1. Learn the Track

It might seem obvious, but learning the track is the first and most important step towards becoming faster in racing games. Memorizing the track enables you to identify the different types of corners, the racing line, and overall flow during a lap.

Games like Gran Turismo have tutorials that split the track into sectors, providing you the chance to practice each individual part. This is helpful because you mentally connect each sector, and you can memorize the track even better. Once you perfect each sector, you can string them together and make the ultimate fast lap.

Learning the track also helps you understand its nature. Some tracks have long straights, others have complex corners, or elevation changes. Learning the track, or tracks can help you develop a pattern that will be useful when setting up your car.

2. Understand How Car Setups Work

Cars have different components that can be adjusted, depending on the nature of the race track, you will have to set up the car in function of its characteristics. This means determining if the track favors a low or high downforce setup, if the suspension needs to be stiff or loose, how high or low the car can be, and determining brake balance, tire camber, and much more.

Downforce

Downforce is how much downwards pressure the car is getting when moving through the track. It is achieved by adjusting the wings of the race car. Some cars have front and rear wings, others just a rear wing, and some have no wings at all.

Increasing downforce will help you go through corners and avoid understeer; however, it will reduce your speed and acceleration on straights because of the drag.

Knowing the track will help you determine its nature. Tracks with long straights and a few curves favor low downforce setups, like Monza. Tracks with a lot of corners favor high downforce, like the Hungaroring.

Getting a feel around the track is important to find the right amount of downforce needed for the car. It also depends a lot on your technique and level of confidence. Some drivers prefer to stick the car through the corners so they opt for high downforce setups; others prefer to sacrifice a bit of adherence so they can achieve greater top speeds. This requires more refined and precise driving; hence why more experienced drivers get to play more with their wing setup.

Suspension

How bumpy the track is, and how many elevations changes it has will determine how you want to set up your suspension.

Soft suspension makes the ride smoother but affects the aerodynamic elements of the car, especially during braking. The car will shift most of its weight towards the front during braking, affecting the level of traction each tire has. Rear tires will lose traction, while the front ones will gain more. Once you are out of the corner and accelerating, this shift in weight will reverse, making the rear tires the ones holding most of the load.

If you are racing on a bumpy track, softer suspensions are better, but you will have a more unstable car during braking. Again, technique is crucial here since learning about string theory (not the physics one), trail braking, and breaking points will give you an edge when setting up your suspension.

Car Height

Lower height gives you more aerodynamic room. You can gain more downforce and reduce drag, the closer to the floor you are racing. Car height is related to suspension as well. Lower cars require stiffer suspensions to avoid ‘porpoising’, or inconsistencies in floor suction; this means that the car will bounce a lot when going on the straights, and will lose adherence when cornering.

Higher cars allow for softer suspension but carry more drag. What determines car height is the track surface, and how stiff you are willing to set up your suspension.

Brake Balance

Most race cars have the option to set up brake balance, or brake bias. This will determine if the front or rear brakes will do most of the work during braking.

Usually, the front brakes take most of the load because it will stop the car faster; the catch here is that shifting all the balance towards the front will lock your tires, making things worse. Shifting the balance too much on the rear will make the car take longer to stop, or even lock the rear tires, sending you on a spin during heavy braking.

Brake balance is determined by how many hard braking areas are in the track, and with how refined your braking technique is. Good drivers tend to lean towards front brake bias, and avoid front locking by determining how much brake pressure is needed.

Tire Camber

A proper tire camber setup is important because it helps to improve the handling of the vehicle. It helps to provide more grip when cornering and reduces the amount of wear on the tires, which can improve the overall performance of the vehicle. A properly adjusted camber also helps to reduce understeer and improve the responsiveness of the vehicle, leading to improved lap times for the driver.

The tire camber should be increased if the track has a lot of fast corners, and decreased if there are few corners with long straights as well.

3. Polish Your Technique

Brake in a Straight Line (String Theory).

A good driver’s advice is to brake in a straight line, with very little steering input. This is often called string theory. It basically states that the more pressure on the brakes you have, the less steering angle should be input. It is like the brake pedal has a string on it, and it will try to re-center the wheel, the further it’s pressed.

It is good to practice braking in a straight line to avoid any kind of sudden shifts in weight, affecting both aerodynamic and mechanical grip.

