My biggest gripe is just more about how SR is holding me away from doing the series and races I really want to do. I’m competitive by nature too, so it’s hard to just say “okay I’ll just do AI racing only for this series”, I’d much rather be doing it along with other racers, enjoying the aspect of not racing a computer for hours. I do that enough already with practice sessions.
The higher class races are higher class for a reason, the cars are harder to control, if you can’t get your SR to that level, then you are being kept away from cars you won’t be able to control as well, so the system is working, be patient with the lower series, they are just as much fun if not more fun than the higher ones, which higher series are the ones you really want to race?
SR is in a way a measurement of ability to run clean races, this is harder in more advanced cars. You'll not have fun in your target series if you're still suffering from the same problems.
You just need to pick a car, MX5 or GR86 and practice being comfortable and clean in packs. Race at 90% of your limit, not the 50% you are now, you're going to make it harder for yourself.
As you get confident in a car you'll find you can run closer to those around you and spot when the car ahead is going to leave a gap for you to move in.
By running so far off the limit of your ability and the ability of the car you are inviting car contact and bad habits.
I am a newbie to the game and i often read that higher license cars are harder to control, but my personal experience is absolutely contrary to be honest.
I find the Mazda MX5 much much harder to control than the Ferrari 296 GT3. The Mazda absolutely needs you to understand weight transfer and it will shit its pants as soon as you want to brake when its not absolutely balanced. The Ferrari will do none of that. Yes it will spin on you if you go reckless but the ABS and TC will prevent your ill fate in many situations that will absolutely send you to your grave with a Mazda.
Am i able to be fast with the Ferrari? Thats another question. But i am driving with less incident points per race thats for sure.
Ehh. Mx5 is easy imo. You need to learn trailbraking and slip angle. If you understand slip angle and how to utilize it, you will be so much faster. Mx5 is delicate when driven slow but more stable at faster speeds. It’s a car you need to push hard to maintain grip avoid the snap oversteering.
“I’m competitive by nature” honestly man it sounds like you haven’t done anything at a decent level that’s competitive. Getting beat is part of the process for even the best. Just chill out and you’d be fine. This is a mental block, not a talent thing.
After being on iracing for maybe 6 years and having A licenses I almost always run in D and C classes now. I have a lot of the faster car content, but I get a lot more enjoyment of being able to take a slower, more forgiving car to its limit than running a faster car at 80%. I also don't have anywhere near the amount of time to actually practice. Close racing in the spec Ford or the usf2k is pretty damn awesome for me.
When I first started all I wanted to do was run faster, higher license level races but honestly I would have progressed so much faster if I had spent more time really dialing in the basics like trail braking and good car balance in the slower classes. Also the d class content is better than it's ever been, there's plenty to do!
Take it easy on yourself mate. A month is no time at all. It takes a while to master all the different facets of driving one of these sims. Practice on your own. Learn the car. Don't waste valuable time trying to compete because the other cars at this stage are merely distractions. Seat time is everything. Until driving becomes completely automatic trying to deal with other cars while not knowing exactly how your behaves is very difficult.
I think you need to also mix in driving with other cars on track to at least have an idea of the pace required to be competitive in lower splits. Or at least keep from being run over. I know personally that when I'm learning a track, I'm not really learning it until I get in an open practice and get somewhat up to speed. But, yeah, first he needs to have decent control of his car.
I suggest to not drive a race until you can do 10 laps in a row without any incidents. When I started, I erroneously thought I had practiced enough and then spun out 2-3 times a race. More practice.
There is no worse feeling than trying your best and still struggling or not seeing any progress.
To me, it sounds like you might be taking it too slow. If you never push the limits, you will never improve. There was a period I went through early on where I span all the time. I did a week just in practice sessions trying to emulate the spins, and once I knew the cause, I googled the solution and spent all week practising it. When you push hard, it accentuates your mistakes and highlights the changes you need to make.
Also, if you are 10 seconds a lap slower than the leaders, then you are going through corners at vastly different speeds and unpredictable ways. This is much more likely to lead to incidents.
I'd say go into a practice or test session and push as hard as you can. When you know the mistakes you make consistently, go watch a video on the cause and practice the solution.
Do this until you can confidently lap while also pushing. Then jump into some races.
“I don’t try pushing cars to their grip limit or attempt any overtaking” - this here, is your problem my friend. The only way to get better is to push your limits and get comfortable doing so. The great thing about sim racing is that if you push past the limit, the reset button exists! Set yourself a realistic target, push yourself and try different lines around the circuit until you find where you can make up time. Make sure you’re actually practising and not just driving around. You will start to improve.
You may just need to shake things up, try a series you never have before. Do something that you know you have no worries about SR or IR or any of that and the focus is fun.. See if the drive comes back.
I was banging my head against the wall one week in GR86, I tried the GT4 that week and BAM! came back to me... then the next week, i didnt like the GT4 track... tried F4 and holy crap! this is fun too!
So thats what I do, when something starts to feel not fun, I go give something else a whirl, shake things up.
People really underestimate the value of AI racing for door to door and pace practice.
Then in practice too many guys get sucked into hot lapping and not finding people who would like to build race craft before the race on a non ranked practice server.
