Now that Real Racing 3 is out, we are going to give you some tips to get the best times and have the most fun with Real Racing 3. All of that with an eye toward how you can minimize any real money investment in the game.

Real Racing is the most beautiful racer on any mobile platform, and it's free, so there is no reason not to try it. I've played Real Racing 3 for around 30 hours total now, let me give some tips on how to get the farthest possible in the shortest amount of time and without paying a thing.


Racing Tips

Manual brakes = faster times. The main tip I can give is one that I still haven't mastered completely myself, turn the braking assist to low or even better off. Of the three assists in the game it makes the most difference in your racing times/speed. When the computer does all of the braking for you, it does so very conservatively. If you can at least turn braking to low, it will greatly decrease your times. One thing to remember, you can change this in-race, at any time. Hit the pause button and you can then get to the settings in the lower left of the screen. (See more dirty tricks below)

Get inside, quickly! You start in last place in every single race. Seems unfair, but get used to it. You can usually jump up at least half way up the standings in the first couple turns with smart maneuvering. The key here is to not follow the car in front of you. If you do that you can only go as fast as they are going, and the car in front of them, etc. Pick your own path, preferably on the inside of the turn, and zoom past the other cars as they all line up and then slow down when the car in front of them does. It's best to not follow another car at any other time if at all possible, you get no advantage from drafting and will be more likely that you will need to slow down to avoid hitting the car you are following.

Build your stable of cars, smartly. You will need a single car that is one of the 3-4 for each circuit to race in that circuit. But you will need all of the cars in the circuit to complete it 100% as there will be races that require each car in the circuit. You should also note that most cars you purchase will be able to race in more than one circuit -- just check out the list on the main page to see the circuits you have access to.


To save R$, try to stick with a single car in a series until your money reserves have plenty of R$ in them. It's makes more sense to upgrade one car in a series and make it stronger rather than have multiple partially upgraded cars.

Once you get to the point you have more than one car in a series, try to keep one car without any upgrades. Another problem with the matching is that it seems to make the cars you race against with that when you are using a lower performance car much easier. Keeping a base level car gives you another option to try to get a trophy on a tough race.

You will find that once you have four or more cars total you will generally always have at least one car available to race. Even if the other ones are repairing, you should have one to race. It may not be the race you want to do, but every race you complete helps you gain in-app cash and progress.

Be Friendly, Overly So In Real Racing 3, when you race and beat the time of one of your Game Center of Facebook friends, you get a bonus in R$. And not just a little bit, can be a lot, just for having friends who are slower than you! So, it's best to add as many friends as you can to maximize the bonus opportunities. Check out Carter's post for more on this and Time Shifted Multiplayer tips.

De-Dub-It, please. Another thing that helped my times was to turn off the horrible dub step in the game. You can do this by going to the Options, Settings, and turning the music down to 0%.

Re-Re-RE-RACE. Race matching can feel wrong at times with some opponents being really much worse than you and others being way stronger. I've found that if you retry a race a few times the opponents will get easier overall. This only seems to work if you try the same race immediately though. It's like the game is rewarding you for getting back on the bicycle.


Race Event Tips

Let's take a look at each of the race types and some tips that help with each.

Cup is the most common type of race. In a cup there will be 16 or 22 cars in the race. For this race type, it's best to do everything you can to get around the cars as quickly as possible. I find that many of the cars in this race type will be slower than you, but the top 6-7 will be much faster. If you let them get way ahead, you don't have a chance. Try some of the dirty tricks below, if needed.

Cup races also award the most money when won. Good tip for grinding out extra cash is to find a cup you dominate at that will award a good amount of money and just keep hitting it.

Endurance could the the hardest race type in Real Racing 3. Not only are they usually the longest, but they can be a little boring with long stretches of racetrack where it's only your car in sight.

With this race type you start out with just 60 seconds and try to get as far as possible, in miles, to win a trophy. Pay attention to the leader board when you start the race to see how far you need to get. Each car you pass gives you 10 extra seconds, and each lap you do gives you a bonus that depends on how long the track is.

For this race type it's important to race a clean race. The usual suggestions apply. Drive a solid line, NEVER get behind another car as most of them are driving much slower than you and will suck 2-3 seconds or more from your time.

In Head to Head it's just you and one other car. You can tell early how well you are going to do. Most of the times I've tried this race I will either pass the other car before the first turn or the other car will run away with it.

Try turning brake assist to low for a while if you are close and need to pass the other car.

Elimination is one of the most fun of the Real Racing 3 events, in my opinion. You start with a grid of 8 cars and ever 20 seconds that car in last place is eliminated. So obviously your best bet is to get to the head of the pack as soon as possible. Dirty tricks greatly encouraged here.

Drag Race is the one race type that doesn't fit. It's very different, the controls are different, and it's just a bit boring, really.

To win at drag racing, you need to shift up your car, no steering, nothing else. Just shift up. And it's pretty easy. On the screen will be a tachometer showing the RPMs of your engine. You hit the launch button when the lights turn green, then hit the gear up button when the tachometer hits the red. Easy. You will rarely lose.

