What Delta Actually Does
Delta analyses your laps in your chosen simulator and shows you, in precise detail, where and why you are losing time.
It pairs you with a professionally set reference lap – using the same car and setup – so instead of guessing at your mistakes, you can see them directly against a driver who has already found the fastest way around the circuit.
Delta supports iRacing, Assetto Corsa Competizione, Le Mans Ultimate, Automobilista 2, Assetto Corsa Evo, Assetto Corsa and Gran Turismo 7. Whichever simulator you race on, the core process is the same.
Before You Start: Getting Delta Set Up
Download Delta from the Coach Dave Academy website at coachdaveacademy.com and run the installer. During installation, your virus scanner may flag the app – this is a false positive. Add Delta to your scanner’s whitelist before proceeding, otherwise it may interfere with how the app reads simulator data.
Once installed, connect your Coach Dave Academy account and your Discord account through the app’s settings. These connections unlock your content, including the reference laps and setups tied to your subscription. Then you should be ready to drive with Delta.
If you run into any issues during setup, the full installation documentation is available at coachdaveacademy.com/documentation. The Coach Dave Academy Discord is also the fastest place to get help from the community if something is not behaving as expected.
Step 1: Choose Your Car and Track Combination
Open Delta, select your chosen sim, and select the track and car you want to work on. Once you have made your selection, the app automatically loads a setup built by some of the fastest drivers in the world. From the garage, you can load this setup and then head out on track – it is the same setup used for the reference lap, which means the data comparison will be accurate.
Why the Setup Matters More Than You Think
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Most drivers skip straight to driving and ignore the setup Delta provides. This is one of the most common mistakes new Delta users make. The reference lap was set using that specific setup. If you are driving a different setup, you are comparing your inputs on a differently balanced car, which makes the data less meaningful and harder to act on.
Load the setup, check your fuel load, and get out on track knowing you are working from the same baseline as the reference driver. Fuel loads matter depending on the setup being a Q or a R setup.
From Dave: “When testing a GT3 car, you need to have a solid baseline setup that is neutral, because it’s more important to be consistent than it is to be fast. Consistent lap times allow you to experiment with a reference point – your lap times. And the best way to do that is with a neutral setup that is slightly forgiving. Only once you have consistent times, with a neutral setup, can you really start to experiment with driving and car changes.”
A stiffer front setup will make you turn in differently. A different brake bias will change your stability under braking and shift where your natural braking point wants to be. When you use the Delta setup alongside the reference lap, you are removing that variable entirely. Everything you see in the data reflects your driving, not a mismatch in car balance. That is the only way the comparison actually means something.
Step 2: Watch the Reference Lap Before You Drive
Before you turn a wheel, click the Hot Lap button. This plays a video of the reference lap so you can get a visual sense of the braking points, the racing line, and the general rhythm of the circuit. You are not trying to memorise everything – just build a rough picture of where the key moments are before your first session.
Watch the video on its own first, without the telemetry overlay active. It might be tempting to run both at the same time to get as much information as possible, but the opposite tends to happen – your attention splits between the visual and the data, and you end up absorbing neither properly.
The video gives you spatial awareness of the lap: where the car positions itself, where it brakes, and how it flows through a sequence of corners. The telemetry gives you the precise numbers behind those moments. They are both valuable, but they work better in sequence than simultaneously. Watch the lap, build your mental picture, then use the data to put specific numbers to what you saw.
Step 3: Set Your Initial Lap
Head out and run a few laps to get comfortable with the track and setup. Then set a timed lap you can use as your baseline. Do not worry about the gap to the reference time at this stage – the gap is the point. It tells you exactly how much time is available to find.
Understanding What You Are Looking At: A Quick Guide to the Data
Delta’s interface is built to be the most intuitive in sim racing. Every element on the screen has a clear purpose, and the layout guides you naturally to the information you need – no experience with telemetry software required. Here is what each part does:
The track map sits in the centre of the screen with a moving marker showing your car’s position at any point during the lap.
The overview bar runs beneath the map. Drag across it to scrub through your lap and watch your car move on the map in sync. This is how you navigate to specific corners and moments on the track. The lap is also broken up into sequences, which the Auto Insight automatically tracks for you.
