My career so far in stats
To kick things off, here’s my IRacing profile.
I started sim-racing in July of last year in rookie MX-5s. Got frustrated really quickly and migrated to driving solo in AC. Improved my ability behind the wheel significantly and returned in the fall. Quickly moved out of rookies and into the D license, where I fell in love with the 86. Spent the next ~8 weeks driving that series nearly every week. Mixing in some skippy and MX-5’s. Didn’t really have a “hardcore” practice regiment setup. Was mostly aiming for completing 3 races a week with maybe a solo practice session if I was struggling with a car/track combo.
My gear:
Logitech G923 wheel and pedals
GT Omega wheel stand
Normal desk chair
Oculus Quest 2 (will cover thoughts on VR vs triples below)
There are a lot of things I improved on over my ~8 months on IRacing. But I think a couple stands out above the others.
My on-track learnings
Firstly was understanding that just getting the car to the finish line as close to incident-free as possible will do more for both your skill and safety ratings at the start than anything else. That said, 90% of incidents happen in turn 1 and 95% within lap 1. So playing a conservative start and conceding positions off the line (at low elo’s) is the smart play 9 times out of 10. Let them have the inside line and the position in T1 and watch them spin a turn or two later since they had to overheat their tires to make the move happen. The MX-5 series is measured by the lap, 15 laps each race, so the total time usually ends up somewhere around 20-30 mins. And as things go, once you have one incident it becomes harder to avoid having a second and a third, and so on. Basically keep your nose clean and fast-tracking out of rookies is a cakewalk.
The next big realization came once I started participating in the GR series. The car is quite a bit easier to drive. It handles similarly to the MX-5 in the corners but is quite a bit faster on straights. This paired with the D License requirement and larger field (12 drivers in the MX-5 races vs 18-21 in this series) leads to significantly better racing. Now that I was having to hold my own with drivers of similar skill, I came to understand what is meant by M.A.D.
Mutually Assured Destruction
As a driver, your goal is to finish in the highest position you can manage. Sometimes that’s P1. Sometimes it’s P10. Sometimes just staying with the field is all you’ve got. But no matter what being overly aggressive will do nothing but end your race as well as those around you. And this goes for both the aggressor and the defender. Pushing too far and crossing that line is so severely detrimental that it’s not even worth testing. Often the difference between one position and another is maybe a handful of skill points with either no change or a reduction of your safety rating. But crashing out can cost you hundreds of skill points and multiple-tenths of safety rating. So even if you want to disregard the fact that you could cause that much damage to someone’s rating who was undeserving of that, you at the very least would also suffer a similar fate. In short, avoid using physical confrontations. Some bumping and rubbing (in closed-wheel series) are bound to happen in good racing. But pit maneuvers, brake checks, and slamming the door on the apex are surefire ways to see yourself to the back of the line. (“closing” the door is one thing. but if someone is up your inside, trying to cut them off at the last second is a recipe for disaster.)
My off-track learnings
Switching gears a bit. But hands-down the biggest change I made that wasn’t behavioral, was getting in my VR headset for races. I started out on my 27” 144HZ monitor, and the amount of information you gain by having access to peripheral vision is such a massive difference maker it’s not even funny. There’s genuinely no comparison. For practicing alone a single monitor is fine. As most of what you’re concerned with are the horizon and the feedback in your peripherals. But once you get on track with other human beings also trying to pilot one-ton metal missiles, essentially driving with these
Is guaranteed to cause accidents. You end up with a choice of either having the ability to properly gauge your speed (low FOV) or having the ability to kind of see your mirrors and maybe out your windows (high FOV). In reality, neither option is great. You basically end up in incidents because you misgauged how fast or slow you were going, or because you have no way of telling where the other drives are around you. There are third-party radar add-ons you can install like below, but they still require a mental translation step that at first feels pretty unnatural, in comparison to looking over your shoulder.
So yes, I would say to really start sim-racing you’ll want a VR headset. I know currently, everyone says “Get triple monitors”. But for most people that is wildly inaccessible. To start, that is a lot of physical space to set up three 27”+ monitors/TVs. Not to mention the monetary cost of buying three medium to high-end screens along with the computer hardware necessary to drive them at a decent framerate/resolution. Realistically the cost of all that is in the range of 1-2 thousand dollars. I understand racing in general is an expensive hobby and that that is nothing in comparison. However. The base audience isn’t people racing every weekend. The base audience is…
Drum roll…
PC Gamers.
Not the stingiest of groups, but they aren’t flush with thousands and thousands of dollars to spend on setups that they’ll use maybe a couple dozen times a month. If that. So setting barriers of that scale is just going to keep people out of the hobby.
And yes. I said hobby. 90% of the people on the service have no aspirations of being professional and even fewer do it to be uber-competitive. I understand that racing is a competition, but some leeway has to be given to those that like to compete causally.
So back to my original statement. If you really want to get into sim racing I would start with a VR headset. They can be intimidating and uncomfortable at first. But with sim-racing your sitting still, so the “undesirable” side effects typically aren’t anywhere near as severe as say in an FPS game. And coming in at ~300-400 USD, taking up around the same amount of room as a steering wheel it is much more friendly to newcomers in pretty much every way.
Conclusion
In short, I had a blast. Compared to other “competitive” styles of gaming I would rate sim racing at the top. I learned a lot about how to operate a vehicle. Got into some good clean battles. Would even dare to say I grew on a personal level to an extent. Do I think that sim racing is the most noob-friendly hobby out there? No. Do I think it’s the worst? Also no. (League of legends has that title). Could it become more noob-friendly? Yes absolutely. Will I be continuing to race? Again, yes absolutely.
See you trackside.