20 Tips for Sim Racing Beginners

20 tips for sim racing beginners starting with a couple of really big fundamentals that every sim racer needs to understand if you want to go faster in the corners you're going to need some string fast cornering is all about extracting every last bit of grip you can from the tires and the traction circle demonstrates how this can be divided between accelerating braking and turning simply put the more you increase one the less of the others you can do without going beyond the grip limit and getting acquainted with the return to pit button on paper it's obvious but in practice it can be difficult to implement and drivers get this one wrong all the time so it can be helpful to think of a piece of string tied between your steering wheel and the pedals as you turn the wheel less range of movement is available to you in your pedals and if you push past and break the imaginary string with your mid feet you exceed the maximum grip the tires can generate and inevitably slide off into the stone's arm cover regret you can manipulate how much grip each of your tyres produces as you drive by managing load transfer you can feel the effect of this in your road car when you stamp on the ups pedal and your body tries to become intimate with the windscreen while that's happening the car's center of mass moves forward compressing the front suspension and pushing the front tires into the road with more force and that generates more grip in those front tires and we can use this transferring of load to maximize grip where it is needed most on the car as we drive braking moves the balance of the grip to the front tires accelerating creates more grip on the rears and turning loads up the outside wheels as you can see from this thermal image of an f1 car but it's not generating more load it's transferring or moving the load in fact what's happening is the car's center of mass moves in reaction to our driving inputs so in our braking example the front tires experience more load and generate more grip as a result but as a consequence the rear tyres experience less load and produce less grip which is why cars often feel light at the rear when you're braking heavily and that's why driving smoothly is important abrupt control inputs shift the load suddenly which makes the car feel unstable or nervous remember your suspension and tires are springs you want to compress them and release them gently every beginner overdrives the car so start out slowly and smoothly and then build your pace perhaps the best use of load transfer is a technique called trail braking essentially you make use of the brakes to load up the front tyres for the turn-in phase of a corner start by breaking in a straight line like your driving instructor might have taught you and as you start steering blend off of the brake pedal and the circle of traction and the string example earlier show how this is done perfectly with both the brake pedal and the steering wheel movement in perfect synchronization while trail braking maximizes grip during the turning phase allowing you to enter the corner faster it also shortens your braking distances as well so getting this right is a massive win in terms of lap time as an aside some cars will tolerate more braking while turning than others front engine cars generally like and need this technique more than mid and rear engine layouts we talked about braking late a moment ago but the old adage slow in fast out is definitely the best way to learn the ropes beginner sim racers often break far too late carry too little speed into the corner and as a result they leave the corner slowly which is totally mad you spend most of your time on the straight bits of a race circuit so being the fastest you can on them is generally the best approach whereas the braking zones are the bit that you spend the least amount of time in so get your priorities in order at least until you can break as late as this guy which brings us to break markers proper visual references help us know where to position the car when to turn and importantly when to jump on the crikey pedal a common mistake is not using static permanent references find things that stay put like marshall posts barriers poles etc because corner distance markers get destroyed and shadows are essentially slowly moving lies just like your feet when you have to transition between the brake and accelerator pedal so learn to left foot brake from day one i know i know but it's quicker and you're gonna have to do it eventually so just get the pain out of the way early speaking of pain arguably this is the most important tip of all there is no best racing sim drive the sim that keeps you engaged and invested all of the sims have good and bad points moments of excellence and staggeringly myopic emissions yep even that one so don't get too hung up on the whole what ambassador sim debate another short-sighted issue in sim racing and in fact real driving is much more literal and many beginners focus their attention on the road directly in front of them i know it sounds obvious but you need to look where you're going to be not where you are after all your body naturally wants to move to where you're looking now vision in racing is a big and important topic too big to cover here but it has a meaningful impact on your smoothness awareness and how accurately you position your car on the track as does field of view a setting that's often overlooked and misunderstood i've got a video on the subject which you really should watch but for now know that setting this correctly matches your perspective seen from the virtual eyes in the game with your actual perspective out here in the mean space there's nuance to this of course and more than one school of thought but if you're struggling with spatial awareness in the sim this is the first place to look and it's not just your eyes your ears are more helpful than you might think feedback from the sim isn't just through the wheel and most sim racers don't think about how the sim is communicating with them through the sound design one of the things i do in any new sim is turn up the tyre noise relative to the rest of the sounds as this often provides useful feedback about how the tyres are gripping the road surface now it's not going to change the world for you but a little bit more feedback doesn't hurt conversely don't worry about upgrading your equipment too much to begin with if you've got a wheel that can generate force feedback you're more than good to go sim racing is one of those things where gucci equipment is nice to have but far from essential and plenty of people are upsettingly quick with the most humble equipment so focus on learning with a consistent repeatable and stable setup long before you go down the sim gear rabbit hole and as with most things it's best to try and limit as many variables as possible while you're learning the ropes many advocate that you stick with one card to start while you're figuring out how the sim's trying to communicate with you through the wheel force feedback is a language and you kind of have to learn it how does the wheel feel when you're approaching the grip limit and what about when you exceed it how does that vary with speed load and during under or oversteer etc and cars in racing sims all communicate differently from one another almost like they have their own dialects and to stretch that analogy further when you're learning a new language it's usually best if the person you're speaking to does so slowly appropriately you'll learn far more far quicker with a slower car than you will with a carbon fiber missile in something like the ubiquitous mx-5 you can feel the weight transfer and the grip levels change so much more gradually which allows you to understand and react accordingly similarly shorter circuits are usually better for practice than sexy long ones it's like picking up some useful travel oh yeah i'm gonna stop that now with shorter circuits you get to have more attempts at any given corner in your playtime more laps and of course there's less time until you get feedback about how you've done and the best tool for feedback is your lab delta which gives you an instant report on how you're doing from corner to corner but don't neglect the other tools that are available to you replays are a great learning device they can show you how the cars reacting to your inputs how you're making use of the track and combined with ghost cars in replay mode they can make for a really good form of analytical feedback without having to learn what all of this means another obvious one may be but consistency is more important than raw pace for beginners and grinding out a thousand laps to get a good lap time isn't much use if you put it in the wall in 864 of them focus on learning the racing line first with the well-worn slow in fast out mentality then you can build up your corner exit pace your entry and apex speeds shorten the braking zones and really push those lap times notice that i mentioned breaking late towards the end of that really is last on the list of things you should be thinking about actually scratch that the last thing you should be thinking about is changing downloading or buying car setups until you have a really good feel for the sim in the car and you're setting beautifully consistent lap times they're really just not going to help you and finally keep it fun i've advocated for a structured approach to improving your driving skills but none of that any use at all if you're not enjoying yourself so throw some f1 cars around the nordschleife use the chase camera if you want and download every single setup your bandwidth can handle

Channel: Chris Haye

Views: 191,785

Keywords: sim racing beginners guide, sim racing beginners, sim racing tips, tips for sim racing, sim racing guide, how to sim race, racing sim guide, guide to racing sims, racing sim tips, racing simulator, sim racing, racing sim, chris haye, chris haye sim racing, assetto corsa, iracing, assetto corsa competizione, project cars 2, raceroom, rfactor 2

Id: ceet6WpG3HE

Length: 8min 31sec (511 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 04 2022