After feeling like I hit a wall as far as my improvements go, over the weekend I decided to try racing the ghost of the #1 car on the LB on the Alps Festival track. I’ve always loved the Alps tracks and have been pretty good on them. It was simply amazing watching him go, turning like his car was on rails and going over lines that I thought would get me dirty. I quickly realized his tune was more suited for this track than mine so I looked for his tune and downloaded it. Went back to the track and found I was able to turn in quicker and it under-steered less in big sweepers. After about 6 laps I lowered my lap time by over 3 seconds and went from somewhere over 1000 on the LB to 397! I’m still about 4 seconds behind him but I see room for improvement in several corners. Not sure if I’ll ever get to his time but I know I can come closer.
Just wanted to share this to illustrate to the others who are trying to improve, just how much can be gained from following a fast driver. I also realized that I am a better driver than I thought and what holds me back from being really quick on most tracks, besides putting the effort in, is how much I like the track. I love Prague and the Alps. My favorite track ever was Maple Valley (still go back to FM4 to race on that track). What all three of these tracks have in common is they’re ‘momentum tracks’. very few slow turns on these tracks, it’s all about maintaining high rates of speed and using a deft touch to keep it on your line. Tracks with many tight slow turns like Long Beach, I don’t like 'em, so I don’t race on them much at all, and therefore, I’m pretty slow on them. But I’m ok with that.
Do you guys find that you’re faster on certain tracks and does it generally correlate to which tracks you like?
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I suspect I’m better on tracks I like simply because I run them more often in Rivals, but having said that, I have top 1%s on Yas Marina in a few classes, and I detest that track!
Not sure what conclusion to draw from that based on your question 
TTFN
Toni
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Yep. I love speed tracks, indy, and spa. I can run really fast laps at those tracks whenever I feel motivated.
Im usually not the greatest at some of the short tracks or high grip tracks because I usually don’t like those tracks anyways.
I don’t really care for momentum tracks either, except Maple from other forzas.
I’ve found though that even though I don’t care much for Prague or Bernese, I’m really good at the tracks whenever I force myself to hotlap them. Same goes for the two bigger catalunya tracks.
And as much as I like Road America, Im terrible at getting a good lap down.
Its a mix bag for me.
I guess it just depends on how good you are on a track.
Oh absolutely it matters. You’re bound to be faster and more consistent on the tracks you enjoy. You’ll have run more laps on them, presumably. I tend to STRONGLY dislike fantasy/turn 10 tracks. You’d know it’s a turn 10 track within the 1st lap you ever run on it. They’re designed for noobs. MASSIVELY wide endless stupid corners where 10 noobs can haplessly and unintentionally drift side-by-side. Most of the time turn 10 tracks will have an unrealistic jump designed to bring smiles to noob’s faces. It simply cannot have escaped the attention of fast players that total noobs that are 10 seconds a lap slower on proper tracks, such as Sebring, are only 3 seconds slower on Alps?
Anyhow OP, hot lapping is perfect practice. If you want to get fast, keep doing it. Just do it on proper tracks like Road America and Silverstone if you really want to get good.
I absolutely loathe Long Beach and yet I have some of my best lap times on that track. I suspect that liking a track can help, but fast is fast whether you like the track or not.
Seems a reasonable assumption. After all, I’m better at Forza than other games, cos I like it.
I’ve spoken to people i’ve raced with before, and as i see tracks in a certain way, and many people agree. When i’m racing i see a course as like a song, it ebbs and flows, it has rhythym and feel all of it’s own. Once you learn the rhythym of each track you can get on much better with them. This is highlighted for me by all the newer courses which are computer designed by a committee concerned with safety. They are a discordant mess. I absolutely loathe Yas Marina, but love older tracks even if they’ve been changed for any reason, they still have that feeling.
So yeah, any track you enjoy is bound to be one you’ll do better at. And sometimes i think the other way round, you may not like a track because you’re not good at it. But with some practice, you can learn to enjoy it. But we play games for fun, so any you enjoy are bound to draw you in more.
Just not Yas Marina…
I’m always looking for the perfect marriage between track and car. I’m an average driver at best, but put me on any track with the right car and I can run with almost anybody…almost.
Everyone has their favourites.
For me Its the Green hell Suzuka and Catalunya and i have come to like those tracks as they are/were F1 tracks and they are also testing tracks. I cant stand Bernese Alps but then again i haven’t really tuned a car for that track. Probably due to lack of interest and the fact that to be really decent there in A class you are somewhat restricted to what you can run to be competitive and in addition the track is way too wide and leaves too much margin for error. Strangely enough i HATED Yas Marina but im slowly getting the hang of it and therefore appreciating it for what it is.
So im comfortable being over the top 1000 with any of the Alps tracks while i work my ass off to hotlap when leading multiplayer races when i can on the other bona fide tracks.
Cheers