I agree, we rarely work on our racecraft because it´s mostly a game within the game trying to find fast settings. I just can´t expect to be competitive in places like Spa and Le Mans without spending a lot of time working on a setup.
Hotlapping can evolve, it´s one area where all racing sims do wrong, you could have events without ghost cars, no restarts, live track conditions, damage and other things turned on, limited time slots... i mean, there´s a plethora of ideas and everybody is just doing the same optimal conditions-download-the-ghost-tune-to-perfection-restart-everytime model.
It´s annoying because it could be a lot more than it is right now.
Every record lap on e-sports represents the worst aspects of a racing sim, it´s where they are at their most arcade-like persona due to the sterile conditions in which those hotlaps are produced.
As for e-sports racing, if you-re going to stick to hotlapping you have to fix it, but if you´re going to evolve to races, points, and fixed events, then there´s also a bunch of new ideas to throw in.
I´ve always thought you should have events like a live 30 minute qualify session open to everybody and then closing down the lobby to the 16-32 player race. You could do a B final, a C finals and such, i mean, e-sports should not have this massive emphasis on sterile and perfectly executed hotlaps.
It´s like GT Academy set the wrong standard and everyone followed along without introducing anything new.
