How to set
a fast lap

The myth of doing laps

The common belief is that you improve by accumulating laps. It's true at first and stops being true quickly. Past a certain point, lapping with no plan only cements the mistakes you already have: you repeat the same bad braking two hundred times and turn it into a habit.

Real training has three elements: a hypothesis ("I think I'm braking early into turn 4"), a change ("brake five metres later") and a measurement ("does sector 2 come down or not"). Without all three, you're driving, not training.

Where the time actually is

Not all corners are worth the same. Time is distributed like this, most important first:

1. Corners onto a long straight. A tenth gained on exit multiplies down the whole straight. By far the biggest area to work on.
2. Fast corners. You spend a lot of time in them and a small lift costs a lot.
3. Linked corners. A corner that sets up the next one: get the first wrong and you lose in two.
4. Isolated heavy braking zones. Less than you'd think: gaining ten metres is hundredths.
5. Slow hairpins followed by another corner. The least of all. And where most people take the most risk.

Practical conclusion: if you have an hour, spend all of it on the two or three corners that lead onto straights. That's where your second is.

Using sectors as your compass

Full-lap time is too coarse: it mixes twenty things together. Sector times don't.

Concrete method:

• Note your best sector 1, best sector 2 and best sector 3 of the session, even from different laps. Added together, that's your "theoretical lap".
• The gap between your best real lap and that theoretical lap tells you how much you're losing by not stringing it together. If it's big, your problem is consistency, not speed.
• If one sector never improves, that's your problem corner. And it's almost always two or three corners, not the whole track.

And a rule that saves a lot of frustration: compare against yourself. Comparing against the outright track record tells you nothing about what to change.

One thing at a time

The mistake that stalls most people is changing three things at once: braking point, line and setup. Then the time goes up or down and there's no way to know why.

The discipline that works:

1. Pick one corner.
2. Pick one change: brake later, or turn in wider, or open the throttle earlier. One.
3. Give it five laps. Fewer won't do: the first two are always worse simply because it's new.
4. Look at the sector. Does it improve? Keep it. Does it get worse? Undo it.

It sounds slow. In an hour you run twelve experiments, and two or three of those give you real time. That's more than almost anyone achieves lapping aimlessly for a whole afternoon.

Consistency before speed

One good lap in twenty is worth nothing in a race. And it's misleading: it makes you believe that's your pace when your real pace is a second worse.

A far more useful target than a fast lap: five consecutive laps within three tenths of each other. When you can do that, two things happen on their own:

• The car feels predictable, so you start committing where you used to hesitate.
• In races you stop losing time recovering from your own mistakes.

And the fast lap turns up eventually, because consistency is what lets you push without fear.

A well-built session

Ninety minutes, split like this:

• 10 min — warm up. Calm laps, no clock. Tyres, brakes and head.
• 15 min — baseline. Comfortable pace, noting sector times. That's your starting point for the day.
• 40 min — work. One corner, one change, five laps. Repeat. This is the real training.
• 15 min — long run. Race pace with the fuel you'd carry. Check whether what you've learned holds with a heavy car.
• 10 min — fast lap. Now go for the clock, with fresh tyres.

If you leave without having lowered your time but knowing which corner is missing, it was a good session.

If you're stuck

There comes a point where the time stops falling no matter how much you drive. Things that break that, in order of effectiveness:

• Switch cars for an afternoon. A slower car forces you to carry corner speed; a faster one forces you to brake better. You come back to yours with new habits.
• Drive behind someone quicker. Watching another driver's line and braking points teaches you in ten laps what a hundred alone won't.
• Turn the aids up for a while. With more ABS or traction control you can focus on the line without fighting the car. Then turn them back down.
• Rest. Tired, you drive worse and learn worse. Three one-hour sessions beat one four-hour session.

If the ceiling is your entry technique, the next step is trail braking. If it's the track itself, use the section-by-section method.

Frequently asked