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Spring Sense Series. Racing Springs Explained: Spring Rates, Travel, Rubbers and Track Setup
NEW EPISODES EVERY THURSDAY UNTIL THE END OF 2026
Table of Contents
What is a Spring Rate?
What Does Changing a Spring Affect?
Tacky vs Slick - How Should You Tune Your Race Car
What is a Spring Rate?
Racers often make the mistake of copying another car’s setup instead of understanding their own. The key is knowing how your car responds, putting your setup on the track, and evaluating its behavior. Pay attention to how the car handles on entry, through the center, and off the corner. From there, make adjustments to spring rates and loads based on what the car is telling you. Don’t get distracted by someone else’s setup.
Test and take note of how your car handles throughout the track and make the necessary adjustments. These are factors of improving your setup that will make a big difference.
What Does Changing a Spring Affect?
Changing the right-front spring rate directly influences platform control, load distribution, and corner-entry behavior, while also affecting the car’s overall mechanical balance. Spring changes should be based on understanding the vehicle’s current response and the specific performance limitation you’re trying to address. Increasing spring rate is not automatically the correct solution. Analyze your incremental inch measurements to determine the appropriate rate, and evaluate shock behavior to understand how damping controls spring movement and load transfer.
Understand your vehicle’s response before making any spring changes. Going up in rate won’t always be the solution.
Tacky vs Slick - How Should You Tune Your Race Car
A tacky track and a slick track demand very different approaches to suspension tuning.
On a tacky track, there's already a lot of mechanical grip. The goal isn't necessarily to create more grip—it's about controlling the grip the car already has.
When the track goes slick, the challenge changes.
Now the spring and shock combination becomes critical to helping the car generate mechanical grip. Adjusting spring rate, shock control, and load can help the tire maintain the contact it needs to get through the corner and drive off the exit.
That's why there isn't one spring-and-shock setup that works everywhere. The track changes. The suspension strategy changes with it. Tacky or slick, the goal is controlling the tire.