So, How Do I Know What Lap Time is a Good Lap Time?

Good news and bad news.

Just tried a 6 lap race against 13 AI at 100% difficulty. Good news is, I managed to finish the race. Bad news is, well, I got shit on Fastest was 1:54, 8 seconds faster than me I have a lot to learn. I am heartbroken, but not giving up yet

 

That ^^^ is not the face of a heartbroken man.

By way of reference, there used to be a rule in Formula One (and other forms/series within motorsport too, as best I recall) known as the "107 percent rule." Provided you were able to run at least one timed lap within 107% of the pole sitter's best laptime, you were allowed to take the start in a Grand Prix. My quick math says you're already there, so now you just have to get faster.

Have fun!

 

Oh man! Practicing with the AI was so useful. I watched them as they lapped and noticed they were breaking much later than I did, I tried and failed. There was just no way of breaking so late. I was constantly spinning mid corner, trying to threshold brake. Then I noticed that whenever they geared down during extensive braking, their rev counter was always high.

Now it's my habit that I gear down at the lowest rpm possible because I thought that was the right way to do it. However, if I keep the rev as high as possible while braking down, I noticed I could brake much later and didn't oversteer and spin mid-corner at all! Now remember I told you my best lap was 2:02 with extensive try harding

Just 15 minutes ago I did a 1:58! This feels amazing. There is a lot more to learn and I am willing to! Finally broke the 2 minute barrier and now it's time to push even harder! Sorry if I sound like an idiot but seriously, I am feeling amazing (and sweating like a pig hehe).

Thanks for all your helps everyone! May your lap times be short!

 

If you or anyone else is interested we can go on server one day and have some fun together. For me I don't find practicing with others much useful since after so many years in sim racing you get a hang of what needs to be done to get what I want. Only when I'm totally lost having someone who has a better idea of what needs to be done to improve things is good. But I know people that progress slowly when alone and once they get onto a server with someone semi-competent they improve vastly. Who knows, maybe that's you too. Quick pro tip before we actually end up on a server: Some people repeat the age old mantra: Slow in, fast out. But many misinterpret it and carry "no speed", no real momentum into a corner. When I hear someone say: Slow in, fast out, I ask: Why not fast in, fast out? GTR GT500 is relatively light car (much lighter than any other major GT car) with huge downforce that only high-end open wheel cars and LMP cars can beat. This car is designed to go fast, it stops working when you go slower, it needs speed to grip. It is a thin line between overdoing it and being just right with carrying speed, momentum into a corner but once you feel where that thin line is, you not only find bonkers speeds but also driveablity since downforce is helping your stability. I know talking about it might not help that much, seeing it might do a bit more of a difference so if you or anyone else feels that they don't really feel it still, I'm gonna show what I mean as soon as possible.

 

Of course, I would love that. I regret driving alone now. First practice with the AI and my time improved by 4 seconds. I am willing to compare against others and learn from them now.

 

Default is actually really good with this car.
Of course, appropriate adjustments will help with speed, or stability, or agility, whatever your personal needs per car per track. But this is probably one of the easiest to just jump in and drive.

Heres a setup I developed while messing about at Silverstone, and a video of a few laps with it, including my PB.

PB starts at 6:10 in the video, the last lap is an "oopsie" XD

Cheers

 

There's an old saying among team-managers which goes something like this: "If your driver doesn't come hobbling back to the pits every once in a while, carrying just the steering wheel, he's probably not trying hard enough."

 

Join the Formula SimRacing servers, and then check your relative laptimes here:

http://raceview.nl/elm_web/raceview.html

 

Edit: Oh my, nevermind what I just said. Apparently my eyes weren't educated enough to see the difference between a correct racing line and a messy one. I can see it now Thank you so much for the video!

Just watched the video and I still can't understand what I am doing wrong. Seems not much different than what I do but there is a 5-6 seconds difference. I will try to analyze further. Thanks for preparing a video, appreciated

 

Rubber perhaps?
This was about an hour into the session with 13 AI making the track nice and sticky for me.

