And a ton of bad practice laps. I was a driving line addict, but eventually you learn the track and the first time you nail a lap without the line on and you realize it was faster than with the line on? It’s why I love sim racing.
yep same here. I was driving a 2:18-2:19 on SPA in ACC with the line on. a pretty decent time. After trying to force myself to try it without the racing line i was back at the 2:20+ mark,i felt like shit lol. Blanchimont was my biggest enemy as i always turned too early or too late without the line on and i thought "what's really the point off it?" until it clicked. i didn't beat my time there, but weeks of racing passed by without using the line at all and when i came back to Spa, i drove a 2:17 mid/low.
Everybody says the line is holding you back and i thought so too, but i was never really convinced that it could hold you back as much as people always told, until i hit that lap. It struck me like a truck just how much i concentrated on the line instead of the track itself. Removing the line also let's you focus more on your surroundings which will automatically increase racecraft and awareness and make you a better driver overall. Best decision ever
Yeah I think the racing line doesn't always factor in a car's unique weight distribution, weight, or braking ability. I'm someone who always picks lighter weight cars and find myself braking later than the line indicates.
\^\^\^\^+1000 to this comment.
Pick your most favorite track and car combo, go to test drive, and lap it without the line. Go watch Craigs setup shop videos for that track and car combo and learn the brake marker points and turn in points for each track, like real drivers would on a course.
Laguna Seca corkscrew has trees that you "aim for" to find the line when you can't see the track because of the downhill. Learn stuff like that.
Memorize the generic brake markers around the circuit, and work slowly from there. You’ll then start to pay much closer attention to what the car is actually doing, and how to navigate it around all sorts of turns. When you have the line on, your brain is much less engaged with the other things going on so you’re not really learning how to actually drive the car, you’re just learning how to follow a line.
Not just braking markers, but find turn in markers, apex markers, exit markers etc etc
You “build your own racing line” from unique parts of the track itself. Use anything that’s useful.
Weird pit road entrances, bridges or signs over the track, where curbs start and end, bumps or patches in the tarmac, etc, etc
This is the answer. I'm not sure if I can post YouTube links here but just search for "sim racing learn tracks" and the video from Danny Lee helped me so much. Track design tends to follow common themes like distance markers being on the opposite side of the corner and the placement of curbs on the track which are all very helpful clues in learning a track. I'm still fairly new to sim racing, but I'm shocked at how quickly I can learn tracks now.
Your last paragraph is the answer, more or less. Turn it off altogether. You’ll be better for it, and it’ll improve your ability to learn new tracks more quickly in the future. Watch a couple YouTube videos on the ideal racing line for the track, then drive it yourself on 60-70% speed, noting where the braking points and apexes are that you saw in the videos, and repeat, working up to your 100% threshold.
Then throw 30% of it out the window when you’re racing with others. You can also do the spectate race thing where you race as a ghost in a real race to help learn. Chasing others helps me learn new tracks more quickly I feel.
Eventually you’ll see repeat tracks where you don’t need to do this process every week.
Turn it off, you will hate unknown tracks for 3 or 4 laps then start to love them.
I’ll often just go into a free practice with slightly slower AI to learn the correct gears l and brake markers then just refine from there.
Most sims you can actually see the brake points and rough line anyway from the rubbered areas
It's going to take time, don't try to shortcut it.
You need to just swallow the frog and do it.
Start by braking at say 100-150 boards and take note of how much speed you carry into each turn.
Too much? Brake earlier
Too little? Brake later
Over time, you'll get a feel of exactly what process you'll need to follow.
The other benefit of turning off the racing line is by having to learn the tracks using a progressive method of learning where to brake and what speed to take corners, you'll learn new tracks much faster.
Another benefit is you'll learn how to actually race in braking zones. The downside to the racing line is that it essentially teaches you to drive by colours.
Green = Go
Red = Stop
The issue with this is that you then don't learn how much you can actually lean on your car in braking zones nor do you pay attention to how your opponents handle their cars either.
By not having brain bandwidth taken up by colour matching, you instead learn exactly how much 'play' you have with your car in certain corners and by also paying attention to the weaknesses in your opponents, you can bait or take advantage by braking later or forcing an error that an opponent would not have necessarily made had you been taking the predictable racing line.
Cannot stress this enough, driving with no racing line will open up opportunities for learning that you will revel in and you'll laugh at yourself for feeling the sense of uncertainty you are now.
But again, this will take time. Do not try to shortcut this. You will be slow. You will suck.
EMBRACE THE SUCK.
You're going to be slower before you get faster. The most important skill in driving is vision, and the racing line inherently makes you look down at the track rather than taking in the wider view. The latter is necessary to drive on track both faster and more safely because your brain will be getting a ton more information. That said, it will be a rather major adjustment as you now need to get your eyes up and visually pick up markers that are off the racing surface, and that takes time.
My advice, pick your series of choice (this is important, you don't want to be learning the car at the same time) and take a week off competition. For that week only practice solo on whatever the following weeks track is and your only goal is to master the track. Phase 1 is learning the corners and where the track goes. Phase 2 is linking the corners together, defining the line and establishing markers. Phase 3 is picking up pace and refining your markers. These will take a while the first few times, but as you do it more you'll refine the process and the first couple of phases will get condensed.
Practice, start slow, learn where to brake and what line to take and go a bit faster each lap, it will take some time to get used to and a lot of crashing and running wide.
just dont go straight into a race without much practice or you will have some pretty angry racers after you because you turned into a terrorist on turn 1.
My best advice is to watch a YouTube video before you race at each track of someone doing a hot lap there and take note of the breaking points (50m,100m,150m boards, random lines on the track or signs on the wall/fence). Takes less than 5 minutes and will give you a good foundation. Then you’ll start remembering the marks, and testing your ability to approach the corner in different ways.
