Please help

Tim Ling · Oct 4, 2008

I'm not quite sure if this is the right place for this post, as it applies to all racing games. I am also quite certain I'm not the first person to suggest , but here goes.

I'm having problems, like most newbies, as I can't get any where near the fastest people on the grid, and to be honest I don't expect to. However I also don't seem to be able to get near the mid-field runners either, at least for now.
Part of the problem is not knowing the tracks, I admit this. But even as I get to know the tracks, my time doesn't fall that much. For instance, Brno 07, my fastest time is 2:06 so far, with an average of about 2:08. And yes I have managed to put 4 or 5 laps together without a major spin or off track excursion :thumb:

The hotlap is 1:53

So, I'm 13 seconds behind, or maybe 9 or 10 seconds per average lap. Quite depressing tbh, and not fun at all, and that includes for the people at the front with no competition.

Now I'm not asking you give your skills to me (though donations gratefully accepted

), but a little assistance for myself and other tail-end-charlies
would be helpful.

What kind of help?

Well one-to-one would be great :thumb:. However, it may not be practicle, after all, we are all busy, and we all want to play the game, not teach it.

Maybe a 30 minute to 1 hour session per week/month help a group of 5-10 on a circuit using team speak (side note: why doesn't anyone use the RD TS server? :focus

, first giving an overview of the track, general setup tips for the track (is it fast or slow, smooth or bumpy etc), then maybe watching each driver for a lap or 2 (depending on how many learner drivers there are).

Alternatively (but not as good overall) or even alongside the Learner School, a forum with help for each circuit, with advice for each corner, and again setup help. At least people will know what is achievable on each corner of a circuit and strive to reach it. As I read back through this last section, I realise that with the amount of cars available to RD users, it could be tough to be a complete guide, but a rough guide would still be possible.

Setups: a difficult, nay, black art. And before anyone says "Ahh, have you read....", yes I have read Ramon's fine guide, and many webpages explaining the same thing in different ways. But there is a problem, for me anyway. It's possible that I am alone in my "specialness", but I'm sure others have similar issues.
When it comes to setting up a car, I kinda know what settings affect what. But how do I know where to start? What do I look for in my cars handling to know what to change first?

I am quite happy to assist where I can. I don't want to open a can of worms and then leave others to clean up the slightly slimy mess. I just would like to have the most fun racing that I can, even if that means scrapping for 24th place all race, rather than being lapped by over 3/4 of the field because I have no idea what I'm doing and I can't keep up.

I apologise if I cause any offence or disruption with this post, it is not my intention.

Juha Saari · Oct 5, 2008

Sharing my ideas about setups...

Well, I have owned Race07 for about a year now and I have been mostly driving around Brands, Valencia, Monza and Pau. Brands is my main thing, probably because of the demo version gave me a thing for it. I started from around 1.42's and thought this is quite a nice game, actually. Drove 50 laps more and was pushing constant 1.36's. This is where I started to think about setups and how on earth people like Atti can be so fast, surely they were cheating. I was using his setups (thanks man :thumb

, for crying out loud! I was completely mad for not being able to match their speed.

After a hundred laps or so I started to hit constant 1.35's, a tenth here and there... Still no 1.34's, which in my book were DA FAST TIMEZ. Then all of a sudden BANG, 1.34.7xx and I can still remember that day! :becky: Now, this for me was the kind of speed and time, which made me slide to a wall every other lap, I was just pushing too hard, everywhere.

Now I'm quite happy to say that I have achieved the constant 1.34's. And couple of days ago I just had a crave for little touring in the Honda, took it out with the default setup and managed a 1.33.7xx on my second lap. Mindblowing. My lines have become a lot smoother and now I'm hitting those walls and sandpits a lot less.

So, what am I trying to say with all this nonsense? Well, if your not naturally talented and not driving alien lap times +2sec in your first outing with your favorite car, you need to practise, practise, practise and practise. You need to go mad, crazy and borderline psychopathic to keep yourself pushing and getting back to the game over and over again. That's what makes it so much fun and rewarding in the end. Whatever you do, do not lose your faith in yourself, the times will come.

