Noob back with new replay and new questions

Hi all. My AC game time has been almost only BMW 1M on Imola because I found that the car to me is one of the easier RWD car to handle. As a totally newbie to sim racing, I've met with tons of questions, and I have made two posts before:
https://www.assettocorsa.net/forum/index.php?threads/replay-and-lots-of-noob-questions.16132/
https://www.assettocorsa.net/forum/index.php?threads/question-about-understeer.17214/

I've received lots of suggestions, and actually I've tried almost all of them. I make this new thread because I think people who have helped me before may have unwatched my old threads.

After my second post I compared my replay with other people's replays and videos, and did realize that I was trying too hard being fast rather than smooth. So I slowed down, brake a lot earlier, and was always careful when pressing the paddles. After about 50 laps like the replay below (bmw_1m_imola_1.zip), I was pretty happy about myself because I had a lot less tire screech than before and I did feel that the car's balance was upset a lot less frequently than before.

However what frustrated me was that my lap time was not improved much, although a lot more consistent. I was still struggling around 2:14. Then I bought a book that https://www.assettocorsa.net/forum/index.php?members/rodrigo-pires.1468/ recommended, and I read about the G circle and trail braking, and decided to try to push a little bit harder, and ended up with the second replay below (bmw_1m_imola_2.zip). The lap time is not improved a lot, and I actually don't care about the lap time. I just want to know whether I'm now on the right track of practicing now, or I should quit the idea of pushing harder, and go back to keep going slower and smoother.

Besides, someone suggested that I study my telemetry, but I really don't have any clue how to look at it. I can only see the telemetry of the best and the last lap but no more. Can I load more telemetry? Can I save them? What am I supposed to look at in the telemetry?

Sorry for this long post. I just don't want to spend several hours doing the wrong thing, then a lot more to change my bad habbits.

Thank you!

 

Hi St3fan,
I would start letting trail braking apart for now. It is a complex technique that can make you earn cents to tenths after you master it, but only after years of experience can be mastered, so not the moment yet.

To tell how you may improve your driving technique, I start with an example from your replay: Tamburello chicane.
I see you start leaving yout foot from the throttle pedal before 250 mts, you start braking before 200 mts, you start braking harder after 200 mts.
Then you have to brake 100% because you didn't brake enough
Then you have to use 2nd gear because you are still to fast to enter the turn.
You may have more fun, and more speed, than that!

In general, you want to step on brake right after you move your foot away from throttle.
How hard have you to brake? The harder you can without locking tyres.

At tamburello: keep braking the harder you can without locking, downshift to third when the RPMs are good (around 4000rpm in 4th to go around 5000rpm in 3rd).
Let the car in 3rd gear and continue slowing down with brakes. move from brakes when you have to steer at turn-in.
Only after you realize that you are too SLOW approaching a turn, then you know you can brake a bit later - I mean 2 meters later, not 50 meters
Still too slow at turn after retarding your brake of 2 meters? Another 2 meters later at the following lap, and so on, lap after lap.
In this way you will improve without loosing time, and without loosing confidence.

I tried some laps, I have no experience with the BMW, but you can lap in 2:07 with almost no effort (I know, at RSR the record is a low 2:03, but let's aim to a 2:10 for now).
There are obvious tricks to improve you technique (and as a consequence, your speed).

1st golden-very-important-never-told-too-often rule:
the larger the turn, the faster.

Watch this iRacing teaching video - and eventually the full driving school series - ehr, until Kunos make their owns :


2nd golden (etc) rule:
the fastest speed you can take into a turn is the speed that can make you go to the apex without upsetting your car.
More that this is useless, and will make you slower.
Exception to the second rule: trail braking. But it isn't an adequate technique for now.

Should you need it, I will upload a replay of a lap in 2:07.0, but I am sure that you will be able to do it yourself in a couple of days (if you can drive 10-15 laps remaing focused on the right things to do).
Have fun!

