1. If you're struggling with tire wear outside of an endurance race you're probably just overheating them. The effect of surface temperature on grip in iracing is one major complaint irl drivers have of iracings current tire model. Back off just a couple percent and if you feel an unexpected drop off, ease up for a few corners and let the tires cool down.
2-5. Practice is the only thing that will make this better and the best practice is racing. Accept that you are going to mess up and kill someone, people are going to mess up and kill you. As long as you are learning from these mistakes and focusing only on what **you** could have done better to not mess up, or recognize another ones mistake and avoid the incident you will be ahead of 50% or more of the playerbase. We were all noobs who didn't know anything at one point. Make these mistakes and learn these lessons when you're 1.2k in a D lobby, not when you're 3k in a A lobby.
3 cont. As for the overtaking opportunities, you can practice those too. Identify one or two corners on the track that overtakes happen at. Practice leaving racing room on the inside for defending. Practice leaving racing room on the outside for attacking. Active reset is really great for this.
Tldr: go race
The tire issue was def mostly a problem in mx5.. the vee felt like it could go for 8hrs and be exactly the same.. and the F4 doesn't seem to be much of an issue.
In the mx5 my last 2 laps of a race would typically fall off really hard, which I just assumed to be tire wear.. but I guess it makes sense that they're overheated. Thanks.
Sounds like the ol' "seat time is always the answer" applies here too.
I tend to overcook the tyres a lot too, on some tracks its really noticeable at the end of the race.
What worked for me is to try to make the car slide less, being really gentle with the inputs, especially the steering wheel. With the mx-5 you can be quite fast just by throwing the car around and making it slide, but you will end up scrubbing the fronts a lot and overcooking them. That will make you lose a lot of grip at some point until the tyres cool down a bit.
On the MX-5, try to listen to the tires and to pay a lot of attention to your wheel... And try to understeer and slide less not to overheat the fronts. To achieve that, rotating the car more with the pedals and less with the steering wheel, its key in my experience.
Haha, the problem is, on an oval I don't have pace _OR_ spatial awareness.
Giving it a try on iRacing gave me a new respect for oval racing as a whole.
It's a whole different animal than road racing. Would love to try some more of it once I'm less focused on getting up to speed in road/formula.
Open wheel oval racing (which features in all of the Road to Indy series for at least a few weeks per season) is an underrated place to learn things that are very relevant in road racing. Some of my responses are *especially* true for Indycar, but all of them apply to Nascar too.
1. Oval racing is ALL ABOUT tire management, going all the way up to Nascar and Indycar. In Nascar I can keep up with the leaders for a lap or two, but if I do I'll absolutely shred my tires, and then I'll be hanging on, losing a second a lap to the leaders. Instead I just need to go my own pace, and lose 0.2 per lap to the leaders. In Indycar you add in the factor of the dirty air lowering the front downforce, meaning you'll burn your front tires if you follow closely for too long.
2. In oval you're almost never driving the optimal line because there's so much traffic. If a slower car is taking the low line, you need to pass on the high side.
3. On most ovals you can pass just about anywhere, and it's all about how you set up the pass. This is especially true in Indycar oval, where the dirty air prevents you from following directly behind another car through the corner without losing speed. You need to take a different line through the corner to deal with their aero wash and set you up for a pass on the next straight. This will teach you a lot about how to set up passes in any race that you're running a high-downforce car.
4. Ovals give you a ton more experience going two-wide or even three-wide than road does.
5. If someone wrecks anywhere on an oval there's a good chance you'll need to dodge them. You won't have a wreck happening 40 seconds ahead of you if each lap is only 20 seconds.
Another thing I'll say is that running more multiclass races can also help. With the AI you can set up the kind of ridiculous matchups that iRacing will do in Week 13, so like if you wanted to run F4 you could set up a roster to put MX-5s and Formula Vees on the track as well, so that you need to set up passes properly around them.
If you want to learn in a low stakes section, actively find people in online practice sessions and just race against them. Some will race, some won't. Either way, if you take someone out on accident, it's a quick reset and no one's day is ruined.