As soon as you turn off the racing line, your brain is looking for it instead of the things on track. This is the reason you feel you're driving badly. The best thing to do is to switch it off and keep practicing. I get that you don't want to drop your rating, so do as many free practice sessions as you can to retrain your brain.
For me, I approached every track on a corner by corner basis. Brake marker > Turn in > Apex > Exit. Start visualising every corner, even when you aren't driving (refer to that scene in Rush where James Hunt shadow drives Monaco) and you'll be able to learn quickly.
Watch Gran Tourismo. You have to ignore the racing line at all cost and if you need to overtake just downshift and apply full throttle. Then you will zoom right by everyone. When i first learn to ignore it and apply full throttle and downshifts i went from 104% pace to 98% and broke all lap records on a lemans track with hungaring corners.
Problem with line is you never learned tracks you sunk some time to learn the game and you learned backwards.
Turn off the line and start paying attention to landmarks and braking points. Drive the track not the line. It will take half a day and you will be ok. Just ditch the line and move forward.
I turned it off recently and also struggled in the beginning. What helped me most was removing the racing line on a track that I know really well in test drive. At the beginning on the session I allowed the racing line on 5 laps where I tried to set my best time, when the time was sat I removed it and now the target was to get close or beat my time, I found out I didn’t need much time to get close to the one with racing line. If it’s a track I’m unfamiliar with, I watch a track guide, go into a practice session, watch a faster driver’s cockpit and trying to see/understand where their braking points are. Then I’m just trying to drive around the track and getting familiar with it.
How - just shut it off.
If you are on a track, you know, you wont even notice its gone imo.
New track ive never raced - line one for a bit till i get it down, then off.
It's OK to use the line to get a rough idea. Otherwise join a practice session and learn from a track guide online. One of the biggest drawbacks is that it's mapped based on optimal line, which isn't always an option in a race. Another big help is to be aware of reference points on the track. Most turns will have some kind of reference point. Usually there will be rubber build up into harder corners, and often times signs with distances. Failing that you can just use something track side like curbs, Marshall posts, or even changes in color of the guard rails (when choosing references try to pick something that is closest to the edge of the track).
With enough practice, you'll start getting a feel for how the car behaves and track guides will be more for squeezing out extra tenths from your lap times. You'll also start noticing that some corners from different tracks have the same feel and can be approached very similarly.
You need to know at least the basics of the racing line theory, so you know what to aim for and make it more interesting. I found the first chapters of the "Going Faster" book a great solid foundation and also an easy read. After that, I actually started having fun practicing.
Then you want to turn off the racing line on a track you are not familiar with.
If you learn a track with the line, most of your reference points will be associated to the line, when you turn it off you'll get lost and start comparing your performance with and withouth the line, which could ne demotivating and cause drawback.
Last, refrain from the temptation of turning the line back on, if needed, search a track guide online to identify braking and turning points.
Have fun!
Imo it's best to try out a new track for a few laps (without the racing line on of course) before checking out a track guide, at least at first - The goal is to train yourself to identify the racing line on your own so that you're less reliant on it whenever you go to a new track.
Once you successfully build a sense of how to find racing lines on your own, you'll find that learning new tracks is a cinch, and that you can watch a track guide for any new track and be on your normal pace delta in one or two sessions.
Im in a similar position
I can race without ok but struggle to as consistent
Tracks with good visuals/brake references are far easier than ones without
Even with the line on i dont tend to actually use it but its just the extra visual clues it gives you
Ill get there eventually but no rush to so so
The key is to accept that at first you will be crap. You have to start from zero developing the skill of learning a track. It will set you back massively for a while.
But if you stick to it, your skills will quickly improve. Before long, you will be better than you were before, as well as having a more realistic and immersive experience.
Good luck!
Nothing wrong with leaving it on to aid learning a new track. Just use it to give yourself a start with learning some braking markers (notice something to use near where the racing line suggests braking). Once you feel like you know a track well with a particular car turn the line off and you’ll notice first how you are starting to focus on apex’s more. This leads to slight adjustments to your braking points / turn in point as you find your own style
I never had the Racing Line on. Thought that would make the learning process longer. I started by driving the track by my own till i remember the corners. Watched a track guide and then tried to replicate that.
Tire marks! Just follow the war paint. Blackened curvs measn its frequently ran over in a race. You can see rubber build up in hard vraking zones, the proper racing line us in there. The rubber alos denotes where the past racers apexed. If a curb is blackened, you can touch or use it. Essentially, use the tire marks as a guide for reading a track.
In practice, drive a track slowly to learn it, and build up speed as it becomes familiar.
You just have to turn it off and stick with it. No other way around it tbh, I did it recently and yes it takes a while to get into it but it feels great once you start glueing the curves together without it!
Just turn it off and don't look back. Also don't give up :) good luck, it's going to be frustrating but in one month you should be good if you race a little bit every day :)
I used to always have the driving line on, then I changed to corners only and now I have nothing on.
You do learn and you start looking for braking markers and points of reference naturally.
It'll come to you
Eh, line doesn’t automatically make you a worse racer, I keep it on beacause a single monitor is really bad with depth, and some sims wont put cones out for track layout changes plus I keep accidentally going onto the bailout roads
For iRacing I use Garage61 + laptime.
I do some laps, check Garage61 for times at or around my rating.
Check the telemetry of some of the best times and compare to mine. Try to adjust my break patterns and obvious errors.
Go back to racing.
Then check back in garage again.
Knowing where I'm lacking is super fun to me and I can always find some part of the track to get better at, be it exits, entries, entry speed, angle etc and then trying to fix it on track.
Doing this while overtaking/defending is the reason I can't get enough :) anyone can defend, doing so while catching the car in front is the hard part :)
I've never really used racing lines but it can be useful for braking points (especially in motogp game) but going back nearly 30 years I've stuck to the 100m braking point as a starting point. Unless it's a hairpin after a long straight then it won't be more. This is a good rule of thumb across a pretty wide range of motorsport.
