Case Study 2 — 1800 iRating
Lesson
6
of
7
Lesson by
Suellio Almeida
Lesson by
Suellio Almeida
Mark as Finished
Introduction to the Second Case Study
This case study examines a driver with a 1.8k iRating. We'll analyze each corner individually to identify opportunities for time improvement.
Right Foot Braking vs. Left Foot Braking
This driver appears to be using right foot braking. With right foot braking, instead of seeing a quick transition into the brakes, we observe the throttle going down first, followed by brake application after a delay. This delay represents the time it takes for the right foot to move from the throttle pedal. We see more of this gap here compared to an actual overlap that would occur with left foot braking.
While this does affect lap time, it doesn't cost that much—probably around half a tenth or one tenth if you're doing it super efficiently. You shouldn't worry too much about it.
Clutch Usage and Rev Matching Issues
There is a little bit of dragging on the clutch, but this is far away from the bite point, so it's probably not affecting anything significantly. However, the blip here is a little bit too small, which definitely hurts the balance.
The Problem with Insufficient Blipping
If you don't blip enough to make the rev match happen, you end up getting a little bit of locking. You can hear this in the downshift to fourth, which causes a little bit of a micro lock. The blip was not enough to create the rev match, and the engine essentially created a sudden deceleration of the rear tires, even micro-locking the rear tires. This completely decreases the amount of rear grip and causes the car to get a little bit of a snap.
This might have been a problem in other laps. In this specific lap, you're going to see this being a true problem at one of the hairpins.
First Corner Analysis: Too Safe, Not Enough Rotation
The entry seems a little bit too easy—too safe. It even looks very smooth and might look fast, but the car is not doing a lot here. There's no fighting happening. We want to always rotate the car so much that we get the excessive oversteer and then make a little correction, and there is no correction going on here.
The Importance of Corrections
If your steering is perfect and you're joining in with zero corrections, be suspicious. Probably the car is not rotating enough, or you're not trailing enough, or you're not carrying enough speed. One or two corrections show you that you're so close to the limit—that you're maybe on the limit. You need to force that rotation and negotiate with the car. If there's no negotiation happening, that means the car is saying "yeah sure, at this speed no problem, I'm gonna do the corner for you with no complaints," and there are no complaints here.
Exit Analysis
The power application and exit looked good. The throttle shape goes straight into keeping the rotation and then creeping up to 100 percent, which looks good. Just the entry felt a little bit too easy—not spicy enough. You can probably brake a little bit later, trail a little bit heavier, get a little bit more oversteer, make a correction or two, and then still have exactly the same exit while gaining time on entry.
Second Corner Analysis: Compression and Camber Changes
The turn-in point is good. We hit the compression—there's a compression here, a little dip, and then right after that we kind of hit a little bit of an off camber area. We will have more grip, then we'll have less grip here, and the car rotates then understeers. Now we're crossing that little crest—that's a lot of understeer. Then brakes are added.
The Fourth Gear Problem
Here's the problem: fourth gear makes sense initially, but if from previous laps you do this and feel the car doesn't want to turn, look at the trace. We're adding brakes—trailing, trailing, and then adding more. As soon as you do that, you're in fourth gear all this time. This is just locking the front right tire because we're trying to gain rotation with the brakes.
The Correct Solution: Use Third Gear and Engine Braking
Don't shift to third here—go to third gear earlier and keep trailing down. Never add brakes in the middle of the corner. You're gaining rotation by loading the outside tire more and more, which means adding more brakes will immediately lock the inside tire. The engine braking from third gear would create enough stress on the rear tires to make it point more, and that extra deceleration would add more load to the front tires without having to lock the front tires from the actual pedal brake.
Why Engine Braking Works Better
We want the engine brake because the engine braking creates all the weight transfer effects, but without actually adding deceleration stress on the front tire itself. That's why the car rotates so much more, even though you're not decelerating so much—you're not losing that much speed because of the engine braking. It's a huge benefit in the rotation. We want to use third gear here to allow the car to point in more.
