What to focus on now

Hi there!

I've been working a lot on cars and tracks despite my very non-professional level : I'm around 5-7s below Blancpain's 2018 best laps depending on tracks. My best times are probably on Paul Ricard with Barwell's Huracan : 1:59:300 or so. Whatever, it's still a blast to play and I'm having a lot of fun.

My current problem is I can't seem to be able to compete with AI cars and slowly getting bored doing hotlaps and hotstints. Maybe I'm too agressive, but even when being careful, I'm always taking hits from other cars in most turns (probably because of my weird lines), resulting in control loss and full race at the bottom of the grid. :-(

Any advice on how I could practice and start being able to compete with other cars? Or just, what should I work on, now?

Here are my ratings, in case it could help.

Thanks in advance.
Cheers!

 

I'd say keep practising. Maybe work on your lines if they're what you think are causing this.

 

Dial down AI skill and aggressiveness as low as it will go and run on the track you are most comfortable on with the car you are most comfortable in. Start from the back and try to follow the back marker. Do not pass him. Stay as tight as you can and watch the AI line. After a couple of races, pass the back marker and do the same with the next guys and so on. You will be dialing up the difficulty in no time.

 

Racing is not just doing fast laps arround the track, but the ability to put your car in the best place for an overtake. You need to learn how to keep your line, for that, just drive side by side with another car, this will help you understand different lines on the track...

And also racing is consistency. You can do a fast lap after hundreds of errors but this wont make you a good racing driver, because in racing the most important thing is concistency, so working on that, also will make you a better driver.

 

+1_

 

Do an hour long seasons where the priority is keeping the car on track, not fastest lap. Throw all notions of fastest lap out the window and get consistent.

 

First of all, I don't understand why someone gave this thread a 1-star, not that it matters much in the end. Someone is asking for help on improving how to drive, don't see what's the issue with that.

On topic:
Maybe you could add some footage of your driving. It's kind of vague advice if we don't know what exactly it is you're doing.

 

You and most others are having problems with the ai because the ai is kind of broken at the moment.

 

AI may not drive (break) exactely like human do but at 50% agressiveness I can drive really close without (too many) contact. I think the key is track knowledge, most of the time you won't be on the ideal line when you overtake so you need to know different (slower) ways to take corners.

 

Thanks a lot for the answers! Very nice from you all.

I'm really keeping your advices for my next sessions : I've just been able to finally end a 30 minutes race at 90% skill /50 % aggressivity without any serious contact nor crash or control loss, and wasn't last on the grid (10th on 16, if I remember), so it's getting better.

I know that consistency is key more than anything else. I don't feel that bad with consistency, I can run 10-15 consecutive laps and having all lap times in a 1-second margin. Yet, according to the game, my CN rating is my lowest, so I bet I can do much better! I believe I'm quite consistent with lap times, but not enough in terms of driving line. I have no matters with car control when alone on track however, I can keep the car fine for a long session and did quite well (for my level) to this season's long hotstint with Jaguar on Paul Ricard (that's the one I got 63 PC from). I usually prefer long but somehow slower driving sessions.

Thanks again! I'll try racing against the AI more, and stick to them as much as I can!

 

1 second is a lot. You should be aiming for as close to zero as possible, within 0.2 at least. Now that's not easy, I've only started doing it recently with ACC. It's taken me a good 600 hours to be able to put in laps identical to the last one.

Putting in a lot of laps really does bring big improvements. It should be as familiar as the drive home from work, or something else you do day in day out. 10 - 15 laps probably won't cut it.

It can be really hard to put in that many laps on your own. It's best to do that kind of long stint online with real people, that's not really possible with ACC as it currently is. I started doing hour races on racedepartment, you may need to find a similar group and use a different sim (like AC or rfator) for the time being while ACCs multiplayer isn't working well enough.

 

Concerning CN rating, long session is the easiest way to climb in my experience. I'm happy when my laps delta is less than 1 sec but with 2 x1hour session I can do 80+, but when I race (especially on wet track) or time attack it progressively go down to ~65

 

Honestly try your best to make long stints and disregard the AI... I had the AI in 12th position resist my pass attempt, cut a chicane and crash me out instead of lifting up a bit from throttle.... After that and other countless crashes with kamikaze ai i chose to skip any and all "race" events for now. Hope the new multiplayer bases get built fast, nothing is better than battling with humans !

 

Yeah, I've been doing many more stints : I tried all the cars to see which one was better in terms of safe driving and found Ferrari and BMW really good for that, yet my heart turned me back to the Lamborghini right after! It feels so aggressive, yet safe.
Here is probably what I've done best recently : was in mood for a one hour stint on Paul Ricard but my 17 months old girl came for a hug during last turn, so I stopped as she got me crashed.

 

Always worth a crash!

 

Indeed!

I realized the timetable was unreadable, here it comes, resized. It's not crazy, yet it's the first time I'm putting out a few decent consecutive laps.