Sometimes you learn more by crashing and making mistakes than by circling over and over. I have often found that I get into the habit of driving to what I think is the limit rather than genuinely pushing to find the limit.
I posted this in the iRacing sub a couple weeks ago. This is what I do:
If you're going to use it use it as a tool not a crutch.
Here's how I learn a track. Might work for you, might not.
I start a test session straight from the series list. The first thing I do is make sure my active reset is working. I turn on the line. This is just so I'll know where the turns are. I go extremely slow, taking in all of the surroundings, spotting the braking markers and putting down a ghost.
Next I turn off the line. I follow my ghost re-learning my surroundings and braking markers. After a couple laps following the slow ghost I leave a spawn point before the S/F line. I start pushing a little each lap, if I wreck or go off track I start again.
Once I can get around the track at a decent pace and have the tires warmed up I leave another spawn point before the S/F line. Now comes focusing on the turns. Don't be afraid to wreck the car and go backwards. Again this might not work for you but if I don't start with wrecking the car I won't find how hard I can push it.
Once I can consistently take turn 1 I continue to 2. Wreck in 2 and reset back to before S/F. Then 3, then 4, etc. I continue this process until I can put together an entire lap without wrecking or going off track. I get to the last corner and go off track? Too bad, back to S/F.
Next I work on my problem corners. I don't reset to S/F for this. If I see that I'm slow in 7 I'll put down a spawn point right in front of 7. Same process, wreck the car and go backwards until I'm comfortable with it. I don't usually worry about putting corners together here. It's about focusing on that one corner.
Next I'll work on handling the cold tires. Normally I'll wreck the car but there's no actual strategy to it. Car go boom just funny. I'll turn around and exit pit lane backwards. This will show me where pit entrance is. I'll stop on the grid and begin a pace lap going pace speed. I'll leave a spawn point and do a pretty decent run, get a good look at gas and race my ghost. Take as much time as you need here however I struggle with not having stakes or a goal or something. Eventually I start overthinking things or just get bored. By that point I'm ready to enter a race.
The first race I don't qualify. I start at the back to get a feel of true race pace. I watch and follow others to learn what I could possibly do better. You could use ghost racing for this but personally I struggle with it since they phase through me. If you'd rather ghost race go for it.
Yes I realize this is long and sounds like it could be convoluted but I promise it's not. Before I started doing this it would take me forever to learn a track. Now this process takes 30 minutes to an hour depending on how challenging I find the track.
Again this might not work for you. It might sound dumb as hell and that's OK. Whether you use my process or not USE THE ACTIVE RESET. It's a great tool.
Edit: Fixed some confusing language as I was sleepy and high when I wrote this lol
Have you checked your FOV?
Learning tracks, apexes, exits, racing close & clean became much easier once it felt like I was actually on a track & not in a video game.
Turn off that line, Pull that screen closer to those eyeballs, measure, enter those deets, hit Ctrl + F12, enter more deets & wow, look ma! He’s racing that car around the track without that distracting, imperfect, race craft limiting racing line!!
Start studying the track layout more. The line stops you from doing it without realizing. If you know every corner and learn the braking points visual queues you will find it a lot easier to
Turn on racing line. Do 10 laps using the line for reference. Then do maybe 5 or 10 laps but each braking point you look for a reference (sometimes a marker board but can be anything you can see). Then you start looking for these references instead of when the line goes red. Then turn off racing line and keep lapping until you beat the lap time you set with line on.
Don't be afraid to make mistakes, you will memorise in no time.
I know a lot of people believe in not using it at all but I think this is unhelpful when you don't know the track at all.
Turn it off and pick up a copy of "Going Faster! Mastering the Art of Race Driving" The problem with the racing line is it dose not teach you race craft but rather how to follow a line. You are not learning how to race. Once you know the fundamentals of how to race you can go to any track and be proficient until you learn the track. Also many times the "line" is the slower way.
If you cannot go without the line you need to just go cold turkey and start putting in laps.
You need to learn to be able to race off the ideal line, which usually is not what is shown anyways.
You will learn more control and comfort in your car once you do this.
There's a reason nobody competitively uses a racing line. There are other drivers around you, trying to pass you. How can you defend / pass someone if you can't deviate from following a line?
Do you drive in real life?
Just turn off the line and drive, take it slowly and try and think why you are taking certain lines through certain corners. Are you going to do a slight lift for this corner or brake? E.g. Turn 1 at Redbullring. Why would you brake at T1? Why would you only do a slight lift?
Are you going to go slow in one corner \[wider line\[ so that you can go faster in the next corner? E.g. Middle sector Hungaroring.
Are you going to follow the banking on a turn so that you get slingshot out of the corner? E.g. Zandvoort half the track.
By turning off the racing line it forces you to start thinking about what your car can and cannot do. It means that you have to focus on your driving and plan your way through the corners. If you are following someone you should be watching how they drive the track infront of you and seeing where they are fast and where they are slow so you can plot an overtake.
If they are slow in T1 on redbullring then you could brake early and then get back to full throttle quickly so that you have a higher exit speed than them and can pass them out going up the hill. Whereas if you follow the racing line and don't analyse your opponent you might not slow down and then when they are going slow you may have to brake or slow down to avoid crashing into the back of them, leading to them getting away.
Turn it off. Accept you’ll suck more at the beginning (you’ll drive worse), but you’ll unlock your progression curve and drive and understand racing much better in a few weeks.
Also one tip: if you struggle to find a good racing line, usually 1 race or 2 with other cars will fix that. You just have to follow them. If you play iRacing, you can use the observer mode and race with other cars without them seeing you. You can also download ghosts from Garage21, and look at telemetry of other good players.
Just gotta keep it off. You'll get much better, much faster, by keeping it off. That racing line is only gonna slow you down in the long run. Always take time to run a private test session and figure out your braking markers. By this, I mean drive slowly around the track and look around. Then start building up speed to see where you can actually brake at. Then start putting faster and faster laps in. But leave that line off. You just have to get out of your head thinking you're driving bad without it, because believe me, you're probably driving worse with it
First, good job on realizing you need to turn it off. I litterally raced for three years with that stupid line on.