 

It's quite hard to watch videos from others and understand what they do differently than us, while obtaining faster laptimes under our nose. Reason 1 is that we lack the "eye" for the details that make the difference, and nr.2 fast driving is usually very very very smooth, while inexperienced people are more harsh and overdoing things. So, it's easier for the good pilot to see the mistakes of the newbie and point them out than the opposite. One good way to lap faster is to not try to lap faster. Braking to the limit at every turn will have the only outcomes to verheat tires (losing grip), unsetting the car at turn entry (losing grip), force to make abrupt mid turn corrections (losing speed,apex,balance,grip, the love of your girlfriend and baby jesus) , and if you then make it to turn exit you will have to wait Xmas before applying throttle, or you will spin miserably, or worse, your tires will spin overheating even more... will you make it for a whole lap?

 

In the rf1 days I used a tool that would merge hotlap replays. So I would go to the server, and if someone did a really fast lap I would save that hotlap and merge it with mine. You could choose to synchronize the lap at the start, sectors or finish line.

Then it was very easy to see where I was loosing time.

Maybe someone knows what is the equivalent of that tool for rF2?

 

I'm not in a position to teach someone how to drive , but the first thing I would try would be to try to not upset weight balance at braking point, then make the turn with the car evenly balanced so you can accelerate as soon as you straighten the wheel. Then, when "grandma" driving is aquired, you can learn how to tweak that equilibrium state to your gain: bring a little weight forward at turn entry will improve handling, but tail must remain under control and not turn too happy. At mid turn you would want to be again balanced because the turn is opening, you should need less directionality and soon will need more traction, so at turn exit you are ready to have your weight backward accelerating hard as you can.
The most time you have to gain in a lap, is from accelerating earlier , instead we think it's all about braking later.
If you are familiar with airplanes dynamic during landing, you will easily understand the idea that during a turn, your inputs "swaps" . While flying the airplane throttle control the speed and the cloche the direction of travel, during landing the throttle is what manage the trajectory and the cloche is what manage the speed. Something like that happen on the car: throttle and brakes control your speed on straights, but control your turn radius and ratio (overlapping inputs from the wheel) during a turn. Then the wheel is not only the tool to direct the car in a way or the other, but is a tool to reduce or increase the effect of throttle and brake application.

 

Comante's comments do also point up one baseline fact: Many of today's racing sims--this one certainly, as well as it's predecessor--are accurate enough representations of driving real racing cars on real tracks that most real-world techniques for going quicker will apply. If they didn't, people who do this for a living (there are a few) and those who have done it in the past (more) wouldn't be wasting their time with any of this.

Therefore, it follows that a text aimed at race driving instruction might have a lot to offer for use here too. "Going Faster" by Carl Lopez is one I recommend, but there are certainly a lot of others.

And at this point, an old comment made by Mario Andretti comes to mind (paraphrasing mine): "If you are going to do this..."--race cars at a very high level--"...plan to take very short vacations." Meaning if you don't keep constantly in practice, your skills may slip...and you may not be fast enough.

It can lead to a lifetime of study, but what's not to like about that?

 

You are definitely right. I am improving fairly well. Just did a 1:57:675. That means 5 seconds quicker in just three days. I'll see how much more I can push it.

Also, apparently I tried to learn a lot before actually playing the game and that was a big problem. I was very confident in the car's setup because I had studied car set-up guides before hand and spent a lot of time at them but turns out I actually bogged down the car. After trying the default setup, I noticed how better the handling was. Apparently I did huge mistakes there.

Well, I'll keep driving and see how it turns out

 

