If the track is narrow enough it can be practically impossible to pass someone at speed without going through the drafting “wake”. Also, having a car BEHIND you in your wake will also dirty the lap, so you can’t just pull straight back over on to the racing line after the pass and expect to stay clean.
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A dirty lap doesn’t mean you did something wrong, all it means is that it isn’t eligible for the leaderboards.
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Not ineligible, just automatically lower than every single clean lap.
The only other really significant impact of dirty laps is grid seeding in multiplayer.
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. I believe it is eligible for the LB’s but you will not like the lower ranking because of the dirty lap.
Then why have it in the sim.
It’s in the Sim to discourage people from drafting to get faster times.
That’s the same reason you get a dirty lap on the next lap, if you happen to draft or get a penalty before the next lap.
I remember using the AI in Forza 1 to get a slightly faster lap on the Sunset Speedway in Class A Shelby event.
Drafting in Forza 1 did not dirty your lap.
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FM7 is not a sim
The penalty is there so that the times you see on the leaderboard are the result of only that one persons efforts and not the result of a group of people acting together to boost one other person.
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Why do you hot lap in career mode? You can do it in time attack too without those robots and as many laps you like.
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I know all the details of how the leaderboards work but didnt really want to go in to it. A dirty lap indicator is not a punishment or saying you commited some kind of penalty, all it means is how your time will be sorted for the leaderboards.
If you had a previous clean lap, your current dirty lap will not show up even in the bottom dirty section. So far all practical purposes your time will not show up unless you have had nothing but dirty laps on that track ( not as rare as you might think ) and it was a personal best.
It’s easy to think that you did something wrong but a dirty lap indicator doesnt mean that at all.
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If you are attacking class based leaderboards, this can only be done in rivals.
Else, if you are in a race it’ll post to the homologated leaderboard or if not homologated it’s to the big unrestricted leaderboard.
Easiest way to avoid it in free play is to set collisions to always off. Can still run a full grid of cars but no drafting occurs from ghosts.
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Finally, an option that addresses the actual question!
Thanks for your helpful response DamMe2006
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As many here have said…the lap was dirty due to the drafting ( consider it like a boat moving in water and another boat coming up from behind, the boat in the back will feel the wake from the other boat. And the farther back the wider the wake.) Drafting in air handles a bit different but still similar properties and the lap is dirty wether the draft helped or hurt your lap time.
There are several ways to avoid this…
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go into free play and select the track and car and class you want to race ( if your car is above the restrictions for Homologation it will be in the X division time class) and you can set it to 0 opponent cars…now you can get all clean laps unless you go out of bounds… ( you can now turn on the track limits in the HUD also so you know where the track says out of bounds is by a blue ribbon on the out of bounds line. If you have 2 wheels out of bounds it will turn yellow but not dirty your lap, if you have 3 wheels out it turns red and your lap is dirty. I am not sure if you have 2 wheels out and catch a bit of air with one of the 2 wheels still in bounds if that will dirty the lap as only 1 wheel is touching inbounds then.
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go into rivals and either choose a friends time to beat or just start racing and it will select your next fastest friend rival for you to beat. If you have no faster friends it will select the next fastest time for you to beat. There will be a ghost car of that friend that you are chasing and you can turn it off in the settings if you want. The ghost car will NOT dirty your lap but can make hitting your braking points harder as it can obscure your vision if you use the in car view. There are many different rival options for you to try as well. I think there is Homologated, and A,B,C, through X classes, and for each track, ribbon, and environment ( day, night, and rain ) on many tracks.
The reason this happens is that in past Forza games 2 or 3 friends would get together at say Daytona and get into a 2-3 car draft and totally destroy the record fast lap set by a single car. This was not what was intended for the leaderboards so they made the drafting a dirty lap so the leaderboards would show proper single car lap times for the leaderboards. The dirty laps will still count for you as long as you dont have a clean lap already but the fastest dirty lap will be beat by the slowest clean lap. Once you post a clean lap no matter how slow you will no longer be able to post a dirty lap, no matter how fast that dirty lap is. Clean is always faster than dirty.
Hope this helps you to enjoy the game more
Dan the Dartman.
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Thanks for the info Dan. A lot of it was known; some of it wasn’t, but it is all appreciated.
It would be nice if TURN 10 could come up with a system where the draft must exist for a certain minimum time, say 3 seconds for example, before the “draft” triggers the dirty lap.
Sorry to ask, but why is this so important to you?
During a lap, if you’re overtaking someone, that lap is no longer the fastest you can go anyway. And drafting lets you go faster than normal, so it makes sense for it to make the lap dirty.
Also, the mod cards give bonuses for “staying on the track”, not for clean laps.
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