F1 2010 Acceleration and cornering in manual problem

Craig Whitmore · Apr 4, 2011

I have been slowly progressing my skill at F1 by removing the assists one by one. I now use ABS and Braking off, while TC is on either medium or full and have just started using manual gears, this is where my issue is.

I did some TT's at budapest, I did a couple of laps and got a 1:18:7xx just to get a lap in for something to aim to beat. I am using Bram's or Evil Eye's setup, however, I can't seem to out accelerate the auto gears.

I change gear when it gets to about 1/3 - 1/2 of the way along the last rev section.

A typical corner for me, I slam the brakes on as late as possible, trying leave a bit of pressure on the accelerator. When the corner appears, I start to turn in and then release the brake, but not fully, perhaps have about 10-20% braking with about 40% acceleration. When on my way out of the corner, I slowly ease the accelerator to full while releasing the brake fully and also shift to the next get as soon as the revs get to about 1/3 of the last bar.

I notice that I can't brake at all while turning, even just a very slight amount, as my car stops turning and I go off the track (is my car locking up? do I need to brake even less still?). While turning, I always try to leave a little bit of acceleration but this only helps slightly.

The best lap time I can do against auto gears, with manual is just under 2s slower. I'm thinking that I am doing something wrong, as I have watched some video's of 1:15's and they are taking corners much faster.

Craig Whitmore · Apr 7, 2011

I watched one of Andrew Bortz' video's and noticed how the gears are being used to aid braking, I spent some hours yesterday getting the hang of it and I can now brake a fair amount later than in auto with full traction, I'm on medium traction too.

Use your gears to aid the braking, the higher the gear, the less help you get from the engine, the lower the gear, the more help you get braking. This is why you see video's of people going from 7th to 4th very quickly, then less quickly gearing down to either 3rd or 2nd, depending on how much speed they need to lose.

Dan Holland · Apr 7, 2011

Do this:

1. Remember your braking point from before without gears to assist you.
2. Brake at the same point as you normally would, but downshift to 3rd as quickly as you can (try out 2nd to see why you don't do that!)
3. About a second after you hit 3rd then downshift again to 2nd or 1st - whatever is needed for the corner. I know "about a second" is very vague, but experiment with this to see what works. You should still be under full braking at this point.
4. When you are at a speed that you can take the corner lift off your brakes completely, and remember this point, which should be well before your turn in point. Estimate the distance from this point to your turn in point.
5. Next lap do the same, but this time adjust your braking point by your estimate in 4.

This works best for a typical slow corner after a straight, but the principle is the same for all corners. It's also good for places like monaco where even tapping the brakes under turning can cause front wheel lock up. In this case you can help control your speed by a couple downshifts.

Everyone's driving style is a bit different, so try the above and then adjust to what feels right for you

Andrew Bortz · Apr 7, 2011

Dan Holland said:
Do this:

1. Remember your braking point from before without gears to assist you.
2. Brake at the same point as you normally would, but downshift to 3rd as quickly as you can (try out 2nd to see why you don't do that!)
3. About a second after you hit 3rd then downshift again to 2nd or 1st - whatever is needed for the corner. I know "about a second" is very vague, but experiment with this to see what works. You should still be under full braking at this point.
4. When you are at a speed that you can take the corner lift off your brakes completely, and remember this point, which should be well before your turn in point. Estimate the distance from this point to your turn in point.
5. Next lap do the same, but this time adjust your braking point by your estimate in 4.

This works best for a typical slow corner after a straight, but the principle is the same for all corners. It's also good for places like monaco where even tapping the brakes under turning can cause front wheel lock up. In this case you can help control your speed by a couple downshifts.

Everyone's driving style is a bit different, so try the above and then adjust to what feels right for you

Totally agree with this depending on how high your 2nd/1st gears are determines if you can drop to 2nd then wait a sec for 1st or from 3rd wait a sec to 2nd. A second is probably way overestimating it as I tend to downshift at about half the speed than normal when coming from 3rd to 2nd so its more likely that its about 1/3rd to half a second wait time.