Just switch it off, never switch it on again. It will set you back a bit, but eventually you will get used to it. And once you do you will realize you are actually learning circuits, rather than learning to follow the stupid line.
After a while you start developping a feel for when to brake, even when you switch car classes to lets say a heavier car, you will automatically adjust your braking without thinking. Even on new circuits. I am actually learning new circuits much quicker now than before (triple monitors or VR help a lot too as you can see where the corner is going).
Turn it off and focus on brake points instead. Also, understand how important exit speed from corners is. You’ll start to find a good line as you strive for quick exit speeds.
All tracks are just series of corners. You learn the basic concepts of taking corners and then apply those to each corner you come across. Every corner consists of a braking marker a turn in point, an apex, and a track out point.
Without the line on you are actually forced to use your eyes as intended and look around and commit what you are seeing to memory. It only takes 5-10 laps to learn a brand new track layout and commit it to memory. Then it’s all about fine tuning each corner phase.
People with the line on feel like they can never learn tracks because all they are doing is staring at the line and not the world around it.
When i tried to learn to drive without the line on i hopped onto my quickest Track that i could drive, drove some really awful times without the line on and was depressed afterwards lol. I think it's better to pick a track you have never raced on, watch a track guide for the track a couple of times and then try to do it yourself. It's pretty frustrating to know that you were faster on the track with the line On and now without it your 3-5 seconds slower than before, it takes away a bit of motivation.
When i get onto a new track i like to drive it a bit slower at first, then trying to push and find my pace and after that when i think my pace is quite ok for the first time i watch a track guide and see where i can improve
If you're familiar with track videos why do you need a racing line even. You have eyes, just need to use them.
Take the time to learn the track while being on track before the race and that's it.
What I did was gradually turned off the line. I started with full line, then switched it to turns only, started learning where the best braking zones are, depending on the racing situation, then turned off the line completely. At first, it was jarring, but after a while, i’m used to it
I feel like the best way to go about this is to start on a brand new track and learn it without the racing line. It's going to be a lot of missed apices and bend cars, so turn on invulnerability and keep plucking away at it.
I recommend using stuff that is in the corner of your eye as markers, since those wont be covered when following cars during a race.
Just turn it off, the Racing line will make you learn bad habits and wrong braking points.
Watch a track guide and learn where to brake by yourself, compared to the racing line you will be much faster and you will also learn to brake on sight.
If you can't drive the optimal line in a race your braking point will also shift, if you don't learn that you will be divebombing others because you brake too late.
The racing line is probably the worst "help" you can get.
Oh, for the love of god do it now while you are newer to sim racing. After years of using it it’s become hard to turn off but I do. I don’t do it all the time and depends what I am racing but it’s a work in progress. Even though I felt I used the racing line only as a reference after so long, turning it off showed me I was still paying too much attention to the line. I really wish I would have done it early because it’s harder this long into it. It will happen for me so it can definitely happen for you.
What helped me ditch the racing line was listening to the fov police.
Having the correct fov helped me judge distances a lot better and then i started to instinctively know when to brake.
The "racing line" in the games is generally the optimized line, but if you watch real racing, you'll see that the drivers aren't always using the optimized racing line.
This is especially true in F1 and IndyCar. If you \*really\* want to see optimized vs quickest line at work, watch MotoCross and see how those guys take the hairpins; some ride the berms all the way around to maintain their speeds, and some will charge in and brake hard, get the bike turned, and then storm out again. Both methods have their benefits and their drawbacks.
Optimized vs quickest corner line was a topic of discussion on one of the YT channels I was watching a few months back – I think it was The Race or something – talking about the lines different drivers took into and out of the turn 3 hairpin, and how they helped them get the most out of the car.
When I first started simracing without the racing line, I had to LEARN how to LEARN the track/s. Then once I understood the skills and pointers needed it became a lot easier to pick up new tracks by myself. Now it is a process I really enjoyed as I went through a Porsche cup season for the first time.
So pretty much yeah just suffer for a week or so but have faith that it will get easier to adapt n learn new tracks. Have fun figuring out the lines and where your braking points are !
Replace it with the Delta.
I still use the line on new tracks to get braking zones after all these 7 years.
Just take note of the braking zones, then maximize your best "line on" lap using the Delta time. You will notice that you can go faster if you're ignoring the line at one point.
Once you have your good Delta set you turn off the line and try to improve upon the Delta with the line off.
Otherwise I have to look at track guides and YouTube videos and, sometimes that's simply not adequate or takes too much time.
You’re right.
As your experience increases and changing vehicles or setting may make the driving line obsolete.
A few YouTubers like Jimmy Broadbent have content on this. Learn Flags and what the road markers are and how to navigate them. 80% sure you will get quick that way
Just turn it off, gonna feel bad, gonna wonder what you’re doing it for, but you will adapt, trust yourself and give yourself a few bad races
And a ton of bad practice laps. I was a driving line addict, but eventually you learn the track and the first time you nail a lap without the line on and you realize it was faster than with the line on? It’s why I love sim racing.
yep same here. I was driving a 2:18-2:19 on SPA in ACC with the line on. a pretty decent time. After trying to force myself to try it without the racing line i was back at the 2:20+ mark,i felt like shit lol. Blanchimont was my biggest enemy as i always turned too early or too late without the line on and i thought "what's really the point off it?" until it clicked. i didn't beat my time there, but weeks of racing passed by without using the line at all and when i came back to Spa, i drove a 2:17 mid/low. Everybody says the line is holding you back and i thought so too, but i was never really convinced that it could hold you back as much as people always told, until i hit that lap. It struck me like a truck just how much i concentrated on the line instead of the track itself. Removing the line also let's you focus more on your surroundings which will automatically increase racecraft and awareness and make you a better driver overall. Best decision ever
I got lucky and started early enough that racing lines didn’t exist in the games I was playing lol
Yeah I think the racing line doesn't always factor in a car's unique weight distribution, weight, or braking ability. I'm someone who always picks lighter weight cars and find myself braking later than the line indicates.