---------------

Add: found a nice page with old telemetries comparison between Schumacher and Barrichello at the Montreal hairpin. Look how different is the technique among a left-foot (Schumacher) and a right-foot(Barrichello) braker:
http://world2talkabout.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/compare.jpg

Full page here: http://world2talkabout.wordpress.com/2011/08/30/michael-schumacher-driving-analysis

 

From looking at the telemetry alone, you're being testy with the brakes
You need to brake with authority right up to the threshold of locking them up (aka threshold braking) with the steering as straight as possible.
In another words, get on the brake as quickly and hardest as you can without locking them up, and stay on it for the shortest amount time possible to come down to the required speed.
Add steering angle as you're coming off the brake, add throttle to balance the car if needed, and as soon as you are certain you know you can take the corner exit at full throttle, unwind the steering as you bury your throttle pedal. Be smooth.
Since you're just beginning, this is a good way to learn a track. Try taking corner with late apexes, and if you feel like you have to speed up through the corner too much, start dialing braking points closer for early apexes to maximize corner entry speed.

Saw your second replay, and it confirms you're not braking hard enough and kind of coasting through the turn.
You also need to look farther ahead, and it looked like you're a bit tunnel visioned to the upcoming corner a bit. Your eyes need to be looking at least 2 corners ahead and use your peripheral vision for apexes and corner exits. That will smooth out the overall line since you're not going to be busy making minor corrections.

 

After watching the replays:
1) (Least important) try taking less straight lines from apex to apex in multiple corner sections of the track, with more left-right movement you will be able to use more width of the track and clear the corners at higher speeds, and accelerate faster.
2) You brake early which is nice (too early but its ok) but you still have too much speed while turning into the corners, you need to slow down more at the apex to have clear and early throttle application on exit. And with that said, the real problem is:
3) Lack of brake pressure during cornering. You understeer hard during most of it because both of too high speed and lack of front axle load from brakes.

The easiest way to fix that would be to drop hotlaping and learn braking drift, even if it is at very small angles, i think it's crucial for you to get the feel of car dynamics during braking and turning at the same time.
Right now you brake first, then turn. Since most cars are prepared to be balanced while turning with some brake pressure, it understeers and you never use the full grip of all 4 tyres to turn. Try having brakes ON continuously (10-40% pressure) while turning in.
Hint: if you overbrake before the corner just let up the brake pedal for a moment, right before the corner and reapply it to get front more loaded. You will not loose much time from that.
Right now you enter the corner too fast to clear it with only steering but too slow if you would leave the brakes on while turning in.

Also you could try different approach to thinking about the car control... Like think of brakes as the thing that control how much you turn (while the steering remains at some arbitrary angle). There is a specific amount of brakes that will give you best turning ability, less brakes and the front will understeer due to lack of load, too much brakes and the braking force will eat up all the grip for turning, proper brake pressure and you will find the car cornering much harder than ever before because all 4 wheels work equally hard (and it allows for even later braking).

Personally i think learning basics of drift (or at least about how to use weight transfers to balance the car) is what would help your laptimes the most at this moment.

__________

As for telemetry, you want to look for the best moments to apply throttle, for that you look at the speed on straights, if the line is above the previous record look for when you pressed the accelerator and how fast you where going when doing that. Good example is in the middle of your picture. On your "last" attempt you braked later and consequently pressed the accelerator later - you gained some time on braking but lost it on straight (if it was longer straight the time lost would have been grater than gain).
It goes similarly for brakes. Look for example at the last 2turns, you braked later and a little less (more speed into the corner) but because of that you had to slow down way too much loosing time between the corners, the acceleration point at the exit was the same so you had similar straight line speed.

Another thing to keep track of is the smoothness of brakes and throttle. You want to have smooth top line during braking, and on acceleration you want to achieve full throttle as early as possible. In your picture you can see a lot of hesitation on the accelerator.

edit: i post sooo slow nice post's above me already haha

Edit2: Afterthough after i gave the BMW a spin on imola:
That car is a boat, it rocks and swivels hard during transitions between braking/cornering/throttle etc. It means the car will feel difficult, snappy and hard to control if you let it catch a breath between braking, cornering and acceleration. When driven with smooth transitions thou it gets much better.

