It’s all about braking

I’ve been trying to improve my Barcelona GP lap time… I found this explanation from TraxionGG which I’ve found very useful. I’ve printed out a copy of the track from RaceFans.net and annotated it with notes as described in the video — which gears when, where to start breaking, where to position etc.

So now comes the time to put the theory to practice… And its not so easy!

One thing I thought I’d try out is the rubber brake mod that came with the T3PA pedals. It was easy to install, but I couldn’t get Assetto Corsa to calibrate the brake properly — so I only had about 50% braking power. A problem similar to this one but I didn’t get to the point of breaking it, I just couldn’t put enough pressure on it to get it to register 100%.

I thought I’d try out Assetto Corsa on the PC — it seems the PC version has lots of settings and customisations from what I’ve read. So I grabbed an old laptop, reinstalled Windows 10, logged in to Steam, and grabbed Assetto Corsa for less than $6 (it was on special!).

Next I had to install the Thrustmaster T300 drivers for Windows and do a bit of configuration (and not forgetting to change the switch on the T300 to PS3/PC mode). While I was there I noticed that installing the drivers had also installed a firmware upgrade program. By running this I upgraded the firmware from 31 to 33.

After playing on the laptop for a bit, I thought I’d go back to the PS4 — and this is when I noticed that I could now calibrate the brake properly — long story short, updating the wheel firmware seems to have fixed my issue and I’ve now got the rubber mod working for Assetto Corsa on PS4!

Now, I just need to get used to this braking and coordinate it properly…