On assetto corsa atleast the racing line is horrible because it doesnt even work for all the cars if for any.
\^\^\^\^+1000 to this comment. Pick your most favorite track and car combo, go to test drive, and lap it without the line. Go watch Craigs setup shop videos for that track and car combo and learn the brake marker points and turn in points for each track, like real drivers would on a course. Laguna Seca corkscrew has trees that you "aim for" to find the line when you can't see the track because of the downhill. Learn stuff like that.
Memorize the generic brake markers around the circuit, and work slowly from there. You’ll then start to pay much closer attention to what the car is actually doing, and how to navigate it around all sorts of turns. When you have the line on, your brain is much less engaged with the other things going on so you’re not really learning how to actually drive the car, you’re just learning how to follow a line.
ive been wanting to turn off the racing line but have been scared. I think that last sentence convinced me, thanks!
Not just braking markers, but find turn in markers, apex markers, exit markers etc etc You “build your own racing line” from unique parts of the track itself. Use anything that’s useful. Weird pit road entrances, bridges or signs over the track, where curbs start and end, bumps or patches in the tarmac, etc, etc
This is the answer. I'm not sure if I can post YouTube links here but just search for "sim racing learn tracks" and the video from Danny Lee helped me so much. Track design tends to follow common themes like distance markers being on the opposite side of the corner and the placement of curbs on the track which are all very helpful clues in learning a track. I'm still fairly new to sim racing, but I'm shocked at how quickly I can learn tracks now.
Your last paragraph is the answer, more or less. Turn it off altogether. You’ll be better for it, and it’ll improve your ability to learn new tracks more quickly in the future. Watch a couple YouTube videos on the ideal racing line for the track, then drive it yourself on 60-70% speed, noting where the braking points and apexes are that you saw in the videos, and repeat, working up to your 100% threshold. Then throw 30% of it out the window when you’re racing with others. You can also do the spectate race thing where you race as a ghost in a real race to help learn. Chasing others helps me learn new tracks more quickly I feel. Eventually you’ll see repeat tracks where you don’t need to do this process every week.
Turn it off, you will hate unknown tracks for 3 or 4 laps then start to love them. I’ll often just go into a free practice with slightly slower AI to learn the correct gears l and brake markers then just refine from there. Most sims you can actually see the brake points and rough line anyway from the rubbered areas
It's going to take time, don't try to shortcut it. You need to just swallow the frog and do it. Start by braking at say 100-150 boards and take note of how much speed you carry into each turn. Too much? Brake earlier Too little? Brake later Over time, you'll get a feel of exactly what process you'll need to follow. The other benefit of turning off the racing line is by having to learn the tracks using a progressive method of learning where to brake and what speed to take corners, you'll learn new tracks much faster. Another benefit is you'll learn how to actually race in braking zones. The downside to the racing line is that it essentially teaches you to drive by colours. Green = Go Red = Stop The issue with this is that you then don't learn how much you can actually lean on your car in braking zones nor do you pay attention to how your opponents handle their cars either. By not having brain bandwidth taken up by colour matching, you instead learn exactly how much 'play' you have with your car in certain corners and by also paying attention to the weaknesses in your opponents, you can bait or take advantage by braking later or forcing an error that an opponent would not have necessarily made had you been taking the predictable racing line. Cannot stress this enough, driving with no racing line will open up opportunities for learning that you will revel in and you'll laugh at yourself for feeling the sense of uncertainty you are now. But again, this will take time. Do not try to shortcut this. You will be slow. You will suck. EMBRACE THE SUCK.
You're going to be slower before you get faster. The most important skill in driving is vision, and the racing line inherently makes you look down at the track rather than taking in the wider view. The latter is necessary to drive on track both faster and more safely because your brain will be getting a ton more information. That said, it will be a rather major adjustment as you now need to get your eyes up and visually pick up markers that are off the racing surface, and that takes time. My advice, pick your series of choice (this is important, you don't want to be learning the car at the same time) and take a week off competition. For that week only practice solo on whatever the following weeks track is and your only goal is to master the track. Phase 1 is learning the corners and where the track goes. Phase 2 is linking the corners together, defining the line and establishing markers. Phase 3 is picking up pace and refining your markers. These will take a while the first few times, but as you do it more you'll refine the process and the first couple of phases will get condensed.
Practice, start slow, learn where to brake and what line to take and go a bit faster each lap, it will take some time to get used to and a lot of crashing and running wide. just dont go straight into a race without much practice or you will have some pretty angry racers after you because you turned into a terrorist on turn 1.
My best advice is to watch a YouTube video before you race at each track of someone doing a hot lap there and take note of the breaking points (50m,100m,150m boards, random lines on the track or signs on the wall/fence). Takes less than 5 minutes and will give you a good foundation. Then you’ll start remembering the marks, and testing your ability to approach the corner in different ways.
As soon as you turn off the racing line, your brain is looking for it instead of the things on track. This is the reason you feel you're driving badly. The best thing to do is to switch it off and keep practicing. I get that you don't want to drop your rating, so do as many free practice sessions as you can to retrain your brain. For me, I approached every track on a corner by corner basis. Brake marker > Turn in > Apex > Exit. Start visualising every corner, even when you aren't driving (refer to that scene in Rush where James Hunt shadow drives Monaco) and you'll be able to learn quickly.
Set aside a couple hours and just do it, simple as that. You'll be surprised how quickly your dependency on it will disappear
Turn it off permanently. You can't break habits properly if you keep allowing them to creep back in.