The trick is to keep the controls interwoven to keep these load transitions smooth. Proper constant loading of all tyres also allows easier throttle application. By switching from braking to throttle around the apex (without going into brake/throttle less cornering), the car will not snap oversteer like it likes to do when throttling out of steering only cornering, but kind of continue from the position of the braking (often not requiring much if any change in steering input).
Also, the more you slow down in corner the faster your car will rotate pointing the car into the exit earlier - meaning earlier throttle and better straight line speed on upcoming straight (so do not be afraid to slow the car down in corners!).

 

This makes for some pretty interesting sim reading

 

Thanks for the advice! I realize that I TOTALLY misunderstood how to brake. I realize that on the brake telemetry it looks messy because I actually haven't got an idea of how to brake properly. I'll try out you guys' advice this weekend and maybe I'll try to get a feeling how hard I could brake without locking up the tires first.

Also the only reason I'm doing hotlap now instead of practice mode is just... I want to have a record on RSR ranking to give me an incentive of practice.

Thanks for all your advice!

 

@St3fan I might get some flak from purists for that but at this point driving with ABS would help you a lot. It will give more consistent brakings (and more confidence) which in turn will help actually learning the weight transfers faster. Not having to worry about inside tyre locking during trailbrking helps too. And then you can always return to proper ABS-less mode and adjust freshly learned skills.
ps: i edited my post above with one more thought if you want to read my rambling. Cheers and good luck .

 

I would suggest 'factory' abs setting also. The stock G27 brake pedal is difficult to modulate.
It seems wrong and violent, but stomping brakes for all they are worth at the start of braking is the way to go(You'll really load the front and they won't lock up right away on softer sprung cars, typically). Slowing to the correct speed in as short of distance possible is what you are shooting for, yes?

 

I'm not the best at reading telem, but from my own laps just now, I can see that you are not comfortable with the brake on this car. Doing ****ty laps, I was able to easily make low 2:12s, better 2:08 and 07s with pushing. Had very little tire noise throughout.

But don't trust the lack of tire noise as proof of your going faster. AC still has a lot to do in the sound department, and when and where tire sounds occur is a huge area. Trust the physics, what the wheel and your eyes tell you. Right off, you also need to mess with set-up. Outside tires (right) should have more camber to help grip on a counterclockwise track like Imola. Lower rear toe values too...helps with the car's instability...great for drifting, kind of bad for regular driving.

 

There is one thing to remember when trying to improve laptimes through braking.

Stopping in the shortest distance possible is only worth the effort in races (to attack or defend) and in super fast cars where you spend a lot of time braking (like F40, LaF etc). In a car like 1M shaving that 20m of braking distance will net like 0.1s laptime max, while earlier, gentle and controlled braking resulting in clean and precise corner exit can give earlier acceleration. And assuming long straight afterwards even 0.05s earlier throttle can shave much more time than what was lost on braking.

The thing is, the bigger the relative de-acceleration of braking when compared to acceleration out of the corners the more important the exit is compared to entry. For F1 car that can accelerate almost as fast as brake, entry is as important as exit, but for low powered car getting turn in right is much more impactful on laptime than actual braking performance (distance).

The most important part of braking is to arrive at the corner entry at correct speed, position and gear.

edit:

Funny i actually drive a lot based on sound of tyres and not the visuals , i think AC have it in a pretty good spot. (not perfect , but good enough)
Setup, especially for a road car, does not have that big of an impact on laptimes, unless driver can actually extract that 100% performance from the car. He has many seconds to shave off in just driving, and default is nicely balanced.....
Also, low rear toe values can bite the OP in the butt on the Imola T4 as it is very hard corner when you are learning trailbraking, i would advise against that on this occasion.

 

Meh, turn 4 for me is all throttle, I kept the toe values stock and struggled, lowered them and it helped. Might very well be the different wheel I am using...

 

This is a really interesting thread, I'm still a learner so I can't give any tips for now
Thx for the advices guys

 

I have to agree with this.

Many people put too much emphasis on braking as late and as hard as possible. That's fine if you're neck and neck with someone and trying to overtake at a corner, but it doesn't make for good lap times. You'll have heard it before.... 'Slow in, fast out...' it can shave tenths of each corner.
Try easing the brakes on a little earlier instead of jumping on them at the last second then ease off the brakes as you reach the apex, especially with road cars as they are more sensitive to weight transfer with their softer suspension. It will also teach you good techniques for when (if you choose) you progress to faster cars with harder suspension.
The BMW 1M is a great car to learn these techniques and loads of fun too as is the Z4, but don't just practice on one track. You'll learn quicker if you try out other tracks as you find different and better approaches to corners and turns. Kunos went to a lot of trouble to laser scan their tracks so it would be rude not to

Most of all have fun with it!

