- The time is rarely everywhere. In the worked example, three stretches — about a sixth of the lap — hold 91% of a 1.317 s gap.
- Fix braking first: where you brake, how you come off it and the speed you carry to the slowest point decide the corner and the straight after it.
- Consistency before pace: closing the gap between your typical lap and your best is usually cheaper than finding a new best.
- Practise one section, one change at a time, in short blocks, and re-measure in the same car, track and conditions.
- Judge progress over weeks — your best at a track against your first session there, and each session's typical lap — not by one hero lap.
Why driving more stops working
At first every session makes you quicker, because everything is new. Then the gains dry up. You are not lazier — you are repeating what you already do, and repetition grooves habits, the slow ones included. Driving more laps the same way gets you more of the same laps.
Getting past a plateau takes three things driving alone does not give you: a reference — a faster lap to measure against; a diagnosis — where, exactly, the difference is; and a measurement afterwards — did the change work? Telemetry supplies all three, and the rest of this guide is how to use them.
Find where the time actually is
Put your lap beside a faster one on a distance axis and look at the delta. It almost never climbs evenly. In the worked example, the gap is 1.317 s, and 1.193 s of it is lost in three stretches totalling 1,000 m of a 5.8 km lap. StintLab's practice plan finds them and says what it saw in each:
| Section and time lost | What StintLab saw |
|---|---|
| 500–900 m · 0.621 s | Braking begins at the same point as the target (target: 500 m). Minimum speed near this braking zone: 78 kph; target: 88 kph. At 900 m: 276 kph versus 280 kph; throttle 90% versus 100%. |
| 2,500–2,800 m · 0.298 s | Braking begins at the same point as the target (target: 2440 m). Minimum speed near this braking zone: 130 kph; target: 140 kph. At 2800 m: 253 kph versus 260 kph; throttle 90% versus 100%. |
| 4,300–4,600 m · 0.274 s | Braking begins at the same point as the target (target: 4240 m). Minimum speed near this braking zone: 140 kph; target: 150 kph. At 4600 m: 256 kph versus 263 kph; throttle 90% versus 100%. |
Three sections, and the same story in each: the brake point matches the faster lap, the slowest point is 10 km/h (6 mph) lower, and the throttle is short of 100% on the way out. That is a far more useful thing to know than “I'm 1.317 s off”. It says where to practise, and what. The other five sixths of the lap can wait — pushing harder there mostly buys mistakes.
Your own laps will tell their own story, but the shape is typical: a lap is lost in a few places, not everywhere. Comparing two laps shows how to read the delta for yourself.
Fix braking first
Most of the time you can find lives around the braking zones — not just the brake point, but everything from there to full throttle. A braking zone has four parts, and each leaves its mark on the traces:
- The brake point — where you go from throttle to brake. Pick a fixed visual marker for it: a board, a kerb, a shadow. Without one, it moves every lap.
- Peak pressure — the hardest you brake. It belongs at the start of the zone, when the car is fastest and the tyres are not yet being asked to turn — and, in a car with downforce, when they have the most grip.
- The release — how you come off the brake as you turn in. Easing off gradually, known as trail braking, keeps weight on the front tyres and helps the car turn.
- The slowest point — the minimum speed, the result of the three above, and the single most telling number in a corner.
Braking later is what everyone tries first, and it is not always the answer. In the worked example, both laps brake at exactly 500 m. The slower lap gives its time away after that:
By the slowest point, at 660 m, your lap is 0.254 s down: it carried 10 km/h less to the slowest point. The rest — 0.371 s — goes on the way out, because the car is slower at every metre until both laps are back at 320 km/h (199 mph). That is how a corner costs more than it seems to: a low minimum speed is paid for down the whole straight after it.
Make your good laps your normal laps
Your best lap is what you can do once. Your typical lap — the median of your clean laps — is what you actually do. In a race, and in improving, the typical lap is the one that counts, and it is usually easier to move.
Every number here is time you have already driven. Your best sectors add up to 0.283 s less than your best lap; your typical lap is 0.227 s off it. Before you look for pace you have never found, closing those gaps is the cheaper win — and the way to do it is the same: find the corner that varies most (in this session, the brake point at the 500 m corner, which varies by about ±16 m) and give it a fixed reference. Lap time consistency goes further.