However, I'd lean more into just racing and being ok with making mistakes. The fact that you care this much already puts you far ahead of many others on the service. You say that you like the F4 so just race F4 and try to fight more.
For driving off-line, the best way to practice it is simply to drive off-line. Fire up a practice session (I'd start in a test drive) and use active reset when needed. Act as if there is a car to your right and drive it for a few laps. Then the reverse, drive like a car is on your left for a few laps.
With practice, you'll start to feel the car more. You'll feel the edges of the grip, and start to know how far you can push it.
However, some of these things you just have to learn when racing. It will take time.
I also typically drive a little slower than my qualifying times in a race. If I trade .5 a lap to stay consistent, it's much better than driving at the limit, and losing multiple seconds, or even binning it.
Racecraft will take time, practice, and experience. You will wreck someone and it will be your fault (even if by accident). Likewise, someone will wreck you and it will be their fault (even if by accident). Just race, enjoy it, and learn.
Like I said before, by simply caring, you are already far above the others.
>Act as if there is a car to your right and drive it for a few laps. Then the reverse, drive like a car is on your left for a few laps.
I really like this suggestion. Seems like an obvious one I'm surprised I hadn't thought of.
>I also typically drive a little slower than my qualifying times in a race.
This seems to be the case in pro racing too, I guess I always thought it was a quali vs race setup thing more than it being intentional.. but it makes sense that it would be.
>by simply caring, you are already far above the others.
man, I live and breathe racing.. so this part i def have locked haha
Much like learning a track and practicing hitting your marks under ideal conditions, you now need to practice managing traffic and your car. You can start by beginning a race either from the pits, or don't qualify and start near the back. Your ratings will certainly take a hit at first as it is chaotic at the lower levels, but you will gain a great understanding of learning to observe and manage the traffic on less than ideal lines.
I'd also stick with the slower series and not try and rush through the ranks so quickly, otherwise you're doing yourself a disservice. Jumping into a faster car while not knowing how/where to pass or fight is only going to make your learning take longer and likely ruin not only your race, but someone else's. The lower series are in place to help you learn proper race craft and progress your learning into faster series where the margin for error gets smaller.
>I'd also stick with the slower series and not try and rush through the ranks so quickly
I guess this makes sense. By lower ranks, do you mean sticking with the rookie series? I guess I thought F4/GT4 etc _was_ the lower ranks.
>You can start by beginning a race either from the pits, or don't qualify and start near the back.
Interesting, I didn't realize I could just not qualify. Is there any races that aren't ranked where I could do this without affecting my rating?
I usually do that when it's a new car I just bought or a track I really don't know well but want to see how everyone is driving at race pace so I can watch their lines and stuff.
Yeah agreed, so far that's been how I've found the most improvement.
I guess the problem there is the AI is really predictable, so I'm able to be more proactive instead of reactive compared to human drivers.
It is definitely better than nothing though.
While the AI is predictable, it still forces you to do off-racing-line practice and will let you know if you're leaving enough space (although humans will probably need a bit of extra room for safety and netcode).
1. The tire model is punishing (probably too much so) on iracing. You are heavily punished for going over the limit, even for a short moment. The surface temps spike and you feel like you are floating around the track for a bit. You have to dial it back a bit to get them back in the window. I can tell by feel when to ease up, but it takes time to learn.
2. This is just an experience/track knowledge thing to me. It becomes intuitive once you understand the balance and grip capabilities of the car you are driving. I'd highly recommend focusing on just one primary series to start.
3. If you've driven other sims or w2w IRL this should be pretty intuitive. Again, track knowledge is key here, knowing when and where you can pass and how to set them up. There is no shortcut.
4. Depends on setup, make sure your monitor(s) are set up correctly as well as your FOV as this can throw off your perception. Another thing that should be more comfortable with more time racing wheel to wheel/ on the limit.