Speed Carrying Analysis
By the time the driver got into third gear and got back on power, there was a little bit of understeer. Interestingly, you can see that he did get the understeer—the car didn't want to turn—but still he pointed very well and found himself at the apex. This means he's not carrying enough speed. If you were dealing with this problem and the car was going out but you still were able to bring the car to the apex, that means you can carry more speed—a little bit more, not so much more, but a little bit more.
Brake Application Mistakes
If you just didn't add the brakes here, you could do this whole phase with much higher minimum speed. If you don't reapply the brakes—if you just trail like this—this extra braking that you tried to use to rotate the car failed because you locked the tires. It also cost you speed. It really decelerated the car a lot without any benefits.
From here, you ended up having to—you can even go straight to 100 percent throttle here. At this point we're deeply under the limits because we decelerated too much.
Trail Braking Principles
Be careful with trailing too much. Trailing is only useful if you need the car to turn, but deeper into the corner you cannot add more brakes because the outside tire is super loaded and the inside tire is super unloaded and doesn't accept any more braking pressure after that.
That's why our trail braking most of the time will look like a decreasing curve. There are very rare exceptions depending on the situation, but adding brakes mid-corner is gonna happen in only one percent of the cases.
Third Corner Analysis: Carrying More Speed
The entry is a little bit too easy. There's no real sound of the tires. Where's the constant sound of the tires? We can carry more speed. Also, there's a little bit too much lifting here.
Lifting Too Much
The sound of the tires kind of disappears a little bit, and then you're still not struggling—there's no drama, there's no spice. The lifting here was too much. Lift just enough so that the car can point, and then get back on power aggressively to get that little slide and carry that slide all the way to the outside there.
The lift here was too big, the application was a little bit smooth, and then you didn't get any punch on the rotation. Because you lifted for so long, you allowed your speed to go down from 92 to 82. Maybe we can decelerate to only 87, or maybe not even let the speed go down—just lift and hold, or maybe just lift fast to at least get the weight to the front.
Optimal Lifting Technique
What I want here is that you lift the least amount possible, and do that in a way that generates rotation. If I say lift the least amount, I don't want you doing a slow, gradual lift, because this would cause a lot of understeer. I want you to do an aggressive lift—boom, boom—aggressive. Why? Because this aggressive lift shifts weight to the front tires, makes the car point, and the aggressive acceleration keeps that pointing going and activates that rear tire usage so that you can carry as much rotation as possible. Experiment with that.
Fourth Corner Analysis: Rev Matching Problem Returns
Here's the downshift without the blip that's causing this problem. The blip is not big enough. We need more throttle during the downshift to second gear—especially second gear, a little bit less for third, but more overall to really get the rev match. There's a big distance between third and second gear in the ratio.
Understanding the Rev Match Requirements
The third gear downshift was okay, but the second gear—even though you had a little bit more throttle—the second gear really throws the car in and still takes a while to kick in. There are two reasons the second gear almost killed you:
You didn't blip hard enough
You shifted too early to the previous gear
If you don't shift very early to the previous gear, then you have to blip even more. Or if you shift later, then you can blip a little bit less. It really depends on how much your RPM pointer—the needle—has to go up.
Timing the Downshift
We're in third gear about to shift to second. If the needle has to go all the way to the rev limiter, you're gonna get an insane amount of engine braking. If you wait a little bit and it goes up only halfway, then you get half the rev matching—which is the unpleasant effect that throws the car without much use.
Second gear was too early here. I don't even know if we need second gear here—maybe third works, but I'm not really sure. You have to upshift to third very fast already, so maybe second gear isn't necessary here.
Fifth Corner Analysis: Good Entry, Slow Corrections
Really like the trail braking—really like adding more, more, more, committing, pointing, power application, and then making adjustments. However, the adjustment here was a little bit too slow.
Steering Correction Technique
I don't like this steering approach. You want to do micro, passive countersteering motions—yoink, yoink—not one big countersteer like that. You don't want to be smooth on the steering while on power. You want to keep pointing. If you lose it, make quick corrections, always guiding the car and trying to stay on the slip angle that you want.