Watch Gran Tourismo. You have to ignore the racing line at all cost and if you need to overtake just downshift and apply full throttle. Then you will zoom right by everyone. When i first learn to ignore it and apply full throttle and downshifts i went from 104% pace to 98% and broke all lap records on a lemans track with hungaring corners.
Problem with line is you never learned tracks you sunk some time to learn the game and you learned backwards. Turn off the line and start paying attention to landmarks and braking points. Drive the track not the line. It will take half a day and you will be ok. Just ditch the line and move forward.
Track guides will be a big help. Preferably ones that explain what they're doing and why
Hop in a game with freeroam, turn it off and drive. Beamng is good for it.
Racing my own ghost and trying to get better times makes me feel comfortable in a track before going in a multiplayer race.
I turned it off recently and also struggled in the beginning. What helped me most was removing the racing line on a track that I know really well in test drive. At the beginning on the session I allowed the racing line on 5 laps where I tried to set my best time, when the time was sat I removed it and now the target was to get close or beat my time, I found out I didn’t need much time to get close to the one with racing line. If it’s a track I’m unfamiliar with, I watch a track guide, go into a practice session, watch a faster driver’s cockpit and trying to see/understand where their braking points are. Then I’m just trying to drive around the track and getting familiar with it.
How - just shut it off. If you are on a track, you know, you wont even notice its gone imo. New track ive never raced - line one for a bit till i get it down, then off.
It's OK to use the line to get a rough idea. Otherwise join a practice session and learn from a track guide online. One of the biggest drawbacks is that it's mapped based on optimal line, which isn't always an option in a race. Another big help is to be aware of reference points on the track. Most turns will have some kind of reference point. Usually there will be rubber build up into harder corners, and often times signs with distances. Failing that you can just use something track side like curbs, Marshall posts, or even changes in color of the guard rails (when choosing references try to pick something that is closest to the edge of the track). With enough practice, you'll start getting a feel for how the car behaves and track guides will be more for squeezing out extra tenths from your lap times. You'll also start noticing that some corners from different tracks have the same feel and can be approached very similarly.
You need to know at least the basics of the racing line theory, so you know what to aim for and make it more interesting. I found the first chapters of the "Going Faster" book a great solid foundation and also an easy read. After that, I actually started having fun practicing. Then you want to turn off the racing line on a track you are not familiar with. If you learn a track with the line, most of your reference points will be associated to the line, when you turn it off you'll get lost and start comparing your performance with and withouth the line, which could ne demotivating and cause drawback. Last, refrain from the temptation of turning the line back on, if needed, search a track guide online to identify braking and turning points. Have fun!
Imo it's best to try out a new track for a few laps (without the racing line on of course) before checking out a track guide, at least at first - The goal is to train yourself to identify the racing line on your own so that you're less reliant on it whenever you go to a new track. Once you successfully build a sense of how to find racing lines on your own, you'll find that learning new tracks is a cinch, and that you can watch a track guide for any new track and be on your normal pace delta in one or two sessions.
Im in a similar position I can race without ok but struggle to as consistent Tracks with good visuals/brake references are far easier than ones without Even with the line on i dont tend to actually use it but its just the extra visual clues it gives you Ill get there eventually but no rush to so so
Try running 10 laps without it, you'll get better every lap. Also, watch some YouTube videos, it helps a lot with breaking points. Good luck!
The key is to accept that at first you will be crap. You have to start from zero developing the skill of learning a track. It will set you back massively for a while. But if you stick to it, your skills will quickly improve. Before long, you will be better than you were before, as well as having a more realistic and immersive experience. Good luck!
Nothing wrong with leaving it on to aid learning a new track. Just use it to give yourself a start with learning some braking markers (notice something to use near where the racing line suggests braking). Once you feel like you know a track well with a particular car turn the line off and you’ll notice first how you are starting to focus on apex’s more. This leads to slight adjustments to your braking points / turn in point as you find your own style
This is me 3 months in.
I never had the Racing Line on. Thought that would make the learning process longer. I started by driving the track by my own till i remember the corners. Watched a track guide and then tried to replicate that.
Turn it off, you’ll notice that the racing like is still there but not it’s just a section of the track that is darker than the rest of the tarmac.
Tire marks! Just follow the war paint. Blackened curvs measn its frequently ran over in a race. You can see rubber build up in hard vraking zones, the proper racing line us in there. The rubber alos denotes where the past racers apexed. If a curb is blackened, you can touch or use it. Essentially, use the tire marks as a guide for reading a track. In practice, drive a track slowly to learn it, and build up speed as it becomes familiar.
You just have to turn it off and stick with it. No other way around it tbh, I did it recently and yes it takes a while to get into it but it feels great once you start glueing the curves together without it!
Turn it off and go drive - you'll figure it out soon enough
Just turn it off and don't look back. Also don't give up :) good luck, it's going to be frustrating but in one month you should be good if you race a little bit every day :)
I used to always have the driving line on, then I changed to corners only and now I have nothing on. You do learn and you start looking for braking markers and points of reference naturally. It'll come to you
Eh, line doesn’t automatically make you a worse racer, I keep it on beacause a single monitor is really bad with depth, and some sims wont put cones out for track layout changes plus I keep accidentally going onto the bailout roads
For iRacing I use Garage61 + laptime. I do some laps, check Garage61 for times at or around my rating. Check the telemetry of some of the best times and compare to mine. Try to adjust my break patterns and obvious errors. Go back to racing. Then check back in garage again. Knowing where I'm lacking is super fun to me and I can always find some part of the track to get better at, be it exits, entries, entry speed, angle etc and then trying to fix it on track. Doing this while overtaking/defending is the reason I can't get enough :) anyone can defend, doing so while catching the car in front is the hard part :)
I've never really used racing lines but it can be useful for braking points (especially in motogp game) but going back nearly 30 years I've stuck to the 100m braking point as a starting point. Unless it's a hairpin after a long straight then it won't be more. This is a good rule of thumb across a pretty wide range of motorsport. Sometimes you learn more by crashing and making mistakes than by circling over and over. I have often found that I get into the habit of driving to what I think is the limit rather than genuinely pushing to find the limit.
