Just a personal experience comment relating to plotting.

I've tried changing locations, on my ladder bar cars, and 4 link cars, so many times trying to reduce, or gain bite. Plotting it out on the ground, in software, and on and on. All that is fine for pro level racing where any wasted energy is a lost round, like PS. At my immeasurably low level racing, my concern is just about always making it hook, and go down. I'm either blowing the tires off, or wadding them up sometimes to the point of shake. Either case the shock alone can solve it almost every time.

What I've come to, may not be the best thing in the world, but it works for me. I've put too much of whatever setting works for each car, and use the shock to say no, or hell yeah, have at it. This takes a mean shock to do, but in the long run, when you go to a different track, or conditions change, a shock setting change is all that is required.