The two data columns sit above the overview bar. One in blue represents your lap; one in yellow represents the reference lap. Each column displays throttle, brake, gear, speed, and steering.
Here is what to look for in each input when comparing a well-executed corner against a common mistake:
Throttle: A clean corner exit shows a smooth, progressive throttle trace that begins at the apex and builds steadily to full application by the exit. A common mistake looks like a hesitation mid-corner – a flat section in the trace where the throttle stalls before picking up again. This usually means the driver is waiting too long to commit to the exit and is losing time exactly where the car should be accelerating.
Brake: A well-executed braking zone shows a sharp initial application followed by a deliberate, controlled release as the car rotates into the corner. The key marker is a defined release point – you can see the brake trace slope off cleanly. A mistake typically looks like trailing brake pressure too far into the corner, keeping the red bar elevated well past the turn-in point. This scrubs speed and delays the moment you can get back on throttle.
Steering: A clean steering trace is smooth and deliberate – one clear input into the corner, held through the apex, then unwound progressively on exit. Erratic steering shows up as a jagged, back-and-forth line and usually indicates the driver is making corrections mid-corner rather than committing to a single input. That kind of correction costs time and also loads the tyres unevenly, which affects grip across the whole lap.
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Step 4: Focus on One Corner at a Time, Not the Whole Lap
This is where most drivers go wrong with telemetry. They look at the full overview, see they are losing time everywhere, and try to fix everything in one lap. The result is that nothing improves because there are too many variables changing at once.
The correct approach is to pick one corner, make one targeted change, and run enough laps to confirm whether it actually worked before moving on. A single corner corrected properly is worth more than five corners half-corrected.
Delta tells you what to fix and how to fix it – for example, ‘you are braking 30m earlier than the reference lap’. Your job is to go and fix it deliberately, one piece at a time.
Step 5: Compare Corner by Corner
Pick a corner and focus on two things: the racing line and the braking point.
Start by removing the throttle and brake colour overlays so you can isolate the line. The blue line is yours. The yellow dotted line is the reference.
Look for three things in each corner:
- When you brake compared to the reference driver
- How much speed you are carrying into the corner entry
- Where your car is positioned on exit
A common early finding is that you are braking earlier and harder than necessary. This scrubs speed before the corner and pushes the exit line wider than it needs to be. Even correcting one corner can be worth several tenths of a second.
Make a note of the specific changes required – brake later, turn in earlier, tighten the exit line – then go back out and focus only on that corner.
From Dave: Where you brake determines the entire nature of your corner. If you brake too late, you will go past the ideal turn-in point and compromise your exit. If you brake too early, you’ll arrive at the apex too slowly and tempt yourself into getting onto the power before you’ve rotated the car enough. Your braking point and technique are extremely important, perhaps the most important, part of the corner sequence. Everything after braking is a consequence of that input.
When you brake early, you arrive at the apex with too little speed, which means you have already shed the momentum you needed to carry through. The car sits too slow at the apex, the exit line opens up, and you end up trailing throttle further down the straight than you should be.
In GT3, a single corner where you are braking 20 metres earlier than necessary can cost you three or four tenths by the time you reach the next braking point – not from the braking zone itself, but from the compromised exit and the ground you lose on the straight that follows.
Step 6: Use the AI Auto Insights
Once you have made some initial corrections and are getting closer to the reference time, use the AI Auto Insights feature to identify where the remaining time is hiding. It is easy to jump straight here from the beginning, but it is better to build an understanding first, improve on your laptime naturally, then try and find the remaining important tenths here.
In the overview bar, look for sections where the blue and yellow lines are most separated – that gap represents your biggest remaining time loss. Click and drag over that section to isolate it.
As you move through the timeline, red buttons will light up. These are the Auto Insights. Click any one of them and the app explains specifically what went wrong at that moment – too much brake pressure, incorrect entry position, late throttle pickup – with each insight colour-coded to a location on the map so you know exactly where on the circuit it applies.
Think of the Auto Insights as a corner-by-corner debrief from a coach. They do not just tell you that you are slow; they tell you why and where the correction needs to happen.