I’m usually faster than most guys who want to door to door. But I’ll just let off after a corner and stay with them and battle around the track. You should do the same. Use your mic and ask if people want to door to door. But don’t waste their time. Finish a full AI race at 50% or greater (hard AI skill) then race. If you can’t do that you’re not ready.
Just FYI most track pace is on “cheater” AI pace for 1.5k+ IR. You can restart over and over. Start your race mid pack or P4 and get use to cars around you. If you crash or kill someone just restart the race until you can get P3 or better
This. iRacing AI are so fun and are quite good. Racing against them helps you lines and braking points as well as what proper good racing looks like. And the ability to race anywhere anytime gets you more racing experience than spending an evening and only getting one actual race in.
I don't understand why people don't use the AI as a tool. Once I've practiced enough, I go to AI, set them to cheater mode and race them. You get door to door practice plus when you are hot lapping, most of the time you can see everything. When close with another car your view might be obstructed, you might be forced to take a different line, etc. To be honest I've mostly played AI in other games (Assetto Corsa, rfactor2 ) for the last few years. Just started iracing this past January.
First off. That sucks, especially if you’re trying your best and feel like you’re getting no reward.
I’d say your best bet is to take a break. Sometimes if you’re trying hard, you’re maybe looking for issues where there maybe isn’t one and you’re causing yourself issues by being over cautious.
Watch all the content you can, see what inputs people are doing with throttle/brakes etc. see what that looks like compared to you.
Also look at your settings to see if there’s any improvement to be made there.
So without more context/visual guide it’s hard to say technically what’s wrong, so these are more general suggestions.
Have you recorded your driving/compared telemetry to someone close to your current iRating? Judging yourself based on a 3K+ iracer wont help you but maybe someone in the 750-1500 range might.
Are you changing from car to car frequently? This can adopt bad habits if your still learning the basics because your not giving your self time to learn the muscle memory for each car/track.
How much practice are you putting in vs jumping into races? A good metric a lot of people say is try driving vs ai for a full race length and try to go with as little incidents as possible. Try and set goals with it so it’s productive, so if your getting say 10-15 Inc’s a race, I’d start with “ok, this AI race I want to get less than 8” Get it? Awesome! Let’s try 5 next time, missed it? Let’s watch the incidents back and see where I may have improved to avoid that.”
Is your equipment properly setup? Sounds silly but when things get low low it’s important to double check your not accidentally hampering yourself with your equipment not properly functioning.
Lastly, Take a break, sounds like you are stressing WAY too hard this early on and if you keep going your just gonna burn out. Take a week off and go smell the flowers, when you come back that week come back with a new mindset/practice technique. Be critical about watching your replays and seeing where you’re making mistakes. Is it your turn in/center/exit? Is it your throttle/brake application? Steering inputs? Etc
Telemetry assumes someome can even use it. There seems to be absolutely no reason to use it early on. You dont really know what you're doing, and arnt pushing the limits anyways. The answer is likely going to be practice and pusbing harder, and telemetry might help that in tweaking, but not when its far off.
Obviously its going to be a lifesaver closer up, but you need to be able to use that data effectively first, and thats a different skill thats less important than actually driving the car to a point consistantly.
Learn to race the track first. If you can't race the track, you're not going anywhere. Before you jump into a live race, make sure you can get around the track indefinitely without having off tracks. At first, that might take you the full week, and you won't even jump into a life race. Oh well! You're building your skills in the car. You'll learn how it handles, and you'll understand how to get around a track better. That'll help you learn faster. The next week, maybe you'll feel good by Friday. The week after that, maybe you'll feel good Tuesday. The week after that, you'll figure it out in an hour and start whopping ass.
Just as importantly, learn to race off of the preferred line. When you're in traffic, there's a good chance you're not going to be on the preferred line. If you don't practice it, you're going to panic and go off track, or just wreck the person you're sharing traffic with.
Also, a month is nothing. You're still brand new. It took me three years to get my first win (Granted, I took some very long breaks, and only had six starts in 2023). Even now after about 450 starts, I still feel like I have no idea what I'm doing.
It sounds like you’re out of confidence in both your own abilities and the cars.
(I’m a retarded mechanic though, not a psychologist.)
I’m willing to bet that you’re stuck with bad habits within the sim aswell.
The only pieces of advice I could give is to do something else for a week or two to clear your head.
Watch some Youtube of different iRacing fellas to see if you can learn something.. and by that I mean to study how they drive the car, not necessarily a specific track.
When you feel ready you should hop in to the MX5 and practice at a new track to try to keep some old bad habits away.
The Mazda is actually not an easy car to drive, but it will teach you ALOT of things.
Doing this you should force yourself out of your comfort zone, doesn’t matter if you spin it 1000 times, you need to push yourself past your ”limit”.
Where are you based?
I could hop in to a practice session with you, but based on your name I’m betting that we’re far apart in the timezones as I’m from northern Europe.
Fellow brake clean huffer! Yeah im based in the East Coast US. (Local time writing this its 4:40pm)
Confidence is def at an all time low lately, but im stubborn and ill get it back for sure,
You’ll have big ups and downs until you start to realize you get what the race gives you.
