Shaving off seconds: Man or Machine?

[iamjajo]

I ran these two cars at Laguna tonight.

Sports Soft tires
Steering wheel (G27)
No driving aids
ABS - 1

ChromeLine Murcielago - Like new; Premium car
1995 R33 - Whatever mileage it had when I bought it from UCD; Standard car

I ran 3 laps with each.

Lambo/ R33
Time 133.5/133.1 *Best of the 3 laps
kg/hp 2.51/ 2.65
HP 642/461
Wt 1635/1244
PP 556/529

The R33 has all suspension, drive train, Weight reduction, and is chipped and tuned. Default turbo installed.

I did not adjust anything on the R33 except LSD and brakes.

The Lambo is straight out of the box. No tuning.

I ran this test cold. No practice with either car first. No tinkering with setup on the R33. I just entered my preferred 4wd LSD settings and set brakes at 4/4.

I never race these cars, and with a little practice, I could easily improve the times on both cars, but the point, I think, is they are pretty well matched.

 

[n10secapricorn]

I have the Chromeline Murcielago, and one thing I noticed is that it has a higher base horsepower that the one from the dealership. All things being equal, I would get one from the dealership, and use that one as your base.

 

[Mr.Slow]

Unless you can do 20 laps straight within 0.010 of each driving at 100% then you are either not at your max skill or not at the car's max or don't know the track well enough.

Once you can do that on each car you can then start tuning the R33 until you can do more than 20 laps within 0.010 and cannot improve the time anymore.

Having said that, racing slicks are usually worth a couple of seconds on most tracks.

 

[SmokingCones]

While I agree with this:

If car A is faster than B, and car A set a lap at its best, car B can never beat car A no matter how well it's driven.

If you beat the Murc with the R33, you probably weren't driving the Lamborghini fast enough.

...the problem is how to define "faster".

Better top speed?
Better acceleration?
Better handling?
...

 

[ElSecundo]

Unless you can do 20 laps straight within 0.010 of each driving at 100% then you are either not at your max skill or not at the car's max or don't know the track well enough.

Once you can do that on each car you can then start tuning the R33 until you can do more than 20 laps within 0.010 and cannot improve the time anymore.

Thanks, you saved me from having to say it. If you're not consistent enough with your driving, then it means there's more time to be gained through driving. But once you start bumping a ceiling consistently, then you've got all the time that you can for your given driving skill. At that point, it's time to tune the car.

 

[tissimo]

Thanks, you saved me from having to say it. If you're not consistent enough with your driving, then it means there's more time to be gained through driving. But once you start bumping a ceiling consistently, then you've got all the time that you can for your given driving skill. At that point, it's time to tune the car.

Imo its to hard/impossible to be consistent as you can't feel the limit as with a real car. You can easily push to hard and cause an error, slowing your time.

 

[Mr.Slow]

Imo its to hard/impossible to be consistent as you can't feel the limit as with a real car. You can easily push to hard and cause an error, slowing your time.

You can be consistent. If you have a wheel with force feedback you can learn the feel of the car on the given track and do lap times that are very close to each other.

Sure, at some point driver fatigue/tyre wear will set in and the times will fall but they should fall consistently. By that I mean you loose 1 second because the tyres don't grip as well on turn x. Then you should do a number of laps close to that time until the tyres affect another turn and so on.

It should not be the case that you get a 1:10 then 1:15 then 1:08 then 1:12 then 1:10 then out of nowhere a 1:05 followed by a 1:14.