Solved

Do cars actually get held up?

I've been trying to decide whether being stuck behind a slower car actually holds your car up. Last night i was watching the race, my guy on fresh soft tyres was 0.3 behind another car on older mediums. My guy was lapping at 1:30.5 and the other guy at 1:30.45 - so really close. I reasoned that fuel load was probably the reason why the times were so similar, especially because the other driver then went into the pits and released my car into fresh air, but my guy's times didn't change more than the normal variation.

Has anyone else actually found that you can get stuck behind a slower car, so that it impacts your lap time?

Yes you can get stuck behind cars and have your lap time affected by staying held up. In general it's hard to overtake without boost and/or DRS. It is also important to note that on certain tracks or sections of tracks (Monaco especially) or conditions (like rain), your car may not be able to follow closely and may even hover around near a second or even more than a second behind the car in front.

You can even get stuck behind backmarkers, especially in slower/hard to overtake sections (Monaco is notorious for this).

Yep I can asure you that cars can get stuck behind the other cars. One time I got stuck behind a slower car on Inter (bcuz it was raining) and i was on wet BUT the singapore track is so hard to overtake that my rival come up behind and me and his driver kept switching places but couldn't overtake that slower car. Maybe I actually got held up or Jack could have added dirty air in secret so that you have to use boost to get through the other cars.LOL idk XD.




Edit:The water on track was also 3.0mm

thanks for the responses. I've not been able to notice a difference in lap times in nearly 100 races since i started playing