Star Mazda Setup School

Since my focus has landed on the Star Mazda I've been trying to learn how to tweak its setup. Generally I've been starting with a base setup which I've grabbed from the forums, trying out a few if possible and finding something which is easy to drive. Then making tweaks to the front and rear wings, increasing downforce if I'm still struggling to keep it on the black stuff or lowering it until I find that I'm losing traction too often.

I'd like to progress beyond that and towards actually having a decent clue as to what I can affect. With this in mind I've been reading through the wonderful setup guide. Today I also came across an amazing spreadsheet of testing results which Zsolt Gyetvai posted on the forum.

The gist of his testing breaks down like this:

For Front Wings:

1. Mainplate always 5.5 °
2. Use 1/4" gurney flap until flap angle 25° then if it is not enough use 7/10" gurney flap from flap angle 20°
3. At Flap angle of 32° no gurney setup is also effective
4. 1/2" gurney flap is not very effective. I do not really understand the reason. I thought it should behave between 1/4" gurney flap and 7/10" gurney flap. But not. Maybe is it a bug?

For Rear Wings:

1. First use the upper wing elements to create downforce, until A3 every step creates about 10% more DF. The upper wing element is the most cost effective
2. Then to fine tune the downforce level use the lower wing element. Every 0.5° step creates about 5% more DF. Start it from 7.5° then increase it to 8.0° or 8.5°
3. The vertical endplate element has a very little effect on the downforce and drag. From the data I can not see the effects from the endplate, they are in the error margin
4. The lower element gurneys are not cost effective. They creates more DF, but much more drag. Only use them if u desperately want more DF.

Also helpful is this setup viewer app.