TLDR: I want to understand how to make a fair comparison with e.g. GT3 laptimes against in-game times, given that the GT3 cars improve every year... I felt like replicating British GT in AMS2 so I set up the championship. The first race is at Donington, and I am able to get down to about 1:28:0, which is about right for the level of AI I chose. I then decided to take a look at the qualifying this year and they got times like 1:24!! This seems incomprehensible to me. However, then I took a look at the times for a few years previously, including e.g. James Baldwin's time in 2020 (he has a video where he aims to replicate the time on ACC) which was a 1:27.097 (in the 'AM' category) and i think the pole in the pro category that year was 1:26.5. Of course I'm not anywhere near as good as a proper racing driver, so if i'm a 1:28 guy then that's that. But I am curious - are the laptimes this year so much lower (~1.5 seconds) because of car improvements? (Of interest is that Morgan Tillbrook put the Mclaren on pole both in 2022 (1.25.460) and this year (1.24.311), so it's probably fair to expect it's a car thing. So this begs the question: Which 'year' would the GT3s (Gen 2) match with? What can I consider a fair comparison? And, more importantly, how could one work out a fair answer (would one need to read the regulations?) or is it all just a kind of mess and I shouldn't try too hard to think about matching/coming close to real life laptimes because there's no hope?
Probably this to be fair .. GT3s aren’t universal across different series / countries . They have different regs , different restrictions, different tyres …different support series laying different rubber … etc etc . GT3 Gen2 is based on last year or so of IMSA . So only reference that can be considered is around current IMSA tracks in recent years, but even then conditions and bop of the weekend aren’t exact.
Yea, different championships with different regs and restrictions. The reason why qualy times are faster now could be that the track became faster due to resurfacing. One could look it up if Donington got parts resurfaced. Apparently Donington got some resurfacing done in 2022 and completely resurfaced in 2023. Found a tweet from them. https://x.com/doningtonparkuk/status/1660996839678550020?s=46
Interesting point regarding the track surface - yes I suppose that would help (and perhaps could be mimicked by the most rubbered in configuration of the track). This does make me feel a bit that GT3 track records are a bit meaningless...
They are useful for ball park reference. Just now I watched todays IMSA qualifiers at Road America, track was in good condition for it with good track temps . I think they were in the 2:03s , and I just jumped in game and did TT on default set ups with a couple of the less popular cars and did 2:03s . of course I could go faster with a set up like others , and Sim racers will do sim racier things that you can’t really do irl , because you have to consider the race car and reliability, but then I would go slower if I had to carry more than one laps fuel , so it balances out a little, and track temps in TT are 20c hotter, so tough on tyre grip. But ultimately it’s in the ball park, and felt like you could push the same as them and replay also looked very close to what you see on TV .
