been racing at my local club for about 8 months now, not totally new but definitely still mid pack. my straights are actually decent, i can hold a clean line and my throttle management has gotten a lot better. but every single race i just bleed time in the corners compared to the faster guys and i cant figure out what im doing differently when i watch the footage side by side.

it kind of looks like i brake earlier than them going into turns and then accelerate later coming out. ive tried just going in hotter but then i either overshoot or i chop the throttle too hard and the quad pitches weird. running a 5 inch on a 2306 2450kv setup, betaflight rates are pretty standard nothing crazy. not sure if this is a flying technique thing or if there's something i could tune that would actually help

the throttle chop causing the pitch is almost definitely a TPA issue or your D term is too low for how aggressive your inputs are. when you chop throttle hard the props go from high rpm to low really fast and if your filtering and D arent keeping up with that you get that weird bounce or pitch. worth logging a run and looking at your gyro traces around the corner exits.

but honestly from what you're describing it does sound like a technique thing too. the fast guys are usually already back on throttle before they're even pointed where they want to go ? they're trusting the quad to finish the turn while they're already thinking about the exit. that takes a while to just kind of feel natural, not really something you can logic your way into

same exact problem here for like my first year lol. what actually helped me was flying the same track layout over and over until i stopped thinking about the gates and just started thinking about momentum. sounds dumb but i was so focused on hitting the gate clean that i was basically optimizing for gate accuracy not lap time and those are not the same thing at all. also try dropping your rates slightly on yaw if you havent, sometimes over-rotating corners is coming from twitchy yaw response and you dont even notice it