How do you know when there's no more room for improvement?

Let's say that you come across a new track that you've never try or even seen before, and you start to learn it.

How do you know that you are doing laps that are coming closer to the fastest lap in that track?

 

Short, but flippant answer:
There's always room for improvement.

Slightly longer and earnest version:
I know where I'm at by comparing my times with those of my peers. That's usually also the point where I find out how to improve further.


To be honest, even though I'm pretty sure I answered your question, I'm doubtful I told you what you actually wanted to know. Would you mind clarifying a bit?
What do you consider a "fastest lap", are you talking about hotlapping or just learning the track enough so you can join others in a race?
Why did you leave the comparison with other people out, it seems to me as it was the "obvious" answer...

 

You organize a competition with prizes. Then if it ends up being on fist page of wall street journal you can be pretty sure the results are "fastest".

Otherwise i'd say it comes with experience. Well at least for simpler tracks with clear cut limits and well balanced car.
If you don't >know< if your lap is fastest then it likely isn't one. Fastest laps aren't about "i can't go any faster" but rather "i drove really close to optimum there".
And how do we know optimum? The line theory isn't that complicated in basic 2D space with ideal car and firm track limits. But the more variables you throw at it the more gaps you'll be patching with experience. So it will be both subjective and skill dependent. I think an alien driver could have a good estimate of what is possible for given combo (car/track/conditions) even if he could not do such time in the short amount of practice spent on it, because he knows what lines he should be striving for.

But to give you a tip, when you "hit a wall" and can't get any faster. Try modifying your lines a little bit for each corner (mostly by varying entry and exit speed, but also on taking more or less kerbs). If you manage to get very similar delta times at the end of following straight, you are close to the "fastest". But if a small change in line causes a big time loss, you are likely far from optimum. Well at least for the common corners, you can't do much for the "just send it!" corners except for throwing enough laps and crashes onto the wall until something brilliant sticks, but even then it's likely skill or setup limited so you never know.

 

You can take part in the special events, or compare your times to the real world records.

 

I'm asking for what I have to feel when the car is at his limit, cause I can do a lap that's awesome for me, when I think I'm feeling the car at his maximun grip limit, just to see later some dude going 10-20 km/h faster than me into every corner.

How do you now when you're close tho the optimun lap? What do you feel in the wheel? That's what I'm asking, cause I've no clue

Yea, but I'm asking more about what I should be feeling from the car, sorry to all of you, I should have specified it

 

You feel nothing. Just keep an eye on your delta when you experiment with getting through corners in different ways without overdriving. But do overdrive when practicing, because that will also help you find the limit. Make mistakes. Other than that I think it's just intuitive.
Also note that different people have different limits. Some people are just able to carry more speed through corners than other people, may it be because of their driving technique or setup. You have to find your own limit.

 

I know that I'll never see a 99 PC, but is fun to try and reach my limit.
So, you don't feel anything, but if you are in the limit and turn the whell or press the gas a little you fall into a mistake? Is that what the limit should be?

 

The more I think about it, you can actually feel it when you're close to the limit, but it's more instinctively than some magical feeling through the wheel. I dunno, I'm probably not the best person to explain it xD

I've recently installed Kyalami for AC. First laps I go slow, learn the track layout, look where I roughly have to brake and turn in. Then I build a bit more speed, look if I can brake later or should brake earlier, experiment with turning in and carrying speed through corners. Then I get a basic idea of how to drive the track and I start working on building consistency. While I'm building consistency I'm still experimenting with corners and braking. After a while I can instinctively tell in which corners I can still find time. I keep experimenting with those corners until I have a good idea of how to drive them. Some corners are hard to master and do perfectly each time, so I just kinda improvise a bit. Good example is on Paul Ricard track, the long right hander after the right hander of the Mistral Straight, called Beausset. I know how to basically drive it, but I use steering angle, brake and throttle to adjust while I'm cornering.
That's how I personally find my own limit.

If you're really struggling with certain corners, it can be a good idea to watch other people drive the track on youtube or whatever.

 

Ah, that changes the matter a bit.
There is nothing to feel in the wheel. In theory the FFB strength should start to drop when approaching the grip limit. But it's more complicated, and on the road to getting a feel for this effect you'll find better ways to get a sense of the limit. So i'd say forget it. FFB is a good tool to know >when< to do things, for knowing >how much< visual and audio cues are better.

For "beginners" one cool tool to "see" the limit is tyre slip indicators. They can tell you if you are using grip of the car to the full potential. The very basic version of it is the Car Control widget that tells you if you are "too slow" or "too aggresive". AFAIR it normally only shows during the introduction to the game but you can turn it on in options to see it when normally driving (can't remember where exactly).
One step further from that is an app that tells you slip angles (in AC few apps did it including one stock one - suspensions dev app). If you are interested i can link an old abandoned project of mine that should still work for ACC (needs SimHub to work). The app shows you a bar that fills up as you use more grip and turns red when you cross the it separately for each tyre (just like the ones in AC). It won't help you drive better lines thou, and you need both proper lines and pushing tyres to the limit properly to do fastest laps. I mentioned in previous post how to feel if you are on proper lines.

