Lesson One - Goals For RCT Level Two

Now that we know all of the parts and pieces of a race car, the knowledge learned in RCT Level One, we can get on with actually setting up a race car. In RCT Level Two, we will, in the logical order of importance, be preparing a race car in advance of the actual race day setup. The methods we will use and the order we will progress in is mostly common with all race cars from short track street stocks to Late Models, to Prototype road racing, and even with the Formula One race cars.

Race cars don’t just come ready to race. You might be buying a brand-new race car, starting to work with a used race car you just acquired, or maybe you are building your own race car. In any event, you must go through the car and setup each system of that car properly and in a specific order.

No one gets away with not doing any of this. You cannot be successful in racing if you don’t work with these setup routines. And even if the race car manufacturer or previous owner says it is good to go, you cannot trust anyone but yourselves. We must verify each and every setup parameter of the race car.

If you are racing now, or have watched others race and have asked how they do it to make their cars so successful, it isn’t magic and no one every falls on a winning setup by accident. No matter how easy it all looks, a lot of effort and smart thinking goes into every winning race car. Here is what you can expect from RCT Level Two.

What We Will Be Setting Up – In this Level Two Course, we will go from simple, but necessary functions like determining ride heights.We’ll set the weight distribution, and establish proper caster and camber for your application. We’ll go through all of the various alignment settings and carefully explain why we are concerned with each phase and how those will make the car perform.

We will establish what spring rates to use, which sway bar will match those spring rates. We’ll match our shock rates to the spring and sway bar rates too. We will choose tires and tire sizes and learn how to select tires and prepare them for competition. Then we’ll put this package to the test and fine tune it at the race track.

When you get done with this Level Two Course, you will be able to take a modern day race car and set it up. When I first started into racing, I could find no good information to tell me how to setup a race car. Even today, information comes at us in parts and pieces and it is very difficult to put it all together into a winning combination. Now you can. This school is designed to provide all of the necessary information to guide you through the setup of your race car.

Our ultimate goals are as explained in RCT Level One. For those of you who forgot, or those who chose to begin your schooling with RCT Level Two, we urge you to go back and take the Level One course. In our introduction to Level One, we explained what our overall goals are for designing a high performance, winning race car. It bears repeating, so If you missed that, please go back and read Lesson One in RCT Level One.

So, let's get started with setting up all of the components for a modern day race car. Even if you are more experienced with race cars, there are parts of the RCT Level Two that might provide more insight into making better and more correct adjustments for your car than what you had previously thought.

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