How Max Verstappen is a Sim Racing GENIUS

not only is Max verstappen the current F1 world champion but he's one of the top three Sim drivers in the world and nobody has done that before being right at the Pinnacle of both Sports so in a world where being a Pro SIM driver is a full-time job how does he do that and win the F1 world drivers Championship well it's down to his specific technique so let's break it down look at this this is Max driving at Bathurst one of the most technically challenging circuits on the planet and he is driving flat out right up close to the walls leaving zero margin and completely understanding his car it's Max's qualifying lap at the iRacing bath first 12 hours last year is in the top tier racing the best Sim drivers and teams in the world and he set a time four and a half tenths faster than anyone else four and a half tenths is a lot in Real World Racing where conditions are changing a lot meaning that the track could be faster or a driver could get a tow and gain half a second but in the Sim it's just each driver and the lap nobody else is on the circuit and there are identical conditions and so then four and a half tenths of a second is a massive amount then there's this it's the start of the lemon virtual this year he starts fourth and makes an incredible launch to be first before the first chicane then he just runs away with it pulling out an enormous lead before the game crashed but that's another story he's Racing Pro Esports drivers like James Baldwin xf1 drivers like Roman grojon F2 Champion Felipe drogovic and other drivers who have won the real Le Mans 24 hours and Max calmly drove away from them all so max is in the sim a lot mainly eye racing but he also plays on other platforms iRacing is also my preferred Sim the cars feel real to me and the way the tires behave and the car moves feels pretty good and I have to say many of the pro drivers agree with this as well now you might be saying why is this surprising he's fast in the real world of course so he should be fast in the Sim well that's not the case the Sim and the rearward are very similar but they they're not the same especially when it comes to the final few temps of lap time I've personally seen lots of very capable real world drivers struggle in the Sin these are drivers who are straight on the pace in the real world but they spin off and hit every barrier in the Sim and it personally took me a while to adjust as well when you jump in the Sim you're taking away senses that you've relied on for years you'll feel for G-Force hearing of the drivers around you your 3D perception of speed the vibration you get with wheel spin all of it gone you have to adjust the in-game audio which isn't quite as good no GeForce and a 2d screen unless you use VR of course which has its own quirks that you have to get used to there are some differences in the technique and the racing compared to the real world there's your ability to fill the car in the real world you can feel a tire slide getting an idea for how much grip it has corner to corner allowing you to adapt to changing conditions Tire degradation and feeling the balance change as the fuel Burns off you do have force feedback though through the steering wheel in the Sim and to be fair it's X but it's a hard task to exactly replicate what you feel with your backside in the seat of a real racing car interestingly Max like many Top Sim drivers has a few little tricks to help listen to this that grinding rubbing noise is a tire sound in eye racing so max turns the engine all the way down and the tires all the way up and this is his way of knowing when the tires are close to their limit rather than feeling it like in a real race car he also listens to it in high racing so many of the Top Sim drivers have learned on the Sim and have it raced at a high level in the real world they've learned to drive quickly in the Sim using fewer senses meaning you can often put them in a real car and they can learn to be quick it's very different between a real driver and a Sim driver you need to drive a lot more in real life to overcome that little kind of it's not fear I think but it's a bit of trust in the car as well so I do think that you know if you give a Sim driver a lot of track time as well I think yeah they can get very competitive but you need to give them the opportunity to be able to do that however Max is coming the other way and there are so many other drivers Lando Norris Ruben barricello Fernando Alonso Bruno Spengler Roman grosjon the list goes on even our producer Callum here at driver 61 has raced Valentina Rossi and Fernando Alonso on eye racing he lost of course but still Max won the usgp this year at the Circuit of the Americas and was seen in eye racing lobbies just three hours later but what's really interesting is that Max drives similarly in the Sim to in the real world he's super aggressive and that's not a bad thing just look at this in the eye racing Petty lemon he sent some real dive bombs as well as running people wide in typical Max fashion his approach to racing here is the same as in the real world and look at this move is to start at the Le Mans virtual there's a driver on the inside on the way into the chicane which becomes the outside for the second part Max gets his nose just ahead and runs wide to the outside I'm being into the other driver a little he forces other drivers to back out similar to his real world driving and you can say what you like about this but it is within the rules in this case Max didn't get a penalty and that's what great competitors do push right up to the limit of the rules in terms of driving there is another similarity Max lives absolutely no margin always using every millimeter of the track and going for bold overtakes and on occasion it has caught him out last year the Le Mans virtual he crashed out he was taking a lot of curb at the four chicanes so much so that a game glitch meant the car bounced up and spat in in the barrier then there was the spa 6r Max was in