You probably heard this quote already many times: "In order to finish first, you first must finish", meaning if you want to win a race you first must be able to stay out of trouble during the FULL race. So consistent (errorless) driving is more important than pure pace. Of course, once you are consistent on a given track, you must be working on building up your pace, but always keeping your car under control.

Establishing your baseline: what and why?

Consistent lap times means that when you drive in the same circumstances you can record lap times very close to your average lap time. Same circumstances are: same track and ambient temperature, same weather conditions, same car setup, same tire (wear), same fuel level, etc. Remember we are not talking about qualifying laps where you probably will be driving more aggressively and probably taking more risks.

Fuel level is something that you should consider. For now, let's assume that the weight advantage you get by lowering the fuel level while driving, is outbalanced by increased tire wear. If these effects would cancel each other out, then you should be able to drive within a couple of tenths of your average lap time.

Another indicator for your driving consistency is how far your best lap time is from your opt (optimal) lap. For the people that are not familiar with iRacing: the opt lap takes your best time in every (clean) sector of the track and builds a lap based on those sectors. I presume other sims have similar lap timing features.

See the graph below: it shows lap times over x number of laps, together with the average lap time and the opt lap time. There is almost a gap of 1 sec between the average lap time and opt lap time, and a gap of about 0,5 sec between the average lap time and the best lap time. Those numbers should be much closer to eachother.

Once you can drive very consistent lap times in the same conditions, you have established a baseline for those weather and track conditions.

And why is this baseline important? First, it will give you confidence that you can bring home your car in one piece, that you can run long races without making mistakes etc. Second, having this baseline is very important before you'll start changing your car setup. There is no point in changing downforce, dampers, camber etc if you don't know what effect it has on your driving and lap times.

Tip 1: don't use your race data or AI race data, because having to deal with traffic will increase the variance of your lap times too much.

Tip 2: if you are planning a practice session to build this baseline, don't forget to take notes about weather and track conditions, starting fuel level, car setup etc.

How to get started?

Start driving slowly at a -for you- reasonable pace. Put all pieces together, focus on safe driving, keep everything under control. Remember, consistent laps is key, not pace. Once you get in the flow and you drive consistent lap times, start building up your speed. Do this by working on just a couple of corners per lap, don't try to improve every corner in every lap. Once you have found some time in 2 or 3 corners, and you are lapping consistent laps again, start working on the other corners.

In the sections below you'll find some more insights in how to improve your consistency and lap times.

Use your vision

Our brain is a wonderful thing: if you just look at something, it knows exactly what to do how to get there. This is a feature you need to use and train. Your eyes should be scanning the track all the time: from brake marker to apex to next corner and back. This sort of triangulating while driving gives your brain the exact input it needs to judge your speed and distance to the apex. Your feet and hands will then magically do the right thing to go where your eyes (and brain) want you to go.

This consciously scanning the track back and forth is something you need to practice in doing, if you are not used to it, it requires extra mental bandwidth while driving.

There is another big advantage by looking more forward to the next corner (while you are taking the previous one): you have more time to prepare for the next corner. Compare it to dodging bullets in the movie The Matrix: time seems to go slower when using your vision right. Once you are committed to the corner, already move your vision to the next one.

Tip 3: on high-speed corners, don't focus on brake markers, just look at the apex, your eyes and brain will do all the work and make sure you do the right thing. Braking becomes more of an unconscious action. Try it and you'll experience what I describe here.

Tip 4: when in a race and driving close behind the car in front of you: don't look at that car, keep on looking at the apex and the next corner, try to see through that car. If you look at the car, you start copying its driving style (and errors).

Improve the racing line

Because you want to focus on driving consistent laps without going off track, you should start on a safer racing line, by turning in late into the corner, so apexing late. By doing this you will go slow into the corner to come out fast. This leaves you enough room on the exit thereby giving you enough safety margin.

When you are getting confident and consistent, start apexing earlier and earlier and start braking later and later. Remember, don't try to change everything in all corners at the same time. Build it up step by step.

At this stage you should also try to experiment to see what the maximum cornering speed is in each corner.

Tip 5: don't use those visual racing line guides that you'll find in most sims. The first 10 laps on a new track will make you probably faster, but after that you are losing big time compared to people who found out the racing line on their own and by practicing.

Tip 6: once you drive consistently and lap times close to your opt time, don't fall into the practice trap of just doing more and more laps. See our article on deliberate practice how to avoid this.

Learn from others

If you are having trouble finding extra time, then you can start looking at how other people drive. There are several ways to do this.

In iRacing you can do test drives and race against ghost cars. These ghost cars are ghost laps, either from you or from other people (google for blap and olap files). Other sims probably use something similar.
You can race in the AI in iRacing. Make sure to set the difficulty of the AI higher than your current level.
in iRacing, you can drive as a ghost car yourself in official races. Choose a race with the correct Strength Of Field (SOF) and try to follow the faster cars. It will be obvious in which corners they are faster than you
in practice sessions in iRacing, you can jump into the cockpit of other people and drive along. You don't see their diving inputs on screen, but you can hear when they are down or upshifting.
compare telemetry data of your laps to faster drivers: here you can spot on graphs where you are braking, accelerating, steering etc. We'll create a separate article on this subject. We could even write a whole book on this subject ;-) Things to compare: racing line, braking points, turning in point, minimum corner speed, how much kerb are they taking and so on.

Tip 7: don't compare your driving to people who are 4 sec faster, start with people that are 1 sec faster than you, then try to close the gap. Next you choose another comparison point that is 1 sec faster than you and so on.

Exercises:

in iRacing, start an AI race in last position (I use 40 cars on grid), and use relatively easy AI difficulty setting, typically I start with a spread between 30% and 90%. Just follow the cars in front of you to learn the racing line and braking points, and especially try to match their cornering speed. Once you feel confident that you can go faster (without making mistakes) you can start to overtake to make your progress in the field. In the end you will be driving behind cars which pace you can't match. Here starts the learning process. Study what they are doing differently.
same exercise, but when you finish 25th for example, chance your AI race settings so that you'll start in 25th position in your next race. Do this until you can win the race. Then again start in last position but increase the difficulty spread of the AI, to for instance 70% to 120%.

Don't be lazy and make it hard on yourself by increasing the AI spread levels quite fast. This will push you and forces you to keep on learning.

Jump to the Getting Faster Series overview page to see all articles in the series.

Banner photo credit: Image by DRIVAR from Pixabay

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