How do we become better at driving? Practice makes perfect, right? Well not necessarily. Without feedback and direction, additional practice won’t always improve your ability and can possibly lead to the development of bad habits. So in reality, perfect practice makes perfect. In Part 2 of the Driver Development series, we discuss how drivers learn to improve their craft through various methods from coaching to data analysis to simulators which all aid in the advancement of the skill of driving.

For those who want to improve their craft as a driver, this is a great read to understand more about how we learn as drivers to become faster and the benefits and limitations of various methods from working with coaches, going over data and video, and practicing on driving simulators:

http://www.motoiq.com/MagazineArticl...Processes.aspx





Enjoy!

 

Feel free to leave any comments on the article or if there is anything you would like covered in future articles.


Billy

 

I'll bite - I have a few questions.

I read the part about the simulators. Do you think iracing is a better simulator than the most current release of GT6?
Some people have complained about the tire modeling characteristics of iRacing and said that they prefer GT6 over it because of that.

Car control:
I'm definitely still working on the whole car control thing.

For an s2000, should I practice car control with or without a wing?

I've been debating two setups.

Setup 1:
17x9 255 square with gtc-200 wing

Setup 2:
17x9F 245 with 17x10R 255 - wingless


Other mods that i'm not currently changing
-Revalved Bilsteins (A.R.E.) with 700F/600R lbs/in
-hardtop
-CR front swaybar. 06 rear sway bar.

Current alignment
(-2.9 camber F/R. 6.0-caster. 0.2 degrees total toe-in R)

Any recommendation on which setup will be more conducive to developing me as a driver? I drove the car stock for 2-3 years. I found that when I added the wing and went 17x9 255 square, the car was SUPER easy to drive in comparison.

 

Have not tried GT6 yet. Like I said in the article, I don't like the break away characteristics of the iRacing tire model and spun out the simulator a ton before figuring out how to drive it properly - by building up to the limit with no sliding or 'neutral-steer'.

Once you drive like this, iRacing is VERY helpful. But its not good for learning car control.

You can practice with or without a wing, especially since when you first start it will be at lower speeds where the wing has less effect. You can always reduce the wing's angle of attack or even take it off to let the car move around more.

245/255 wont make much of a difference. Keep a square tire setup and just play with the wing angle or take it off. With no wing the car will make you work harder while with the wing, it will be more stable and you'll have to be more aggressive with your inputs, so it all depends.

 

This was also my experience with iracing, after becoming expert in GT5/GT6 and earning a spot as a Nissan GT Academy Finalist.

The tire model in iracing is poor compared to GT5/GT6 in my opinion. Knowing a chief designer for iracing locallly, the chassis modeling is superior in iracing but I think for a simulator, the tire model is the most important part. GT5/GT6 has its own limitations with the tire model, but generally works very well and overall is a great learning tool for skills that apply directly to at-limit track driving.

 

Curious if either of you have tried Live For Speed? I tried it last winter and liked the autox(ish) feature. It is Oculus capable as well.

 

GT5 did allow more oversteer than iRacing, but iRacing's car and track models make it far better for training. Let alone the online racing series that iRacing has. I have not tried GT6, but I don't see it being to the level of iRacing. I also have not tried Live for Speed so I cannot comment.

 

Don't want to muck up Billy's thread, haha. But I think it's worth elaborating:

My perspective comes from extensive experience in Gran Turismo (>thousand hours) and achieving a master level of skill with it, and very limited (maybe 8 hours of time) experience with Iracing. So although my view is extremely well substantiated, it also going to be biased, even though I am doing my best to remain objective. The lessons learned going through the challenge of achieving that skill level directly apply to real world driving when shaving tenths or hundreths off a lap (where to take curbing, how much, factoring in on/off camber to line to choice, line choice based on sector and following corners, managing tire wear, adapting to changing tire temps, and many, many other lessons) that are "high level." I think any good simulator can teach you to think critically about these things, where as it would be impossible with time and budget to ever get that amount of time in on a real racetrack, while being able to control other variables every time you get on the track (same EXACT grip level, same track temperature, etc. - things you can never precisely control in the real world.) For that stuff, simulator training is invaluable because it allows you to isolate those variables from your own driving technique and observe the difference in lap time.

I agree with Billy in that I think Iracing's biggest strength, from a training perspective, is the fact that they model many real world tracks. That's awesome, because learning the right line is so critical to lap time, and getting the virtual seat time in advance of doing a race or time trial at the track helps you get up to speed there much more quickly than normal.

GT5/GT6 also has many real world tracks (notables of Laguna Seca, Infineon, Spa, Tsukuba, Monza, Indianapolis and Daytona Road Course and others) but significantly less in comparison to Iracing. Gran Turismo has very sound modeling of chassis dynamics (you can read about their modeling system online), but iracing is superior in that regard, no question. But GT is not far behind, and 98% of drivers that would casually drive the sims, you wouldn't even be able to notice. And it's not that Polyphony Digital (Studio for GT series) doesn't desire or aren't capable of producing a model like I-racing, it is just that they have to manage a balance of using available memory on the platform (PS3) to balance graphic processing (frame rate versus resolution) versus model simulation, whereas a PC based sim like Iracing has much more freedom for coding and less constraint from hardware (memory, processing speed etc.) The tire model (IMO) in Iracing is "less realistic" than Gran Turismo because of its ability to allow what I would describe as moderate and normal (not slow) at limit oversteer. At the time I drove the Iracing sim (2012), it felt like anything more than slightest bit of oversteer and the tires would melt and the car would spin. They have been changing tire models often to address this but each iteration sacrifices one thing for another, and their user base has been vocal about it. One tire model may work great for 80% of cars but not work so well for others; this is the challenge of creating a driving sim. The "feel" of the cars in Gran Turismo (weight transfer and sensation of under/over steer) felt more life like than iracing, but that is also a function of the coding required to tell the force feedback on the steering wheel what to do in each cornering phase and change based on what the tires are doing. To each their own. But I felt that I had to drive in iracing in an "unrealistic" or "un-natural" way to go fast; it felt very awkward for me. But I am sure with more seat time it would become less awkward, keeping in mind that there is always an adaptation curve for different sims. But for me Gran Turismo was more natural in the breakway chareacteristic of the tires. On the flip side, IMO GT6 actually allows "too much" sliding in a few circumstances and you need to slide too much to get the fastest lap time, rewarding some habits that are actually detrimental in real life - ideally I believe a model somewhere in between the GT model and Iracing model would be ideal.

One of GT's "competitive advantages" is their stated focus on feel and the overall "experience" of driving the car. Iracing's competitive advantage is a more serious-business approach to track modeling and competitive racing leagues that make it easy for you to join in online and get a clean racing experience as close to real world without actually buying and driving a real race car. Iracing is exponentially more expensive but you get a more comprehensively "real" racing experience, real being "all of the other stuff you experience in a racing environment beyond just the driving experience."

GT6 does have many organized racing leagues (with extremely fast sim drivers, some of the best in the world) that you can particpate in through GTplanet.net. We're talking qualifying, league standings, spec racing leagues, race stewards , there is even a "GTP OLR" online racing rule set that is extensive and will get you penalized if you don't adhere to it.

I can't comment on Live for Speed - I have never driven it. But I think(?) that I-racings first tire model (the one its user base seemed to love the most) was based on its tire model.

Bottomline: like Billy says, sim driving is a fantastic tool that, if practiced with sound fundamentals, will make you a better driver in real life. Today, that topic is proven in both directions, with proffessional race teams using it as a tool for their drivers to train on, and the fastest sim drivers, honing their craft in the virtual world, making the transition to real-world driving succesfully and in a straightforward fashion.

 

Nick, iRacing when I first started using it, in 2013, was less useful as a training tool for exactly what you've described. At some point in late 2013/early 2014, an update was released that improved it greatly, and now that Karwan convinced me to start iRacing again recently, I feel like it's VERY good. Just my .02c.

You should also include the disclaimer on how useless GT is if you use anything much softer than say, Sports Medium, which feels like an A6 to me.

 

Forced - great post, its good for everyone to share comments/experience/opinions.

Ive had the fortune to drive on a "medium-grade" home simulator while at RFR to practice on for my first ever oval race. While I had no problem powering out of corners with a 650hp nationwide car up to the wall, I spun while in iRacing a ton of times. I've also had the chance to test on a world-class half-million dollar VI-Grade motion simulator, which are some of the best in the entire world. While better, this sim also had issues with oversteer and yaw-angle modeling. I don't claim to be an engineer and the people who create these programs are intellectually way beyond my own, but from what I understand, there is a lot more to modeling a tire than simply giving the car unrealistic grip levels with large tire slip and car yaw angles.

While I agree that GT allows you to slide the car more, in reality, driving a car with r-comp or racing slicks, you don't want to slide the car much atall. The faster the car you drive and the more aero dependent the car becomes, it becomes even more important to not slide the car. It sounds like I was like you, wanting to drive the car at a neutral-steer or slight oversteer at all times, which iRacing and major sims don't allow you to do. But I drove around it and built up to driving in the "under-developed" car control manner (like in my Car Control article on MotoIQ.com) and this taught me a lot and further expanded my own driving in real race cars.

I wouldn't criticize iRacing's model too much because driving up to the limit, it is probably a lot more advanced than GT, while GT allows you to slide a car around more like a non-aero car on street tires, its behavior isn't as precise. Now I agree with everything you said how you can still practice a lot of theory and learn a lot from GT, but despite the lack of grip at big yaw angles in iRacing, it is still a real simulator in every other aspect and in many ways more realistic and beneficial. If you ever get a chance to hop in one of these VI-Grade simulators, I highly recommend it because it'll blow your mind what they can do, how realistic they are, etc... But again, they still have the same yaw-angle oversteer drawbacks as iRacing -but F1 teams, Porsche Motorsport, and various other companies use and constantly develop them.

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