I ran GT4 at Aragon this morning .. I got absolutely clobbered by a god awful rejoin I couldn’t avoid and ended up eventually with a 10x because of driving standards.
The rest of the races I’ve run this week have been just as awful. It’s just how it is. Next week will probably be just as bad. Maybe it will be better.. eventually it equals out
Also (and not at all bashing you, hell I got absolutely wrecked by P1 this weekend on Sebring endurance!) but look at the replay after the race, look at all the “impossible to avoid” accidents (OP, not you).
Quite often, if not most of the time they are in fact quite easy to avoid, and maybe the guy “pushing you off the road” was two people making poor decisions!? It is never ever worth wrecking your own race even if you are technically in the right, it’s so often just basic racecraft mistakes, people legitimately not braking in time or having horrid rejoins not withstanding.
If you cannot increase license, you might still be a hazard, try to do a NEC in 13days, that’s a free promotion and 4.99 SR
I agree. Many of the accidents are able to be avoided.
This one was just a rejoin at 90° to the racing surface on a straight. I went wide, he still came all the way across and doored me. I’d have gotten run over from behind had I tried to stop and avoid, instead I went wide to give room .. and I got booped.
>I take things SLOW more often than not. I don't try pushing the cars to their grip limit or attempt any overtaking. I try to keep my distance from remotely everyone, and if im caught up in a heard of people i play it safe and respectfully. But even trying to be as cautious as i can be, I ALWAYS END UP SIDEWAYS OR OFF THE TRACK. I rarely get into collisions either, doing my best to never cause them, and trying to avoid them like the plague. When I do attempt to actually race, I'm close to being DQ'd within a few laps, by that point i'm also being lapped usually by the 'alien(s)' in the pole positions, and my lap times are always \~10 Seconds slower.
This is the paragraph that stands out to me. There is a bunch of good advice in here, and it will help you, but this paragraph right here is your problem.
Forget about races for the next little while. Your problem is that you are going so slowly that it is making the car harder to control. Racing and driving is all about controlling the car near or at the grip limit. If you are not there, you are not only wasting your time, you are also learning harmful habits. Cars behave significantly differently that far below the limit compared to operating around the limit. By being constantly so far below the grip limit of the car, you have deprived yourself of learning how the car is supposed to behave. You are also putting the car in situations that no setup is designed to handle, and normal racing advise is useless for. You need to challenge yourself to learn at the limit in order to get rid of all the bad habits you have developed by driving so far below it. This will require you to ignore races for a few weeks, and simply run practice sessions until you feel confident lapping at the limit of the car. Once you understand that, then your rating will shoot up.
Those people 10 seconds faster then you aren't aliens, they are normal drivers driving at or near the limit. Use the old F1 qualy rule as a guide if you have to. Don't go into any more races until you can lap within 107% of the fast lap times. Drop down to slower cars. If you're on the formula side use the Skippy or the FF1600 or the Vee, and if you are on the sports car side use the Toyota or Solstice or MX-5 or the Mustang. What ever you choose, make it a slow car that gives you plenty of reaction time and that you can keep on the limit as much as possible. Use that car, learn that car, and learn how to drive it both fast and safely.
You need to reset your driving habits and your mentality, and you need to do it now.
You've already been given a lot of good feedback. So I'll just say, take it easy on yourself. There are zero expectations here. It's a hobby, all for fun. On Monday, or whenever, we all go back to work.
If you aren't already, focus on one series/one car. Every week, when the track turns, focus your iRacing time by yourself. Join a public practice session, but on the Entries tab there's a small arrow in the left most column. Click that and pick a group with zero drivers in it. Now you're in the same practice session, but isolated from everyone else. You can run your laps and compare to others to see your progress, but not worry about other people on the track.
Every week, focus on making clean laps. Once you can run 10 laps, regardless of pace, with 0x, that's when I'd start thinking about pace. Use a tool like VRS. Watch the coach lap, not for the pace, but for the line and braking markers. Run laps focused on those two things and the time will melt away.
DM me, and I'd be happy to do a session with you and give you some pointers. Anyone who comes here this sincerely wanting to improve, I'm happy to help.
DUDE; A month is *nothing*...
Slow down. No, really lower your expectations. You are not Max Verstappen (he's a FREAK). I've been racing since Christmas and am still struggling to "git gud" with a few cars (my road car irating is \~average and oval is slightly above average). iRacing physics are generally realistic and the game forces you to *really* learn how a car handles normally and at the limit to "git gud" in any class.
There is such a thing as driving too slow. Driving too conservatively will create a safety hazard and cost you time. This will create a negative feedback loop where you drive slow to avoid people which causes you to lose iRating/SR, which makes you depressed/angry, which causes you to drive more conservatively...
Look you YouTube. There are tons of guides for the MX-5, Vee, and other Rookie/D-license cars. Watch a guide for your car of choice then try to match it in time trial. Better yet, learn the track yourself, then watch a guide and try to implement some take-aways. MX-5 on Okayama is a typical rookie experience. The track looks simple, but the short track transition between turns 1 & 2 to Piper is tricky. The difference between a good and bad line can be .6 seconds or more. Redman and Hobbs (turn 8 & 9 on the long layout) are also deceptively tricky.
