[Pete Parisetti]

Yes, I know - it's me again... Bear with me please. Also, I understand from the discussion on my other post "Where does the time go?" that this is an issue that affects many sim racers.

Here we go again. I train on a new car, and on a new track - Dallara F3, Spa Francochamps. In a few days I set a personal best of 2:14.3, which I believe to be quite decent. By that I mean that I can see room to take off another second at a stretch, but I can't honestly believe anybody can lap below 2:12. Then I check, and I see that top people do 2:08, and perhaps even less. This - as I already explained - is absurd and totally incomprehensible to me.

So I decided to run a little test. In this video you see me, on the bottom, doing a 2:15.0 lap - not my best, but typical of what I can do on that track. On the top you see a guy doing 2:09. 

https://youtu.be/OvJXpfJQ0Gg

Please, tell me where the difference is. Not the difference of one or two seconds - that I can easily understand. The difference of SIX SECONDS, which are AN ETERNITY. Look carefully at the line, the gears, the braking points and tell me if, honestly, you think that the differences you see are worth six seconds.

To begin with, look at turn 1. At the apex, we have EXACTLY the same speed and the wheel is turned EXACTLY at the same angle. Check the position of the hands. Yet, he comes out faster and in a few hundred meters, when we hit the first curb, he already has kind of half a second. 
Then, check out at about 30 seconds.  I am doing 231, and he is doing 237. Is this the kind of difference that builds up to SIX SECONDS?

Then, again, look a few seconds later. My speed stabilises at 234 and won't go any faster, whilst he keeps accelerating and goes up to 242... That has nothing to do with my driving.

The rest is history. If you have the patience to check, you will see that the lines are very, very similar, and yet he seems to be driving another car altogether and he keeps moving away from me.

Am I wrong? Am I failing to see massive mistakes I am making which would justify such an enormous difference?

Thanks for bearing with me.