ZCT276 - Bonkstad - The Bonk's Lair

[Mark Nailwood]

Hi @Erik Barros, sorry for being so late in answering your question about my strategy. Well, first of all, the main difference between the competitions in the late 90s / early 00s and today is that in the past it was much easier for me to win a race.
Honestly, now being in my second season after my comeback, I think that I'm now pretty much at the same skill level as 2 decades ago, so it might be fun to retry a race of the past to compare my times. But, but for sure, the skill level of the community has improved significantly during my absence, and there are now some top pipsqueaks who will always be several seconds ahead of me.
My racing strategy is pretty much the same as in the past: When a new track is published, I'm just curious and drive "for fun", then during the next days I try to improve this time, with some replay handling, but not too serious and without paying really much attention on my time in certain sections - just to get a feeling for the complete track. Then, during the "serious" phase, usually starting 1-2 weeks before the end of the race (depending on my mood and also on the time I can afford), I divide the track into certain sections (defined by "checkpoints", as you have called it, like "tunnel start", "bridge jump", "curve end" - for example, 15 checkpoints in total on C276), write down my time on these sections in my best replay so far, and then try to improve these section times.
The only difference to my first racing career is that now I'm not using pencil and paper any more for this task, but I have an Excel table on a second monitor where I list the checkpoint times of my previous best lap and the current one, and the table compares the current section times with the previous ones.
It depends on the type of a track whether I concentrate more on perfecting each section before going to the next one or if I try to improve all sections several times. For example, if there is a difficult section in the early part of a track which takes a long time to get it right (e.g. jumping through a loop), I invest more time in the beginning to achieve a replay where I am satisfied with my driving until after this point, and then spend the rest of the racing days to improve only the remaining sections. If there is a difficult part at the end of a track, I try to get a perfect as possible replay until this part and then only concentrate on the difficult section at the end during the last days.

[Duplode]

With a fair bit of subtle variation across the lines, this could make for an interesting race analysis. BTW, my best trick nomination is @Zapper 's third cork!

[Cas]

Mark's description is more or less what I do, except I surely don't dedicate it enough time, ha, ha. I race for maybe two hours per month.

[Daniel3D]

Mark's description describes my strategy as well except for the minor issue that u rarely reach the "serious phase" .

And the few times that is did sectorize and tried to maximize my time per sector (even using hardcore RH tricks learned from the master himself) i didn't get a better time than in the fun phase..

So I'll stick to the fun phase because it keeps it fun for me.