Driving Technique Discussion

Gents (and Ladies),

I'm after either a few tips (or hardware set up info) so as I can brake harder and later.

I'm fine in most parts of the game but for some reason I seem to have little 'feel' on the brakes, thus making it so as I have to start braking way before a corner, everything feels sort of soft.

I have a decent wheel and pedal combo but I just have no idea which way to go and playing online I feel I am both impeding others with early braking but also losing a couple of seconds a lap.

Help....

 

That would be nice, but I don't know how that feedback can be accomplished without a motion seat.

Except for maybe more ABS chatter feedback in the wheel.

I personally work on getting the best braking points established, and be consistent there, obviously takes some experimentation.

 

You have to set markers for your braking points and hit them every time. its ok to lift slightly while your braking to perfect your corner entry speed.

 

Just Watch Aris.Drives(ACC Developer) vids on YT, it's Gold!

 

It's sometimes forgotten as it feels natural after a while. But in simracing you brake exactly the opposite way compared to your daily driver. You slam on the pedal and release it near the end to stabilize the car for the corner.
Thanks to the aero platform GT3's are you don't dive down, so you don't experience actually how hard you're braking which is a psychological effect really.

 

The key with someone that can brake later then others is the feel at turn in. Obviously mashing the brake 100% as late as possible and to the apex with ABS on isnt going to give the best braking performance. Otherwise everyone would be the same but clearly some are better then others.

If you can feel the braking fairly well, keep the car balanced and use as little ABS as you can manage also tune the setup amd brake bias to improve this. Then you will be able to brake deeper to the apex and be in more control at the apex allowing higher apex speeds, also braking deeper allows you to brake later.

The basic approach of 100% braking approach in a straight line is far from optimal and so you need to brake earlier to achieve this. If you try to trail brake and have little feel for the cars balance then you will likely miss the apex and also have less front end grip so need to be slower at the apex. If you use more ABS it will also decrease stopping distance so theres quite a bit to it.

 

...fov, maybe?

 

I think part of the skill in braking is how you come off the brakes. Good drivers can balance turn in with coming off the brakes to maximise their braking and using it to help them rotate around the corner. It's a hard skill because messing up your entry to the corner ruins your exit which is more important to get right. What you'll gain by maximising your entry isn't worth what you'll lose on the other side of the corner if you mess it up.

Braking is one of the areas of sim racing that really suffers from the lack of G-forces. So you have to rely pretty much entirely on markers as a reference.

 

What pedal are you using ? A load cell pedal make a huge difference in accuracy and muscle memory .

 

I am like you not a fast driver.
3" slower as the best laptime is nothing but normal in my opinion.
The guys are more talented, they practise more, and they often use pretty special setups.
Currently, I just aim to stay constant as possible, make my way to the traffic, and Always finish the racde. My goal is about midfield starting generally from the back.
My pace in hotlap/superpole event is about 45 to 60.
But my rating pace hotstint is currently 83 in the last zandvoort event. It means more for me as the pure hotlap. (but of course it is very rwarding to be quick)

The only problem is that on some track, if you start from behind it may be a big disadvantage.

Remember, it may be a sim, but except for some of us, it remains a game

 

Consistency is more important than being fast. I accepted the fact that I cannot compete with the top 10%, but my average finishes are 6-10th place in sim games because others spin out and ragequit.

 

yes but when you are 7,5 secs away from the top 3 on a server then you are consistant slow and will gain nothing (it happen to me yesterday and its more than frustrating...)
in AC i was 3-4 seconds behind in GT3 this was ok but here... :/

 

It depends how much free time you have. I only have like 2-3 hours per day which isn't enough for practising that much and I like to play other games too. If you want to commit yourself to competent racing you need much more practise.

 

same here.
its a hobby,im not a race driver earning money with this.
hard part for me is the "be a race engineer" on the side of beeing a driver.
there are so many setup guides (good,bad,ugly) and videos that go deep in the setup stuff and there is not enough time between work/eat/sleep and other stuff to do...