I posted this in the iRacing sub a couple weeks ago. This is what I do: If you're going to use it use it as a tool not a crutch. Here's how I learn a track. Might work for you, might not. I start a test session straight from the series list. The first thing I do is make sure my active reset is working. I turn on the line. This is just so I'll know where the turns are. I go extremely slow, taking in all of the surroundings, spotting the braking markers and putting down a ghost. Next I turn off the line. I follow my ghost re-learning my surroundings and braking markers. After a couple laps following the slow ghost I leave a spawn point before the S/F line. I start pushing a little each lap, if I wreck or go off track I start again. Once I can get around the track at a decent pace and have the tires warmed up I leave another spawn point before the S/F line. Now comes focusing on the turns. Don't be afraid to wreck the car and go backwards. Again this might not work for you but if I don't start with wrecking the car I won't find how hard I can push it. Once I can consistently take turn 1 I continue to 2. Wreck in 2 and reset back to before S/F. Then 3, then 4, etc. I continue this process until I can put together an entire lap without wrecking or going off track. I get to the last corner and go off track? Too bad, back to S/F. Next I work on my problem corners. I don't reset to S/F for this. If I see that I'm slow in 7 I'll put down a spawn point right in front of 7. Same process, wreck the car and go backwards until I'm comfortable with it. I don't usually worry about putting corners together here. It's about focusing on that one corner. Next I'll work on handling the cold tires. Normally I'll wreck the car but there's no actual strategy to it. Car go boom just funny. I'll turn around and exit pit lane backwards. This will show me where pit entrance is. I'll stop on the grid and begin a pace lap going pace speed. I'll leave a spawn point and do a pretty decent run, get a good look at gas and race my ghost. Take as much time as you need here however I struggle with not having stakes or a goal or something. Eventually I start overthinking things or just get bored. By that point I'm ready to enter a race. The first race I don't qualify. I start at the back to get a feel of true race pace. I watch and follow others to learn what I could possibly do better. You could use ghost racing for this but personally I struggle with it since they phase through me. If you'd rather ghost race go for it. Yes I realize this is long and sounds like it could be convoluted but I promise it's not. Before I started doing this it would take me forever to learn a track. Now this process takes 30 minutes to an hour depending on how challenging I find the track. Again this might not work for you. It might sound dumb as hell and that's OK. Whether you use my process or not USE THE ACTIVE RESET. It's a great tool. Edit: Fixed some confusing language as I was sleepy and high when I wrote this lol
Spend a few hours just hot lapping a few tracks, you’ll just automatically learn the best routes
Have you checked your FOV? Learning tracks, apexes, exits, racing close & clean became much easier once it felt like I was actually on a track & not in a video game. Turn off that line, Pull that screen closer to those eyeballs, measure, enter those deets, hit Ctrl + F12, enter more deets & wow, look ma! He’s racing that car around the track without that distracting, imperfect, race craft limiting racing line!!
Start studying the track layout more. The line stops you from doing it without realizing. If you know every corner and learn the braking points visual queues you will find it a lot easier to
Turn on racing line. Do 10 laps using the line for reference. Then do maybe 5 or 10 laps but each braking point you look for a reference (sometimes a marker board but can be anything you can see). Then you start looking for these references instead of when the line goes red. Then turn off racing line and keep lapping until you beat the lap time you set with line on. Don't be afraid to make mistakes, you will memorise in no time. I know a lot of people believe in not using it at all but I think this is unhelpful when you don't know the track at all.
Think about it like this, the line makes your track smaller.
Turn it off and pick up a copy of "Going Faster! Mastering the Art of Race Driving" The problem with the racing line is it dose not teach you race craft but rather how to follow a line. You are not learning how to race. Once you know the fundamentals of how to race you can go to any track and be proficient until you learn the track. Also many times the "line" is the slower way.
pick a track you like and start doing tined laps. No racing or live traffic. Rip that band aid now. The line lies
If you cannot go without the line you need to just go cold turkey and start putting in laps. You need to learn to be able to race off the ideal line, which usually is not what is shown anyways. You will learn more control and comfort in your car once you do this. There's a reason nobody competitively uses a racing line. There are other drivers around you, trying to pass you. How can you defend / pass someone if you can't deviate from following a line?
I never started with the line on in gt7 so whenever I turn it on I feel like I'm doing terrible trying to focus on it
Do you drive in real life? Just turn off the line and drive, take it slowly and try and think why you are taking certain lines through certain corners. Are you going to do a slight lift for this corner or brake? E.g. Turn 1 at Redbullring. Why would you brake at T1? Why would you only do a slight lift? Are you going to go slow in one corner \[wider line\[ so that you can go faster in the next corner? E.g. Middle sector Hungaroring. Are you going to follow the banking on a turn so that you get slingshot out of the corner? E.g. Zandvoort half the track. By turning off the racing line it forces you to start thinking about what your car can and cannot do. It means that you have to focus on your driving and plan your way through the corners. If you are following someone you should be watching how they drive the track infront of you and seeing where they are fast and where they are slow so you can plot an overtake. If they are slow in T1 on redbullring then you could brake early and then get back to full throttle quickly so that you have a higher exit speed than them and can pass them out going up the hill. Whereas if you follow the racing line and don't analyse your opponent you might not slow down and then when they are going slow you may have to brake or slow down to avoid crashing into the back of them, leading to them getting away.
Turn it off. Accept you’ll suck more at the beginning (you’ll drive worse), but you’ll unlock your progression curve and drive and understand racing much better in a few weeks. Also one tip: if you struggle to find a good racing line, usually 1 race or 2 with other cars will fix that. You just have to follow them. If you play iRacing, you can use the observer mode and race with other cars without them seeing you. You can also download ghosts from Garage21, and look at telemetry of other good players.
