been racing for about a year now, doing local club races mostly, and theres this one section of the course we run pretty regularly that has a left-right-left chicane with gates that are slightly offset from each other. everyone else seems to flow through it and im just getting destroyed on that section every single time. my lap times are actually pretty competitive everywhere else but i lose like half a second through there easy.

ive watched my DVR back and it kinda looks like im going in too hot and then having to brake mid-section which throws off the whole line. but when i try to slow down earlier i feel like im giving up even more time before i even get there. its one of those things where i know what the problem is but fixing it is a different story. running a pretty standard 5 inch with like 2306 motors, rates are on the higher side but ive been flying them for a long time so its not a rates issue i dont think.

anyone dealt with this specific kind of thing? is it mostly just reps until it clicks or is there a mental cue that helped you?

half a second through a chicane is a lot and yeah it does sound like entry speed. the thing that helped me click it was stopping thinking about braking as losing time and instead thinking about it as setting up the exit. like if you carry too much speed in you end up with a bad angle on the second gate and then youre correcting through the third instead of already accelerating. the time you give up on the entry you more than get back on the exit if the line is clean.

also worth looking at where exactly youre braking in the DVR. if its mid-section thats the worst place, ideally youd be settled and already back on throttle by the second gate. took me probably 3 months of consistent flying to actually internalize that on a similar section, its not a quick fix.

what are your rates set at out of curiosity? i know you said its not a rates issue but sometimes having too much authority through a tight chicane makes you overcorrect and then youre just fighting the quad the whole way through. i dropped my pitch and roll rates slightly for a track that had a similar section and it actually helped me smooth out, felt weird at first but my consistency went up. just a thought, might not be relevant to your situation at all