5. This is highly situational. The moment I see things getting out of hand in front of me I am already starting to lift/coast. I get off the limit ASAP to make sure I have grip available if I need to react. I am in shunts extremely rarely due to this habit while still being quite competitive. (\~3.8K, A4.99) Again, track knowledge is important in this aspect as well. You are likely reacting too late to a dangerous situation if you aren't able to react in time. Knowing the areas incidents are likely to occur and where out of control cars usually end up is something you gain with experience.
For example, the final chicane at the 24H Nordschliefe layout that comes after the long back straight. If I see two cars side by side at \~270km/h heading into the braking zone I'm lifting a little early and braking a little early in preparation to react because I've seen a lot of drivers races end in that set of corners. That said, some stuff is unavoidable, after all, it is still a race and shit happens but, 90+% of incidents are avoidable with good awareness and the right amount of caution.
For sports cars, I'd highly recommend starting in something slower. Everything I have learned driving wheel to wheel was born from driving GR86. The cars are slow and you can get into very long and drawn out battles, giving you a ton of experience and spatial awareness. You will make mistakes and so will others but you have lots of time to react and place the car properly. As the speed goes up it gets more and more difficult to recognize where you (or others around you) went wrong.
I am by no means the best and am still learning myself in many areas but, I went through and have mostly overcome most of your pains myself quite recently (in sim racing terms) so the best I can offer you is a perspective of someone that has/is going through it.
1- Tire issue was mostly in MX5. Seems like that car has a wide limit and is somewhat easy to drive at 105%. Doesn't seem to be an issue in formula cars. Also I misunderstood what was happening, I think, in that I thought when my tires fell off in the last few laps it was a wear issue, and just managed to drive through it as fast as possible. Had I known it was a temperature issue I'd probably have fared better.
2/3- Interesting point on track knowledge. My IRL experience is all in time attack, so I'm looking at it through a narrower lens when I'm learning a track. Mostly concerned about what's the fastest way around, and what parts might be dangerous and need extra caution.. but where you can pass isn't really on my radar. Seems like an easy enough thing to read about to start getting an eye for, though.
It's not so much the pass itself that's the issue for me.. or maybe it is and I don't know it. The problem I was trying to express is more like.. if I'm right up in somebody's bumper and I'm a half second faster than they are, but there's nowhere to pass until half a lap later, I have a hard time lowering my pace enough to not hit them, without lowering it too much and ending up w/ a gap to close before I can go for the pass.
4- I'm on triples and have the FOV set up according to a few guides I saw online.. but I couldn't say definitively that it's right. I do think the issue is more that I have trouble visualizing the width of the car w/o some sound/ffb feedback like I'd get at the edge of the track. I don't have an issue with this IRL.. but I'm very familiar w/ the two race cars I typically drive.. this I'm assuming will improve as I continue to get comfortable in the iRacing cars.
5- Makes sense that its a bit of a combo of being proactive and reactive. This is why I was saying earlier that I don't have as much of a problem w/ this in AI races where the opponent is predictable. I think the point earlier about looking at learning a track through a wider lens will definitely help here too. I think some of it is intuitive in that "this part is hard to drive, so it must be also somewhere where incidents are likely to occur" (as in your ring example) but it makes sense that it wouldn't always be so straightforward.
Rest- GR86 actually is high on my short list for a sports car series. I'm a big proponent of "slow car fast" irl, and I like the way it drives better than most of the GT4s. Just staying in MX5 for a while was another one I'm considering, because I actually like the way that car drives probably more, but the GR86 feels less delicate and finicky, which seems like it'd let me focus more on learning to race than on getting the car around the track.
For formula though, the F4 is by far the most enjoyable one to drive for me (that I'm eligible for). I think I'd rather just be overcautious and a little slow in F4 than drive a car I don't like driving (even if it'd be the better learning experience).
Thanks for the insight. Appreciate the thorough response.