A practice session that works at home
Long, unstructured sessions are how plateaus are made. A structure many drivers find works — adapt the minutes to your evening:
| Block | What you do | What you look at afterwards |
|---|---|---|
| Warm-up · 5 min | Three or four laps, building up to pace. | Nothing. These are for the tyres and for you. |
| Baseline · 10 min | Five to eight laps at a pace you could hold for a race. | Typical lap and spread. |
| Section 1 · 10 min | One section, one change — for example, a more gradual release into the corner at the top of your list. | That section's time and minimum speed against the target. |
| Break · 3 min | Out of the seat. | — |
| Section 2 · 10 min | The next section on the list, one change. | The same, for that section. |
| Re-measure · 7 min | Five laps, whole lap, at the baseline's pace. | Typical lap and spread against the baseline. |
- Keep the car, track and conditions fixed for a block of sessions. Every change you do not control is noise in the measurement.
- One change per section. Two changes at once, and a faster section tells you nothing about which one worked.
- Stop when the mistakes start. Tired laps teach tired habits.
- Do not save laps by hand. Let every lap be recorded; the slow ones are part of the measurement.
Use a faster lap as your coach
A reference lap turns “faster” into “faster here”. It can be your own best from a better night, or a friend's or teammate's lap, as long as it was driven in the same car, on the same track and in the same conditions — otherwise the gap is measuring the difference in conditions, not in driving.
StintLab picks the fastest matching lap from your history as the target automatically, and imports anyone else's lap file as a reference. Against it, the practice plan measures the gap every 100 m and lists up to three sections to practise, each with what it saw and a drill:
Replay the braking and release here, then practice this section for three clean laps. Compare the exit speed before changing another section.
StintLab practice plan, section 1 of the worked example
Chase a target lap covers how targets are matched and how to use the plan.
Measure progress over weeks, not laps
One quick lap on a good night proves very little on its own. The long view is StintLab's season record — your best at each track against your first session there, in the same car — read alongside the typical lap in each session's report, so you can see whether your normal pace is moving too. In the worked example season — 3 sessions between June and September — that record looks like this:
If those numbers have stopped moving for a few weeks, you have hit the next plateau — and the answer, again, is to find where the time is, not to drive more of the same laps. Tracking your progress explains how StintLab keeps the record fair.
Hardware, setups and assists
- Hardware makes you more repeatable before it makes you faster. Whether an upgrade helped is measurable: see your sim rig, measured.
- Car setup comes after technique. Learn a track on a stable, known setup; change one thing at a time; judge it over a run of laps. StintLab does not record setups, so keep notes.
- Assists change what the car does for you. Compare like with like: in F1 25, StintLab only matches laps whose steering, braking, gearbox, ERS, DRS and racing-line assists agree — ABS and traction control are not recorded, so keep those the same yourself; in Assetto Corsa some aids are recorded but none are matched.
For the F1 25 version of this method, step by step inside StintLab, see how to get faster in F1 25.
Questions
How long does it take to get faster at sim racing?
There is no fixed answer, and anyone who gives one is guessing. What you can do is measure: your typical lap and your best at a track, week by week, in the same car and conditions. If they are moving, the practice is working; if they stopped, change what you practise, not how much.
What should I practise first?
The stretch of track where the delta to a faster lap climbs most. It is usually a braking zone and the corner after it, and it is usually one of only two or three places on the lap.
Should I just brake later?
Not necessarily. In the worked example both laps brake at exactly the same point; the slower one loses 0.621 s through the corner because it is 10 km/h slower at the slowest point and slower back to full throttle. Braking later only helps if you still make the corner at a good speed.
Is it better to practise one track or many?
To measure improvement, stick to one car and one track for a block of sessions, so each session is comparable with the last. Variety is good for your racing, but it makes progress hard to see.
Do I need expensive hardware to be fast?
No. Good hardware makes you more repeatable, and repeatability turns into lap time, but the method here works on a controller too. Whether an upgrade helped is something your telemetry can tell you.
Does this method work in games StintLab does not read?
The method does. The measuring needs a telemetry tool that reads your game. StintLab reads F1 25 and Assetto Corsa on Windows.