The Problem with Slow Corrections
If you do slow corrections, then you're gonna be under the limit and you can even slingshot the car to the other side. You're not creating the lateral forces. What do we want? We want this car to do an opening spiral. If it snaps out a little bit, you have to get back at it, back at it, back at it. But if you do a big, slow correction, then you offset the entire line and you can even go off after—not because you were too fast, but because your correction was too slow.
Be careful with slow corrections on the steering. If the car is losing it, just do a quick flick to correct, but then don't kill the oversteer—you still want the oversteer. You want to exit almost on a mini drift. If you correct too much, you end up going straight, pointing to the outside.
Final Corner Analysis: Blip Size and Exit Issues
Do we need third gear here? I like the driving overall, but I don't like the size of the blip—it's causing a little bit excessive rotation. The exit is way too easy—no corrections, nothing. There's a little oversteer correction right here, but look at the line. This car doesn't want to—it's not fighting you to use all the track on the outside.
Line Analysis
Technically, if you kept turning the steering without the correction, you would probably be able to place your car here instead of placing the car all the way there. The fact that your car is probably capable of doing this offset to the right means you didn't get back on power early enough, and that means you let the minimum speed go down a little bit too much.
You also got back on throttle very early, which means you're also over-slowing here. Try to just carry more speed in the first place. By the time you get back on throttle here, you're picking up a higher minimum speed, and then you can actually have to use all the track on the exit.
Summary and Conclusion
These are definitely more subtle things than the 610 iRating analysis, but this should help a lot of people. There's a lot of drivers within the 1.5 to 2k rating, which is the vast majority of drivers in this high rating range.
Introduction to the Second Case Study
This case study examines a driver with a 1.8k iRating. We'll analyze each corner individually to identify opportunities for time improvement.
Right Foot Braking vs. Left Foot Braking
This driver appears to be using right foot braking. With right foot braking, instead of seeing a quick transition into the brakes, we observe the throttle going down first, followed by brake application after a delay. This delay represents the time it takes for the right foot to move from the throttle pedal. We see more of this gap here compared to an actual overlap that would occur with left foot braking.
While this does affect lap time, it doesn't cost that much—probably around half a tenth or one tenth if you're doing it super efficiently. You shouldn't worry too much about it.
Clutch Usage and Rev Matching Issues
There is a little bit of dragging on the clutch, but this is far away from the bite point, so it's probably not affecting anything significantly. However, the blip here is a little bit too small, which definitely hurts the balance.
The Problem with Insufficient Blipping
If you don't blip enough to make the rev match happen, you end up getting a little bit of locking. You can hear this in the downshift to fourth, which causes a little bit of a micro lock. The blip was not enough to create the rev match, and the engine essentially created a sudden deceleration of the rear tires, even micro-locking the rear tires. This completely decreases the amount of rear grip and causes the car to get a little bit of a snap.
This might have been a problem in other laps. In this specific lap, you're going to see this being a true problem at one of the hairpins.
First Corner Analysis: Too Safe, Not Enough Rotation
The entry seems a little bit too easy—too safe. It even looks very smooth and might look fast, but the car is not doing a lot here. There's no fighting happening. We want to always rotate the car so much that we get the excessive oversteer and then make a little correction, and there is no correction going on here.
The Importance of Corrections
If your steering is perfect and you're joining in with zero corrections, be suspicious. Probably the car is not rotating enough, or you're not trailing enough, or you're not carrying enough speed. One or two corrections show you that you're so close to the limit—that you're maybe on the limit. You need to force that rotation and negotiate with the car. If there's no negotiation happening, that means the car is saying "yeah sure, at this speed no problem, I'm gonna do the corner for you with no complaints," and there are no complaints here.
Exit Analysis
The power application and exit looked good. The throttle shape goes straight into keeping the rotation and then creeping up to 100 percent, which looks good. Just the entry felt a little bit too easy—not spicy enough. You can probably brake a little bit later, trail a little bit heavier, get a little bit more oversteer, make a correction or two, and then still have exactly the same exit while gaining time on entry.
Second Corner Analysis: Compression and Camber Changes
The turn-in point is good. We hit the compression—there's a compression here, a little dip, and then right after that we kind of hit a little bit of an off camber area. We will have more grip, then we'll have less grip here, and the car rotates then understeers. Now we're crossing that little crest—that's a lot of understeer. Then brakes are added.