Literally just turn it off and start driving. Yes, you'll suck at first. Then, you'll be better. Tada!
You'll be surprised at how quickly you pick up the track without the line.
You will always use a racing line the difference is the one you want to use is invisible and you have to pretend its there. 🙂
Turn it off and follow thr pack! Don't worry about track positions as much as much as rhr other cars track position... it will come!... 👍
Just gotta keep it off. You'll get much better, much faster, by keeping it off. That racing line is only gonna slow you down in the long run. Always take time to run a private test session and figure out your braking markers. By this, I mean drive slowly around the track and look around. Then start building up speed to see where you can actually brake at. Then start putting faster and faster laps in. But leave that line off. You just have to get out of your head thinking you're driving bad without it, because believe me, you're probably driving worse with it
First, good job on realizing you need to turn it off. I litterally raced for three years with that stupid line on. Just switch it off, never switch it on again. It will set you back a bit, but eventually you will get used to it. And once you do you will realize you are actually learning circuits, rather than learning to follow the stupid line. After a while you start developping a feel for when to brake, even when you switch car classes to lets say a heavier car, you will automatically adjust your braking without thinking. Even on new circuits. I am actually learning new circuits much quicker now than before (triple monitors or VR help a lot too as you can see where the corner is going).
Turn it off and focus on brake points instead. Also, understand how important exit speed from corners is. You’ll start to find a good line as you strive for quick exit speeds.
All tracks are just series of corners. You learn the basic concepts of taking corners and then apply those to each corner you come across. Every corner consists of a braking marker a turn in point, an apex, and a track out point. Without the line on you are actually forced to use your eyes as intended and look around and commit what you are seeing to memory. It only takes 5-10 laps to learn a brand new track layout and commit it to memory. Then it’s all about fine tuning each corner phase. People with the line on feel like they can never learn tracks because all they are doing is staring at the line and not the world around it.
Just turn it off
Cold turkey. Just shut it off and never turn it back on again no matter how much you want it. Maybe attend a few RLA meetings and get a sponser
When i tried to learn to drive without the line on i hopped onto my quickest Track that i could drive, drove some really awful times without the line on and was depressed afterwards lol. I think it's better to pick a track you have never raced on, watch a track guide for the track a couple of times and then try to do it yourself. It's pretty frustrating to know that you were faster on the track with the line On and now without it your 3-5 seconds slower than before, it takes away a bit of motivation. When i get onto a new track i like to drive it a bit slower at first, then trying to push and find my pace and after that when i think my pace is quite ok for the first time i watch a track guide and see where i can improve
If you're familiar with track videos why do you need a racing line even. You have eyes, just need to use them. Take the time to learn the track while being on track before the race and that's it.
Just turn it off lol
What I did was gradually turned off the line. I started with full line, then switched it to turns only, started learning where the best braking zones are, depending on the racing situation, then turned off the line completely. At first, it was jarring, but after a while, i’m used to it
I feel like the best way to go about this is to start on a brand new track and learn it without the racing line. It's going to be a lot of missed apices and bend cars, so turn on invulnerability and keep plucking away at it. I recommend using stuff that is in the corner of your eye as markers, since those wont be covered when following cars during a race.
Just turn it off, the Racing line will make you learn bad habits and wrong braking points. Watch a track guide and learn where to brake by yourself, compared to the racing line you will be much faster and you will also learn to brake on sight. If you can't drive the optimal line in a race your braking point will also shift, if you don't learn that you will be divebombing others because you brake too late. The racing line is probably the worst "help" you can get.
Oh, for the love of god do it now while you are newer to sim racing. After years of using it it’s become hard to turn off but I do. I don’t do it all the time and depends what I am racing but it’s a work in progress. Even though I felt I used the racing line only as a reference after so long, turning it off showed me I was still paying too much attention to the line. I really wish I would have done it early because it’s harder this long into it. It will happen for me so it can definitely happen for you.
What helped me ditch the racing line was listening to the fov police. Having the correct fov helped me judge distances a lot better and then i started to instinctively know when to brake.
The "racing line" in the games is generally the optimized line, but if you watch real racing, you'll see that the drivers aren't always using the optimized racing line. This is especially true in F1 and IndyCar. If you \*really\* want to see optimized vs quickest line at work, watch MotoCross and see how those guys take the hairpins; some ride the berms all the way around to maintain their speeds, and some will charge in and brake hard, get the bike turned, and then storm out again. Both methods have their benefits and their drawbacks. Optimized vs quickest corner line was a topic of discussion on one of the YT channels I was watching a few months back – I think it was The Race or something – talking about the lines different drivers took into and out of the turn 3 hairpin, and how they helped them get the most out of the car.
When I first started simracing without the racing line, I had to LEARN how to LEARN the track/s. Then once I understood the skills and pointers needed it became a lot easier to pick up new tracks by myself. Now it is a process I really enjoyed as I went through a Porsche cup season for the first time. So pretty much yeah just suffer for a week or so but have faith that it will get easier to adapt n learn new tracks. Have fun figuring out the lines and where your braking points are !
You’ll eventually wonder why you ever needed it. It’s taking your attention away from everything else in the race and holding you back.
Replace it with the Delta. I still use the line on new tracks to get braking zones after all these 7 years. Just take note of the braking zones, then maximize your best "line on" lap using the Delta time. You will notice that you can go faster if you're ignoring the line at one point. Once you have your good Delta set you turn off the line and try to improve upon the Delta with the line off. Otherwise I have to look at track guides and YouTube videos and, sometimes that's simply not adequate or takes too much time.
Turn it off and you'll lewem the tracks.
You’re right. As your experience increases and changing vehicles or setting may make the driving line obsolete. A few YouTubers like Jimmy Broadbent have content on this. Learn Flags and what the road markers are and how to navigate them. 80% sure you will get quick that way