this has been bugging me for a while and i cant figure out if its a me problem or a quad problem. consistently in time trial runs im competitive for the first 3 laps and then by lap 4 or 5 im dropping like half a second per lap. happened at the last two events and also in practice at home.

running a 5 inch with 2306 motors on 6s, currently on a betaflight tune i mostly borrowed from a guy at my local club with some minor adjustments. battery is a 1300mah 6s, not the biggest pack but shouldnt be sagging that bad by lap 4 right? i log my flights and the voltage drop looks normal to me but im honestly not great at reading blackbox so maybe i am missing something.

could be my throttle management but i genuinely feel like im flying the same in the later laps. its frustrating because im not crashing, im just slow

pull the blackbox logs and look at your throttle trace against your motor outputs across the run. if your throttle is consistent but your motor outputs are climbing to compensate for voltage sag thats your answer right there. 1300 on 6s with 2306s at race pace is gonna start showing sag around that 3-4 lap mark depending on your C rating and how hard youre pushing. you might just need a bigger pack or a higher C cell.

also worth checking your filtering - if your ESC temps are climbing mid run sometimes betaflight does funky things when the board gets warm, seen it cause weird mid flight feel changes even if the tune looks fine on paper. not saying thats it but its worth checking the temp logs if you have a sensor

honestly id bet its fatigue before i bet its the quad. not physical fatigue but like mental concentration dropping off. your brain thinks youre flying the same but your reaction window on the tighter sections starts lagging like 30-50ms and that compounds over a full lap. try recording your fpv feed and comparing your throttle inputs on lap 2 vs lap 5 on the same corner. i did this last season and was genuinely surprised how differently i was flying the same section by the end of a run even when it felt identical from the cockpit