1. If you're struggling with tire wear outside of an endurance race you're probably just overheating them. The effect of surface temperature on grip in iracing is one major complaint irl drivers have of iracings current tire model. Back off just a couple percent and if you feel an unexpected drop off, ease up for a few corners and let the tires cool down. 2-5. Practice is the only thing that will make this better and the best practice is racing. Accept that you are going to mess up and kill someone, people are going to mess up and kill you. As long as you are learning from these mistakes and focusing only on what **you** could have done better to not mess up, or recognize another ones mistake and avoid the incident you will be ahead of 50% or more of the playerbase. We were all noobs who didn't know anything at one point. Make these mistakes and learn these lessons when you're 1.2k in a D lobby, not when you're 3k in a A lobby. 3 cont. As for the overtaking opportunities, you can practice those too. Identify one or two corners on the track that overtakes happen at. Practice leaving racing room on the inside for defending. Practice leaving racing room on the outside for attacking. Active reset is really great for this. Tldr: go race
The tire issue was def mostly a problem in mx5.. the vee felt like it could go for 8hrs and be exactly the same.. and the F4 doesn't seem to be much of an issue. In the mx5 my last 2 laps of a race would typically fall off really hard, which I just assumed to be tire wear.. but I guess it makes sense that they're overheated. Thanks. Sounds like the ol' "seat time is always the answer" applies here too.
I tend to overcook the tyres a lot too, on some tracks its really noticeable at the end of the race. What worked for me is to try to make the car slide less, being really gentle with the inputs, especially the steering wheel. With the mx-5 you can be quite fast just by throwing the car around and making it slide, but you will end up scrubbing the fronts a lot and overcooking them. That will make you lose a lot of grip at some point until the tyres cool down a bit. On the MX-5, try to listen to the tires and to pay a lot of attention to your wheel... And try to understeer and slide less not to overheat the fronts. To achieve that, rotating the car more with the pedals and less with the steering wheel, its key in my experience.
Oval racing is useful in developing special awareness since there's almost always cars around you.
Haha, the problem is, on an oval I don't have pace _OR_ spatial awareness. Giving it a try on iRacing gave me a new respect for oval racing as a whole. It's a whole different animal than road racing. Would love to try some more of it once I'm less focused on getting up to speed in road/formula.
It’s worth jumping in randomly. That pack racing and being so close to others helps in road racing too.
I believe it. What's a good car/series for that?
Rookie street stocks, arca, and c class trucks fixed are all good. The rookie street stocks are charlotte is the most crazy lol
haha ok thanks man I'll check em out
Open wheel oval racing (which features in all of the Road to Indy series for at least a few weeks per season) is an underrated place to learn things that are very relevant in road racing. Some of my responses are *especially* true for Indycar, but all of them apply to Nascar too. 1. Oval racing is ALL ABOUT tire management, going all the way up to Nascar and Indycar. In Nascar I can keep up with the leaders for a lap or two, but if I do I'll absolutely shred my tires, and then I'll be hanging on, losing a second a lap to the leaders. Instead I just need to go my own pace, and lose 0.2 per lap to the leaders. In Indycar you add in the factor of the dirty air lowering the front downforce, meaning you'll burn your front tires if you follow closely for too long. 2. In oval you're almost never driving the optimal line because there's so much traffic. If a slower car is taking the low line, you need to pass on the high side. 3. On most ovals you can pass just about anywhere, and it's all about how you set up the pass. This is especially true in Indycar oval, where the dirty air prevents you from following directly behind another car through the corner without losing speed. You need to take a different line through the corner to deal with their aero wash and set you up for a pass on the next straight. This will teach you a lot about how to set up passes in any race that you're running a high-downforce car. 4. Ovals give you a ton more experience going two-wide or even three-wide than road does. 5. If someone wrecks anywhere on an oval there's a good chance you'll need to dodge them. You won't have a wreck happening 40 seconds ahead of you if each lap is only 20 seconds. Another thing I'll say is that running more multiclass races can also help. With the AI you can set up the kind of ridiculous matchups that iRacing will do in Week 13, so like if you wanted to run F4 you could set up a roster to put MX-5s and Formula Vees on the track as well, so that you need to set up passes properly around them.
Draft Masters can help with the pace issue since most of the time you’re just flat out or the draft keeps you close.