 

The purists, haha. There is no way to turn off ABS in most modern cars production road vehicles, except if you pull the fuse for the ABS module or actually delete the code from the computer (funnily enough a friend did delete the ABS cide lines on his E39).

Turning it off in a sim is actually making it unrealistic.

@op: you can try looking for videos on youtube of hotlapping or racing where you have pedal apps visible on screen to see driver pedal work. Both iRacing and AC videos sometimes show this. Also try looking for the videos of people doing this in street cars as you are focusing on a streetcar and differences between that and racers are signifficant. A video can help you understand how you are doing the braking wrong. And use ABS in a car that is equipped with ABS. Engineers worked hard to balance that cat with ABS in mind, and it is a boat like someone said previously.

 

+10 minutes of my pedal technique at Imola. The video is made just after Meco released their wonderful Cobra. I'm sure there are faster guys than me whose technique is better but I think this could be helpful for novices.



I personally haven't spent my time for looking telemetry or driving around skidpad. I've just driven and learned. Setups and telemetry aren't as important as the ability to feel what the car is doing. That comes only with the years of hard work.

Hard to find any shortcuts..

 

I might have meant T5 then ( ) - The first corner of second chicane, with high speed entry. Although in some cars braking into that corner requires good throttle control too haha (for dynamically controlling brake bias with engine)

 

Agree m8. While I am a fan for pure driving w/o assists or aids, it can be taken too far, even to the point of driving cars without their mandatory aids. Even GT3 drivers use traction control, sometimes to silly levels in championships like supercar challenge, etc. If a car has ABS and it allows me to know what that car feels like, why turn it off?

 

Is the M1 really a good car to be practicing on? It's a bit of a handful and likes to oversteer. I guess if you can control that cars arse you can control anything but it's going to be difficult and frustrating.

I'd recommend one of the lotuses, they require you get your entry into the corner correct and punish you with understeer when you get it wrong, they have excellent grip when you get it right. I'd also say try other cars, I've found if a practice with one car for a while then move to another car and come back to the first one I've found time.

The FWD cars are great for learning trail braking, the effects are more obvious while being easier to manage any over rotation. It's a lot of fun too.

 

this so much, all the lotus cars (bar formula ones) I've driven are delightfully balanced and such fun drive while learning pure car control - won a GT race with the GTC earlier lol

 

Hi guys I jsut spent 5 hours learning replays, telemetries, and practicing. I've improved to 2:11:207, but I don't think I get it. So attached is the new replay with 2 laps in it, and I also attached the telemetry. I can't quite understand why I'm improved, and I think I'm just improved by luck while still doing the wrong thing. I feel that I'm still very very terrible at Tamburello, and the downhill section before Rivazza makes me nervous all the time.

I repeatedly tried at that corner, beginning braking at 200mts mark, and attacking the corner in 3th gear. However I can't get to 5k rpm. I find that I still need to slow down to no more than 70 mph in turn in. Am I doing something wrong?

The problem that I'm having with braking is that, when I brake, even with steering centered, I still can feel the car has a tendency to turn to left or right. Is this because I lock up the tire already?

So I'm still too quick into the corners?
I've tried taking a more serpentine line between corners, but I find there hardly any time for me to make it. Should I increase the steer input to cover more track?
I just tried Lotus Exige S, and after that I did realize that how boat-like BMW 1M is.
Also one of the main reasons that I turn off ABS is because my gf who's still learning how to drive, recently bought an MX-5 without ABS. When I helped her drive it back, it was raining like crazy, and the car had almost worn-out summer tires. In a steep downhill, the car in the front suddenly stopped at the bottom of the slope, and I almost lost control of my car and hit him. After that I tried to have as fewer assists as possible to try to learn how to deal with these situations, at least to feel them in game first.

Thank you all for the advice!