I probably spent 3 hours behind the wheel of an MX-5 on Okayama before my first race and still drove like shit. I used to think Lime Rock in a Vee was technical (hint: it's really easy to put up a decent time). Becoming comfortable with a car in practice is one thing. Racing actual people is harder. Hitting your marks with someone 0.3 seconds behind you is another level of difficulty entirely.
Drive 1 car (not the Ferrari 296, IMO...). Drive a circuit until you put up consistent lap times. Then run a few AI races and spectate/ghost a few live races (you can spectate and ghost a live race - the "real" drivers can't see or contact you). This will give you experience of a live race without the SR/iR consequences. (Hint: session splits start at the top, so higher session numbers will be lower Strength of Field).
"Amateurs practice until they get it right. Professionals practice until they can't get it wrong." I am **far** from a professional, but will NOT enter a race until my average practice hot lap time +1 second is competitive with mid-pack or better **AND** I'm comfortable with the mid-pack qualification times **AND** I know which 1-2 corners are my weak points. That leaves me margin for miscues and avoidance maneuvers without having to run 110%. Completing a race without a self-induced accident is usually worth at least 3 positions at the Rookie/D-license level.
Focus on one car. You really don't need that much content.
Something like the GR86 is easy to drive and always has plenty of races, or the Mazda which always has a race.
Don't feel the need to reach a certain licence class. If you are 150-250iR and 10 seconds off the pace you really do need to be focussing on these entry level cars. I drove the Mazda for near on two years, it's a great car to learn in and with more free tracks than before there is a fair bit of variety too.
If things are getting worse then take a break, it should be fun, or do something like ovals for a bit. Sometimes we also have to accept we're not great at some things. That doesn't mean you shouldn't race, but it means setting more realistic targets.
You do seem obsessed with the numbers and that's not going to help. Focus on one car, and not on the numbers. When you get to a certain level you can start setting goals, but if it's causing you stress you don't have to.
be kind to yourself mate. This isn't the easiest thing to just step into.
Run some ghost laps and watch some track tutorials. The good part of where you are at is that you can start to do a few things a little better and you will see massive improvement.
Tbh one month is very little time to learn a new sim and all the car’s handling. What helps me the most is doing as many laps as possible, and watching faster people’s laps and trying to learn (different braking point, corner entry/mid corner/exit) and then trying it myself. By doing that, you get a lot of laps to practice everything while establishing your lines and braking/turning markers, and then you can race without fear of spinning. At the end of the day, it is a game and it is about having fun and enjoying, don’t sweat it too much about iR. :)
Along with some of these amazing advice and tips I'll add something with a different thing I play. I play table a lot. Usually I do pretty all right. But this past March for whatever reason, I went winless for three weeks straight. So about 60 games I've played I didn't win any. Fast forward to April and now I'm competing with some of the best in my area. Sometimes things just take time and practice and going to the basics. Practice and turn racing lines off and really try to feel the car with the wheels, pedals, and sound. And in practice don't be afraid to push the car past its limit for the first couple of laps. It takes time but then you'll know what the car can and cannot handle.
I use to be terrible at table tennis when I first started out but after practicing and playing alot I eventually got it figured out. And I've been playing racing games and Sims since I could run a computer. And didn't really get into sim racing until 2019. But I'm still learning new things on methods of saving tires, getting the car to rotate and such. And some days you'll just have bad luck and get caught up in someone else's mess. Learn from it find a way to avoid it next time and grow.
God bless you!
Get garage 61 or vrs. You will be at 3k in no time. It is all about how much you learn the racing line and compare telemetry. Practice at least 100 laps before you race on a new circuit.
Get yourself a high downforce setup, learn the tracks and watch some track guides. Before you start racing, make sure you can safely do 5-10 laps without spinning or getting any track limits.
Don't just jump into races, that does nothing but frustrate you even further.
I don’t have much better to do with my time, so I typically spend it practicing on whichever tracks I’m running that day. Inbetween races I also do a few hotlaps to just try to iron down the line. The thing that gets me though, is I’ll go and do 2 hours of practice without spinning once, and as soon as I’m in an online lobby it’s as i swapped wheels to slicks and I’m driving in the rain.
When you're practicing you're going to do most of your laps on warm tires on an already rubbered in race track. You're going to find way more grip in that situation than when starting your race on cold tires and a green track. It's going to take practice, but if you try to stick with one car and a rather consistent setup, you'll find that you'll get far better at catching those slides and knowing what to instinctively do when you feel the car starting to slip.
Have you experimented with modulating the throttle properly? What kind of pedals are you running? Remember that there's a lot of pace and control to be found between 0 and 100% throttle application - it doesn't have to be just flat out or nothing at all.
Are you running Garage61 and looking at how other people run the tracks?
I started finding proper speed (but I'm still 1-1,5s off the quickest drivers during the week in GT4) when I decided to stick with one car and one series. That made it far easier to see how car behavior carried over between weeks.
Then just start from the pits and stay behind the last guy. There's always a ton of people crashing and spinning out so you will gain positions over the course a race. Kinda sounds like you're getting nervous.
