Update:
I’ve found yet another boost from a particular upgrade. It’s not quite as good as the race tires, which can increase your lap time on this short course by about 1.5 seconds, but still majorly significant at about 0.5 seconds. It also seems to “fix” the problem of plowing and understeer with these Mini cars (I’m not sure if that’s part of the charm for Mini fans or what, but after this upgrade it handles a lot more sensibly to me at least).
In this post, I’ll explain exactly how to drive the course for a good lap time. This, along with my build (below) was good enough to get me placed 140th. Send me a friend request to race my ghost in Rivals.
You only need to brake three times basically: the first turn (hairpin), the hairpin which starts the winding middle section, and at the final turn. As before, I don’t see any good enough reason to leave 3rd gear.
First turn:
Starting the lap, you’re pretty far on the right side, matching how you end the previous lap. (This deals with Rivals/no other AI cars on the track, only you and the ghost; for the event, I actually sneak up smoothly onto the closest car’s left side from the launch). One thing I’m not sure of is, if you can make any slightly better time by keeping all four tires on the asphalt instead of the rightside tires on the gray gutter cover, but I think it doesn’t matter even for slight gains, and in any case, you’ll have to get over all the way to the right for the best arc on this hairpin (can use the sewer cover to as brake point, or just apex itself). I generally go for cutting across the small patch of grass, using the concrete wall as the apex instead of the edge of the asphalt. After exiting away from the apex, you’re climbing uphill again, and getting as close to the far outside wall as possible without scraping it.
I now consider this turn to be the most critical. It is tricky because it’s a hairpin with the area before the apex downhill, making your brakepoint difficult to determine without sound from the tires, and after the apex, uphill. Because of these inclines, the point of the apex, where you stop braking and start accellerating, would actually be just before the tip of the concrete wall/grassy dirt patch, not after it. Do not worry about “coasting”, just get the best line. Ghosts help you to see just how critical it is, because you have the longest straight on the course after this turn (with hills).
As you approach the hilly straight, there’s a kind of turn with another small patch of grass in front of it, but since you don’t need to brake here I won’t consider it a true turn. At first I experimented a little with driving around that point smoothly to avoid allowing any of my wheels to leave the ground, but don’t see that as worth it anymore-- I just cut hard straight across it. I guess the hills cause too much screeching afterwards. Although it feels like you’re kind of nose-diving into the first big hill’s incline, cutting hard and straight here seems better so don’t worry about the compression. However, I do let off the L-stick momentarily to straighten out the wheels to avoid screeching. You’re gunning it all the way to just after the subtle right turn with no need to brake. When you do brake after, it will be critical to get good placement for the middle section, so start braking in a straight line in the center of the road as generally your best bet. I don’t use ABS assist, so feathering the brake, start braking in a straight line, and as I start to release, I’m banking HARD to the left to get as close as possible to that hairpin’s apex AND simultaneously starting to pull more and more on the accelerator trigger.
Middle section:
Focus on getting the line right after that hairpin, and don’t worry about “coasting” where you’re not braking OR accelerating. That hairpin’s apex is just barely after the sharpest point, and you’ll be going the slowest of any point in the entire course past it. It’s very critical to get this right, as there are several things to keep in mind here. As you let go of the brakes, start banking towards that apex. Smoothness is critical. The first thing is to get your car aligned with the far wall, and getting parallel to it-- and approaching the wall enough to almost touch it, and dong all this while building more and more speed. Get aligned parallel with the far wall soon enough to give yourself enough space to align with the 90-degree left coming up. That’s necessary for the next turn. All things have to go right at once here because you don’t have much time. It is a test of smoothness. The sooner you can smoothly get over to that far wall, the sooner you can start into the next turn, a 90-degree left. And with this particular 90 degree left turn, you want to exit it “oversteered”? or, pointed straight onto the next trajectory sooner than later (and not at a normal 45 degrees). You’re pulling hard left after the 90-degree left turn, and don’t want to get past this new street’s center. Then, the 90-degree right turn comes, the third turn of the middle section: the 90 degree right turn. You are trying to retain the momentum of the first two turns and whip it all back to the right for this last apex of this section. There is some wiggle room for this 90 degree right turn, but it takes concentration and focus. There’s an orange brick wall/fence with a big Rockstar sponsor banner above it after the 90 degree right. If done correctly from the hairpin, you can accelerate to this point without any braking, and minimal or no coasting.
You can consider the entire middle section there as one “triple apex” with the final apex (that 90-degree right turn) inverted, but it’s all one smooth path.
Final Turn:
The final turn is the trickiest of all. The recent upgrade I found helped me get through its compression-- as well as the rest of the course for a huge time boost (not as big as race tires, but significantly better). First, after you exit the middle section’s last 90 degree right turn, smoothly but promptly get the car all the way over to the right side of the road. Do not waste time here, get the car over. It is actually a tight window and it is important, because probably the most important thing you will need to do is what I alluded to in my previous post: align the car with the apex. The next most important thing is to make sure to brake early enough before the apex of this final turn.
The final turn has a long hill before it, which starts to level off and even go down slightly, before it goes UP AGAIN for another little hill and this little hill will trip your car up. Consistent with the “festival” theme of Horizon, this part of the course is basically that scam game booth at the carnival, where you have to roll a ball to get over only one of two humps, but in such a way as to be both fast enough to get over only the first, and also at the same time slow enough to not get over the second. If you treat this like flat ground, you will exit the turn sliding way too much leaving sideways black streaks on the pavement from each tire, or overshoot and get too far onto the grass/dirt trap. And smoothness is important as well because the exit of this turn has you climbing yet a THIRD hill to the finish line. You cannot get into that grass/dirt trap, certainly not beyond the cones. Keep at least the left tires on pavement/white gutter cover after this turn. To do it all properly, get the car over to the right side before the second hill so you can get the car aligned properly- get it aligned with that apex. Brake early enough to do this. If you do it right, you can hit 72 MPH (or maybe even 73?) by the finish line. There’s a point where the speedometer kind of stutters around then, and I use it to gauge how well I really did on the last turn.
The upgrade I found to help is the Race Differential 2-way. Along with rear-only anti-roll bar (NOT front), this reduces the Mini’s understeer. You can actually wind through that middle section with the Mini’s inherent understeer and get good times with just the race tires-- but reducing it with these upgrades allows big boosts and faster lap times all around.
Here’s the build-- note, I don’t much about tuning/building, I just know how to drive fast. It is possible there are changes to improve this build further (please share), but with this build, I’ve managed to get 140th place. Out of 1,658,000+, that’s top 0.00844 percentile-- and I don’t see any other Mini Cooper 11’s there, only the '65 which I haven’t bothered with much. The '65 probably has better times because of its acceleration but I didn’t mess with it.
Build (Mini Cooper '11):
Front Race Bumper
Race Wing
Race Tires
Volk RE30 rims
tire sizes 225/40R17
(stock flywheel)
Sport Brakes
Sport Spings and Dampers
(stock front anti-roll bars)
Race Rear anti-roll bars
Sport Driveline
Race Differential (2-way)