an lmp2 car overtaking a GTE he tried to go around the outside at a Rouge which is always a risky move he made the GT take a slightly unusual line meaning it understood very slightly the two came together and it put Max in the barrier there's no doubt he races to win but that can catch you out every so often right so the mentality is the same the specifics of the environment and the senses you have are different so what does that do to Max's driving style well Max's teammate at sir kirkhov at Team Redline said this what makes Max very strong is that he's very dynamic in his driving so he can drive an impossible car and still send it over the limits you don't have to tell them to work hard because it's his nature like he will push as hard as he can to make sure that he gets the maximum out of the car and that's also what the best drivers have the ability to drive anything to its limit the ability to adapt to the car and do it very quickly in the real world you have very limited testing or practice time so even if the car is a pig to drive you need to adapt your own driving style to get the most out of it and that brings in another interesting side note in the Sim Max isn't driving a Red Bull F1 car he's driving GT cars lmp2 cars F3 cars and they all require different driving Styles particularly the GTS in this case they're heavier they have less downfalls and they have things like traction control and abs and of course you have to drive this type of car very differently to a formula car for example in a formula car or something with a lot of downforce at the start of the braking Zone you break a very very hard and quickly Trail off the brakes as the downforce comes off the car because as the downforce comes off the car you have less grip and so if you kept your foot hard on the brakes the tires would lock up whereas in a GT car with abs you often break at a constant 80 to 90 percent pressure before trailing off as you move into the corner and this allows you to get the most out of the ABS braking it's very very different I'm not racing a Formula One car on the simulator but it's like GT cars so it's also different technique of driving so just keep testing myself and especially you know these Sim drivers they are so quick you know they they it's very interesting to see them drive because they have no real experience of a car but somehow when you look at how they're breaking how they're going through it is how it should be the only thing I wanted to know from this was how does this happen's driving style compare from the Sim to the real world well I've sat and analyzed a lot of footage of Max racing in both situations and there are some differences but mainly similarities let me explain the main thing is that Max's early driving F1 cars in the Sim so that does change the specifics of his technique these past few generations of cars have forced the drivers to be very smooth when driving I actually went to the Turkish Grand Prix a few years ago and at turn one you could really see how smooth the drivers were coming off the brakes pitching the car into the corner and then getting on the throttle and the fast drivers were super smooth when you're driving in the car it feels like one fluid movement from braking to turning to acceleration all of these inputs are Blended together so max will be adjusting his technique to suit so when he's in the GT car or an lmp2 car in the Sim he adjusts to those as well the fundamentals are the same Max uses all of the road and focuses on the exit of the corner and this is where he's a lot faster than a lot of the pro drivers not to say that it's slow on the entry to the corner but his time is gained on the exit and then there is the case of setup remember F1 in 2022 at the start of the year the Red Bull was pretty understood theory meaning that the front of the car was lazy to get into the corner and pushed on on the exit this suited his teammate Sergio Perez but meant that Max struggled he likes a very pointy car one that wants to turn in easily and rotate in the corner and this is the same in the real world and the Sim it also explains why Max likes mid-engine GT3 cars like the Audi rather than front engine cars like the BMW The Mid Engine means he can rotate them better through the corner anyway many drivers can struggle with a pointy car it's very easy to lose the rear on the way into the corner when a lot of the load is going through the front tires so you have to have an incredible feel and be very delicate with your inputs and Max is incredible at this he uses his fantastic feel to predict where the car is going to slide and just stay below the limit and if it does slide he can control it with very subtle inputs counter steering or coming up off the brakes very slightly which tends to reduce rotation in the car so if he can deal with the over there this means he can rotate the car more than the other drivers and not pick up any understeer on the exit now remember what I said about maximizing exits it's this pointy setup that allows him to do this with a car that wants to rotate Max can rotate the car further through the corner meaning he can carry more speed out of it just look at this the white car is James Baldwin a really fast Sim driver the black car is Max and Max carries loads of speed out of the corner he did the same thing with that epic lap at Bathurst combine that with Incredible commitment and complete understanding of the car and he makes one complete Sim driver you should check out these videos here thanks very much for watching and I'll catch you in the next one

Channel: Driver61

Views: 3,005,753

Keywords: Formula 1, Driving, Coaching, Motorsport, Engineering, F1, Racing, Incredible Motorsport, Driver61, Scott Mansell, Callum McIntyre, Max Verstappen, Verstappen, Verstappen Sim, Verstappen Virtual Le Mans, Virtual Le Mans, BahrainGP, Max, Sim Racing, Simulator, Driving Simulator, Driving Technique

Id: H3yArt3cxTE

Length: 10min 59sec (659 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 04 2023