That's the most common mistake I see people make. Following blindly online (offline? Digital or analog - which means paper ) tutorials, guides. What I'm about to say may seem tedious and it actually is but it is a bulletproof solution. Full fuel default setup, drive as long as you can. If you can't spare time to go all the way, do at least 10-15 laps with minimal mistakes. Reset your car to pits and go out again. Why not make some changes already? Because that can only afford someone who knows the track and car very, VERY well (but even best ones learn sth everyday so it doesn't hurt to treat yourself like a newbie even after years spent on this. I have 10 years in proper sim racing already and few more in let's say driving games like the old Viper sth experience? Whatever. As a proof of me still evolving even after so many years in this, I can tell you that I loaded up some setups from 4-5 months ago and found them awful. But back then I was super happy with them and how well they suited me while they feel nothing like it now. There is high possibility that my setups from today can feel not the same, as good as back then to me in the future and I will be very happy about it if that happens because that will mean I'm still evolving, improving). So back to the point: You are going out again without making any changes yet. Why? Because your brain might have adapted to the car after those at least 15 laps+ and knowing that now it might have a big influence on your performance without any changes yet made. If stint time is similar that means that you can start fiddling about in setup. That is the crucial part. Developing a sense of knowing what the car is actually doing and what are YOU doing that makes a car do this or that. I love this saying that I heard long time ago: There are no understeery or oversteery cars, there are only drivers that make a car understeer or oversteer. When you think about it really carefully you will know that those are not empty words. When you are strongly aware of your own actions and reactions of a car to them that's where the whole process of setup changing actually starts. Good saving time method when you are trying to figure out few things if you are not sure what the car is doing and why is going to extremes. You may have read many guides that say: Don't make big jumps, small changes. I'm gonna say: Scratch that and try to stick another rule, don't make changes to more than 1 or 2 things tops. It saves a lot of time when you are a newbie to for example go 6 clicks higher on front slow compression shock absorber. See what this does to your car. Then go the opposite way and go 6 clicks lower prior to the change to go higher. See how it feels. Which direction do you prefer? You're sure? Ok that's a good start. Then you move to another setting. When you go through all major settings you can start the fine tuning. Adding 1 click there or going 1 click lower. You still need to focus on a car feel, car balance, laptimes are good indicator but should never be the sole reason to go for this or that. What good is a setup that can do blistering laptime but after doing 200 average ones, or that only works in certain conditions and when for example it starts raining, it is undriveable. Setup is only a tool of making a car drive a bit more like you want, more efficient too to help you gain laptime, 80 % of the gain comes from a driver. Think outside of the box and move yourself out of your comfort zone. Let's take braking as a example since that's where most painful and most common mistakes are made by most sim racers. One buddy of mine had this issue of overlapping pedals in braking zones. That gas pedal was still just slightly pressed while still braking which not only made his braking distances longer but also messed up his entry and mid corner balance because car was understeery because of that throttle being pressed even just slightly. Making his laptimes worse and his tire life far from desired level. I told him that he should create a new reflex of putting right foot aside everytime he was braking. He hated it because it felt weird for him, made him think about that instead of focusing on driving. Told him to keep on doing it, moving outside his comfort zone. After few weeks of doing that put his right foot back to it's place but without even slightly touching the throttle while braking. Doesn't feel weird anymore but he gained 1 s per lap and with some cars even more and his tire life improved a lot too since he wasn't overstressing them anymore. I know this is a rather long post but I really hope it provokes some self-awareness for some that will make them improve themselves.

 

@Ronnie ok, I have read every single word and I appreciate you took your time to mentor a new guy. I must say that you are absolutely right. I have just noticed that all the oversteering mid corner was actually my fault because I was hitting the accelerator a tad too much. So fiddling with suspension was only hurting me further. I am getting to learn the car now. Correct brake pressure at all speeds, correct steering angle, acceleration amount, when to gear down, how much the car can turn and how quickly it can turn etc. etc.

There is one thing I am sure right now and it is that whenever I over/understeer, it's definitely is my mistake, not the setup's or anything. I appreciate all you people's efforts to teach a new guy the best you can. From now on, my aim is to drive clean. I am not even able to make three consecutive clean laps at the moment so how can I expect to get better, right? Now I'll try to find my balance and move from there, bit by bit. Trying to improve and correct everything at the same time is making things much harder and confusing me further.

I love this quote from Top Gear: "remember, if the car seems slower, it is actually going faster." that's the definition of professionalism isn't it? Doing the same amount of work with less effort. That's why someone drives clean their lap seems slower than a crazy try-harding pilot like me

 

Were you using the soft tires like rocketjockeyr6 on that video. I don't remember if that's the default tire.

 

Positive. Using soft tires. That's the default

 

Ok, just a heads up!

Finally I had this moment of revelation that finally smacked me in the face. I watched a videos about "the racing line" and talked about turn in, apex and track out points and how important it was to hit all three just right and oh boy was he right

I watched my hotlap replay and I was all over the track. Couldn't even hit the apex most of the time and track out was non existent. I just exited the corner wherever possible. So right now I am paying all the attention I can to hitting the apex right and using the rest of the pavement to full efficiency to carry out as much speed as I can. The funny thing is, I am driving slower as a result That corner I took at 5th gear is a third gear corner now but I am much faster in the end.

I will work harder on that and am confident that it will turn out to be just fine. Thank you all for all your effort to teach me the best you could. Have fun and have a good day