Tune To Win By Carroll Smith

A Practical Guide to Carroll Smith's Approach to Race Car Tuning

Tune To Win By Carroll Smith is a well-known reference in the motorsports world, specifically aimed at people who actually build and set up competition vehicles rather than just buy them. The book was originally published by SADES Press and has gone through multiple printings over the years. It covers suspension geometry, tire physics, chassis setup, weight transfer, and the practical math behind getting a car to handle predictably under load. Carroll Smith was an engineer-first driver and builder. His approach wasn't theoretical fluff. He worked at Grumman Aerospace before getting involved in racing, so the book reads like something written by someone who understands forces and stress calculations, not someone who learned by guessing. That matters because most amateur tuners skip the fundamentals and jump straight to spring rates and damper settings without understanding what's actually happening with the contact patch.

Tune To Win By Carroll Smith — What You Actually Get

The book is structured around the idea that a race car is a system where every component interacts with every other component. You can't tune the suspension independently of the tire pressures. You can't adjust corner weights without considering how weight transfer changes under braking. Smith walks through these relationships in a way that's detailed but not impossibly academic. One thing the book does well is give you concrete numbers. Not vague advice like "set it so the car feels right," but actual target ranges for things like static ride height, anti-squat geometry, toe settings, and camber curves through travel. If you're working on a late-model formula car or a modified street car, the numbers in there are close enough to be useful starting points. They won't be perfect for your specific application, but they'll save you from picking values completely out of thin air. I ran into a real problem once when working with a mid-year chassis on a tube-frame sports racer. The previous owner had followed a setup guide that wasn't Carroll Smith's — more of a general internet forum suggestion — and the car had massive unsettled behavior through the high-speed Esses at Road America. It would dive excessively under braking, then snap the rear end loose on throttle application. I pulled out the book, went through the weight transfer calculations chapter by chapter, and discovered the anti-dive geometry was off by about 6 degrees from where it should have been due to a badly mounted control arm pick-up point. We ended up fabricating new brackets to reposition the front lower arm attachment. That fixed the dive issue. The car became much more predictable after that. The book didn't tell me exactly what was wrong, but it gave me the framework to figure it out.

How to Actually Use This Book Effectively

Reading Tune To Win By Carroll Smith cover to cover is fine if you have time. Most people who need this information are in the middle of a build and don't have time. What works better is treating it as a reference manual and pulling out specific chapters based on the problem you're trying to solve. The section on suspension kinematics alone is worth the price of the book if you've ever wondered why your camber gain curve looks wrong. The tire chapter is probably the most overlooked part. Carroll Smith explains that tire performance is non-linear and highly dependent on slip angle, camber, and load. Most tuners don't understand that changing one of these parameters affects the others. If you add negative camber to improve cornering grip, you also reduce the tire's ability to handle straight-line braking forces. The book walks through these trade-offs in detail. Weight distribution and center of gravity height matter more than most people realize. A lower CoG doesn't just improve cornering — it changes how the car pitches and rolls during transient inputs. Smith gives formulas for calculating the effect of CoG height on load transfer during braking and cornering. The math is straightforward algebra. If you can do basic equations, you can use these calculations to predict how moving ballast or changing component placement will affect handling.

There's a common misconception that setting corner weights is about making the car "balanced." It's not. It's about controlling weight transfer. The total weight on each corner at rest is less important than how that weight changes when the car is under load. A car with equal corner weights can still behave terribly if the roll center heights and anti-roll bar stiffness aren't matched to the tire characteristics. Smith addresses this directly. He doesn't just say "balance the car" — he explains why that advice is often wrong.

Where the Book Falls Short

For all its strengths, Tune To Win By Carroll Smith has limitations that you should be aware of before relying on it exclusively. The first is that it was originally written in the 1970s and updated over time. While the fundamental principles haven't changed, some of the modern tire data and materials referenced in the book are outdated. If you're working with contemporary radial racing tires or advanced composite materials, you'll need to adapt the numbers rather than applying them literally. The second limitation is that the book assumes a certain level of mechanical literacy. It doesn't hold your hand through basic concepts like what a pick-up point is or how a sway bar actually works. If you're new to this stuff, you might find yourself cross-referencing other sources to fill in the gaps. That's normal. The book isn't written for complete beginners — it's written for people who already know how to use a socket set and want to understand why their setup choices are producing the results they are. A third issue is that the book focuses heavily on traditional solid-axle and double-wishbone suspension designs. If you're working with pushrod-actuated systems, pullrod layouts, or active suspension (which is rare but exists in some prototype categories), the application isn't always direct. You can still use the underlying principles, but you'll need to translate them to your specific architecture.

If you're looking for something that covers modern computational tools like finite element analysis or advanced telemetry-based setup optimization, this isn't the book. It's a hands-on, mechanical engineering approach to tuning. The value is in understanding the physics directly rather than relying on software to tell you what to adjust. Both approaches have merit, but they serve different purposes.

Getting a Copy

The book is available through several channels. The original publisher, SADES Press, occasionally prints new runs. You can find used copies on eBay and Amazon Marketplace, and new copies sometimes appear through specialty motorsports retailers. The current edition is the third edition, which includes updates and additional material. There's no official digital version from the author or publisher, so be cautious of any PDFs circulating online — they're likely unauthorized scans and may be incomplete or outdated. For most people building or tuning a race car, having a physical copy makes more sense than a digital one. You'll be referencing it while the car is on the stands, and flipping through pages is faster than searching for a specific paragraph on a screen. Keep it near your workbench or in your tools trailer if you're actively using it for setup work. The core message of Tune To Win By Carroll Smith is that understanding how a car works is more valuable than copying someone else's setup. The book gives you the tools to make those decisions instead of guessing. That's the part that's held up over decades. The numbers may need updating for modern components, but the reasoning doesn't change.