The importance of being well rested and focused

I think aliens just have a lot of experience (many 1000s of hours of racing) to complement their skill, intelligence and determination.

 

For me it is not as much related to how well rested I am, but focus is paramount. I have had some of my best races after a hard but satisfying day at work - often once I have completed some project or difficult to solve problem and thus no longer have it playing on my mind.

Caveat: I am mainly talking about AC at the moment - I can’t really compare ACC yet as I traditionally only perform well or consistently in races with other humans, so until multiplayer releases I won’t have a reliable comparison.

For example last night I was absolutely knackered when I got in then did about 6 practice laps before my SRS race then already bored with practicing.
As soon as the actual quali session started tiredness went out the window as I had to push to take pole by 0.003 from teammate and ultimately secured a clean 102 point victory, albeit with some serious mirror watching as teammate slowly closed the gap all race after first lap incident. And he had in fact got home with about 2 mins spare to the start of quali and still took a solid second.

My point being that once the adrenaline comes tiredness is quite irrelevant and all that matters to me is nothing to cause me to lose focus. Maybe some of you also suffer from a similar problem where I have an inability to focus for very long when practicing or hotlapping. I think my main issue is that only racing against humans gives me that adrenaline rush I need to make me concentrate correctly. Otherwise I just daydream until missing a braking point and making a mistake, then lose interest rapidly as there is then no incentive to re focus and catch up as there is nobody to catch up to.

 

This

I also find myself doing better online rather than just hotlapping.

 

Good spot, it must have to do a lot with attitude change. In ACC leaderboards and rankings help a lot, without those bits of competition I wouldn't be using ACC as often as it is now.