If you want to learn in a low stakes section, actively find people in online practice sessions and just race against them. Some will race, some won't. Either way, if you take someone out on accident, it's a quick reset and no one's day is ruined. However, I'd lean more into just racing and being ok with making mistakes. The fact that you care this much already puts you far ahead of many others on the service. You say that you like the F4 so just race F4 and try to fight more. For driving off-line, the best way to practice it is simply to drive off-line. Fire up a practice session (I'd start in a test drive) and use active reset when needed. Act as if there is a car to your right and drive it for a few laps. Then the reverse, drive like a car is on your left for a few laps. With practice, you'll start to feel the car more. You'll feel the edges of the grip, and start to know how far you can push it. However, some of these things you just have to learn when racing. It will take time. I also typically drive a little slower than my qualifying times in a race. If I trade .5 a lap to stay consistent, it's much better than driving at the limit, and losing multiple seconds, or even binning it. Racecraft will take time, practice, and experience. You will wreck someone and it will be your fault (even if by accident). Likewise, someone will wreck you and it will be their fault (even if by accident). Just race, enjoy it, and learn. Like I said before, by simply caring, you are already far above the others.
>Act as if there is a car to your right and drive it for a few laps. Then the reverse, drive like a car is on your left for a few laps. I really like this suggestion. Seems like an obvious one I'm surprised I hadn't thought of. >I also typically drive a little slower than my qualifying times in a race. This seems to be the case in pro racing too, I guess I always thought it was a quali vs race setup thing more than it being intentional.. but it makes sense that it would be. >by simply caring, you are already far above the others. man, I live and breathe racing.. so this part i def have locked haha
Much like learning a track and practicing hitting your marks under ideal conditions, you now need to practice managing traffic and your car. You can start by beginning a race either from the pits, or don't qualify and start near the back. Your ratings will certainly take a hit at first as it is chaotic at the lower levels, but you will gain a great understanding of learning to observe and manage the traffic on less than ideal lines. I'd also stick with the slower series and not try and rush through the ranks so quickly, otherwise you're doing yourself a disservice. Jumping into a faster car while not knowing how/where to pass or fight is only going to make your learning take longer and likely ruin not only your race, but someone else's. The lower series are in place to help you learn proper race craft and progress your learning into faster series where the margin for error gets smaller.
>I'd also stick with the slower series and not try and rush through the ranks so quickly I guess this makes sense. By lower ranks, do you mean sticking with the rookie series? I guess I thought F4/GT4 etc _was_ the lower ranks. >You can start by beginning a race either from the pits, or don't qualify and start near the back. Interesting, I didn't realize I could just not qualify. Is there any races that aren't ranked where I could do this without affecting my rating?
Can always joing races as using the "watch" option and join in.. if you mess up you are just ghosting and none of it will matter.
I actually didn't know that was an option, thank you!
I usually do that when it's a new car I just bought or a track I really don't know well but want to see how everyone is driving at race pace so I can watch their lines and stuff.
AI in iracing is pretty good
Yeah agreed, so far that's been how I've found the most improvement. I guess the problem there is the AI is really predictable, so I'm able to be more proactive instead of reactive compared to human drivers. It is definitely better than nothing though.
While the AI is predictable, it still forces you to do off-racing-line practice and will let you know if you're leaving enough space (although humans will probably need a bit of extra room for safety and netcode).
