USGT Setup and some insights from a LOT of testing.

Hey folks, I've been running my cero V2s for a while now and having lots of success in VTA and USGT. Recently the competition has become quite a bit more fierce in USGT and I've needed to step my game up a bit. In general, it's pretty close to the setup I was running previously, but I've found a little more speed AND tried a lot of things that DID NOT work for me, so I figured I would share and include the setup I've landed at that seems to be working very well after spending multiple days at the track just trying things and having good results.

First and foremost, let me start off by saying that tire program, even with a spec tire, is absolutely 100% the most important part of your program. Once you start getting to "the edge" of your setup you will use on a black carpet track with a car that is "rotation oriented," you need to have that consistency in your tire program. For me, that means I NEVER sauce past the flat part of the tire and onto the outside sidewall in front unless I'm cleaning the tire and immediately scrubbing, hopefully long before a race. I also always hit the rear sidewall a little--not down to the lettering, but the "flat to round" corner part of the sidewall. I hope that makes sense. Then I like to ensure I have at least 3 minutes after a good wipe down for the tire to dry from greasy to sticky before going out. I have found that I can wait a long time after saucing and the tire will wake up in warm-up very well, but going out with a greasy tire, especially on a lower grip track, is just a nightmare of over rotation. I setup my rear ball stud washers to be on the edge and have a lot of rotation, so I prefer my car to push on lap one if anything and come in on successive laps rather than being hard to drive. I've figured this out from traveling to much lower grip tracks, and it's served me well. I can't stress how important the consistency in tire program is for getting faster and getting your car to that point where it turns on a dime and turns heater laps without effort.

Now that the obligatory "tire program is king" message, on-to the cero specific stuff...

First off--the kit setup is pretty close, but it is "stuck in the mud" a little for black carpet. Oh, and the 6mm of ARS washers on the V2 is WRONG. Run 2mm unless you want toe LOSS in the rear in the corners. 6mm was a good setting for the V1, but the V2 adds rear caster, which points the rear spindle arm down more as it reaches the ARS link. All in all, yellow/green springs with the 1mm upper washers front and rear is honestly a great starting point. It needs help on black carpet though. The first thing you will want is the ALU chassis. Now, let me start off by saying when I traveled for racing series, I got on the podium and I also won our local points series and many mains with the graphite chassis, but I was always having to de-tune the front a little and worry about grip rolling when the grip came up. The ALU chassis was about .1 faster per lap for me (on a 9-10 second lap track) in the end, but it's largest contribution is a lower CG, and the confidence that you're not going to randomly pole vault.

The next thing I highly recommend is the 1.2 bar in the rear, unless you're on a lower grip track or one that is super open and large. I also pair this with adding washers to the rear inner upper mounts to dish out the rotation in the corners. I've even been known to shim my wheels out 1mm in the rear, although I haven't been doing that lately. My go-to change for rotation vs grip is the rear washers. I think this is pretty much the story on most cars, so no big surprise here.

The next item that makes the car quicker is the front inner upper arm mount washers. Right now I'm running 0mm, no washers, but I was always in a battle between the front white spring and front yellow spring. If I ran the yellow, I really didn't feel like I could run less than 1mm of front washers without having a car I was afraid to get close to the pipe with because it was so twitchy. For a while I ran the white front spring and 1mm front washers just for the comfort. It was a little pushy but I setup the car with a lot of rotation so as long as I hit my braking points I was swinging those corners really tight without relying on my front end to slow me down as hard on corner entry. Here I ended up on an xray 2.5-2.8 progressive spring that brought all the comfort of the white spring with the performance of the yellow ALL while letting me slam those front arms down to zero washers. The progressive front spring is just best, and you can then fine tune your front rate with shock mount washers. Just do it.

The next thing I wanted to contribute is the fact that I hate anything other than 2mm lower arm mount spacers. I tried 1, 1.5, and let me tell ya, gross. For those who don't realize, when you change your lower mounts, it is a dramatic change in roll center vs the upper mounts. Changing the upper mount DOES change roll center, but the most pronounced effect is camber gain. I've ran lots of on-road and off-road and the one constant in the universe is that RC changes are by far, thanks to springs and sways, most pronounced at lower speed mid corner when the car is more level and the springs aren't doing as much. This is when the outside tire leans over, tugs on the upper link, and pulls the chassis over more, and when you change the lower arm position, it's a HUGE leverage change compared to the upper arm. For me, I felt that 2mm was right primarily because anything lower made the car really "non linear" when I was forced to slow down at the apex of tighter corners. It was like just stupid amounts of steering would come in AS the car slowed down, just making it come unglued right when I was on the pipe at the apex--very unsettling. I really wanted these settings to work, and maybe 1.75mm would be decent, but I am not wanting for ANY more low speed steering, more accurately, I don't want any more steering that comes in like a wrecking ball in a non linear fashion. I want to reiterate that I've gone and tried RC changes on at least 4 separate days and I always, without fail, end up back at 2mm. To be clear, there's more steering there, but it bit me on consistency and I always ended up detuning other parts of the car and never got faster laps out of it, so I just went back to the stability of 2mm mounts.

I think those are probably the biggest things. I'm running -2 camber everywhere, but sometimes I run -1.5 in the front if I feel like reducing tire coning, but TBH, one of my club-racer-speed-secrets is to throw the coned fronts on the rear and the flat rears back on the front and enjoy rotation city. I've also been on 2 degrees toe-in in the rear on black carpet.

Another thing I think is pretty important is balancing USGT tires. Every set I get has at least one tire that will make my truer walk across the table (I only use the truer to remove the seam with a file and scruff the tire when brand new.) It will slow you down on the track, and it's also pretty gross when your body makes weird sounds in the sweeper because your whole car is having a seizure due to an unbalanced tire.