Board Thread:Game Discussion/@comment-50.24.157.47-20150624195359/@comment-144.24.20.233-20150625090707

It's not clear from your comments - but are you talking about career or an event?

Retiring in career mode has never (well not in the last 6 months) reduced the opponent level. It did (or used to) work in an even so long as you also got the "goal failed" message.

The reason for this is that a retire  (DNF) in career mode gives no extra information to the TSM algorithm. A "goal fail" at least tells it that the current event level is too high - so it drops the fastest bot (or did).

Personally I find stop and block (find a choke point and hit the brakes and let them push you) to be much more useful for slowing down the bots - because they're ridiculously good at getting going again. A single block can stop them for 10+ seconds (30+ if you find a really good point), spinning them out usually only seems to buy you <5 seconds (although if the opportunity presents I do try it).

The other good thing about blocking is that it lets slower cars catch up, and if you manage the block well you can get a much slower car to take the lead (or a set of much slower cars). Given that the bots are normally atrocious at overtaking this can be a major win in terms of reducing the time of the second car.