In Autocross race type you are trying to get the best time for a small segment of a race track. With this race it's all about the quickest time on this part of the track. Turn down or off brake assist and go for it!

Speed Record event you get one lap and your fastest speed at any one point is what you are going for.

If you have trouble winning one of these events, keep trying. One tip you can use is to turn off the brake assist a turn or two before the fastest part of the track. This is generally just before the longest straightaway. Remember that only your fastest MPH counts as your score. You can run backward the rest of the race if you wish, it won't matter.

Speed Snap you are trying to get the fastest speed at a particular point in the track. This will usually be a small segment of a course and your speed at the finish line is what counts. Turning off assists will greatly help you speed.


Manage your R$, Hoard your Gold

There are two types of currency in Real Racing 3. R$ or Racing Dollars are what you use to purchase cars, repairs, and upgrades. Gold is what you use to purchase speed-ups, and a couple of the high-end cars.

One of the keys to getting as far in Real Racing 3 as possible is to conserve your in app cash properly. This conservation includes the Gold that is rewarded when you upgrade and open new areas. Never spend the Gold for speed-ups. It's just not worth it.

Real world values are 10 Gold per US$1, R$50,000 per US$1 -- so is that speed-up for repair really worth $0.50? Nah, come back in 20 minutes.

The top upgrades for each car will generally require gold to buy them. These vary from a few to dozens of gold. There are also three cars that can only be bought with gold. The top one goes for 800 gold - that's about $80 worth of gold. Better start hoarding that gold.

Don't see color. Another cheap-ass technique is to ignore the resprays. They are expensive and they do nothing for you. Act like they are not there and leave your cars the default, random colors.

Upgrade as required, but only as required. To conserve your money and to do the best in the races of a circuit, it's best to only upgrade one car in each circuit. It allows you to upgrade a single car fully, which will let you do better in more races. You can upgrade other cars when you have extra cash, or when they are the first car you have in another circuit.

A little money can be saved by not repairing or postponing maintenance. Many races won't require that a car be at full strength to win.

Group it, do it overnight. Maintenance can also be delayed and done all at once to save the delay times. The price of a maintenance item is the same if it is 0% strength as if it is at 99%. A good plan is to save the maintenance until done playing for a while then kick it off for all of the cars that need it at once, then it can complete while not playing.

Car sales, 20-50% off! Real Racing 3 will frequently put cars on sale, so watch out for them and be ready. It's a good idea to keep a decent amount of R$ in your account so that you can take advantage of car sales when they come up. You will generally be given 25% of 50% off of a car when you open up a new race that requires that car. There will also be timed sales that you can take advantage of when you have enough R$ around. Great way to save on the cars you need to complete some races.


Dirty Tricks

There are a few things you can do that bend the rules a bit. But they can help you in a pinch to earn that extra R$ or two.

As mentioned above, you can turn on and off assists by hitting the pause button and going into the options in the race. This is helpful to plow through a couple turns faster than the other cars then turn it on to be a little more stable.

You can use the above along with a move I like to call slam and slide. The general idea is that you dive to the inside of a turn, passing a bunch of cars as they slow for the car in front of them. You then plow into a car right in the apex of a turn and slide as you turn into the curve. This is usually good for a few position jump, but you have to recover quickly or there cars will just pass you by. Here's the basic sequence:

1 - At the start of a race, turn brake assist to low or off (if you can handle it)
2 - Get you car to the inside of the first turn, cars will brake like crazy to line up for the turn, your car will sail right past them.
3 - Over-turn into the turn, slide, and side-swipe the car near the apex of the turn.
4 - Repeat on the next turn or two.
5 - Once your car as at or near the front, turn brake assist back to your preferred setting and continue to race.

Take a look at the video below for the slam and slide in action.

Note that this usually works well, but if the your car is vastly slower than the others, they will eventually overtake you.

Cutting corners is the act of driving across a corner to flatten out a curve and allows you to go through a corner faster then you normally would. Once you know the tracks, you will know the few corners you can cut without slowing down much at all.

Leader of the pack Once you are in front of the race, stay there by watching the cars coming up from behind you and actively cutting them off. If you are in a straightaway, feel free let them get beside you then push them into the grass. They will brake like crazy to recover. A good bet is to just ride the line and most cars will follow behind you. Rarely will a car try to pass as long as you stay in the line.

Grass powered brakes Let the grass be your brakes. One of the dirty tricks you can do when you are getting used to having the braking assist on low or off is to use the grass on the inside of turns as your brakes. This works great in addition to the slam and slide move above.


One Big Tip

This came up a lot in the above, once again can't stress how important it is to race with at least braking assist on low. It makes a huge difference in your speed in the corners and your overall times. That is the single most important tip and worth repeating.

Have any other tips and trick for Real Racing 3? Leave them in a comment below. Also, looking for Game Center friends to help boost friend bonuses, leave your Game Center handle below and I encourage everyone to add as many GC friends as they can to maximize those bonuses.

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