Last reviewed: November 12, 2026 · By the RaceYear team
Short answer: A Mini-Z setup sheet should record front and rear tires with compound, the T-plate or suspension plate, springs, damper grease, camber and toe knuckles, ride height, pinion and spur, motor, body, track surface and your best and average lap times. Log a baseline first, then change one thing per run so the sheet tells you what actually worked.
Key takeaways
Setup note: Directions here are typical starting points to test, not guarantees. Check your chassis manual (MR-03, MR-04 or AWD platforms differ) and your club's class rules before you buy parts.
Mini-Z racing is small, but the setup problem is the same one full-size racers have. The car was perfect two weeks ago, the club laid the same RCP track down, and now it spins on exit. If you didn't write down what it was running that night, you're starting from zero. A setup sheet fixes that, as long as it records the right things.
Record everything you can change with a tool or a part swap, plus the conditions the car ran in. Here's the field list we'd use as a minimum:
| Section | Field | What to write |
|---|---|---|
| Conditions | Track and surface | Venue, RCP, carpet or hardwood, layout size, temperature |
| Tires | Front and rear | Brand, compound or hardness number, width, wheel offset, how many runs on them |
| Rear suspension | T-plate or suspension plate | Part number or flex rating, any shims |
| Rear suspension | Springs and damper | Center and side spring rates, damper grease or oil, side damper setting |
| Front end | Springs, camber, toe | Front spring rate, camber knuckle angle, toe setting |
| Chassis | Ride height and weight | Front and rear ride height, any added weight and where it sits |
| Drivetrain | Gearing and motor | Pinion, spur, motor type, ESC or board settings |
| Body | Body and wheelbase | Body model, wheelbase setting it requires |
| Result | Lap times and notes | Best lap, average lap, one line on how the car drove |
The tire line matters most. Write the actual compound marking from the tire or package. "Rear 30" means something to you tonight and nothing in March unless you also wrote the brand and width.
Because every other number on the page is an answer to it. A high-grip RCP track and a dusty hardwood floor want close to opposite setups. MiniZMods' T-plate guide lists soft and ultra-soft plates for carpet, low-grip hardwood and bumpy floors, a medium plate as the usual starting point on RCP at moderate grip, and stiff plates for high-grip RCP (MiniZMods). If your sheet doesn't say which surface it came from, you'll copy a carpet setup onto RCP and wonder why it hops.
The rear plate and damper control how the rear pod moves, which on a Mini-Z is most of your handling. The same MiniZMods guide gives the direction plainly: a stiffer plate keeps the rear more planted on high grip, a softer plate lets the rear settle and find traction on low grip. For handling, it suggests a stiffer plate for oversteer on corner exit and a softer plate for a car that pushes wide.
Damper grease and oil work on the same motion, just in time instead of amount. Thicker damping slows how fast the rear rolls and settles. Thinner damping lets it react quicker. Log the exact grease or oil you used, because two "medium" greases from two brands are not the same.
Front springs and camber handle the steering side. Log the camber knuckle by its marked angle and the toe setting by part or measurement, so you can put it back exactly.
It's the simplest way to make a setup sheet teach you something. Run the car in a known setup until your times settle, then change exactly one thing.
The average lap is the honest number. A change that drops your best lap by a tenth but makes the average worse probably made the car harder to drive, and that costs you in a main.
Here's a sample layout with blanks where your numbers go. Don't copy values from anyone else's car; the point is the format.
| Field | Baseline | Change 1 | Change 2 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Surface | RCP, medium grip | Same | Same |
| Rear tire | Brand / compound / width | Same | Softer compound |
| T-plate | Medium | One step stiffer | Kept from change 1 |
| Damper | Grease or oil used | Same | Same |
| Pinion / spur | Your gearing | Same | Same |
| Best / average lap | Your times | Your times | Your times |
| Notes | Loose on exit | Exit better, kept | Write what changed |
Gearing works the same way on a Mini-Z as on bigger cars. A bigger pinion trades punch for top speed and adds heat, so change it one tooth at a time. Our guide to RC gear ratio and rollout covers the math.
Tires and surface. The tire compound and the surface it ran on explain more of the car's handling than any other line, and they're the two things racers most often forget to write down.
Use it as a starting point on the same surface and the same platform, then run your own baseline. Their tires may have more runs on them than yours, and their driving style is not yours.
As many as you have runs for, one at a time. Three logged single changes in a night teach you more than one big guess.
A notebook works fine for this. The trouble starts when you have twenty sheets and need the one from the RCP night last spring. RacerRX supports Mini-Z, works offline at the track, saves setups on your phone and backs them up to your account, and its AI tuning reads your saved setups when you ask what to try next.
Want to see how sheets work in general first? Start with how to read an RC setup sheet, then camber, caster and toe for RC racers. Terms you don't know are in the RaceYear racing glossary.
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