The Fourth Gear Problem
Here's the problem: fourth gear makes sense initially, but if from previous laps you do this and feel the car doesn't want to turn, look at the trace. We're adding brakes—trailing, trailing, and then adding more. As soon as you do that, you're in fourth gear all this time. This is just locking the front right tire because we're trying to gain rotation with the brakes.
The Correct Solution: Use Third Gear and Engine Braking
Don't shift to third here—go to third gear earlier and keep trailing down. Never add brakes in the middle of the corner. You're gaining rotation by loading the outside tire more and more, which means adding more brakes will immediately lock the inside tire. The engine braking from third gear would create enough stress on the rear tires to make it point more, and that extra deceleration would add more load to the front tires without having to lock the front tires from the actual pedal brake.
Why Engine Braking Works Better
We want the engine brake because the engine braking creates all the weight transfer effects, but without actually adding deceleration stress on the front tire itself. That's why the car rotates so much more, even though you're not decelerating so much—you're not losing that much speed because of the engine braking. It's a huge benefit in the rotation. We want to use third gear here to allow the car to point in more.
Speed Carrying Analysis
By the time the driver got into third gear and got back on power, there was a little bit of understeer. Interestingly, you can see that he did get the understeer—the car didn't want to turn—but still he pointed very well and found himself at the apex. This means he's not carrying enough speed. If you were dealing with this problem and the car was going out but you still were able to bring the car to the apex, that means you can carry more speed—a little bit more, not so much more, but a little bit more.
Brake Application Mistakes
If you just didn't add the brakes here, you could do this whole phase with much higher minimum speed. If you don't reapply the brakes—if you just trail like this—this extra braking that you tried to use to rotate the car failed because you locked the tires. It also cost you speed. It really decelerated the car a lot without any benefits.
From here, you ended up having to—you can even go straight to 100 percent throttle here. At this point we're deeply under the limits because we decelerated too much.
Trail Braking Principles
Be careful with trailing too much. Trailing is only useful if you need the car to turn, but deeper into the corner you cannot add more brakes because the outside tire is super loaded and the inside tire is super unloaded and doesn't accept any more braking pressure after that.
That's why our trail braking most of the time will look like a decreasing curve. There are very rare exceptions depending on the situation, but adding brakes mid-corner is gonna happen in only one percent of the cases.
Third Corner Analysis: Carrying More Speed
The entry is a little bit too easy. There's no real sound of the tires. Where's the constant sound of the tires? We can carry more speed. Also, there's a little bit too much lifting here.
Lifting Too Much
The sound of the tires kind of disappears a little bit, and then you're still not struggling—there's no drama, there's no spice. The lifting here was too much. Lift just enough so that the car can point, and then get back on power aggressively to get that little slide and carry that slide all the way to the outside there.
The lift here was too big, the application was a little bit smooth, and then you didn't get any punch on the rotation. Because you lifted for so long, you allowed your speed to go down from 92 to 82. Maybe we can decelerate to only 87, or maybe not even let the speed go down—just lift and hold, or maybe just lift fast to at least get the weight to the front.
Optimal Lifting Technique
What I want here is that you lift the least amount possible, and do that in a way that generates rotation. If I say lift the least amount, I don't want you doing a slow, gradual lift, because this would cause a lot of understeer. I want you to do an aggressive lift—boom, boom—aggressive. Why? Because this aggressive lift shifts weight to the front tires, makes the car point, and the aggressive acceleration keeps that pointing going and activates that rear tire usage so that you can carry as much rotation as possible. Experiment with that.
Fourth Corner Analysis: Rev Matching Problem Returns
Here's the downshift without the blip that's causing this problem. The blip is not big enough. We need more throttle during the downshift to second gear—especially second gear, a little bit less for third, but more overall to really get the rev match. There's a big distance between third and second gear in the ratio.
