David
There isn't 1 big thing that makes you better, it's all about incremental gains; there are so many different things that affect race results that being a tiny bit better than other people in each of them adds up into a big difference. For example when developing your car everyone should be developing the big 4, but if yours is more suited to the current track you could have a tenth's pace advantage, which means you could run a lap or so longer on fuel in the race whilst staying in drs without wasting boost, giving you an advantage on strategy too. Combine that with a good understanding of when to use boost, when to push, how to best deal with lapped traffic, when youre being held up, when you just need to sit in someone else's drs; it all adds up to winning the race by 5-10s rather than being trapped behind slower cars down in 6th.
Totally agree, it’s all the small things that add up. Like holding onto a drs train when you’re on a slow stint in order to get a head start on a faster stint.
Like using push level in order to get drs from traffic
Or having 2 cd’s and swapping them mid season
Or the odd extra spying gain in big 4,5
Or push level 1 on the drs strait, cooling tyres just a bit in order to push harder in corners and gaining that fraction of a second
Or picking exactly the right moment to use boost
All the small things add up, it’s a snowball effect