There are also audio cues, which are similar to tyre tyre slip (as the tones are basically dependent on slip). If this was AC i could give some advice for how to use sound, but i'm not sure about ACC... Which brings me to last point, the reason why i'm not really using audio, slip angle or FFB cues to judge the limit: the YAW.

Car yaw speed (or turning speed) is the holly grail of car control, the better your sensitivity to car yaw the faster you'll go. Basically fast drivers know how quickly the car is able to rotate at any given speed, so they literally see the limit of the car by looking out of their windshield. This is also why low FoV is important and why many coaches teach drivers to look far ahead when driving, as both improve the sensitivity to yaw and speed which is needed to accurately know the maximum rotation rate of the car. As car at maximum rotation rate is at it's limit.
For a non downforce car the connection of speed and turning rate is pretty linear, so if you learn just a few points where you are sure car was on the limit of grip it's possible to extrapolate that into any other situation, where more speed = smaller maximum rotation (and vice versa).


@Oblit0r The causality here might be a problem. That "instinctive magical feeling through the wheel" could be the "effect of" not a "cause for" driving on the limit. As the better you drive the less you struggle with steering, less pushing the wheel around means more to feel the forces coming from it.

 

I think you misread my post I said the feeling of driving on the limit is instinctive, there's no magical feeling from the wheel.

 

"than", then, done, do, damn, done, goofed

 

When lap after lap your delta doesn't go green at any part of the track anymore.

 

That's actually something I've never heard, thank you

 

You can achieve this by doing laps with the pit limiter on

 

what you are asking is impossible.

 

Actually, one question about that. I've only recently noticed that the grey delta of [0.000] works differently for some people. For me it seems to have up to 0.05s (maybe more) of spread of static [0.000] between green and red which is strange when red starts at -0.001 and green starts at 0.001. I even drove almost a full lap with delta firmly never changing from 0.000, which kind of was a problem as i was trying to compare line performance with it. But i recently saw a video where a somebody was going very close to 0.000 delta, and it was quickly switching green/grey/red on straight.

Is this CPU timing related? a feature that stops the red/green flicker? a bug? am i cursed?

 

Definitely cursed

 

To actually add some value to the thread (rather than my earlier post), there is always room for improvement.

There will come a time where you hit what feels like the limit on the track and focusing on hot lapping will certainly the easiest way to find yourself in a rut/on the limit - or specifically on your limit for your current skill level and pace.

I think it's important to focus on effective practise rather than just hotlapping or trying to improve your absolute best lap time until the cows come home. If you feel like you're not gaining time anymore, focus your efforts elsewhere to round out your skills, refresh your perspective. There are a number of ways that help me;

• Focus on race set up for a while. Even if you never find another thousandth of a second in hotlap pace you can almost always find time across a full tank run. This is what wins races. Qually pace helps but the guy who can punch out laps and attack on lap 1 and lap 20 of a tyre set with an aero balance that has vastly shifted as the car drops fuel is the one who will have greater success. This is both a combination of good race setup and good race driving (managing tyre deg etc and finding setup advancements that reduce wear - this is almost always different to your hotlap setup)
• Drive different tracks. If you've hit a wall go race at a different track for a while. It will reset your thinking and your muscle memory a bit.
• Train with long fuel runs. An extension of point 1, often doing a 30 minute stint will yield better hotlaps after it than just trying to improve your best lap endlessly. You relax and settle into a rhythm and get your eye in in the process.
• Spend some time thinking about what the car is doing while you're not actually in game. It can be easier to be objective when you don't have adrenaline pumping. Really think about and identify root cause of issues. Oversteering mid corner? In the heat of the moment you might identify this as oversteer and dial more understeer into the car, when it actual fact you're understeering on entry and breaking into oversteer mid corner as a result, so a different remedy is required... this is the kind of thinking that can sometimes be hard when in the car and rushing to get results. I will often run 'review meetings' with myself after testing and write down a bunch of observations, and think and come up with things I want to try for next time. This can be setup changes, but often it's just a frank assessment of my driving and will actually result in me just changing my technique into a corner.
• Don't get ahead of yourself. It will take time, you're being very proactive with your postings regarding improving which is great. Sometimes it just takes time and miles, don't get frustrated if it takes time
• Train with AI. Do long race runs with them and work on being able to cleanly pass them on different parts of the track. It's easy to pick out 1 or 2 obvious spots where AI can be exploited and overtaken, but purposefully try to orchestrate an overtake tactic somewhere else on the track. There are really clever ways to set up overtakes and work an opponent out of track position which will both catch them by surprise, and gain you track position.

 

Years and years of simracing. I started it back in 2015 and my times still 5-6 seconds off from the fast people. If you didn't start your simracing career back in the early 2000s then you have to practise it a lot, because you missed a lot of things just like I did.