SimHQ.com - Motorsports Zone - Feature: Sim Racing Tips - Getting the Most Out of Your Virtual Racing Hobby

Hot lap: The fastest possible lap using a minimum fuel load, with no regard for tire wear.

Race lap: The fastest set of laps possible with a given fuel load, while minimizing tire wear.

Many sim racers become enamored of the hot lap. You'll be quicker in a hot lap, and the goal is to have the fastest lap, right? Well, yes and no. Hot lapping is great for building qualifying setups and qualifying technique. But hot lapping isn't racing. It's just driving fast. Racing is about speed, but with consideration to pacing, timing, and conservation of assets. Often I race online with folks who take their hot-lap mentality into a 30 lap or 30 minute race. Sure, for the first few laps they're quick. Their cars disappear on the horizon as they blaze away. Impressive. Impressive, that is, until 4 or 5 laps later when the patient racers reel them in, or glance at them out the corner of their eye as they drive by the hot-lapper's car sitting off-track and in pieces. What happened? A couple things, probably:

1. Lost Concentration. Hot lapping doesn't require the same stamina and duration of concentration as racing. After a few laps their mind, not used to concentrating for so long on driving, wanders. Then they make an error, and wreck.

2. Tire Wear. Hot lapping is hard, hard, hard on tires. And hard-core racing sims do model tire and brake wear pretty well. Cars on old tires don't handle as well. You have to brake sooner, and smoother, as the tires wear out. Ditto for cornering performance. If you don't ease up, the tires will let you down.

The patient hunter conserves his tires, and paces himself for the long run. You can't run slow laps and win, but you have to listen to the audio tire cues and drive such that you keep the tire noises to a minimum while driving as quickly as you can. Be smooth. Be fluid. A race lap will feel smoother than a qualifying or hot lap, and in the end your average lap times will be better than someone who doesn't conserve their tires. And a better average lap times win races.

As you can see, the practice technique advocated above is designed to make you a good, consistent, fast race driver, not a hot lapper. Hot lapping has its place, and can help with qualifying. But it's not the be-all end-all of racing. After all, they aren't called hot-lap sims, they're called race sims. As they say in the military: Fight like you train; train like you'll fight. Practice for racing, and let the hot laps come where they may.

Passing a 'Stang in GT Legends

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