Understanding the Rev Match Requirements
The third gear downshift was okay, but the second gear—even though you had a little bit more throttle—the second gear really throws the car in and still takes a while to kick in. There are two reasons the second gear almost killed you:
You didn't blip hard enough
You shifted too early to the previous gear
If you don't shift very early to the previous gear, then you have to blip even more. Or if you shift later, then you can blip a little bit less. It really depends on how much your RPM pointer—the needle—has to go up.
Timing the Downshift
We're in third gear about to shift to second. If the needle has to go all the way to the rev limiter, you're gonna get an insane amount of engine braking. If you wait a little bit and it goes up only halfway, then you get half the rev matching—which is the unpleasant effect that throws the car without much use.
Second gear was too early here. I don't even know if we need second gear here—maybe third works, but I'm not really sure. You have to upshift to third very fast already, so maybe second gear isn't necessary here.
Fifth Corner Analysis: Good Entry, Slow Corrections
Really like the trail braking—really like adding more, more, more, committing, pointing, power application, and then making adjustments. However, the adjustment here was a little bit too slow.
Steering Correction Technique
I don't like this steering approach. You want to do micro, passive countersteering motions—yoink, yoink—not one big countersteer like that. You don't want to be smooth on the steering while on power. You want to keep pointing. If you lose it, make quick corrections, always guiding the car and trying to stay on the slip angle that you want.
The Problem with Slow Corrections
If you do slow corrections, then you're gonna be under the limit and you can even slingshot the car to the other side. You're not creating the lateral forces. What do we want? We want this car to do an opening spiral. If it snaps out a little bit, you have to get back at it, back at it, back at it. But if you do a big, slow correction, then you offset the entire line and you can even go off after—not because you were too fast, but because your correction was too slow.
Be careful with slow corrections on the steering. If the car is losing it, just do a quick flick to correct, but then don't kill the oversteer—you still want the oversteer. You want to exit almost on a mini drift. If you correct too much, you end up going straight, pointing to the outside.
Final Corner Analysis: Blip Size and Exit Issues
Do we need third gear here? I like the driving overall, but I don't like the size of the blip—it's causing a little bit excessive rotation. The exit is way too easy—no corrections, nothing. There's a little oversteer correction right here, but look at the line. This car doesn't want to—it's not fighting you to use all the track on the outside.
Line Analysis
Technically, if you kept turning the steering without the correction, you would probably be able to place your car here instead of placing the car all the way there. The fact that your car is probably capable of doing this offset to the right means you didn't get back on power early enough, and that means you let the minimum speed go down a little bit too much.
You also got back on throttle very early, which means you're also over-slowing here. Try to just carry more speed in the first place. By the time you get back on throttle here, you're picking up a higher minimum speed, and then you can actually have to use all the track on the exit.
Summary and Conclusion
These are definitely more subtle things than the 610 iRating analysis, but this should help a lot of people. There's a lot of drivers within the 1.5 to 2k rating, which is the vast majority of drivers in this high rating range.
Introduction to the Second Case Study
This case study examines a driver with a 1.8k iRating. We'll analyze each corner individually to identify opportunities for time improvement.
Right Foot Braking vs. Left Foot Braking
This driver appears to be using right foot braking. With right foot braking, instead of seeing a quick transition into the brakes, we observe the throttle going down first, followed by brake application after a delay. This delay represents the time it takes for the right foot to move from the throttle pedal. We see more of this gap here compared to an actual overlap that would occur with left foot braking.
While this does affect lap time, it doesn't cost that much—probably around half a tenth or one tenth if you're doing it super efficiently. You shouldn't worry too much about it.
Clutch Usage and Rev Matching Issues
There is a little bit of dragging on the clutch, but this is far away from the bite point, so it's probably not affecting anything significantly. However, the blip here is a little bit too small, which definitely hurts the balance.
The Problem with Insufficient Blipping
If you don't blip enough to make the rev match happen, you end up getting a little bit of locking. You can hear this in the downshift to fourth, which causes a little bit of a micro lock. The blip was not enough to create the rev match, and the engine essentially created a sudden deceleration of the rear tires, even micro-locking the rear tires. This completely decreases the amount of rear grip and causes the car to get a little bit of a snap.
This might have been a problem in other laps. In this specific lap, you're going to see this being a true problem at one of the hairpins.
