When I am racing I have noticed that the “Caution” symbol next to my lap time appears and flashes for some time. This “Caution” symbol I understand is when you drive off of track, hit an obstacle or hit another driver. But I do not understand when I am driving and it appears for no reason when I have not violated any of the conditions I have just mentioned. Can someone explain or “school” me on this matter. Also does this affect the “Driver feats” reward? Does this affect anything other than indicating I bumped another driver or went off track? Thanks.
it means a dirty lap. you forgot drafting. if you are close enough to draft your lap is dirty, also if another car drafts you. it only affects times for the leaderboards, clean laps are above dirty laps. iit does not harm driver feats, infact you can get feat pints for perfect draft, which will automatically be a dirty lap. if you are concentration on leaderboards use free play or even test drive in tuning mode so there are no other cars. if you aren’t worried about the leaderboards dirty laps are irrelevant to you, just ignore them and play. if you are close enough to another car you can see them or they can see you there is a draft chance on most tracks. dont worry about clean/dirty laps when racing, only when hotlapping solo for the leaderboards.
if you have damage turned on any car damage can also dirty a lap. missing a shift and damaging the engine or tranny, or locking up the brakes enough to flat spot tires, over reving an engine on a long straight all can make a lap dirty.
rdo3, thank you for bringing me up to speed with this subject. I have always wondered and now have an answer. Thank you
you’re welcome. drafting is the #1 cause of dirty laps. there’s some history behind it. to some people the leaderboards are their top priority, bragging rights and all that. back in fm1 drafting didn’t make you dirty so people would run teams, with a low class car drafting and over classed car to get an unrealistic time so it became “cheating”. then they started useing over classed cars to push lower class cars around the track like the daytona nascar race a few years ago. so now it doesn’t matter if you are drafting or being drafted its dirty. getting a clean lap in a close race even with clean racing will get you a dirty lap because of drafting. if racing online or in multi car races just ignore it, its an indicator of luck more than skill. sometimes you’ll run into people online who will accuse you of cheating if you win and bring up leaderboard times. hotlapping is not racing. just let them rant and ignore it. circut races are won by the fastest race time not the fastest lap time. its more a matter of having the fastest slow lap than the fastest fast lap making you average lap time better. often the person with the fastest lap is not the race winner. if two cars are battleing for the lead their laps will be dirty because of drafting, a car half a lap back wont be caught in the draft and can run a clean lap which will make them the fast lap. just ignore clean/dirty when racing. it basically means you got lucky, not that you were the best.
I’d like to add some further input. Drafting or getting drafted by another car/player kicks in at 100 mph, give or take a mph.