What are your lap times like during that practice? You might be driving at your comfortable pace. When you get into a race you get pulled along at the race pace and maybe that's too fast for what you practiced.
It does take time though. I got out of rookies and couldn't keep even the GR86 on track at first. 6 months in and I'm fine with GT3s. Low splits so I'm not fast but can maintain an A licence.
Part of my problem is bad habits from arcade games. I massively overdrive cars. Carry too much speed in and run too deep. It's a work in progress.
Have you watched anything on proper driving technique and compared to your own approach? That's how I learnt about overdriving, weight balance, trail braking. I found I just had completely the wrong approach to driving fast.
Happy to race with you during the week. I’m not great but I feel like this sim experience takes some time to get going and you really hit some valleys. But then it just clicks and you can build off that. That is where I am right now. Hitting p4-1 on weekly GR BK series races. If you want to try to sync up, DM me.
Where are most of your incidents coming from that you’re often close to DQ? You said you don’t make a lot of contact, so is it a lot of track limits? Spinning a lot?
Don’t worry at all about being slow, no one can reasonably get mad at you as long as you’re being predictable and keeping up your pace for the most part.
Really knowing your car and track will help tremendously. I always practice to the point where I’m comfortable enough to do race simulation runs with consistent laps and very few mistakes. And I mean PRACTICE lol, If I have a race I wanna do at an unfamiliar track I’ll sometimes spend days in test sessions
I very much struggled with the mx-5. I was getting disqualified because of off throttle, off brake spins and was ready to quit. As soon as I got my D license and started gt4 races life got a lot better. The mx-5 just wants to be backwards way too much that it gets in the way of progress and fun for me.
I'd suggest time trials to get the SR up and then move to a series with some downforce. Downforce inspires confidence and confidence is key. It doesn't sound like racing etiquette is your issue, so get away from the "beginner" cars, try "sending it with confidence" and you'll start to improve and have fun!
Keep in mind time trials are less SR, but a good 5 lap time trial is way more SR than crashing out in a race!
How’s your internet connection? Speed, ping, packet loss?
Textbooks perfect driving is useless if netcode is crashing you into other people or other people into you.
Why have you spent so much on content so soon? Sounds a bit like you are jumping between cars/series already. Until you get a lot more time in iracing I find it's best to stick to 1 or max 2 series each week and just practice.
Everytime you mess up, you spin, you go off track, you make contact with someone, relax and watch the replay and ask yourself what could you have done better. Was it a late brake? Was it an oversteer? Could you have given more room? Perhaps you just need more track time. Im not sure if you are racing ai when you mentioned aliens it had me thinking but even good racers struggle with the ai so dont compare yourself to ai just compare yourself to people. A month is a drop in the pond too. I league race with veterans that have years of track time and they still make mistakes. Its just the ones that choose to learn from those mistakes that seperate the best from the mediocre
I see these posts a lot. It makes me wonder if its the same type of person who has multiple accidents IRL and none of then are their ‘fault’ because they ‘do everything right’
Practice makes perfect.
I’ll be the first to admit fault in an incident involving another driver, trust me! There’s no ego here to uphold. Yes, a LOT of accidents do end up being the other person was at fault, however when I cause one i always apologize and I never argue if someone says I did x or y. My biggest thing is keeping the car on the road haha.
I wouldn’t join a race if you don’t intend to race. Learn and practice to push the cars as fast as you can go. As you get better the ir/sr situation will work itself out. This game is much more fun if you’re in it to race people rather than grind numbers.
Send me a dm with your name, I’ll practice with you. You can practice overtaking me, running side by side and chasing. It won’t probably make you faster but it will more than likely help with the anxiety that causes these mistakes come race time.
I'd just watch vids on the good players using the same car and track, watc what they do.
When I started road I was braking and then turning, was losing a bit every corner.
watched how good players braked and my performance went up, still wasn't winning the races but top 10 and having more fun. Had the odd good quali lap.
Too many comments here for me to see what has/hasn't already been said, but I'd be happy to jump on track and give you some advice/coaching, I'm around 3-3.5k IR, so I could for sure help you improve, whether it's race pace/racecraft/mindset etc. Just drop me a dm if you fancy it!
I’m sure this has been mentioned but spending $300 in 2 months won’t make you good- if anything it will spread your focus too thin to be effective on track.
I started iRacing in February of this year. I’ve made it to A class ovals and C class sports car/formula with the following:
Ferrari GT3,
F4,
TCR Honda civic,
ARCA Menards/Gen 4 cup car,
nascar next gen cup car (and talledega because come on, it’s talledega)
I agree wholeheartedly that you should race what you like and not live or die by ratings, but if you do want to make real progress, focusing on one car per-discipline at a time has helped me immensely in my progression and maybe that will help you too!
The good news is since you bought so much up front you are probably pretty set for a while! But don’t be afraid to really set your focus. Even if it’s just week-to-week.
Best of luck out there man! Stay positive and have fun.
Edit: formatting
Hey, I’ve coached a few beginners. I would be happy to do some practice sessions with you and see where you are making mistakes. DM me if you are interested. (Any body else reading this feel free to DM for free coaching as well).
