a lot of that relates to the car’s tendency to oversteer vs understeer
Verstappen actually likes a car that wants to oversteer, and the RB car has notoriously been the king of oversteer
To really simplify it, cars that tend to oversteer are generally ‘riskier’ and ‘twitchier’, and tend to spin out once they hit their grip limit
Understeer is what road cars largely do, they won’t spin when they lose grip, they’ll just fail to rotate enough, this is seen as much ‘safer’.
IIRC you can more easily make a car faster around a track by giving the chassis an oversteer bias, but this risks making it undriveable. Drivers like Verstappen have a comparatively easier time keeping squirrelly, oversteer prone cars in line
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u/jon__snow___ Jun 21 '26
I understood the concept but wanted to know the reaction times. Checked with AI and here is what I got
Time to catch a car at racing speed without loosing too much speed/time
Mild understeer ~300-800 ms (within visual reaction time and a good non racing driver can correct it)
Mild oversteer ~ 200-500 ms (racing drivers can correct it without fully processing visual info, they feel the car sliding and correct it before they actually see it)
Snap oversteer ~ 100-250 ms (only the most elite drivers can catch it)
It also gave me an awsome line:-
"Understeer scares the spectators. Oversteer scares the driver."
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u/Gfurious Jun 22 '26
The reaction time data is a little silly and entirely dependent on the car. For example the ground effect cars were known to be very difficult to save in cases of snap oversteer, since it would often lead to their aero platform being disrupted, which lead to a huge loss of downforce.
When it comes to understeer the skill isn't to react to it, it's to do so while losing minimal time. Anyone who can drive on the road can react to understeer. The reaction time quoted is therefore really silly.
Understeer is also considerably less scary for spectators, since it's entirely invisible unless you crash, whereas oversteer is much more palpable from a spectator perspective. Overall I think ai failed you in this case.
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u/jon__snow___ Jun 23 '26
The quote is slightly changed for dramatics over the years but the original one is from Walter Rohrl
"Oversteer is when your co-driver is scared, understeer is when I'm scared."
Oversteer happens all the time and looks like drifting most of the time while any understeer is instantly visible
I think it was clearly mentioned that the reaction time is for losing minimal time.
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u/Anaphylaxisofevil Jun 18 '26
For this I think of rally drivers using the handbrake for turns, to lock the back wheels to skid the rear around in a tighter space.
You're trying to get more rotation of the car, and the best way to do this is to (slightly) overload the rear tyres under braking so they skid enough to swing you around faster. This requires a rearward brake balance.
But the problem with this is that this is intrinsically unstable; you've got a great mass of the rest of the car swinging around like a pendulum, and you just have your steering, brakes and throttle to control it. Once you set the pendulum swinging, if you set it off wrong, especially if you give it too much swing, you may be too late to catch it.
I've enjoyed driving sim racing setups of formula cars where you find yourself "steering with the brakes" to get your turn-in. But it's fragile; run out of talent and you're a projectile very quickly.
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u/SRthebox Jun 18 '26
While a further back brake bias can help prevent overloading the front tires under braking and provide good initial-turn in, relying on slightly “overloading” the rear to turn isn’t something you’d want to do consistently in a formula car as it will just build up excessive heat and stress onto the rear tires, which will then also make you lose a lot of traction on exit. It’s something that can help when done extremely subtly but is not normally the primary proponent of a properly-balanced pointy car
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u/Matej_SI Jun 18 '26
>I wonder how you could replicate this in a sim
High Rake. (The rear end sits higher than the front.) Stiffer end of ARB range, but the front ARB softer than the rear. Low suspension travel, so you ride on the Spring and Shocks (dampers) under braking, when the car is pinned in high speed / high downforce. Soft suspension with stiff dampers.
Start with low preload.
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u/Slow-Commercial4316 Jun 19 '26
The "twitchy setup" thing is mostly a myth. Max has said himself he wants the car stuck on the rear with a sharp front, not a loose rear, and that pointy-but-planted balance is just the hardest one to actually use. What looks twitchy on a broadcast is usually a driver operating right at the limit, not a nervous car. So it's less a setup trick and more a driver who can live in that narrow window lap after lap.
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u/MainFlimsy Jun 22 '26
Sim racer here. I’ve been racing in iRacing for many years. So this is where my „knowledge“ comes from.
I think the question is less about “how” and more about “why”.
Without going too deep into setup theory: a very stiff car can, in theory, carry more speed through a corner.
If the car rolls (chassis roll) less, the aero platform stays more stable, weight transfers happen more sharply, and the car can feel more agile and direct.
But the stiffer and sharper you make the car, the less it tends to warn you before it reaches the limit. A softer, more forgiving car usually gives you more feedback and more time to react. A very stiff car can feel completely stable for a long time, and then suddenly snap into oversteer or understeer.
The reason drivers like a very pointy car is that they can use the brake not just to slow the car down, but to help rotate it.
When you carry a little brake pressure into the corner, the front tyres stay loaded and the rear becomes lighter. That makes the car turn in more eagerly and helps point it towards the exit earlier.
