Ford Mustang GT3: Ultimate V8 FREEDOM Bundle.

Nils Naujoks

Ford Mustang GT3: Full Data and Setup Bundle with all tracks in Assetto Corsa Competizione.

This bundle aims to provide fast, but predictable setups for non-pro drivers. Esports setups are often very sensitive and have bigger time penalties, when getting it wrong, which is a whole lot easier too if you can't control the car on the edge at all times. Therefor we aim to fill a gap and give you reliable setups that should not overwhelm you at no or minimal cost of lap time.

The Mustang is the latest additional to the car pool of ACC. Contrary to general direction, it sports an all traditional, powerful, large V8, that delivers power across the entire RPM range, screams and growls. As often with new cars: They tend to be fast! And ACC is no exception here. Though, the car has already been reigned in a little with a couple BOP kilograms added back. But a good car remains a good car no matter how heavy you make it - and it's quite a good car to start out on ACC for several reasons.

Aerodynamics
The car responds aerodynamically largely like the BMW. The front needs to be low, the rear needs to be high and the rear wing will mostly be on the maximum setting. And despite an aggressive approach in setup: You will hardly get the rear to be unstable in high speeds. The aero balance is always quite far to the rear and even with a lowered wing you will keep a lot of rake to get the car to rotate

Mechanics
The spring pairings also seem lended from the BMW and as with every car in ACC the softest setting allows the car to remain in touch with the road no matter the surface. Stiffer springs work in general, but ultimately don't provide the fastest time. If you need a more responsive car with stiffer springs, make sure to raise both front and rear equally. If you need more stability, raise the front over the rear and vice versa if you want a mechanically more oversteery tendency. However, with a stiffer rear spring compared to the front, you'll quickly get traction issues and generally a nervous car on power.
The Anti Roll Bars can be both soft and stiff. The more important high speed corners are on a track the more likely you will run stiff ARBs - the slower a track, the softer you can run the ARBs. They work a charme for altering car balance in smaller steps than springs or aero settings.

Dampers
As always here's where people assume some magic. However, only smaller changes to behavior can be achieved, but with noticable impact to laptime. Basically you are controlling two things: How slow or fast, how predictable or suddenly the car can lose and regain grip on either axle. And, how quickly weight is shifted around the car from one driving scenario to the other. Some surprising effects can be found to deliberately make the car more pitch sensitive - something it lacks per design - in order to get it to turn into fast corners and give the driver a bit faster response to steering inputs.

Balance
Similar to the BMW M4 the Mustang is long and heavy. The V8 weighs more than the 6 cyl. turbo of the M4 and shifts the weight balance even further forward in comparison, making the car even more stable than the M4. This makes very traction limited in qualifying when there is no (or little) weight on the rear axis. This changes quite a bit once you add fuel. Suddenly the rear end is willing to rotate and traction improves noticably. The race setup therefor differs a bit from the quali set, making it more stable and trying to control the weight a bit more to not surprise the driver. It's much nicer to drive in race trim and it's qualifying to race time delta is not as large. You feel relieved every time you can leave qualifying behind you and go for the race. Plus: The car has great acceleration and top speed apart from the very long straights where the drag will take over.

Electronics
Comapred to the BMW the Mustang has 2 TC settings. TC1 for the "how much slip do you want to allow before I step in?" and TC2 for "how much power do you want me to cut to bring the car back in line?". Generally the TC is quite lenient and even with TC1 on 3 you can go sideways a fair bit before the TC does anything, thus allowing you to not needing TC off for ultimate lap times and making the car fast and drivable for non professional players, too. The TC2 settings helps refine the TC in smaller steps and you can go to quite high values without losing too much time, but gaining a lot of confidence. Don't shy away from trying things like TC1 on 3 and TC2 on 8 or higher to feel comfortable and never intimidated by the rear.

The pack has been created between Marc Tol and Nils Naujoks. We both found different solutions at times so you get a variety of setups you can take insight from. If you don't like one of either creator, you can often copy one from the other of another track, make a few tweaks and this way drive whatever setup you prefer.
On a car this stable negative toe on the rear will help with laptime and rotation, but we tried to avoid this as much as possible, because it creates a sensitive car on power and especially out of slow corners. Sometimes, though, the benefit of the negative toe is so big in other parts of the track, that we decided its worth the hassle on throttle. Of course, feel free to always change this back to neutral, or even positive toe on the rear for a less nervous, more predictable car, at the cost of some high speed rotation. You can somewhat get this back with ARB settings or adjusting the bump stop range on the rear.

Driving
The car does need careful trail braking into long and slow corners. As soon as you take the weight from the front (i.e. take the left foot off the brake), the car will stabilize and rotate slower. On the other hand, initial braking can be harsh for quite some time and the car will slow down very good and deep into the turn - just the last bit of the braking phase needs clean trailing to keep the front tires pressed into the ground while the steering request increases.
Onto the throttle you will find quite a different behavior than basically any other car in the game. There is torque, its there instantly and its likely too much for the rears to handle it. Don't be aggressive here and don't go too high too quick. Start out with 30-40% throttle and increase slowly from there along the limit of the tire. Else you'll easily smoke up the rears and destroy them in the process, shifting your balance to an ever more nervous car throughout a stint. If you take care though, you'll have great pace towards the end of the stint as the front tires wear similarly fast as the rears due to the understeery tendency of the car in general - keeping the balance shift in check over the course of a race.
Steering wise you have options, smooth or fast whenever either is needed. Especially in high speeds under heavy load being a bit aggressive and fast with the steering can help initiate rotation and keep it alive through the turn to overcome the understeery nature.

Check our telemetry with these questions in mind: How much input, how fast or slow is the input increased or decreased and what is the exact sequence of the various inputs (e.g. steering and then off throttle, or first off throttle and then steering? Or both in sync? And check this for any other input combination) Also see the guide (https://popometer.io/guides/popometer) for further details.

Let us know how this bundle treats you and we hope you can drive the car on any track without worrying about setup ever!

Customers: