r/iRacing

Hey All,

Like usual, I’ve written a short article sharing my thoughts and experience on a given topic in sim racing. My goal with these articles ultimately is to help give people a bit more information about the hobby we all love, while also hopefully making for an interesting read.

If you don't know me, I'm Tom, and I've been working full-time for the last 18 months on a sim racing coaching business. My thoughts in this mini essay draw on the 700+ hours of coaching I’ve done in the past year. Just to say that the things I’m sharing in these articles aren't pulled from nowhere, but come from everything I’ve seen during the last 18 months coaching hundreds of drivers, of all ability levels.

Straight Line Braking Consistency

This article will be quite specific to a very niche aspect of straight line braking consistency. The most common, most well known, and most important aspects of straight line braking consistency are hands down the consistency of your braking point, and the consistency of your braking pressure. I don’t want to spend this article discussing these, as they are factors that most sim racers will likely already have an awareness of. But there is one additional factor that I’ve noticed a lot recently in coaching sessions, which is the consistency of your car positioning during straight line braking, specifically the angle of the car relative to the corner you are entering.

Let's assume, entering a standard heavy braking corner, for example The Bus stop at Spa, that  you have a perfectly precise reference point, and a perfectly consistent brake trace. You will not have a consistent entry speed into the corner if you do not also have a consistent angle on which to brake. What I mean by that, is, where is the car pointing when you start braking? Are you pointing into the apex, are you pointing along the white line, or are you pointing away from the corner? It may seem slightly pedantic, but the angle of your car absolutely influences your ability to enter the corner with consistent entry speed. If you angle the car into the corner, even by a couple of degrees, then you will not be using all of the track at turn in. If you point away from the corner, then in order to avoid running out of track during the braking zone, you will necessarily have to do some cornering before you reach your turn in point, just to avoid dipping a wheel on the grass. So if your angle is not consistent during braking, then on some laps you will be using less track on entry, on others you will brake nicely in a straight line along the edge of the track, and in others you will have to do a small amount of cornering (and hence can’t do as much braking) before you even reach the turn in point.

The best rule then, in almost all corners that require straight line braking, is to brake along the white line, in a way that does not require you to do any cornering before reaching your turn in point. If you think car angle on entry is something you haven't paid attention to yet, I encourage you to run a few laps, focusing on braking along the white line. If you were previously having to correct your car angle during the braking zone, you may be surprised by how much more quickly the car can slow down when you fully line the car up before braking and let the steering wheel go light under braking.

As always, I appreciate the comments, upvotes and support that these articles get :). If you have any thoughts on future articles you’d like to see from me, feel free to leave a comment, or drop a message in my discord server!

Cheers
Tom
Noakesy Coaching

5600x and a 3080. My target FPS is 90 because of VR and I'll hit that easy on my own but when I'm on the grid it usually drops to 60fps-ish

It did this before I got VR also on a 1440p monitor

Made the pass at the start, then messed up and gave it back. Did it AGAIN later and even got a drive-through penalty. Thought it was over, but when I came out of the pits he was in the grass and I ended up getting the position back. Curious—would you have pushed the same way or played it safer?

So I'm relatively new to iRacing, so apologies if this is obvious.

This morning I did a race at Suzuka with only 5 drivers total. I started P2, won the race, and then later realised the race has completely disappeared from my stats. No iRating, no record, nothing.

I'm guessing it didn’t go “official” due to low participation?

What confused me is there was no indication beforehand that the race wouldn’t count. If I’d known, I probably would’ve joined a different session.

So just for future reference:

• What actually determines if a race goes official?
• Is there a minimum number of drivers?

Would appreciate any clarification so I don’t waste time in non-official races again.

I'm new to iracing and coming from GT7.

I'm trying to take things seriously and be curtious to others. I've been watching guides and practicing In test drive. I'm trying to start with the mx5 races at summit point. Last week and now at lime rock. I'm decently happy with my laps so the next step everyone recommends is to do AI races.

I'm 3 for 3 for the AI crashing me out of the race. The first two last week seemed crazy aggressive but I thought maybe I was going for overtakes I shouldn't.

This last one I was hanging out in last only passing cars that crashed themselves out, and I got a really fast exit so I was blasting by 3 of them on the straight. The 3rd one pit maneuvered me on the straight t before we even got to the braking zone. That is not aggressive, it's full on dirty.

How am I supposed to practice for real races when AI is pulling shit like that? I can't go anywhere near them.

I am currently driving the Mustang GT4 in C license. Seems like there was only one other Mustang in my race tonite. Curious which GT4 car is the best after the last update? I love the Stang but wouldnt mind trying another.

Hey. So I tried Ford GT4 and other gt4s when it was available in offline test drive and my lap times shocked me lol. Usually I'm 1.5-2 seconds slower from alien times in GT3 and around 1-1.5s slower from top times in GR86 and miata/m2. Basically almost the same pace in every car

But damn gt4 kicked my ass really hard, it just didn't click. Im around 5-6 seconds slower from top times and judging by the lap times my SoF lobbies do I won't be able to compete even for top 10 most of the times. And I tested it for a while. Usually this amount of time is enough for me to get used to other cars. I didn't have this issue even with LMP3 and 2.

I was really looking forward to get Mustang for Mustang Challenge and GT4 races but at this rate I'm really unsure about it and about my ability to tame GT4's. Plus hated how understeery it was (Porsche was nice but no Mustang challenge)

Is it really that much harder? Did anyone had similar experience? If so did you guys managed to learn it in the end? Or it clicked right away and your pace wasn't that much different?

We are a iracing team looking for drivers, we are driving mainly nurburgring endurance Championchip but also the GT endurance, Global endurance series and special events,We dont need fast lap times but drivers who are consistent and want to learn.

We are small team so we are better for begginers

We are driving the porshe and BMW GT3 cars

If youre interested join this doscord: https://discord.gg/H92TsJs5ZQ

https://preview.redd.it/ooxkmrbprdug1.png?width=875&format=png&auto=webp&s=bfbfb3d0893e6f37ea1a95e97115b3be1a32cbb1

I just bought a Simagic haptic and I get this messege. Am I doing anything wrong? On effect testing it´s all woking good, just I doesen´t get feedback for throttle in iRacing...Im dissapointed.