Assists are like sitting in a rocking chair in Real Racing 3 – feels nice and comfortable but you won’t gain ground.

I know how helpful and useful these assists feel but how are their effect on your lap times?

I did multiple races with different assist setups and without setups and compared the assists and to show you which ones are really bad for your lap times.

The Assists In Real Racing 3

There are three different assists in RR3 you can turn on, partly off and completely off.

Here’s what I found out:

Steering Assist

For me the steering assist is the worst of all the assists. When you set it on the “Low” setup you would think it might just micro-correct you in turns… mistake. Big time. It will also start correcting your lines on the straight and get you in much trouble when there are opponent cars near you that you would normally avoid.

A horrible assist that you should turn off completely. Also, you will steer yourself anyway so there’s no use to actually use it.

Traction Control

Traction control will prevent wheel spinning (in theory) but in Real Racing 3 I have the feeling it’s too aggressive, even on the low settings, and will slow you down on corners a lot more than necessary. There’s no automatic shifting so you only have little situations where your wheels would spin anyway so I’d recommend you to just turn this off as well.

Brake Assist

The highest setting here will make you break a lot too early and make you slower. Using it at the lower level is okay as it will just break before “it’s too late”. If you don’t know the tracks yet you can leave it with that setting and on some tracks, like Spa, it will not even interfere with the time I made without this assist. On other tracks, like Melbourne, where there are some left-right turn that you can easily pass in higher speed it will still brake and make you slower.

It’s ok to have it on lower level active unless you do city tracks.

More Tips For Faster Laps

Now with the assist turned off (or at least most of them), you can do some smaller tricks that will help you get faster lap times and overtake opponents because the assists won’t interrupt.

Shortcuts

Almost every track in Real Racing has shortcuts or at least some corners that you can cut for an advantage or taking over a rival racer.

They are extremely helpful and can save you a ton of upgrades in your career progress.

I also made a special guide on the big shortcuts for every lap in Real Racing 3 here:

Break Slower Than Rivals

Always watch out for rivals in turns and when their breaking light will flash – their AI is not that clever and they often break at the same point when your breaking assist would break… too soon.

You can come closer to them in every single corner why simply watching their breaking light and then break yourself – the small amount of time it takes from recognizing that they’re breaking until you actually break (less than one second) is enough to be faster and also not too much to risk getting thrown out of the corner.

Use Your Opponents

In regular racing this would be a no-no but we’re playing a game, right? Always stay on the inside of a turn or corner and you can take it pretty fast and hit into your opponents from the side.

This will help you a lot overtaking them, especially on tracks and races that are fairly short, and also make you a lot faster.

But keep in mind this will send your car into maintenance a lot quicker so only do it in races where you have problems winning.