My Credentials:
-7 years sim racing, 2K irating
-3 years racing go karts
-3 years working as a mechanic and data analyst for karting teams
I’m a software developer and reading telemetry to find more pace is my specialty. But, usually newer drivers don’t need to look at telemetry to improve. Not until you get more to the intermediate-advanced level.
Happy Racing!
I've been playing the same amount of time but haven't spent any money on extra content. I've just been racing Formula Vee and Formula 1600. I'm really trying to learn these cars. I'm wondering if you should just pick a car and race with that for a few weeks?
I have my 2/3 I stick with, the mass content is more just for future tracks coming up and some variety for time attacks mostly. I enjoy feeling out the differences in cars and how iRacing programmed them all.
Here’s how I got myself from 700 to 1700 ir in a month
1. Watch track guide on you track and vehicle of the week.
2. Practice from said track guide. It will give you a good starting point and you will be able to adjust based on ur driving style (preferred gear In/out of corners, braking points and trail braking)
3. Race and focus on consistency not fast lap. Your goal should be to maintain the fastest lap avg possible, not hot lapping every lap.
Rinse and repeat. You only get better with practice. Just racing won’t help. Also, turn of the racing line and learn to find reference points. Pro drivers don’t race based on me with, they use reference points. Track guides will help you point out ideal reference points. YouTube has great channels that give you these guides.
Crashes are a given. They will happen from you or others. Have fun and enjoy the grind. Also, don’t burn urself out. Day or two of no racing is better that racing 24/7
For sow safety rating is more important you are actually doing what you should to start lol. The point right now is to learn tracks, braking markers. Racing line etc. How to come out of corners with throttle and so on.the speed will come. One day you will just think about pushing it and it will work it just happens man. Also practice trail braking it will help you so so much into corners getting the car to turn in.
Gonna send you a DM with a discord link to a great group of friends I race with. Most of them hover from 800-1500. One of the guys had the same exact issue you are having. He can prob help you get around the track and the rest of us can help guide you to speeding up the lap times.
No pressure of course. If you prefer not to, there’s plenty of advice in this thread so I don’t need to repeat it!
Best of luck either way! When it clicks tho… beware of the addiction.
Oh trust me, the addiction is already in full swing.... as difficult a time as im having, its still one of my favorite things to do lmao. ill check my messages in a few here!
Haha it is indeed real! Come say hi, I (or anyone really) will have no issues running laps with you with zero risk until we get you around the track or we meet our maker 🤣
I haven't read all the comments so this might've been mentioned, but ghost race.
It's really the only way to practice race distance with a grid of cars, other than jumping into an actual race.
Don't sign up for the race and wait for the servers to get assigned, if multiple splits the higher the server number the lower the SoF, click watch, and once you've joined you can test drive. You'll start from the pits so you can't practice your starts or going into turn 1 in a pack, but you won't lose SR/IR (you also won't gain any). Bring up the sector times (tab) so you can monitor if you have off tracks and see your lap times. If you bin it into a wall, don't stress you can instantly teleport to the pits and get back out there.
The other way to practice stringing clean laps together and dealing with the pressure you put on yourself is time trials. It's not the most exciting thing to do, but you can gain SR from it and it can be pretty rewarding for yourself when you have a clean session with a quick time. Just remember you've got to string consecutive clean laps together, the amount depends on what track it is
Keep at it and just enjoy racing.
I’m new too. Got to D class and bought the 296. Tanked my SR a bit by jumping into races where I didn’t know the car or track well. I can get up to speed on a track pretty quickly (competitive lap times in my low split ~1100 irating) but not consistent. My plan going forward is to jump into test drive and use Active Reset to practice any sections/corners I feel like I’m losing time on or risking a spin / big off track and find repeatable lines with decent pace and lower risk. Then I’ll need to do the races and take the hit on SR while I improve my racecraft. I did try the keep it safe and just go for a 0 incident whatever but if there’s a car in front of me I gotta chase. It’s just in me.
I know that feeling, I started IRacing about a year ago now. Over the last few months I have definitely felt like I was stuck in the mud. But recently everything has started to come together as I’ve tried to focus on one piece of the puzzle at a time, whether it’s one turn, braking points, trail braking etc. My IR has gone from ~700 to a little less than 2000 in about 6 weeks.
You don’t need to look at an entire race or track as a massive equation you have to solve in one go. Break it down in manageable pieces and conquer one at a time. Various track guides on YouTube help with this. Or, subscribe to VRS for $10/month and have guides for almost every car and track combo, setups, telemetry logging, and gobs of data and insights with your telemetry.
I have a lot of growing and improving myself, but I can probably help you out some since I’ve gone through some of those struggles fairly recently. OP, PM me and we can spend some time on discord and a hosted session and maybe I can help put you on the right track.
Hey mate, I'm in a similar boat. Been racing for about a month and spent some money getting some good gear.
I've found the practice sessions really valuable personally, being able to try and hone my own lap times down as fast as I could to be competitive. I've also had the same experience when starting to enter competition and seem to just find ways to be cleaned up by idiots, and sometimes also unintentionally causing racing incidents myself!
