SimHQ.com - Motorsports Zone - Feature: How to Succeed in Racing (without really trying)

"Eyes tightly shut, throttle wide open" Most of my simulation career has been spent in flight simulations. I know a little bit about the F-16 Viper’s radar in Falcon 4: Allied Force for example, but practically nothing about the Dodge Viper’s tires in GTR. More on that in a moment.

I’m a recent convert to auto sim racing, a relative newbie. As such, my natural desire was to be as good as the veterans who have been doing this for years. And of course, I didn’t want to have to do any heavy lifting in order to achieve the level of expertise that these drivers exhibit.

I wanted to learn to drive well, really quickly.

I wanted to be good, really bad.

Falcon 4: Allied Force has a legendary humungous manual with all the details you need to learn to drive an F-16, plus training missions. Most racing simulations on the other hand (with some notable exceptions such as RBR), don’t come with training missions or tutorials at all. rFactor, for example, doesn’t even have a manual!

So how is a new racer supposed to learn? Granted, there are online leagues where you might be able to find a helping hand or two, but I’m the shy retiring type.

That’s why I was so heartened to see Chunx’s recent article, Driving rFactor - A Fast Lap at Toban Short, followed by McGonigle’s Driving rFactor - A Fast Lap at Essington Park. At last, I thought, illustrated guides through the sim-racing world of perplexing physics and odd words. Words like “apex”, “drifting”, “trail braking”, “oversteer”, “line”, and “loaded”.

Well, OK, I knew what “loaded” meant: An eventual headache with upset stomach and a pledge to never ever do that again.

My first thought after watching the video replays of Chunx and McGonigle’s Hot Laps was that their driving styles didn’t resemble mine. Not at all. Neither were they exactly the same compared to one another, yet they had many things in common.

"Why is the track over that way?" They were smooth, balanced, in control. Precise — yet ferociously fast. I, on the other hand, was halting, hesitant, mistake prone. Lurching from corner to corner, I was always on the verge of disaster, or smack dab in the middle of downtown disaster. I tried hard, maybe too hard, but the lap times told the story: I was slow, really slow.

Now for some unknown reason, once I had read these articles and watched the video replays, I made the quantum leap to thinking I had just been handed the keys to driving nirvana. That instead of using these guides as just that, guides with great information to help me make progress in practice and racing sessions, I had everything I needed to drive just like these guys.

I enjoy making analogies between life and golf, and perhaps I can make one between auto simulations and golf. When I watched Chunx and McGonigle and compared their driving to mine, it was like watching a pro golfer effortlessly swing the driver and smack the ball over 300 yards, contrasted with my once-in-a-while-weekend-player’s pathetic attempts to imitate that swing that results in a 150 yard slice out of bounds.

I’ll guarantee you, the public course duffer has asked himself a thousand times, “Why can’t I do that? It must be easy, because it sure enough appears that way. And if they can do it, I can do it. I just need a few of their secrets, or maybe the sticks they use, that’s all. If I knew some of Tiger Woods’ tricks of the trade, I could hit the ball just as far as he does. Maybe farther.”

That those thoughts should turn to how much practice time he puts in, that maybe he should increase it, take lessons, be patient yet tenacious, well, maybe not.

Speaking of tricks, it’s funny the tricks the ego can play on one’s mind, in order to help you avoid the truth: You suck.

My second and following thoughts were that I must closely analyze their driving videos, their setups, and the accompanying text with all the details about how they accomplished that driving magic. It was all there, don’t you see? All the secrets I needed were there, all I had to do was watch them, read them, make sure I understood them.

"This is gonna hurt!" Then I could take to the track, apply what I had just seen and read, turn some times as good as theirs.

Well, OK, maybe not exactly as good, but close. Probably within a second or two. After all, I had to cut myself a little slack. Chunx and McGonigle had been sim racing for years, while I had just started, in earnest.

For example, my previous “Hot Lap” at Toban Short, in the same type of car as Chunx drove, was a 1:07.06. A little over 7 seconds slower per lap. 7 seconds, doesn’t seem like much in everyday life, to the reasonably prudent person. I have had sneezes that took longer to complete than 7 seconds.

But this was auto racing, where the definitions of “close”, “winner”, and “last place” are often measured in tenths or hundredths of a second. Not seven whole ones, plus 6 hundredths.

I was undeterred by the facts, I saw nothing that a whole article and video full of secret stuff couldn’t cure. And so I downloaded Chunx’ car setup, read the article one more time. I watched the replay video and launched rFactor. I was ready to set the track on fire.

I was hot, I was confident. I had all the tools I needed to be really fast. Chunx and McGonigle league fast. Just like that, I had the magic keys.

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