I'd appreciate if anyone could share their two cents on this and help me understand...

What's up with the Star Mazda?

Everyone who plays iRacing seems to be unanimous in their love for the new version of this car. Nothing about it feels right to me. Every little movement of the wheel sends the car sideways. It feels like a kart to me. I normally have my wheel programmed with a higher range of motion than what's needed for iRacing, 700°. In the Star Mazda the car feels like the wheel is set to 100° or something. It's extremely twitchy.

On top of that, I get almost no force feedback from this car. It's much worse than the BMW. As a result, I don't get any sense that the car is touching the road. I tested with the FF turned all the way up and it felt a little better, but there's no way that's normal. This purpose-built racecar shouldn't have better power steering (or any at all for that matter) than my real life vehicles.

I've tried a couple of setups from the forums, including one labeled as "stable", but I'm not getting good results. If I can do a single lap at Okayama without sliding on any of the corners it'd be a fluke.

Anyway, I'm not venting, it's just frustrating. Is this what the car feels like to the rest of you? If this is normal for this car, why do you like it? I want to like it. This class of car in all the other sim racers I play is a blast and is usually my favorite car to race. I remember liking it the couple of times I drove it on the previous tire model (which ironically everyone else seemed to hate). What am I missing here?

I may have already figured out what's wrong with this car. It doesn't like going slow. Okayama is a slow track, at least the way I drive it. Without a ton of downforce holding the car down, the steering is exaggerated and the force feedback is minimal. I just test drove it on some faster tracks and it felt much more like the other cars in iRacing. It's much more steady at high speeds. I see the logic behind it, but they really overdid it when the car is going slow. No car in iRacing should handle like GTAIV cars did, regardless of the speed. To me it feels like the car has almost 0 friction on slow corners, and it feels like the car is pivoting from the center rather than being guided by four tires.

I'll leave the thread up in case anyone still wants to comment on it. Here's the setup I tested with: Okayama Setup. Feels alright on just about any track other than the one it was meant for.

**One last update for today**

I just test drove the car at several tracks, including ones I historically kinda hate. It's definitely fun and lively in a good way on most tracks. Driving it on tracks I'm decent at, and putting a few hours into driving it has resulted in me liking the car a lot more. I'm getting used to the quirks in the handling. I even went back to Okayama to see if anything had changed. I was immediately better this time. It still doesn't feel as safe on that track as it does almost everywhere else, but I can do decent laps there now.

@maxx77: I found that the Okayama setup that you posted has a lot more neutral handling than most of the over-steer heavy setups that were posted. Of the three posted and linked on the Star Mazda Setup Shop thread I found that Dinyor's (your link) was the one that I prefered the most for Lime Rock. I haven't tried it on Okayama. I also set all of the dampers and rebound to 0 clicks so maybe I'm not the best person to comment on setups....

As to why other folks like it. If @khann's other setups are indicative of his desired car setup then I'd say that most of the folks who like the Star Mazda like it because it over-steers easily. Loose is Fast or something... I like it because I can run it without spinning and control it mostly with the throttle. I don't have the sudden over-steer problems with the baseline or high-downforce setups.

I have my wheel set to 900 (g25) and I do find that the lock to lock of the car is way more than 100, it should be 450. iRacing should be mapping 1:1 until it hits 900 and then maxes out the FFB to simulate hitting that lock. I don't know which wheel you are using but you might want to consider setting the in-game setting to what the wheel can do. Also, for the FFB issues, are you running in linear mode? I have my min force set to 12.5 and the ffb setting to 20.3 or so. I have my logitech settings at 100%. I feel a ton of bumps but I don't clip on the FFB indicator.

Hope that helps a little bit.

Yeah, it's an odd car. Very fun, but odd. It kinda steers from the rear (which seems wrong, physics wise), but once you get the hang of it, it feels pretty damn good.

Definitely feeling plenty of FFB though, so not sure what the go is with that.

@khann: I totally get what you are saying about steering from the rear. The back kicks out quite often. Surprisingly, I feel that I can catch this car in a spin more than any other car that I've driven. I had started the current season driving the Ruf C-Spec but I think I might switch to the Star Mazda.

Maybe it would be good to create a couple of Giant Bomb practice sessions before we start the next GBFD season. I'd be happy to foot the bill on a hosted event or two.

It's a very unique feeling car, for sure. I think you're right in that it'll handle better on faster tracks, and Okayama is kind of a bitch in any car (slippery). Even though it's top speed isn't very high, hopefully we'll race it at larger tracks (its draft is pretty substantial by the way).

I found the best way to drive it is to be very delicate when turning into slow/sharp turns, and the back end will stay planted decently. Thankfully when the rear does peek around, it's predictable and controllable.

Our first few races with it will probably have a few crashes, but once we adjust, it'll be a ton of fun.

Thanks for the feedback. It does feel like it's steering from the center or rear-end. Doesn't turn like any other car that I've driven in iRacing. Keeping that in mind while hotlapping definitely helps. I agree that it is easy to recover when things go sideways. It is highly likely that the fast drivers are intentionally sliding it through the turns every time. I've never reached that skill level, so I probably won't drive it that way in our league races. I also probably won't come close to winning, but I'd like to at least finish the races.

My wheel is the Fanatec CSR, the "Forza wheel". The wheel itself is set to 100% force, with the rest of the on-wheel settings set to what this thread recommends. In iRacing I have it set to linear mode. Min force is around 8, which seems to be where the Fanatec wheels start giving feedback. Max force is varied from car to car. In most cars, it's between 16-20. If I race around a track like Bristol in the Late Model with the max force at 17, it feels pretty solid (maybe too much). If I then jump into the Star Mazda at MoSport (a really bumpy and hilly track) without changing the FFB, it almost feels like there's no FFB at all. I have to crank the max up to 22 for it to start feeling realistic. Those two cars aren't directly comparable I realize, but the point is that's how it is compared to any of the other cars. It's a problem with a solution, but it doesn't make much sense to me why it's a problem in the first place. The car is just strange in almost every way. I'm coming around on it though.

I found that I couldn't drive it like I would most other road cars especially where I would brake for corners. I started thinking about it as a momentum car and it changed it a bunch for me. The back end stopped kicking out as much and I could go harder through the corners. Maybe I'm thinking about it wrong but I still enjoy driving it.

As to the force feedback settings. I usually use this page also but it hasn't been updated since 2013S4 it seems. What I do often is set the FFB to something like 25 and do a few laps as clean as I can. I try and look at the F bar in the upper right hand corner and see if it is clippings while I get the FFB feel from the car. I believe the color is orange when it clips but I am color blind so there ya go.I then turn it down a few steps. Low 20s has been most often where I set the SM. Low to mid 40s for the MX-5, 20s for the Skip Barber. I don't remember what I did for the ruf but I sorta remember mid 20s. 22 doesn't sound abnormal for this car though. You could consider upping the damping force if you want a heavier feeling wheel.

@maxx77: I've been running John's setup here at Mosport and am fairly happy with it. It seems to have a lot of feel from the tires through the FFB. I ended up adding a little bit of wing and it feels really stable.

Edit : After driving it more last night I was thinking that maybe I had the damping on the ffb up but I forgot to check.