How to do a productive self-debrief with AiM data

After a year of collecting data with my AiM Solo 2, I have finally developed a self-debrief process that actually helps me improve session over session. Sharing it here because I spent a long time just staring at squiggly lines without knowing what to look for. Step 1: Pick your best lap and your average lap. Do not compare your best to a pro reference — compare your best to your typical. The delta between those two is the easiest time to find. Step 2: Look at the speed trace first. Find the three corners where you lose the most time versus your best lap. Ignore everything else for now. Step 3: For each of those corners, overlay the brake trace and throttle trace. Usually the issue is one of three things: braking too early, not getting back to throttle soon enough, or a hesitation mid-corner where you are neither braking nor accelerating. Step 4: Check your minimum speed. At Mid-Ohio, I found that my slow laps were not slower because of lower minimum speeds — they were slower because I was reaching minimum speed too early, then coasting before picking up the throttle. The corner-entry phase was costing me time, not the actual cornering. Step 5: Write down one specific thing to work on next session. Not three things, not five. One thing. What is your data review process? I feel like I am still missing some analysis techniques.

2 Replies

CChris Tanferno · May 6, 2026New

Great process. One thing I would add: look at your speed trace consistency across laps, not just your fastest vs. average. If your minimum corner speed varies by more than 3-4 mph from lap to lap at the same corner, that tells you the corner is not "solved" yet — your approach is inconsistent. For me at Mid-Ohio, Turn 4 (the keyhole) showed huge variation because I was not using a consistent brake marker. Once I picked a fixed reference point and committed to it, my consistency improved dramatically and my average lap time dropped even though my outright fastest lap was about the same.

CChris Tanferno · May 6, 2026New

The "one thing per session" discipline is the hardest but most important part. I used to look at data and make a list of five things to fix, then go out and be slower because I was thinking about all five simultaneously. Now I pick the single highest-value improvement — usually the corner where the time delta to my best lap is largest — and I focus exclusively on that. Everything else stays the same. Over a weekend of six sessions, that means I address six specific improvements with full attention rather than thirty improvements with divided attention. The compound effect is significant.