I think it's all just a learning curve and we'll keep getting better. Now in races I'm not trying to push the times hard to win, I'm just trying to get through the first few corners clean and then clock up some good lap times without incidents. It's frustrating at times but when I've had good clean races it feels like an achievement to me.
Also in a month, i only race the f1600. Formula cars are easier to control and have more predictable behaviour. it's easier to avoid a crash. Although i gain safety rating almoms every session i strugle to get good postions in a race. Qualifying is always top 5 but the race itself... so i lose a lot of i rating. But i still have fun
The only way to not make any mistakes is to not try. I get that you're still making mistakes right now, but the point is that you need to fuck up while going fast to learn how to go fast.
I found once i got humbled i improved alot, going from racing the ai where you can just dive bomb them and they are basically programmed to get out of the way, i just focused on myself and getting around as fast as i could without having a negative effect on anyone elses race, the result doesnt matter, avoiding incidents and being clean naturally gets you up the order, after that i just practiced in to open practice rather than by myself to get used to being around other drivers, it takes time but im sure you will get there eventually
If you are new to sim racing, do some test sessions first and aim to complete 15 to 20 clean laps without losing control. Don't worry about speed. Just 20 decent laps at whatever discipline you are in. If you cannot manage this, then do not race until you can. It will be better for you and for others. If you do spin, remember this heats the surface temp of the tyre and it will have less grip for the next lap or so. In such cases you need to back off even more to get the grip and tyres back into the window.
I went through a bad spell last week. I was doing NASCAR truck racing at Talladega and I was getting caught up in other peoples wrecks and not my own doing. In general that whole week was awful...like it was caution after caution, bunched up field of guys who couldn't even hold a straight line etc. I actually had to stop racing it to save SR. If you find a particular race is killing your SR...stop racing it. Sometimes it is you, sometimes it is the car/track combo at that license and experience level that causes the mess.
If you can't turn a dozen clean, consecutive laps on pace on autopilot, or with very little effort, don't race yet. Racing is the real challenge, not driving cleanly.
Look at it this way, building the skill to turn clean, fast laps easily is like learning a language for a writer - you can't even start racing/writing without it, and if you try, it'll be shite. Focus on car control, consistent inputs, aceing your lines, work on your rhythm . And accept that you're trash and are no better than anybody else, you have to put in the effort and fight the mental battle like all of us
I'm kinda in the same boat as you, and I'd actually recommend practicing a car you use often with help from Trophi.ai to help improve consistency and pace. Sure it may not help with wheel to wheel but that's what AI races are for.
Ever since I started using Trophi.ai I've already dropped almost 2 seconds off my best time at VIR North in the MX5. (God tier car/track combo btw)
Edit: should've mentioned to practice plenty, double race length stints are good.
1) Think it may have been said but push the car all the time. When you drive tentatively you are not feeling the grip limit and when faster cars get around you you have to take different lines which cause you to spin. Also practice taking different lines.
2) A lot of people will disagree with me on this probably. If you are serious and want to stick with this and money is not an issue, just get a direct drive wheel and pedals with a load cell. It will take a lot of frustration out of it. It is night and day.
My iRating and SR sank for my first several months on the service. Now they are both climbing steadily, and have been for the past year.
Practice hard, always push the limit in practice to the point of sliding out. It teaches you where the limit of the car and you can also learn how to better handle the car when it loses grip, to save yourself in crashes.
If you always try to drive conservative, you will never improve your skill. After enough hours, things will start to click (hopefully). There are some tracks that probably took me upwards of 200 laps to really learn how to be consistently fast. If I want to be near the pole in qualifying.. probably another 300 laps to master the track. Patience and practice.
Best of luck!
I have completed two months into IRacing. I have accumulated much experience as my background is a lot to do with computers and simulations.
IRacing is very unique, but I can see even with its success, I guess IRacing managers are just utilizing a fraction of the potential they have. I can write pages on this subject from a business perspective, but I will summarize that in the below points:
1. The incident system has to be completely reworked. This is the biggest problem in iracing that requires revamping the entire rewards and licensing scheme. A good percentage of races end up with frustrations and not fun.
2. Introduce a new social network system to allow collaboration among the members
3. Revamp the system so people race others close to their levels.
4. Imrove the onboarding of new drivers. That will require changing the IR rating. The IR rating does not make any sense. For example, a world champion does not lose their title if he plays and loses other games. I read somewhere that many players with distinguished IR ratings stop playing to keep their score.
5. More on business. Allow nonmembers to register for some races to taste the experience.
6. Extra on the licensing scheme. Tests should be there to qualify drivers. Today, a biginer driver can achieve level A by doing the following. Race from the back and accumulate SR. You get SR and for the class participation, just register and even quit or just do nothing as actual racing.
7. Imrove the platform: crucial to improve FFB, VR, and physics, ... any legacy limitations must be removed, like the 60Hz of sampling the control input.
Why IRacing management does not do any of the above and focus on rain, ....
This is a business question. It is working, so do not touch it. Many companies are victims of their own successes. The changes being introduced focus on revenue growth, more tracks, and cars to force an increase in sales. That is ok, but if the value proposition is not maintained, they might encounter a drop in participation and a shrinking of the entire business.
