For what it is worth Erling, and anyone else, I was finding chunks of time by getting my braking and turn in points right for the slowest corners.
My PB in the 6 or so laps I did prior to on line practice last night was around 1:35.
On one practice lap last night lap I suddenly gained 0.8 secs through just one corner, and it did not even feel fast..just smooth. Tried the same line next lap and found the same gain. Applied the same brake,turn in, accelerate technique on a couple of other corners and shaved about 2 secs off my PB.
I also looked to carry as much pace through the corners as possible. So that the run from the S/F line was pretty much flat in 4th all the way to T7? at the bottom of the hill, with just a fractional lift ( to get the front end to bite and turn in ) just before those concrete tyres. I know that Jose was faster than me through that section and was gaining 0.2-0.3 secs towards the end of the race when my tyres were trashed.
This is where the setup comes into play, but I have always maintained ( even over in GPL) that the setup has to suit the driver. It is very difficult to change your driving habits to make a particular setup work at its optimum. What you can do is to tweak the setup parameters to make the car conform more readily to what you want it do. Some sim drivers want the car to be really grippy on the front so that they can brake late and get a sharp turn in, others prefer a very docile car that can be eased into a corner and powered out without any dramatic oversteer. The wrong driver/setup combination just does not work IMHO.
Last night both available cars were on the rev limit before they were half way down the main straight , and were both ( IMHO) very similar on top speed. So I opted for the car that felt better through Turns 1-8 as this is where I felt that the time was to be gained.
I think that comparing speeds down that straight is misguided, because if you lost a second on the straight but your car was better suited to the Esses etc you would more than recover that loss. In fact when I tried both cars on similar setups there was only about 0.2 secs between them, but it was just easier in the Falcon.
I know very little bout setups in GTL , but I am learning slowly and now have enough knowledge to be dangerous to wildlife. Before changing a setup I ask myself what is the biggest thing stopping me from going quicker.
It might be that the car is unstable under heavy braking? snap oversteer mid corner or just massive understeer coming out of corners preventing you getting on the gas. Or simply that the car becomes unpredictable through the corners.
It is all about confidence in how your car will respond to any input from you and your wheel/pedals. If everything works as you expect, you will have confidence and will be at the sharp end of the grid because you are not losing time fighting the car at each corner.
I am reluctant to post suggestions about what to do to correct handling problems within the GTL cars, as I am only just discovering them myself and there are others around here who know far more than I do.
Where I did learn a lot was when I downloaded one of ATi's on line setups for a car, and then compared how that behaved compared to how my attempt a setup worked. I switched back and forth between the cars and I then adjusted my setup ( one parameter at a time) to try and learn what bit made things different...................very illuminating