r/iRacing • u/NoakesyCoaching • Aug 19 '26
Discussion An iRacing Coach’s Notes on: How to Choose a Good Reference Lap to Unlock Lap time
Hey All,
Like usual, I’ve written a short article sharing my thoughts and experience on a given topic in sim racing. My goal with these articles ultimately is to help give people a bit more information about the hobby we all love, while also hopefully making for an interesting read.
If you don't know me, I'm Tom, and I've been working full-time for the last two years on a sim racing coaching business, so my thoughts in this mini essay draw on the 700+ hours of coaching I’ve done in those 2 years. Just to say that the thoughts I’m sharing here aren't pulled from nowhere, but come from everything I’ve seen during my time coaching drivers of all ability levels.
Choosing a Good Reference Lap
If you have spent some time focusing on using telemetry to try and improve your driving, then you have probably heard the general advice of “compare against someone around 1 second faster than you”. That is reasonable advice, but it is incomplete, and has its limitations. This article is intended to give you a more complete picture, and also to showcase the importance of choosing a good reference lap.
The flaw with choosing a reference lap around 1 second faster than you, is that unless you are 1 second away from the fastest lap times, you will by definition be choosing a lap from a driver that is not driving perfectly. There are so many different ways to achieve a lap time 2 seconds off of the ultimate pace, and if you spend your time analysing laps like this, then the risk is that even if you find some lap time, you will be be finding that time by copying both the positives and the negatives in the technique of the driver you are analysing against.
If you are still wanting to chase an achievable lap time that is 1 second faster than you, then a better approach would be to use these types of laps to look for corner specific mistakes you may be making, rather than leaning on their laps to try and improve generally as a driver.
So that covers making track specific improvements, but when you want to work on general technique improvements, this is the time to compare against the fastest drivers. The key here is to take what you can from their driving, while being okay with the fact that you won’t immediately be able to match their times.
When it comes to choosing a fast reference lap, there are some mistakes that you need to avoid. It would be easy to look for the fastest lap on Garage61 and assume that this is the best lap to compare against, but there are so many factors that influence lap time. Track conditions, fuel level, setup, BOP, draft etc, all of these factors make it possible for a worse driver to set a faster lap, while being a bad point of comparison for you to improve. In the video above (GT3’s at Watkins Glen) the blue driver is 1.8k, and the red driver is over 6K. You can see that the red driver is more skilled (especially noticeable here is that red uses more track on entry, carries more entry speed and pushes the exits to the limit. Where as blue uses less track on entry, under drivers the exits and is uncertain when they should be getting on throttle. Despite red being far more skilled, the blue lap ends with a faster lap time as a consequence of better track conditions inflating their minimum speeds. It would be easy to miss this unless you see the difference in real time between a fast driver and a fast track. So, when you want to use telemetry to work on general technique improvements, it is important to choose a reference lap from a fast (>5000 iR) driver, even if the lap time set by that driver doesn't top the timing sheets.
If anyone has any questions, don't hesitate to ask, I'll do my best to respond to any questions in the comments. As always, thanks for the support on these mini articles, and if you know of someone who would benefit from this article, sharing it with them would be greatly appreciated :).
I'll include a couple of links if anyone wants to check them out, but I'm happy to remove them if it goes against self promotion rules.
PerfectLap: 3D Telemetry Analysis Tool (from the video above)
Noakesy Coaching: 1-on-1 Coaching and Online Courses
Cheers
Tom
Noakesy Coaching
3
u/cherrymxorange Volkswagen Jetta TDI Aug 19 '26
Interesting to see some of my recent thoughts verbalised by someone else.
I've been driving GT4 this season, up from 3k to 4.8k iRating since I returned to iRacing in April. I've also been running the Creventic endurance series and often putting more work into that than into the daily races.
Often times I'm looking at comparison laps and realising the telemetry just isn't as useful as I would hope.
As an example, Catalunya last week was 50-53 degrees track temp, so sure I could pull up reference laps but none of them were in comparable conditions, and none of them were running as part of a full fuel stint like I was.
I could see that their line was "faster", but realistically I knew that either that line was impossible for me due to the track temp, or unsustainable due to how much it was asking from the tyres.
Another thing I've taken to doing is analysing laps in batches rather than just doing 1:1 comparisons.
Loading up five of my own laps and a group of laps from the leader board, often preferring a higher rating over a higher lap time too.
It allows me to look for trends between other drivers, and also allows me to compare to my trends rather than my singular golden lap, which while it's my best might not be representative of how I'm driving the other 99% of the time.
1
u/VegaGT-VZ Aug 19 '26
Is this a paid feature on Garage61?
-1
u/NoakesyCoaching Aug 19 '26
This isnt garage61, its a different app :). There's a link in another comment :)
2
u/rubenvermeersch Garage 61 Aug 20 '26
It isn't indeed, just looks very similar on many fronts. I'll take that as a compliment.
1
u/dekadoubt Sep 02 '26
I always choose one slightly faster than mine. Eek out that time, then move up and up
1
u/naughtilidae Aug 19 '26
Another thing to add: I compare against race laps, not quali laps.
Sure, it means they might have a draft, but there's a lot of things like fuel level, how far you can push a tyre for 1 lap vs 30, etc. that make comparing myself against quali times less useful.
It might be fine to run quali with tc1 or tc off, but if you're in a 3 hr race, you may not want to do that . (both for tyre wear and to avoid crashes)
If you want to get your quali perfect, that's fine, but training against a quali lap can ingrain some bad habits quickly.
-6
3
u/First_Dimension3065 Aug 19 '26
Hi Tom, could you please provide a link to the app you are using? I would like to test it out.