One important thing to understand is that mistakes on track tend to compound. A poor entry to one corner affects your speed and position for the next, which affects the one after. The insights are ordered to reflect this. Address the earliest mistake in a sequence first, and you will often find the later ones begin to resolve themselves.
Step 7: Consistency Before Speed
Once you are within a second or two of the reference lap, the temptation is to keep pushing for the last few tenths. At this stage, consistency becomes more valuable than chasing a single fast lap.
Run five laps focusing purely on repeating the same inputs at the same points on the circuit. Compare those laps against each other in Delta rather than against the reference. If your lap times are varying by more than half a second between laps, there is uncontrolled variation in your driving that no amount of data analysis will fix until you address it. Consistent laps are the foundation that fast laps are built on.
From Dave: “When preparing for a race weekend, we have very clear plans when we are preparing for a stint or a qualifying simulation. They have very different approaches, not just in terms of setup, but also mental preparation. A testing lap is not a slow lap; it is a controlled lap. You are driving to a process: hit your marks, replicate your inputs, and confirm what the data is telling you. A qualifying lap is when you push the ceiling.”
The mistake most sim drivers make is treating every lap like a qualifying lap, which means they are never actually in a controlled state long enough to know whether a change they made actually worked. Building consistency in practice is not conservative driving. It is the discipline that makes fast driving repeatable. Until your lap times are stable, your data is telling you about variation, not about pace.
Step 8: Apply, Review, and Repeat
Go back on track and work through the corrections and insights identified. Then return to Delta, compare the new lap against your previous best, and check which insights have been resolved.
This is where the process becomes a structured game with a clear objective: remove as many red insights as possible. Each one you eliminate represents time gained. The closer you get to a clean screen, the closer your lap time will be to the reference.
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Using the Leaderboards to Push Further
Once you are confident in the core analysis workflow, Delta’s leaderboards give you access to laps set by other drivers on the same car and track combination. You can drag and drop any leaderboard lap directly into your comparison view to see where faster drivers are gaining on you.
This is useful for two reasons. First, it shows you whether the reference lap represents the ceiling of what is possible on that combination, or whether faster drivers exist to chase. Second, it gives you a competitive benchmark that evolves; as the leaderboard moves, so does your target.
To load a leaderboard lap for comparison, open the Leaderboard tab within Delta and find the driver you want to analyse. Click their entry and select ‘Open’ – the lap will appear as a second reference line alongside your own.
When comparing against a peer driver rather than the professional reference, pay attention to the sections where their speed trace separates from yours. Unlike the professional reference, which sets a ceiling, a peer lap gives you a more immediately achievable target and often reveals a specific sequence of corners where small, practical gains are available. For full documentation on the leaderboard feature, visit the Delta documentation hub.
What Progress Actually Looks Like
To give you a sense of how this compounds in practice: starting 4.6 seconds off a reference time, working through the corner-by-corner process and then applying the Auto Insights to the most problematic section of track, it is realistic to close that gap to under one second in a single focused session. The gains come in steps – a few tenths from correcting one corner, more tenths from cleaning up a technical sequence – until the lap as a whole begins to resemble the reference.
The final goal is not to perfectly replicate the reference lap. It is to understand your driving clearly enough that you know what to change and why. Delta gives you that understanding.
The Right Mindset for Using Delta
Delta turns every session into structured progress. Where other tools leave you guessing, Delta shows you exactly what to fix and where, so instead of lapping indefinitely and hoping something clicks, you go out with a defined problem to solve and come back faster.
The drivers who get the most from Delta treat each session as a structured test. They identify a target, use the data to understand whether they hit it, and carry that learning into the next session. Over time, that process compounds, and the improvements that once took weeks start arriving within sessions.
If you have questions about interpreting what you see in the app, the Coach Dave Academy Discord community is the right place to bring them.
Where to Go From Here
This guide covers the core workflow. Delta contains additional tools beyond what is covered here for drivers who want to go deeper into their data. The process, however, remains the same at every level: compare, identify, correct, repeat.
Now, just make sure Delta is open for every session you do, and let it work its magic for you. Then be sure to make use of all its features. From AI coaching, the reference laps, the telemetry data, the leaderboards and more.
Then to continue developing with Coach Dave Academy, check out the Never Lift coaching course for a structured approach to improving your overall pace in your own time.