Develop Consistency

Even if you can be really fast for one lap, you won’t get far in the racing world. Consistency is the key to becoming an overall faster driver. Properly learning the track, practicing, and polishing your skills will provide you with consistent lap times. During a race, this is key if you want to execute a strategy, save tires, or even catch up to the cars ahead, or pull a gap if you are leading.

Consistency in the way you drive will reduce your lap time range; it shows on your telemetry how consistent you are lap after lap, and also compared to your delta. Race pace has to feel natural and not take a lot of your mental and physical capacity. The closer you drive to the edge of your abilities, the more likely you are of making a mistake.

An error some drivers commit is that they race in a category, difficulty, or level above their real consistent race pace. They are constantly on the edge, using all their mental and physical capacity lap after lap; inevitably, they end up making a mistake that will cost them the race. This can be really frustrating because they stop enjoying racing.

Racing Line

The racing line is the quickest and most efficient way to navigate a track. It involves taking the most direct route through a corner, using the greatest amount of the available road surface. The racing line allows the driver to achieve the greatest speed and keep their car within their limits of grip. By using the racing line, drivers are able to achieve the fastest lap times.

The racing line provides a natural flow throughout the lap, giving you consistency while driving, and also helps you manage tire wear and fuel efficiency.

It is important to memorize the racing line and braking points on the race track. When going through corners, you should hit the apex to find the most efficient way to navigate it. Some corners have various apexes, others just one. It depends on your driving style to find the best suited racing line or apexes.

4. Practice

It sounds cliche, but practice makes perfect. Racing requires you to constantly practice so you can be consistent with your lap times; not only that, you will gain a better understanding of car setups, track surface and characteristics, tires, and much more.

Practicing will polish your skills, little by little, you will start shoving away seconds from your lap times, and keep them at a close margin. Doing this will also develop consistency throughout the race, which is essential to become a better and overall faster driver.

When practicing, you might want to focus on a handful of things to make the session productive; divide and conquer, so to speak. Perhaps you want to focus on braking and corner exit, so devout the session to improving those things only. Maybe another time you want to focus on consistent lap times, or fuel economy; you understand where this is going.

Do not overwhelm yourself with a lot of things to do in a session because you will find yourself with very little, meaningless time on each thing, or even worse, your practice sessions will lack structure.

5. Analyze

Of course, practicing is important, but what is the point of just driving around a race track aimlessly? You need to analyze your practice sessions in order to identify any weaknesses in your technique. It also helps you better understand the nature of the race track, and the car itself.

We all have different driving styles; you might feel more confident when approaching certain corners compared to others. Analyzing your practice, or even race sessions will help you identify those corners you can improve.

It does not have to be a super complex analysis in order for you to improve; it can be as simple as comparing your lap times, or even splitting each lap per sector and trying to be quicker through them.

Some racing games provide you with the ability to get telemetry out of your sessions. In there you can identify how hard you are breaking, how early you are accelerating coming out of a corner, or how smooth your steering input is.

Analyzing also consists in getting a better read of the car setup. You can get data showing your speed through corners, your top speed on straights, and acceleration. Some sim racing games also provide tire load so you can check the amount of grip sustained on each corner.

All of this is important to start gaining knowledge when setting up your car based on the race track’s characteristics. We often fall into the habit of copying someone else’s setup; don’t get me wrong, it is a good starting point to see what other drivers are doing in terms of setting up their cars. This will only get you a bit far; keep in mind that each one of us has a unique driving style and another fellow driver’s setup might not adjust fully to our way of driving. Use other driver’s setup as a template or starting point; polish it according to your technique and driving style.

Closing Thoughts

These are some tips that might help you become a better driver, albeit a consistent one. Being fast in just one lap and making a lot of mistakes for the rest of the session is not ideal. The key to becoming faster is to be consistent. Gaining understanding of how all of the car’s components behave is key for this. Polishing your technique will provide you with consistency, and analyzing your sessions will help you correct any errors or weaknesses you might have. It’s always important to have a purpose when sitting behind the wheel.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s fun to sometimes race for fun or to relax, however, if you are about to enter a competition, or are actively trying to improve your driving, follow a structured session to help you quantify everything needed like lap times, telemetry and much more.

What are your thoughts on the tips provided? Can you propose another one? Let me know in the comments down below.

Happy gaming.