What is Hotlaps?
There are many telemetry tools out there for sim racers that help sim racers understand their setups better.
Many of us use these tools to dial in the perfect setup for our next race. However, there is a blind spot. The challenge is that these tools are very good at helping us understand our car setup but not quite as good at helping us understand our driving and our technique.
The other major challenge we have is that our own data alone is not always very helpful for us to understand where we can improve. It is difficult at best to isolate where we have opportunities to improve our pace. Which sectors are we losing time in? Which corners are our best opportunities?
Having access to reference data opens up a whole new world to us. Now we can assess our laps against another driver. Now, that on its own is not exactly revolutionary. There are tools that can do this. We can indeed assess our data to elite drivers right now.
What is quite ground-breaking is the ability to access reference data from drivers at our pace all the way to the very elite sim racers. Depending on where we are in our sim racing journey we may want to improve incrementally. A few tenths here and there or we may be looking for the insights that can help us unlock Esports pace.
To overcome this unique challenge that exists in sim racing we developed our own telemetry tool. Enter hotlaps.io - Whatever your unique goals are, Just a few tenths or elite pace, hotlaps.io is the tool for you.
Getting Started
The setup process is simple and can be done in a few clicks. Head to hotlaps.io and register for an account with your preferred email address.
Install the client
Once you have signed up and logged into hotlaps.io, the next step is to install the client on your PC. To do this you simply click the help icon or navigate to this url and download the client.
Once downloaded, you install the app and login to your hotlaps account.
Now you are ready to start recording your laps! Currently, if you are doing your certification on ACC then the app is limited to hotlap mode. If you are on the iRacing service it supports all session modes.
Dashboard Walkthrough
Once you log in, you will be greeted with the main page. Then, select a recent lap or a circuit you would like to work on.
For a lap you would click any of the laps you have recently recorded, to find a circuit, you would click the circuits tab.
Finding laps
Once you have selected the circuit you would like to work on, you will see a leaderboard with all the laps recorded for that circuit. Simply click on a lap that you would like to use as your reference and select your fastest lap from the sidebar and the data from both laps will be overlaid for you to reference.
Reviewing Laps
Now that you have the 2 laps selected, you can drill down into the sectors as a quick reference to where you are either faster or slower than the reference lap.
You will now be able to analyse racing line, speed, time slip, throttle, braking and steering to find the exact areas for improvement.
There you have it. You are now ready to start analysing your data like a seasoned pro!