First Corner Analysis: Too Safe, Not Enough Rotation
The entry seems a little bit too easy—too safe. It even looks very smooth and might look fast, but the car is not doing a lot here. There's no fighting happening. We want to always rotate the car so much that we get the excessive oversteer and then make a little correction, and there is no correction going on here.
The Importance of Corrections
If your steering is perfect and you're joining in with zero corrections, be suspicious. Probably the car is not rotating enough, or you're not trailing enough, or you're not carrying enough speed. One or two corrections show you that you're so close to the limit—that you're maybe on the limit. You need to force that rotation and negotiate with the car. If there's no negotiation happening, that means the car is saying "yeah sure, at this speed no problem, I'm gonna do the corner for you with no complaints," and there are no complaints here.
Exit Analysis
The power application and exit looked good. The throttle shape goes straight into keeping the rotation and then creeping up to 100 percent, which looks good. Just the entry felt a little bit too easy—not spicy enough. You can probably brake a little bit later, trail a little bit heavier, get a little bit more oversteer, make a correction or two, and then still have exactly the same exit while gaining time on entry.
Second Corner Analysis: Compression and Camber Changes
The turn-in point is good. We hit the compression—there's a compression here, a little dip, and then right after that we kind of hit a little bit of an off camber area. We will have more grip, then we'll have less grip here, and the car rotates then understeers. Now we're crossing that little crest—that's a lot of understeer. Then brakes are added.
The Fourth Gear Problem
Here's the problem: fourth gear makes sense initially, but if from previous laps you do this and feel the car doesn't want to turn, look at the trace. We're adding brakes—trailing, trailing, and then adding more. As soon as you do that, you're in fourth gear all this time. This is just locking the front right tire because we're trying to gain rotation with the brakes.
The Correct Solution: Use Third Gear and Engine Braking
Don't shift to third here—go to third gear earlier and keep trailing down. Never add brakes in the middle of the corner. You're gaining rotation by loading the outside tire more and more, which means adding more brakes will immediately lock the inside tire. The engine braking from third gear would create enough stress on the rear tires to make it point more, and that extra deceleration would add more load to the front tires without having to lock the front tires from the actual pedal brake.
Why Engine Braking Works Better
We want the engine brake because the engine braking creates all the weight transfer effects, but without actually adding deceleration stress on the front tire itself. That's why the car rotates so much more, even though you're not decelerating so much—you're not losing that much speed because of the engine braking. It's a huge benefit in the rotation. We want to use third gear here to allow the car to point in more.
Speed Carrying Analysis
By the time the driver got into third gear and got back on power, there was a little bit of understeer. Interestingly, you can see that he did get the understeer—the car didn't want to turn—but still he pointed very well and found himself at the apex. This means he's not carrying enough speed. If you were dealing with this problem and the car was going out but you still were able to bring the car to the apex, that means you can carry more speed—a little bit more, not so much more, but a little bit more.
Brake Application Mistakes
If you just didn't add the brakes here, you could do this whole phase with much higher minimum speed. If you don't reapply the brakes—if you just trail like this—this extra braking that you tried to use to rotate the car failed because you locked the tires. It also cost you speed. It really decelerated the car a lot without any benefits.
From here, you ended up having to—you can even go straight to 100 percent throttle here. At this point we're deeply under the limits because we decelerated too much.
Trail Braking Principles
Be careful with trailing too much. Trailing is only useful if you need the car to turn, but deeper into the corner you cannot add more brakes because the outside tire is super loaded and the inside tire is super unloaded and doesn't accept any more braking pressure after that.
That's why our trail braking most of the time will look like a decreasing curve. There are very rare exceptions depending on the situation, but adding brakes mid-corner is gonna happen in only one percent of the cases.
Third Corner Analysis: Carrying More Speed
The entry is a little bit too easy. There's no real sound of the tires. Where's the constant sound of the tires? We can carry more speed. Also, there's a little bit too much lifting here.
Lifting Too Much
The sound of the tires kind of disappears a little bit, and then you're still not struggling—there's no drama, there's no spice. The lifting here was too much. Lift just enough so that the car can point, and then get back on power aggressively to get that little slide and carry that slide all the way to the outside there.