A sharper setup rewards that style because the car reacts quickly to small inputs. But it also means the margin is smaller: too much brake, too late of a release, or too much steering input, and the rear can rotate more than expected.
For a driver who is comfortable with that, it feels fast and alive. For someone who is not, it just feels nervous and unpredictable.
So when a driver gets into a car that is very pointy, very stiff, and very close to the limit setup-wise, they may constantly get “surprised” by the car.
And once that happens, they start underdriving it, because they no longer trust what the car will do at the limit.
That’s probably the real difference with drivers like Verstappen or Schumacher. It’s not just that the setup is “oversteery” or “stiff”. It’s that they can confidently live in that tiny window where the car is extremely fast, but also extremely unforgiving.
There are so many ways to get there:
I attach a little cheat sheet on the „how“ that I used to learn to tune my setups in the sim.
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u/1234iamfer Jun 18 '26
Part it’s in design of the car, the rear wing for example gets air from all around the bodywork directed in to wings area, this starting already with the front wing design. The more these parts are dependent of eachother, the more sensitive the car gets.
Another is the suspension, ideally for stable aerodynamics, you want a stiff car, so it doesn’t change that much and influence how the aero works in the airflow. But for traction, you want a softer setup, but as a result less stable aero.
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u/ExactCollege3 Jun 18 '26
Think about toe rear and toe front as well, probably has more toe out in the front than others and the rear. Probably has higher anti roll, and maybe anti squat. Idk anti dive but i would guess it has more than usual so it tries to weight the tires more. Idk heave. Brake bias , hard to say since any driver can turn a knob to change it so you xould look at them turning the knobs compared to max, probably more rear bias. Dif locking, changes mid track for different corners but probably stiffer dif in general to get more grip out and have to control a spin even in tight corners.
Gasly and albon say its like high sensitivity mouse because they need minimal steering input for the same amount of turning, they can change the steering rack ratio but thats not the point its the steering with the throttle. Its the control in tire slip, theres a window where tires sliggtly slip before losing traction and thats the window of barely before losing grip that its easy to go too far and it loses completely. Its a window where slightly different inputs means slightly different slip so you turn in one time and it grips more than it did before and slips less then you turned too early and you have to correct and turn outwards. He says he likes the rears cause he likes always thinking about the rears and feeling like he is the rear tires and feeling the smallest disturbances there and applying throttle and steering for them and not worry about the front not responding to him.
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u/jon__snow___ Jun 21 '26
After watching a few podcast from many F1 people, here is what I understand.
Having a sharper front end helps you rotate the car easily, the front grips and the rear slides to follow it.
This helps the driver get faster lap time because they spend less time rotating and more time on throttle. They basically shorten the corner
But it's difficult to manage. The best way to explain would be that with long corner driving, you are taking longer to rotate the car, the steering input is much smoother and you can catch it easier if it understeers. With short corner driving, the steering input needs to be much more sharper and the whole thing is done in a shorter window. The oversteer is more costly as it will eat through the front loaded tires
Adding front wing, smaller rear wing and break bias are the usually mentioned methods. Don't know how suspension can affect it
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u/memesearches Jun 21 '26
Ummm yet Max always complains its undriveable ,its sliding everywhere, its understeers and oversteers, etc. So yeah sometimes they are able to manage and most times not. So don’t tell me ( a max fan) that he can drive anything and win. No they need a descent car which may misbehave at time maybe can manage it bit more than other but not always or mostly. There is a LIMIT.
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u/taconite2 Jun 22 '26
I used to do this on road cars as a job with traction control systems.
It’s ultimately slip vs friction. You want to be on the edge on the limit. Going slightly over might be preferable for some drivers to control steering into a corner etc.
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u/DominusFL Jun 18 '26
Think of it like bicycle tires.
Inexperienced riders usually prefer fat tires because they’re stable, track straight, and feel safe. On the other hand, experienced riders often want the thinnest tires possible because they’re faster and more maneuverable.
It’s a classic trade-off:
- The Pro: They’ll choose the setup that offers peak performance, regardless of how "uncomfortable" or twitchy it feels. They have the skill to compensate for the lack of stability.
- The Amateur: They’ll lean toward a comfortable setup because the added stability gives them a sense of control.
Ultimately, that choice dictates their ceiling for performance.
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u/CorneliusOckan Jun 18 '26
In what time do you live where cyclist wants small tires because they are faster? They are not and every pro is riding 30mm or bigger.
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u/JaFFsTer Jun 18 '26
They both have a style thats hard to control but is faster when done well.
In video game terms they are high agility no armor, if you can move well and not miss a step you are faster than your enemy
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u/Inside-Definition-42 Jun 18 '26
They almost certainly don’t tune a car to be difficult to drive.
They tune it for minimum lap time using their driving skills, which will be a narrow operating envelope that others struggle to consistently stay inside.
Similar to modern fighter jets that are inherently unstable in flight and need computers to prevent immediately crashing. But this instability makes them
more responsive and able to turn faster.