What I see Sim Racers do wrong: Practise

Almost every time I join a practise lobby or whatch a video or a live stream of someone doing practise for a race or event, most of the time I see people just doing lap after lap with no goal or methodology. That’s all fine but what do you accomplish with that is not much. So how do I approach a practise session.

So I start by driving a couple laps..but how many it depends on well I know the car or the track. If I know both relatively well it wont be many laps. Lap times don’t matter at this stage.

At this point I look at other drivers. Mainly to see what kind of lines they’re driving. Am I close or doing something completely wrong? that’s the answer I'm after.

Now with good idea of what I'm doing is wrong or not, time to push some lap times. Because seeing how fast the good drivers are, their braking points, their lines, etc. now I can compare myself to them and what works for me and my driving style. Only when I'm comfortable pushing the car and can replicate the same lines lap after lap, I can judge where the car is lacking. And only after this little process I make my first setup change.

If you start doing laps hoping to see the lap time on the board and say “the setup is bad” or “the car is not good”, 9 times out of 10 the problem is not the car.