 

They're Thrustmaster T3PA with a brake stop

 

First of all I would choose a car that I can drive well. And not choose what seems to be the fastest in online races. I wouldn't change anything in the setup at the beginning either. Sometime later I would start with tire pressure changes. I have now e.g. 922 ACC hours, about 400 hours Huracan and then only Porsche. That's the nice thing about ACC, you first learn "your" car and then you get faster. Unless you are an Alien. They start with getting faster. In hotlap mode you learn the car and race against the AI. And I would set the AI difficulty to your level. So you can fight with the AI and not just drive by or follow it. In online races you can also skip a qualification and start from the back. That way you don't hinder anyone and you can "watch" the others from behind how they drive. I would leave the FFB on standard and only change the overall strength. If it's set too weak, I think you feel too little "weight" from the car and if it's set too strong, you can't absorb the "weight" from the car. Later you can raise the overall strength slightly, the more you feel. To learn the ideal line, you can fade it in. But I would not stubbornly try to hit it exactly, it comes by itself. And I wouldn't fade it in too long, for example, it bothers me more than it helps. The best way to learn is to follow others. Then you can start gaining time by braking. Sounds strange, but that's how it is. In simple terms, brake hard, release the brake slowly and roll around the bend and hit the gas as soon as possible without turning. What I also did wrong in the beginning, to turn the steering wheel too far. If you think you have to turn it even further, you've been going too fast and you're just sliding straight ahead... The view out of the car and the FOV is also a thing with a single monitor. The "real" FOV doesn't make me go faster or slower. But I just don't see enough and the sense of speed is totally missing. Somewhere in the middle between real FOV and "racing game view" and choose Dashcam. It bothers me when I see 2 steering wheels. . Also play with movement and lock to horizon. I have movement 20 and lock to horizon 40, because otherwise my eyes hurt in Silverstone or I fall out of the car. I just realized where my 922 hours of ACC came from... Find your settings that you can drive with and then you can get faster. And only then do you start with setup changes. So, this is all written with translator I am also from Germany. I hope you can understand what I am trying to write.

 

Something else in Aris' vid was the tyre grip vs turning circle. This was sooo simple and I think of this so much when I'm driving.
Basically you have finite amount of grip, so the bigger the radius, the faster you can go.
His simple demonstration showed that even using 1/2 car width on entry and exist is a dramatically increased turning circle radius, so faster cornering speed. This is the same as if you miss the apex due to too being too fast. You need to slow dramatically to be able to turn the car and get the correct exit.

I have a simple question about downshifting. How much does it matter in helping the car regards to braking?
What I mean is if I'm braking from 6th to 2nd gear, do I downshift every 500ms, or wait 1000ms and then downshift every 100ms (times used as an example).
I try to see the difference, but I can usually attribute any lower apex speed into inconsistency in braking distance.

 

That's an interesting topic. Think of downshifts as dynamic balance changers, the faster you downshift the more oversteer and rearward brake balance you'll get. So how exactly you should downshift will depend on how you need the cars balance to change on entry. This changes with car, setup, weather etc. but most importantly with driver's confidence and skills.

What i've found is that if you are fresh on track will little practice the car handles much better with brake balance moved backwards. At that point you will want to downshift calmly, with an initial delay and slower (following lower engine rpms). Then as you gain confidence in the car the optimum brake balance will shift toward front at which point aggressive (high rpm) downshifts will be more fitting. This is probably the reason why if you look at youtube hotlaps most of them have pretty aggressive downshifts - because they are in the groove already and it was their best lap. But I believe that aggressive shifts are result of driving fast but not necessarily the other way around. So shift in a way that will give you the most control over the car. And if you haven't got a feeling for downshifting yet, start by shifting calmly (delayed and slow). It will be much more obvious/natural to feel when it's not the right way to shift than if you'd start aggressive.

For laptimes it's much more important to have a good entry speed than to get everything from braking, so slower shifts should be the answer from that perspective too. Notably not only by having more consistent deceleration speed but also having an option to momentarily increase car's braking/agility for corner entry by quickening last shifts, which should make you more comfortable braking later and taking more speed in.

Also since this is ACC, gt3 cars which have pitch sensitive aerodynamics might want to have initial downshifts delayed a bit if you have bumpy or not straight braking zone. On the other hand on flat and straight zones the gt3 brakes (except the pad 4) can't fully exploit the grip at high speed so initial aggressive downshifts can save a few meters.
Lastly in rain you want to delay shifts to not mess up the ABS. If the car does not give you issues when aggressively downshifting, it means your brake balance is likely too far forward.

 

Mega response. I come watching F1 with their very aggressive downshifts, but thats due to the high number of gears and wicked small braking zones.
I don't know enough about setups to mess with them, and most advice I have is until you are within 2 secs of alien times, don't bother as you need to spend time on driving.
Following this, I haven't played with brake balance or anything other than tyre pressures.
With them, after 5 laps I see what the values are and then adjust initial pressures to make them all close to 27.5 after 5 laps. I'm slowly getting through all the tracks and don't know how much they are helping me, or my time on track improving my techniques.

With braking in the dry...
Straight braking... aggressive downshifts at high rpm - Silverstone Copse (1st corner)
curved braking... calmer lower rpm downshifts - Silverstone Stowe (fast right hander) or Brooklands (2nd to last corner)