says...
This is going to sound too short and sweet to be truly helpful, but I
hope you can just trust that the magic formula you're looking for is in
these five words:
To go faster, slow down.
Newcomers to NASCAR2 invariably start out trying to go too fast and that
just doesn't work against the top 25% of the field (nor, of course, will
it work against live online drivers). If your tires are doing anything
beyond just barely starting to screetch in the corners, you're going too
fast. Believe it or not, you can beat the AI at 100% on every track with
the default ACE setups, you just have to learn control instead of speed.
There's an extremely fine line between having and not having control in
the corners. Mastering this sensitive threshold is the secret to
successful racing. To newcomers, that always means slowing down.
Usually, it means slowing down a LOT.
One of the most effective exercises you can practice that teaches control
is to go to a track in Practice mode and do nothing but drive around and
around with your left wheels hugging the inside line for the entire time
you're on the track. When you're doing this, going fast is NOT as
important as keeping your tires glued to the inside line. Obviously, you
should progressively try to go faster and faster, but NEVER NEVER
NEVER let your tires leave the inside yellow line. You're learning to
keep your tires on the yellow line FIRST, and you're learning to go
faster SECOND. Remember that priority.
The first time you do this, you'll be shocked at how much you have to
slow down prior to (and while) entering a turn in order to keep your left
tires on the inside yellow line. DO NOT LET YOUR TIRES SCREAM. It will
probably feel like you're going WAY to slow compared to how you drive
now, but that's the whole point: you're probably driving too fast right
now and that's why you're not improving. If you're relatively new to
NASCAR and you can't beat the AI at 98%, it's almost guaranteed that the
reason is because you're going too fast.
Slow down before and while entering the turn, "feather" your throttle
through the turn, and find the "sweet spot" near the middle to end of the
turn where you can get back on the gas coming out of the turn. Every
turn is just a little different and you have to learn each one that you
intend to master. Timing is absolutely critical; if you miss the sweet
spot, don't make it worse by trying to make something good out of a bad
entry. Admit to yourself that you screwed up and the best you can do
is get back on your line and learn from whatever mistake caused you
to deviate from it. Back off, get your car back under complete control,
and then keep going. New drivers consistently try too hard to turn a bad
situation into a lucky pass. Just forget it, you might get lucky once or
twice in a whole race but much more often than not you're going to end up
in a wall, into another car, or at the very least being passed by four or
five cars instead of just one or two. In NASCAR, patience is not a
virtue -- it's THE virtue. When you screw-up an entry to a turn, all you
can do is recover and try to be a little smoother (read: slower) the next
time around. If you can't seem to do that, then call your pit crew and
tell them to get ready because you're about to have crash after crash
after crash.
Watch your speedometer closely and learn the maximum safe entry speed for
all of the turns on the track you're practicing (Atlanta is an excellent
track to start with). After you can consistently drive around the track
as fast as possible while keeping your wheels down by the apron lap after
lap (I'm talking a few hours of practice per track here), then slowly
start moving away from the inside yellow line and start looking for the
real racing line that you would use during a race. DO NOT do this after
driving the yellow line for only 10-15 minutes. Drive the yellow
line for at least TWO full hours, more if possible. None of the time
spent down on the yellow line will be wasted.
After you start moving up onto the rest of the track, it's absolutely
imperative that you don't forget what you learned while you were driving
around the yellow line -- don't forget how it felt when you could tell
the car was almost starting to slip, but you were still keeping your left
tires on the yellow line and your tires were still just barely (I mean
BARELY) starting to whine. Don't forget how it felt when you were
driving "the line" and you could just tell that you were far enough
through a turn to give it the gas again. Don't forget how it felt when
you got on the gas too early and you had to back off to keep your tires
on the line or to prevent them from screaming. You're doing the same
thing now, you're simply doing it a little faster on a new, more
forgiving line that you can't necessarily see. Everything else remains
the same, and everything you learned on the line still applies.
To summarize, it's not really about how MUCH you practice. It's about
how EFFECTIVELY you practice. Obviously, the more you practice
effectively, the better you'll get, but if you're not practicing
correctly, then you can drive for hundreds and hundreds of hours and
never get over the 98% AI threshold. If you do what I've described above
and if you literally take as much time learning the corners as I've
prescribed, you'll be beating 100% AI cars at Atlanta by the end of your
first four- or five-hour practice session, guaranteed (or your money back
<g>). The thing that will amaze you the most is you'll discover what I
said at the beginning of this message is indeed true: To go faster, slow
down.
When you hit a turn "just right" and pass that ol' number one car to take
the checkered flag, you'll be amazed at how smoothly and slowly you were
driving when it happened, which is what made the pass possible in the
first place.
Good luck,
Rick