The lift here was too big, the application was a little bit smooth, and then you didn't get any punch on the rotation. Because you lifted for so long, you allowed your speed to go down from 92 to 82. Maybe we can decelerate to only 87, or maybe not even let the speed go down—just lift and hold, or maybe just lift fast to at least get the weight to the front.
Optimal Lifting Technique
What I want here is that you lift the least amount possible, and do that in a way that generates rotation. If I say lift the least amount, I don't want you doing a slow, gradual lift, because this would cause a lot of understeer. I want you to do an aggressive lift—boom, boom—aggressive. Why? Because this aggressive lift shifts weight to the front tires, makes the car point, and the aggressive acceleration keeps that pointing going and activates that rear tire usage so that you can carry as much rotation as possible. Experiment with that.
Fourth Corner Analysis: Rev Matching Problem Returns
Here's the downshift without the blip that's causing this problem. The blip is not big enough. We need more throttle during the downshift to second gear—especially second gear, a little bit less for third, but more overall to really get the rev match. There's a big distance between third and second gear in the ratio.
Understanding the Rev Match Requirements
The third gear downshift was okay, but the second gear—even though you had a little bit more throttle—the second gear really throws the car in and still takes a while to kick in. There are two reasons the second gear almost killed you:
You didn't blip hard enough
You shifted too early to the previous gear
If you don't shift very early to the previous gear, then you have to blip even more. Or if you shift later, then you can blip a little bit less. It really depends on how much your RPM pointer—the needle—has to go up.
Timing the Downshift
We're in third gear about to shift to second. If the needle has to go all the way to the rev limiter, you're gonna get an insane amount of engine braking. If you wait a little bit and it goes up only halfway, then you get half the rev matching—which is the unpleasant effect that throws the car without much use.
Second gear was too early here. I don't even know if we need second gear here—maybe third works, but I'm not really sure. You have to upshift to third very fast already, so maybe second gear isn't necessary here.
Fifth Corner Analysis: Good Entry, Slow Corrections
Really like the trail braking—really like adding more, more, more, committing, pointing, power application, and then making adjustments. However, the adjustment here was a little bit too slow.
Steering Correction Technique
I don't like this steering approach. You want to do micro, passive countersteering motions—yoink, yoink—not one big countersteer like that. You don't want to be smooth on the steering while on power. You want to keep pointing. If you lose it, make quick corrections, always guiding the car and trying to stay on the slip angle that you want.
The Problem with Slow Corrections
If you do slow corrections, then you're gonna be under the limit and you can even slingshot the car to the other side. You're not creating the lateral forces. What do we want? We want this car to do an opening spiral. If it snaps out a little bit, you have to get back at it, back at it, back at it. But if you do a big, slow correction, then you offset the entire line and you can even go off after—not because you were too fast, but because your correction was too slow.
Be careful with slow corrections on the steering. If the car is losing it, just do a quick flick to correct, but then don't kill the oversteer—you still want the oversteer. You want to exit almost on a mini drift. If you correct too much, you end up going straight, pointing to the outside.
Final Corner Analysis: Blip Size and Exit Issues
Do we need third gear here? I like the driving overall, but I don't like the size of the blip—it's causing a little bit excessive rotation. The exit is way too easy—no corrections, nothing. There's a little oversteer correction right here, but look at the line. This car doesn't want to—it's not fighting you to use all the track on the outside.
Line Analysis
Technically, if you kept turning the steering without the correction, you would probably be able to place your car here instead of placing the car all the way there. The fact that your car is probably capable of doing this offset to the right means you didn't get back on power early enough, and that means you let the minimum speed go down a little bit too much.
You also got back on throttle very early, which means you're also over-slowing here. Try to just carry more speed in the first place. By the time you get back on throttle here, you're picking up a higher minimum speed, and then you can actually have to use all the track on the exit.
Summary and Conclusion
These are definitely more subtle things than the 610 iRating analysis, but this should help a lot of people. There's a lot of drivers within the 1.5 to 2k rating, which is the vast majority of drivers in this high rating range.
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