Tips & Tricks for hotlapper

Author:  Tze ?

To get the absolute minimum carweight: start from the pits with fuel for only 2 laps on board. Drive a very slow warmup-lap so that you have fuel for only 1.2 to 1.4 laps left when you cross the startfinish-line at the beginning of your lap...

Lower the car as much as possible: you should tune the carheight to such perfection that the plankwear-indicator on the right stays lit right after the startfinish-line at the end of your lap. Watch out that it doesn't stay lit sooner, or you will lose time because you can not reach normal topspeeds anymore with a worn-out wooden plank.

Start your attempts from a saved game: if you start from the pits each time, you will lose a lot of time because you still need to drive a warmup-lap. Instead, only drive a warmup-lap  the first time you get out of the pits with a setup, and save the game one corner before the start of the lap. Now you can start every hotlap-attempt from this saved game without  having to drive a warmup-lap all over again!

Fix the BHP-value of the player's car: the default value for the player's car BHP is depicted as 780 by editors like Steven Young's GP2Edit. In reality, each time you leave the pits,  GP2 will substract 0 to 7 BHP from this value to simulate random conditions like airpressure, humidity etc... GP2Edit offers you the opportunity to deactivate this random factor and  fix the BHP value at 780.

Fast in or fast out of a corner ? : soon, you'll experience a dilemma: is it better to brake ultra-late and dive as fast as possible into every corner, thus compromising the exit-speed, or is it better to concentrate on high exit-speed? This depends on what's behind the corner: if it's a long straight, then it is important to have a better exit, since you'll carry that speed through over the entire lenght of the straight. If it's a short section upto another corner, then you might do better to concentrate on ultra-late braking. Variante Alfa at Imola is the best example of this issue.

Using curbs?: when you go wide into a corner, using a lot of curb to accelerate out of it is inefficient. It makes the lap look ultrafast, but it actually slows you down most of the time!  If you practice a lot, you will see that curbs can be helpful in certain circumstances, though. If you touch them with the edge of the rearwheels when exciting certain corners, you'll get a bit of extra grip that prevents wheelspin. This makes it possible to accelerate faster. You will learn the corners where this applies by practice, practice and more practice... Because yes, practice is the most important tip!

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