774 Different Tunes in CSR2, and Half Are Unique
646 of the 1,251 recorded CSR Racing 2 cars run a tune no other car uses. We counted every combination to see where players agree and where they do not.
A CSR2 tune is three numbers, and each one has a lot of possible values. The obvious question is whether the community has converged on a handful of right answers or whether every car is its own problem.
We counted every complete tune on the record sheet — nitrous, final drive and tyre pressure as a single combination. The answer is both, and the split is almost exactly even.
774 combinations across 1,251 cars
There are 774 distinct full tunes on the sheet. More strikingly, 646 cars run a tune that no other car on the sheet uses. That is 52% of every recorded car on a completely unique setup.
So just over half the game has been solved car by car, and just under half clusters around shared answers. The clustering is heavily concentrated:
| 188/4.0 · 2.00 · 0/100 | 223 cars | |
|---|---|---|
| 225/4.0 · 2.00 · 0/100 | 18 cars | |
| 188/4.0 · 2.00 · 53/47 | 16 cars | |
| 63/12.0 · 2.00 · 0/100 | 12 cars | |
| 188/4.0 · 5.00 · 0/100 | 11 cars | |
| 188/4.0 · 2.00 · 52/48 | 7 cars |
One tune covers 223 cars. The next most common covers 18.
The drop after the leader is extraordinary. 188 nitrous over 4.0 seconds, a 2.00 final drive and 0/100 tyres appears on 223 cars. The second most common combination appears on 18.
There is effectively one default tune in CSR2 and then a very long tail.
The default is not the fastest
Here is where it gets useful. Compare the median Tier 5 recorded time for each of those common tunes:
| Tune | Cars | Tier 5 median time |
|---|---|---|
| 225/4.0 · 2.00 · 0/100 | 18 | 6.825 |
| 188/4.0 · 2.00 · 0/100 | 223 | 6.914 |
| 188/4.0 · 2.00 · 52/48 | 7 | 6.941 |
| 63/12.0 · 2.00 · 0/100 | 12 | 7.028 |
| 188/4.0 · 5.00 · 0/100 | 11 | 7.569 |
| 188/4.0 · 2.00 · 53/47 | 16 | 7.630 |
The 225/4.0 group posts a median of 6.825 against the default's 6.914 — 0.089 seconds quicker, on a sample of 18 cars.
What is safer to conclude is the bottom of that table. The 188/4.0 tune paired with a 5.00 final drive posts 7.569 and paired with 53/47 tyres posts 7.630 — both well over half a second behind the same nitrous with 2.00 and 0/100. Those pairings appear on cars that are slower for other reasons, but they are also the combinations our driving-gap analysis flags as leaving the most on the table.
The raw option counts explain how 774 combinations are even possible. There are 404 distinct nitrous settings on the sheet, 209 distinct final drives and 57 distinct tyre values. Multiply those out and the space of possible tunes is enormous, so the surprise is not that 646 cars are unique — it is that 223 of them managed to land on the identical triple.
Why half the field is unique
646 one-off tunes is a lot, and there are two plausible reasons rather than one.
The first is genuine optimisation. Final drive has 209 distinct values on the sheet and nitrous has 404. A player chasing a record on a specific car will land on a specific number, and the odds of two people landing on the identical triple are low once the values get fine.
The second is that precision is partly illusory. If a tune of 2.07 and a tune of 2.08 produce indistinguishable results, then half of these unique combinations are noise rather than insight — two players arriving at effectively the same setup and recording it slightly differently.
The data cannot separate those two explanations, and we are not going to pretend it can. What it does tell you is that there is no master list of correct tunes waiting to be found. For most cars, somebody has recorded one answer and nobody has recorded a second.
What the clustering tells you about each setting
Break the three settings apart and they behave very differently:
- Tyre pressure is close to solved. 70% of the sheet runs 0/100 and the rest clusters at two other points. Three real choices, not a slider.
- Final drive is tier-determined. 516 cars run exactly 2.00, and the median falls from 3.89 in Tier 1 to 2.00 in Tier 5. Within a tier there is less genuine choice than the 209 values suggest.
- Nitrous is the genuinely open one. 404 distinct values and two incompatible philosophies — a hard hit over about 4 seconds, or a gentle burn over 12. Both appear on records.
That ranking matches where the driving-gap analysis says the time is. Tyres and final drive are largely decided for you by tier and convention; nitrous is where fast players still disagree, and disagreement is where the remaining ground usually is.
One practical consequence of all this is that the sheet is most valuable precisely where it looks thinnest. A car with a one-off tune has exactly one recorded answer, and that single row is the only guidance in existence for it.
How to use the sheet when tuning
- Look your exact car up first. There is a better than even chance it has a tune nobody else uses, which means the sheet is the only place that answer exists.
- If your car has no entry, start from the default. 188/4.0, 2.00 final drive, 0/100 tyres covers 223 cars and is the most tested setup in the game.
- Check the Elite Customs level in the name before copying. Record tunes change across a climb in 59 of 70 cases.
- Experiment with nitrous and leave the other two alone. That is where the field has not converged.
Every one of the 774 tunes is in the record database next to the car and time it produced.