Regards,
Juha

vmagics · Oct 6, 2008

I, like many others feel exactly the same as you. A few things which helped improve my lap times are
1) Accelerate early out of corners (right after the apex, almost on it in fact.)
2) Shorten gear ratios from default setups for faster acceleration.
3) Use the curbs where appropriate.
These are very personal things which I disticntly remember helping me. There are more I'm sure but this is all i've got for now.

Dave Stephenson · Oct 7, 2008

practice. i know its just what the opthers said but its true.

that and steady but consistent is better in my opinion than blast all out for 4 laps then binning it and losing half a minute.

the biggest thing that helped my times was the slow realisation that a race track is not just a corner, then a corner, then a corner. its a complex then, then a complex, then a complex. ie. each corner affects the next because it controlls the speed and angle of entry into the next. so if you drive the same corner differently everytime then you have to drive the next differently everytime and so on, which means you over work and over think yourself into mistakes. hence why consistency is the key in my eyes.

so when practicing. learn here the timing gates are and try and improve sector times rather than overall lap times first. a really fast 1st sector can make up for a worse 3rd for example. just change the lines slightly eaxh time your consistent and see how it affect you.

lastly on setups. they wont give you magic amounts of time. you have to strike balances behind cornering and straight line speeds etc. all il say is that setups to me is about making your lines and your laps easier and less stressfull to drive. freeing up some space in your loaf to take in whats going on around you. then as things become more instinctive and your workload drops thing about setups for time, less downforce and longer gears for the straightline speed which in turn will more than likely give you more to do in the corners to maintain the speed but youll have the capacity left over to deal with it.

i hope i explained that properly what i meant it makes sense to me but then it would, wouldnt it

Tim Ling · Oct 7, 2008

Thanks David, thatys good advice

Jamie Wilson · Oct 7, 2008

I wrote this last year when the club was at RSC, it might help:

http://www.ninecraft.com/filestore/howtoraceonline-071028.pdf

Tim Ling · Oct 7, 2008

and your well rehearsed braking point for 'that' corner isn't going to do you much good if you can't gauge where you are behind it all. Add to that the fact that someone in front of you might brake earlier than the person behind them expected, someone behind you might outbrake themselves into the next postcode, and the fact that you might be on the wrong side of the road compared to all of your precious laps of training, and it's going to get messy fast...

Very true. Race 1 at Brno last night I got a fantastic run up the inside to T1, got punted up the backside and played pinball with other cars after rebounding off the armco

Not much can really prepare you for that

I also found last night that it is very important to concentrate on your own driving. Being hassled last night for the first time (i somehow got to P10) I out braked myself bonnet first into the armco, 'cos I was trying to go too fast. Stupid and unnecessary on a street circuit like Pau. A lesson learned: be careful of the person behind, but if they're not alongside you, race your own race, not theirs!

Dave Stephenson · Oct 7, 2008

nice piece. a better written version of some of the ideas i was trying to present and loads more on top.

the defence/attacking driving part rings thoroughly through with me as i only race pubs i never really have the faith in the person behind me to do the right thing which kinda craps on most of the intelligent and fare ways to defend.

Alberto L. Barcia · Oct 8, 2008

Hello all

After several days of reading forums this is my first post.

Like most of the mates above I'm a noobie and I still have no experience on online racing. The reason for that is I think i have not experience enough to compite in the same level that people who's been racing for a long time. I mean that I'm afraid of beeing a hindrance between the faster drivers.

This is the reason I think David's suggest is a great Idea and I'd like it to be real someday. However I think that driving technique can be observed in the fastest laps people upload to "time attack". I mean that you can study the way they take corners, the break points and this kind of stuff.

Something appart is setting up the car. I've download several guides and I'm still lost with some concepts about "feeling" the track and expressions like "the car is too nervous" and even the weight transfers. Theese things are difficult to feel even with a force feedback wheel. I agree that most of setup guides I know are very good explained and, like David, I know what settings affect what, but I miss that someone teach me how to translate this concepts to the practice.

To finish I must say that David's suggest is a very good idea but, although there are things that are difficult to learn without someone teaching you, we have tools to improve our driving technique by ourselves.

I´ll try to practice in public servers before joining and starting racing in your community

I appologise for my english. It's a language that I use very little times.