How can I make my car handle better?

Making your car handle better isn’t as simple as it looks. Most suspension shops aren’t versed in complex physics and most vehicle dynamics engineers don’t know how to change springs.

Doing it yourself is fun but can be fraught with hazard for other road users. Cars become dangerous when you mess with the handling.

The problem is, even when you know what you are looking for, it takes trial and error to get things right – and the streets are no place for trial and error.

I remember a mate’s Ford Laser back in the day. He had chopped the springs (and given it a spray-can lime green Kermit paint job).

Little did we know that 'Laser the Amazer' was lowered to the point that the rear bump stops caused the car to snap sideways when it hit a bump while cornering. We found out the hard way one day on a road between Tahmoor and Pheasants Nest in NSW.

My mate did a pretty good job of catching the slide at around 100km/h, but we still ended up in a ditch. Miraculously, 'Laser the Amazer' and ourselves were unharmed.

I’ve since learned that our wellbeing was infinitely more valuable than the car’s – at that age I thought they were roughly equivalent.

It wouldn’t have taken much for things to have gone dramatically wrong. Imagine an oncoming vehicle hitting us in the door of our 1980s-built sardine can.

We could have died and worse, we could have killed other innocent people, leaving loved ones grieving for the rest of their lives. If we’d survived, we could have been charged with vehicular manslaughter – we could have gone to jail.

Since then I’ve worked at McLaren getting their supercars to handle better. I’ve learnt that no matter how big your ego, or how cool you think your car is, endangering innocent people’s lives in the name of making your car look cool isn’t worth it.

It may be illegal, too, so check out our separate article on ‘What car modifications are illegal?’.

You can get a car handling well by finding out how your car is set up, by tinkering with its settings at a track day and by doing some thought-provoking calculations.

If I wanted to make a car handle better, I’d start by taking it for a spin at a track day on a circuit like Pheasant Wood or Winton.

I’d be aware of the insurance risks and would have given my car a good spanner check before the day.

I’d warm up during the first session, getting used to the car, the track and the traffic – keeping an eye and an ear out for any obvious problems.

Once I was confident the car (and me, the driver) were up to speed, I’d start giving it some herbs without going too far out of my comfort zone.

I’d check the balance (understeer versus oversteer) of the car on a long corner by sharply lifting off the throttle at the limit of grip and see if it went sideways.

I’d try the same again with a light dab of the brake.

I’d get a feel for how the car is turning in and putting the power down on the way out of the corners.

I’d look at response with some step steers to see how long the lateral acceleration takes to follow the yaw (see our ‘What makes a car fun to drive?’ story).

I’d get a feel for the springs versus bars, looking at pitch versus roll. Obviously, you can’t do this while there is traffic around.

Think of a car as a table with pogo stick legs. The four legs are the suspension consisting of a spring and a damper (shock absorber).

You generally want to keep the table flat (especially on an aero car). You want the wheels to move freely but support the platform.

Everything is a compromise – the stiffer the legs the more responsive the car, but the less grip you have in the wet.

Too much pitch under braking, not enough roll, then try stiffer front springs.

Tried that, and it is understeering, then try a stiffer rear bar.

The car has started bouncing back and forth and makes rear seat passengers nauseous when I’m cruising on the road. I’ve developed a pitch coupling. Try stiffer rear springs but keep an eye on oversteer.

The car is great in the dry but feels like you are driving on ice in the wet. Soften up the low-speed damping.

Can’t get power down on corner exit. Try wider tyres on the rear.

It’s darting around under brakes – toe in the front, check the bump stop characteristic and consider stiffening the front lower wishbone bushes.

Keep iterating from here. Setting up a car nicely is a game of trial and error.

It’s expensive rabbit hole with many twists and turns and no perfect answer, only compromises. The enjoyment is in the fact you can never reach perfection, but you keep trying.

If you’re a physics and maths nerd and know the specs of your car, you can create your own spreadsheet that takes inputs like your car’s weight (sprung and unsprung), wheelbase, track, spring rates, anti-roll bar rates, anti-dive angles, motion ratios and roll centre height.

You can then calculate important bits of info like your ride frequencies, wheel rates, pitch and roll angles, roll moment distribution and roll stiffness (see our ‘How does suspension geometry work?’ story).

If that sounds interesting but you don’t have a race engineer handy, you can shortcut the process with inexpensive solutions like ChassisSim Software taking you a long way further than the spreadsheet for the price of a cup of coffee and you’ll be supporting local while you’re at it.

Further, you can use Race Software to do a full K&C (kinematics and compliance) simulation. It’ll cost more than a cup of coffee, though…

If you treat it as a learning experience, setting your car up can be tremendously satisfying.

Think Michael Schumacher getting the Ferrari dialled in over several years rather than staying with his championship-winning Benetton. Or Michelangelo honing the Pieta.

There is more than one way to skin a cat and you will know what feels right for your driving style.

If you get stuck and you have the budget, look me up on LinkedIn.

Keep fixing the most noticeably wrong thing until you have a nicely sorted track day vehicle, and enjoy the journey, not the destination.

And keep it sensible on public roads.