lap times

I was wondering what you guys were running for average lap times at say curitiba? I was wondering because I'd like to join the club and race with you mates, I think it'd be fun just need to know how good I have to be to compete.

Thanks
 
It doesn't matter how fast you are. Chances are there will be someone of your skill level racing in the club to have a good scrap with. Not to mention you will improve much faster racing in the club :D

Just go for it, you won't regret it ;).
 
  • leahcim

^ :)
The key is to be consistent

Oh no it isn't :) Not if you're slow.

Simple logic suggests that to drive faster you need to change something.

You'll never get faster by driving, e.g the same 1:47 in the mini at Brands over and over and over. You merely get better at doing what you repeat. Practise makes permanent not perfect.

Indeed, the best you'll do is get a faster lap one time "by accident" and maybe have little idea where or why and yet it's pretty obvious it's because you weren't consistent on that lap - the complete antithesis to what you were supposedly advised to do.

You want to get to the stage where you have a very good idea how fast your lap is going to be before you see a scoreboard telling you whether it's fast or not.

Forget calling someone an alien - even if there is one person who can magically get fast laps simply by driving around a track, he'd ultimately not be as good as someone who can do that and also knows how and why. To be that you need a plan, driving lap after lap on a circuit won't do it. Yes, people that are good at something (driving, playing the piano, playing games) do the activity for hour after hour, but the key difference is what they do with those hours - how they work, what their approach is. To the outside they might look like an alien, especially if someone blindly spends x hours a day driving around in circles, wondering why they aren't as quick.

Look at your sector times, pick the sector that's the slowest compared with the top times. Mebbe that sector has only 2 or 3 turns in it. Spend the same time you would normally spend "lapping consistently", on each turn, forget the rest of the lap. Don't be consistent at all. Find the fastest way around each turn by experimenting. Brake sooner / later. Get on the gas sooner / later...change the path. Copy the top time. Use the motec - make sure you really are doing what you think you are. At the end you are probably seconds quicker - or, even if you still struggle, hopefully realising precisely where the gap lies, between your current, possibly smooth but nevertheless slow driving and how you actually have to drive to be quick.

If you're driving consistently and smoothly and your lap times aren't fast, then it's obviously because you're going too slow. i.e you're slowing down too much when you brake or not accelerating when you can. Don't take "slow in" too literally.

If you can lap at 1:42 or less, be consistent by all means. If not, correct what you do before you practise it for hours.
 
Oh no it isn't :) Not if you're slow.

Yes it is. It's all good and well saying that being faster is more important but if you are not consistent, in race conditions any time you gain from those few good laps will be lost buy the many mistakes/offs you're likely to have when you try to drive too far beyond yourself.

Simple logic suggests that to drive faster you need to change something.

You'll never get faster by driving, e.g the same 1:47 in the mini at Brands over and over and over. You merely get better at doing what you repeat. Practise makes permanent not perfect.

Indeed, the best you'll do is get a faster lap one time "by accident" and maybe have little idea where or why and yet it's pretty obvious it's because you weren't consistent on that lap - the complete antithesis to what you were supposedly advised to do.

To some extent I agree. It is important to practice that lap over for the positive effect of being able to do it under pressure in a race situation. However trying new things is also important. What is more important is to be able to analyse and deconstruct your laps through replay or telemetry data or even gut feelling to see when and where that time was gained and therefore unlock the key to a faster lap.
 
  • leahcim

It's all good and well saying that being faster is more important but if you are not consistent, in race conditions any time you gain from those few good laps will be lost buy the many mistakes/offs you're likely to have when you try to drive too far beyond yourself.

Perhaps, but if you aren't fast then /all/ your laps will lose time.

Besides, consistency of time doesn't necessarily imply or require consistency of action (or in other words, there are billions and billions and billions of different ways to drive, say, 1:47 at Brands in the mini. So much so that it's a bit of fallacy to imply that changing what you do will make you slower or that if you get 1:47 twice that they were the same lap...that's probably the telemetry's best use over simply driving laps and comparing the times)

Besides, any lap time that is less than the optimal, unless it's because of traffic or so on, already has lots of the mistakes you mention in it, by definition. All the consistency stuff really boils down to is something like " it's important to keep making the same mistakes over and over again " :)

In a race I'd argue that you'd probably expect to be less consistent and to rely far more on driving for the conditions of the moment, because of traffic and because there's more to finishing a race than doing x identical laps.

Being consistently slow is a waste of time. You'd be better trying to get those few fast laps, and at least gaining some time and maybe learning something in the process too, other than what to do when you see a blue flag :)

But I'd argue that consistency is something you get for free anyway. If anything it's the converse, we are creatures of habit aren't we? It's breaking the habits that will (hopefully) let us improve our laps.

Speed. That's the hard one. Focus on that, and you'll be consistent by the time you are fast.

What is more important is to be able to analyse and deconstruct your laps through replay or telemetry data or even gut feelling to see when and where that time was gained and therefore unlock the key to a faster lap.

Well, the big piece that's missing for most beginners is that we don't know what is fast in the first place. What it looks like. What it feels like. What we should be trying to do.

The target most have is the lap time (this is what tells them) but we really need different targets.

Being fast isn't the only thing that matters, but imo it is the only thing that's difficult to do and the thing that requires the most skill and effort to obtain.

What is fast eludes me. But I can say without any doubt, if you do the same thing this lap as you did the last one, and the one before that then you won't get any quicker.

Indeed you'll probably find it difficult enough to be quicker if you don't do the same thing, without needing to train yourself to be slow every lap :)
 
True enough, but on the deconstruction front I find that unless driving within a tolerence of say 5% on any part of the track, lower would be better of course, then its very difficult (although not impossible) to compare wether the new thing you tried had a positive of negative impact on your times. I'm with on on working a particurlar corner/sector, but only after a consistent base is achieved.

To see if a new line or braking point truly makes any difference time and time again you need to be able to replicate the entry to that corner time and time again rather than just forgetting about the rest of the lap, as being inconsistent out of the last corner will give you a different entry to the next everytime and therefore change the outcome of any comparible factors in the corner you are working on.

Motor racing is physics and as with all areas of science data is meaningless with a control sample, in this case your consistent lap. Once you find a way that works faster that you can replicate in a stable manner, this becomes the new control for future study.

The vast amount of variables were talking about here mean there is certain truths in both our thoughts and approaches, there can be no denying that :) but one of the most important factors to all of this neither of us has mentioned, which is car familiarity and the only way to get that is running laps. :)

I think a balance between the 2 still holds out strongest in my mind, but of course everyone must find their own path, we can only offer our own experiences.
 

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