I know the title seems silly but hear me out :-)

I do most of my racing on BL3-XRG combo. My lapcount on it is upwards of 45k so one might say I know it pretty well.

What I'm experiencing is streaks of better racing - doing PB's, great splits/sectors (splits consistently into 36.1x and laps into 1.09.1x) and overall the car handles like a dream. Then something changes and it's gone. I'm still doing OK laps (splits in 36.3x and laps in 1.9.4x) and car seems bit laggy. Basically I'm all of a sudden 0.2-0.3s slower. Same car, same driver, same setup, same pc, same mouse.

I tried to figure out the reason but unsuccessfully for years. Tried to restart game, limit framerate, not limit framerate, change steering settings, play in full screen, cycle full screen and windowed back and forth, some particular setup setting, change between settings back and forth, driver settings and nothing worked. Until recently.

I think I found the cause.

When I'm switching between setups - I'm slower.
When I switch cars XRG -> XFG -> XRG and then switch from default hardtrack setup to my setup - I'm faster!

It seems to me like if something is not properly cleared if you flip between setups but it's gone if you swap cars.

Can you, at least for the sake of my sanity, give it a look? :-)

If that's of any importance I'm using mouse axis as steering input in wheel controller interface.

Quote from JoRuss :

Tried to restart game...

Just to clarify, when you say you tried to restart game, you mean you closed LFS and reopen it? And yet the issue still persists afterwards where you are slow?

But if you do the car swap as you mentioned it goes back to normal?

Quote from Silverracer :

Just to clarify, when you say you tried to restart game, you mean you closed LFS and reopen it? And yet the issue still persists afterwards where you are slow?

But if you do the car swap as you mentioned it goes back to normal?

Yes. And I don't think it's "normal" I'd say it's abnormal. It does not persist after restart. I was getting crazy over this for years thinking it must be me since no two laps are the same but the difference is so distinct.

I do occasionally swap cars to send xfg setup to someone and then back to xrg (this is when it's "enabled") and more often sending "reasonable" (not the one I'm using myself) xrg setup to new players (this would be the moment when it's gone) but never noticed the correlation until recently.

Just now. I was doing 1.9.2-1.9.5's an hour ago.
Now, quick car swap, straight away 1.9.04, 1.8.97 in 2 consecutive laps.
Next race 1.8.96, 1.9.25, 1.9.22 (just because I ran out of fuel good 10m before finish line and left tyres were well into red (lap 5) :-) )

Also why I had "streaks" of good racing for weeks if it does not persist across game restarts? Well, there's easy explanation to that as well. My Lfs is running 24/7 for weeks making sure one of our servers stays visible on servers list.

Edit: Replay attached. Action starts after 5 minutes.
First 4 laps after connecting to server, next 4 laps after changing setups between xrg's, last 4 laps after switching between xfg and xrg.
Last 3 laps:
1.08.93 (pb on server)
1.08.96
1.09.05 (new average best over 3 laps on server 1.08.98)

Quote from THE WIZARD DK :

on some servers. i get a feel of my car being "heavy". if i go to forexample MRc blw1 in a gti. i drive my times consistently.
if i go to AA right after same combo. im slower and my car feels more heavy than it did just 2 min ago on the other server ,where i didnt get that feel at all. im not sure how thats possible, but thinking it could be thirdparty programs in the background or something? no matter what. its highly weird, mostly because its ONLY on SOME servers. not all.
that has me puzzled for almost a decade now. well i noticed after patch 35X

Cheers for your input. I feel bit less crazy now. :-)