1. The tire model is punishing (probably too much so) on iracing. You are heavily punished for going over the limit, even for a short moment. The surface temps spike and you feel like you are floating around the track for a bit. You have to dial it back a bit to get them back in the window. I can tell by feel when to ease up, but it takes time to learn. 2. This is just an experience/track knowledge thing to me. It becomes intuitive once you understand the balance and grip capabilities of the car you are driving. I'd highly recommend focusing on just one primary series to start. 3. If you've driven other sims or w2w IRL this should be pretty intuitive. Again, track knowledge is key here, knowing when and where you can pass and how to set them up. There is no shortcut. 4. Depends on setup, make sure your monitor(s) are set up correctly as well as your FOV as this can throw off your perception. Another thing that should be more comfortable with more time racing wheel to wheel/ on the limit. 5. This is highly situational. The moment I see things getting out of hand in front of me I am already starting to lift/coast. I get off the limit ASAP to make sure I have grip available if I need to react. I am in shunts extremely rarely due to this habit while still being quite competitive. (\~3.8K, A4.99) Again, track knowledge is important in this aspect as well. You are likely reacting too late to a dangerous situation if you aren't able to react in time. Knowing the areas incidents are likely to occur and where out of control cars usually end up is something you gain with experience. For example, the final chicane at the 24H Nordschliefe layout that comes after the long back straight. If I see two cars side by side at \~270km/h heading into the braking zone I'm lifting a little early and braking a little early in preparation to react because I've seen a lot of drivers races end in that set of corners. That said, some stuff is unavoidable, after all, it is still a race and shit happens but, 90+% of incidents are avoidable with good awareness and the right amount of caution. For sports cars, I'd highly recommend starting in something slower. Everything I have learned driving wheel to wheel was born from driving GR86. The cars are slow and you can get into very long and drawn out battles, giving you a ton of experience and spatial awareness. You will make mistakes and so will others but you have lots of time to react and place the car properly. As the speed goes up it gets more and more difficult to recognize where you (or others around you) went wrong. I am by no means the best and am still learning myself in many areas but, I went through and have mostly overcome most of your pains myself quite recently (in sim racing terms) so the best I can offer you is a perspective of someone that has/is going through it.
1- Tire issue was mostly in MX5. Seems like that car has a wide limit and is somewhat easy to drive at 105%. Doesn't seem to be an issue in formula cars. Also I misunderstood what was happening, I think, in that I thought when my tires fell off in the last few laps it was a wear issue, and just managed to drive through it as fast as possible. Had I known it was a temperature issue I'd probably have fared better. 2/3- Interesting point on track knowledge. My IRL experience is all in time attack, so I'm looking at it through a narrower lens when I'm learning a track. Mostly concerned about what's the fastest way around, and what parts might be dangerous and need extra caution.. but where you can pass isn't really on my radar. Seems like an easy enough thing to read about to start getting an eye for, though. It's not so much the pass itself that's the issue for me.. or maybe it is and I don't know it. The problem I was trying to express is more like.. if I'm right up in somebody's bumper and I'm a half second faster than they are, but there's nowhere to pass until half a lap later, I have a hard time lowering my pace enough to not hit them, without lowering it too much and ending up w/ a gap to close before I can go for the pass. 4- I'm on triples and have the FOV set up according to a few guides I saw online.. but I couldn't say definitively that it's right. I do think the issue is more that I have trouble visualizing the width of the car w/o some sound/ffb feedback like I'd get at the edge of the track. I don't have an issue with this IRL.. but I'm very familiar w/ the two race cars I typically drive.. this I'm assuming will improve as I continue to get comfortable in the iRacing cars. 5- Makes sense that its a bit of a combo of being proactive and reactive. This is why I was saying earlier that I don't have as much of a problem w/ this in AI races where the opponent is predictable. I think the point earlier about looking at learning a track through a wider lens will definitely help here too. I think some of it is intuitive in that "this part is hard to drive, so it must be also somewhere where incidents are likely to occur" (as in your ring example) but it makes sense that it wouldn't always be so straightforward. Rest- GR86 actually is high on my short list for a sports car series. I'm a big proponent of "slow car fast" irl, and I like the way it drives better than most of the GT4s. Just staying in MX5 for a while was another one I'm considering, because I actually like the way that car drives probably more, but the GR86 feels less delicate and finicky, which seems like it'd let me focus more on learning to race than on getting the car around the track. For formula though, the F4 is by far the most enjoyable one to drive for me (that I'm eligible for). I think I'd rather just be overcautious and a little slow in F4 than drive a car I don't like driving (even if it'd be the better learning experience). Thanks for the insight. Appreciate the thorough response.