How to find your pace deficit

When a session feels slow but you can't tell where it went wrong, PaceBoss can isolate which sector is bleeding time and whether it's a structural pattern or a one-off bad lap. That's the actionable starting point. Localising further — which corner within the sector — needs the in-game replay or a hotlap video. PaceBoss points you at the right sector first.

1. Open the session and find your row

From /sessions, click the import. The Results table shows the full classification. Find your row — if you've claimed yourself with the Claim button, your row is tinted with a primary border-left accent so you can scan to it instantly.

2. Read the row's preview popover

Hover the row (desktop) and the preview card pops up: best lap, gap to leader, consistency percentage, plus three vertical sector thermometers (S1, S2, S3). The thermometers fill against the cohort's best — full = matched the fastest sector total in the cohort, empty = far off.

A popover with two near-full bars and one half-empty bar tells you the deficit lives in one sector. That's where to look next — but remember PaceBoss is showing the sector total, not which corner inside it.

3. Open the driver page

Click the row to open /workspace/.../driver/.... The hero shows your finish position and consistency. The pace-trend chart underneath plots every lap with two dashed reference lines: your personal best and your theoretical best (the sum of your best sector splits, also dashed at the top).

The shaded area between the personal-best line and your trace is your lost time relative to your own best lap. A single deep dip = one bad lap. A persistent gap across most laps = a structural issue with your typical pace versus your peak.

4. Read the SectorsChip

Beside the pace-trend chart, the SectorsChip shows three full-height thermometers — your sector totals against the cohort. A sector that's at 95% but the others are at 99% is the sector to attack first. PaceBoss is honest about scope here: it knows S2 is slow, not which corner inside S2.

5. Cross-reference with the laps table

Below the v5 fold, the Deeper Analysis section has the lap-by-lap table. Sort by sector to see whether the slow sector was slow on every lap (likely a structural technique gap) or only on a couple (likely one-off mistakes — a bad apex, traffic, a moment). The pit indicator marks any lap >1.5× your median lap time so you can ignore in-out laps that distort the average.

6. Try the cohort toggle

The cohort toggle in the driver hero switches between class-relative and overall-relative pace. In a multi-class race, class is the fair comparison; overall surfaces how far off the overall pace you are even if you're winning your class.

7. Localise within the sector — outside PaceBoss

Once PaceBoss has pointed you at "S2 is consistently 0.4s off cohort," the next step is outside the tool. Two options:

• In-game replay: drive the slow sector with a faster ghost lap loaded. ACC's Ghost Mode lets you race against the session's fastest lap; the visual gap shows you where you're losing time.
• Hotlap video: pull up an alien's lap on YouTube or your league's hotlap channel and watch their braking points, lines, and exit positions through the same sector — see getting faster from hotlap videos for what to actually look for.

The combination — PaceBoss tells you which sector and how much; replay/video tells you what's happening within it — is the workflow. Neither tool alone is enough.

What you walk away with: a specific sector and a specific shape of issue ("S2 is consistently 0.4s off the class best across most laps, not just one lap, suggesting a structural problem rather than a one-off mistake"). That's actionable. Where in S2 it's happening is the next question, answered with replay or video.

Related reading

• What PaceBoss can and can't tell you — the explicit data scope.
• Pace bands explained — what the colours on the SectorsChip thermometers actually mean.
• Theoretical best lap, explained — the dashed reference line at the top of the pace-trend chart.
• Get faster from hotlap videos — the next step once you know which sector to attack.
• Why your pace plateaus — the diagnostic decision tree across the three plateau types.
• Trail braking explained — one common cause when an entry-heavy sector is slow.
• Throttle modulation — one common cause when an exit-heavy sector is slow.
• Glossary: cohort — class vs overall comparison, why the toggle matters.