- 86,330
- Rule 12
- GTP_Famine
I don't think that it's a reasonable expectation - or goal - to drop three seconds from your fastest ever lap (a 2.5% improvement), which took you more than 100 laps to achieve.
In fact this is beginning to be a theme. I've been keeping an eye on this thread recently, and you're making a lot of posts about what your targets are and they're always this sort of thing.
At Autopolis, after about a dozen posts of not actually driving the event, you were aiming to "get in a 1'55 club, maybe even the 1'54 club" and talking about getting a gold, but your actual final time (as posted in the thread) was a 1'57.697 - firmly silver. The difference between a 1'54.x and a 1'55.x is big (it's harder to find time the quicker you are) but irrelevantly so because the difference between what you actually got and your goal was almost 2.5 seconds (2.3%) and that's huge.
It does you no good whatsoever to make post after post after post with these ridiculous targets that you can't hope to achieve (yet); you're just setting yourself up for disappointment.
There's nothing wrong with being the level you are and wanting to improve (or even not; there's no reason you can't be satisfied with regular silvers), but you don't improve by wishing yourself 2% faster. You need to focus on getting the basics right (several members have left helpful comments on your videos to this end) rather than setting yourself unrealistic goals so publicly - often before even driving the event.
When you're getting the basics right, consistently, you'll be in silver without even trying. Then you can focus on finesse to improve your lines, braking, balance, and acceleration, and have a reasonable expectation of being near the gold threshold more often.
It won't be a quick process either. You need to learn when you're losing time, sector by sector (look at the split times of someone like @Tidgney - he may be 4% faster than you but you can compare the difference in the splits and see where you're furthest away from him), corner by corner (and if it's entry, mid, or exit), gear shift by gear shift.
Doing 100 laps by yourself doesn't teach you anything if you're just making the same mistakes and don't know that you are, and trying to follow someone who's seven seconds a lap faster than you won't help at all.
Guides are fine, but ghosts show you more. Find the slowest ghost you can (one that's faster than you but by the smallest amount; half a second to a second is fine), set the offset to 0.3 seconds and reset each sector, and follow it. Don't try to beat it, just follow it. Eventually you'll beat it by accident, so then find a ghost that's quicker (half a second to a second again) and do it again.
Combine that with the information about corner gears and braking points (always take the earlier one, not the later one; we're not good enough to make the later braking points work), and you'll get faster incrementally.
