Lap time and frustration

Setups are so brutally important !
They enable you to wring that car harder than you ever thought possible, but the setup needs to fit you personally, since driving styles and preference of car characteristics are so wildly different from driver to driver .

 

Definitely don't qualify with race fuel, you're giving away time there. I'll generally qualify with 15 litres, but if there's 3 minutes left on the clock and I want to do one final run I'll drop it down to just over 2 laps worth. You need to take advantage of this sort of thing, your competitors definitely will be.

Also qualifying on your race setup because it's stable won't get you a fast qualifying time. Qualifying setups often differ drastically from race setups, they are designed to get around the track as fast as possible, not to be stable for a 60 minute race. Drop as much ride height out as you can, dial some extra rake into it to get it apexing tightly, and tweak your tyre pressures to come on straight away... Remember it doesn't matter if your tyres go off after 5 laps, or your car starts oversteering like crazy after 5 laps, it's a qualifying lap you're chasing.

 

Not to say setup is not important, because I am sure it is. But I think it is less so in this particular game, many of the fastest laps have been done with only the aggressive setup. Fixed setup races are a big draw in iracing, and I kind of like then myself. I would rather win/lose because of my ability, rather then how good/bad my car is setup.

 

The whole open/fixed setup thing is subjective. Any given setup suits a particular driving style, so if a fixed setup suits driver A's style but not driver B's, then driver A has an advantage similar to an open setup scenario where one driver can gain an advantage by being better at setting their car up.

We always want driver skill to be the leading factor in overall pace, but feedback and an understanding of the car setup is part of sim racing, and racing IRL.

 

Yes i know, setup is important. The reason i drive in Q with race setup is because you have few time to switch between Q and R setup. Sometimes between wet and dry. One times i forget to adjust fuel and i start race with 20 liters. But is a good idea, I can save also a preset Q setup to switch quickly. Normally i save dry20, wet30 and so on. I may create dryQ20, wetQ30. Thanks!

 

Yeah, I feel you, bruh. Been sim-racing since the late 90's when Grand Prix Legends first came out, but I'm still slow and simply cant keep up in most online-races. Sadly dont know much about setups either,

Last night was a real bummer as people were passing me both left and right as they saw fit, seemingly regardless of corner any resistance from my part. Dont really do much AI, but atleast there you can adjust the competition to your pace

 

It's called talent or lack thereof.

 

Aye, mostly the latter, I'm afraid.

 

I thought the same about my pace until I joined a couple of leagues (in AC) and started practicing regularly before races. Then I found massive time gains. Driving is not only about how aggressive you are. It's about using all of the track and all of the car and that means getting into details. it's also about knowing the track so well that you stop thinking about your driving and focus on the racing instead. In the end being 3 seconds slower on a 4 km track is really not much, so taking away those seconds needs an effort.

The way I practice is racing against the AI, at least 2 full race weekends.

 

Whenever that tends to happend there either people who dont qualify or are just driving at a pace they cant keep up. Most of the people who end up passing me i just chase them like mad and they end up crashing or spinning up anyway because they dont have the consistincy. I like to just keep my pace (or chase and force em into a mistake) im not as good at defending since i know there either faster or they wil just end up crashing further up in the race. Hell i love faster drivers pass me i always gain some pace if it happens

 

Well, i'm not an alien nor an "expert", just an average driver.
I'll simply share my own humble opinion.

These are not "pro tips".

1) Setup is overrated. Unless you're constantly fighting your car, no magic setup will make you a blazing fast driver. A good setup is just something fitting you, making you confident enough to consistently challenge your actual limit. Base setups are normally good enough, subtle changes are usually more than enough to get a decently good pace.

2) Check your engine map settings: aggressive / qualifying maps pack quite some punch on some cars, compared to default. Most people i know use aggressive engine map even on race. It feels a bit like cheating, because it's unrealistic, but that's it.

3) Driving is all about flow. This is something you may want to improve. Whatever your driving style, it is fatally going to near overdriving. From there you have to further refine your driving. Personally i prefer to work on braking, meaning i try to lessen my braking and let the car "flow" through turns as fast as possible. It's surprising for me to discover, each and every time, how easier is to achieve a better and more comfortable pace just by braking less and better.

 

That's what I do. If the car behind me is 10 seconds away and after five laps it is attached to me it means it gives me 2 sec. for lap. What should I do? Lock it? so I let it pass. The problem is that some come with such fury that they end up throwing you out because they try to go to impossible track's point. Wait a moment!

 

Yea some of em just dont have the patience to pass you at a place where its actualy possible blaim the short sprints for that :/

 

Hi...

I had the same experience years ago with GTR. I drove at SPA and had a good laptime but one of the drive was 3-4 seconds faster. My first impression was he cheated and I started to chat with him. He told me he drives always SPA only and hours each day and I beleived him. At the end he gave me his setup and the MOTEC data of one of his racing lap, not the best one, he said, but over 3 seconds faster. First I tried the setup and I tried round by round for an hours and I was around a half second better but still not far away of his laptime. Then I analysed the MOTEC data curve by curve (it was possible to compare two different MOTEC files to see breaking point, when and how much to accelerate, which gear in which curve etc.). He drove completly different, sometime a gear up, sometime gear down, breaking later or earlier etc. I practiced this way of driving for one week, min. 2-3 hours each day and at the end I reached this time and it was absolute amazing this progress for me, because I never thought it was really possible to be so much faster! This racing style was risky, especially for the ferrari at GTR, so to surviving a complete race was yet another challenge, but you knew about every ground wave that could be critical to avoid it after more practice.

So last words, it's frustrating for us to see this difference but keep in mind there is a lot of experience (> 200 hours for each course, incl. >100 hours of analysing your driving stlyes with MOTEC) behind this to reach the real limits for these fast times.

Sorry, I'm not a native speaker, but I hope your know what I mean

Best regards,
Michael

 

I feel exactly like you. Lately I have started to study my own driving in replays. I realized very quickly that the consistency I thought I had is not that good. It is many small things from lap to lap. For instance not hitting the breaking point precisely before a turn, not fully taking advantage of the track limits through a turn, being slightly too slow on the gas leaving a turn, etc.

All of these things together quickly adds several tenths of seconds per incident. Exit speed from corners is particular critical, especially for turns before longer straights. Easy to loose 0.5 second on a straight if you were too slow on the gas a corner exit.

Another usual issue is overdriving the car in ACC. Study your latest driver data on overdriving to check for this.

Finally, enable the ideal line indication for a few laps on the track you a practicing to see if you have some approaches which can be optimized.

 

You've seen a weird miracle, aliens very seldom share telemetry data.

 

Unfortunately this is true although they would only help the community without really being in danger of not being the fastest anymore because:

1) Very few would invest so much time to reach the same times, but many would get better.
2) Driver who copies the driving style will always be worse than the original.
3) Aliens does not have to publish necessarily its fable time
4) You drive on a razor blade and the smallest mistake and you are gone.
5) The effort to maintain this level is very high and is needed for every race track.
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All reasons for more transparency I wish that more people would at least share their setups (or anything else) because it supports the community...

 

I don't think take a setup from someone is useful becaause the setup is based on personal drive technique. What is good for you not necessary is good for me. It will be more useful to understand why someone made this setup.

 

I like when someone explain: "I move the bias in this way because..... i have this psi in front because...." and so on.

 

Lol chillax boy. Stop shaming people who are fast for not helping. What setup do you need?