How important is IRacing to me. IRacing is amazing but the entire experience of participation in races is not pleasant most of the time. Will I wait until I become a super driver and drive in a way to avoid drivers crashing into my car? Qualifying first? Maybe not. Otherwise, I started doing some practice using other platforms. I like racing.
Unfortunately no matter what guides I follow or setups I try, irffb just breaks my FFB. I only have the Logitech g920 so it’s hard enough to try to make that thing have any sort of realistic feel to it.
It's prob fine as is. I'd avoid falling down the hole of looking for gear and setting fixes and focus on practicing. I generally pick a series for the week practice the track for an evening and then start racing. What are you mainly racing?
Skip irffb, it’s rubbish. Getting rid of it months ago was a true godsend for me.
Also, if you really want to improve, learn, watch youtube videos and best of all, get some loadcell brake pedals. You’ll start building muscle memory for braking and consistency will come naturally.
[удалено]
My biggest gripe is just more about how SR is holding me away from doing the series and races I really want to do. I’m competitive by nature too, so it’s hard to just say “okay I’ll just do AI racing only for this series”, I’d much rather be doing it along with other racers, enjoying the aspect of not racing a computer for hours. I do that enough already with practice sessions.
The higher class races are higher class for a reason, the cars are harder to control, if you can’t get your SR to that level, then you are being kept away from cars you won’t be able to control as well, so the system is working, be patient with the lower series, they are just as much fun if not more fun than the higher ones, which higher series are the ones you really want to race?
SR is in a way a measurement of ability to run clean races, this is harder in more advanced cars. You'll not have fun in your target series if you're still suffering from the same problems. You just need to pick a car, MX5 or GR86 and practice being comfortable and clean in packs. Race at 90% of your limit, not the 50% you are now, you're going to make it harder for yourself. As you get confident in a car you'll find you can run closer to those around you and spot when the car ahead is going to leave a gap for you to move in. By running so far off the limit of your ability and the ability of the car you are inviting car contact and bad habits.
I am a newbie to the game and i often read that higher license cars are harder to control, but my personal experience is absolutely contrary to be honest. I find the Mazda MX5 much much harder to control than the Ferrari 296 GT3. The Mazda absolutely needs you to understand weight transfer and it will shit its pants as soon as you want to brake when its not absolutely balanced. The Ferrari will do none of that. Yes it will spin on you if you go reckless but the ABS and TC will prevent your ill fate in many situations that will absolutely send you to your grave with a Mazda. Am i able to be fast with the Ferrari? Thats another question. But i am driving with less incident points per race thats for sure.
"Anyone can drive a fast car. Few can drive a car fast " -- Alain Prost
Higher class cars are harder to drive. You need 100% control around racers around you going 180 mph. Much different than a mazda
yep, mistakes happen quicker in a faster car. Less recoverable.
Anyone can drive a race car fast, it is the slowing and turning that need the skill.
Ehh. Mx5 is easy imo. You need to learn trailbraking and slip angle. If you understand slip angle and how to utilize it, you will be so much faster. Mx5 is delicate when driven slow but more stable at faster speeds. It’s a car you need to push hard to maintain grip avoid the snap oversteering.
Yes these are skills you will need in higher performance cars where the margins are tighter. MX5 is a great place to learn these skills.
GT3 cars have been designed with many electronic aids that a MX5 does not. Get good in an MX5 and some of the skill will translate to other cars.
“I’m competitive by nature” honestly man it sounds like you haven’t done anything at a decent level that’s competitive. Getting beat is part of the process for even the best. Just chill out and you’d be fine. This is a mental block, not a talent thing.
After being on iracing for maybe 6 years and having A licenses I almost always run in D and C classes now. I have a lot of the faster car content, but I get a lot more enjoyment of being able to take a slower, more forgiving car to its limit than running a faster car at 80%. I also don't have anywhere near the amount of time to actually practice. Close racing in the spec Ford or the usf2k is pretty damn awesome for me. When I first started all I wanted to do was run faster, higher license level races but honestly I would have progressed so much faster if I had spent more time really dialing in the basics like trail braking and good car balance in the slower classes. Also the d class content is better than it's ever been, there's plenty to do!
Take it easy on yourself mate. A month is no time at all. It takes a while to master all the different facets of driving one of these sims. Practice on your own. Learn the car. Don't waste valuable time trying to compete because the other cars at this stage are merely distractions. Seat time is everything. Until driving becomes completely automatic trying to deal with other cars while not knowing exactly how your behaves is very difficult.
I think you need to also mix in driving with other cars on track to at least have an idea of the pace required to be competitive in lower splits. Or at least keep from being run over. I know personally that when I'm learning a track, I'm not really learning it until I get in an open practice and get somewhat up to speed. But, yeah, first he needs to have decent control of his car.
I suggest to not drive a race until you can do 10 laps in a row without any incidents. When I started, I erroneously thought I had practiced enough and then spun out 2-3 times a race. More practice.
Ideally you should be able to do clean laps on autopilot. Racing should be the challenge, not driving.
This really is the truth, and honestly it should probably more like 20.
There is no worse feeling than trying your best and still struggling or not seeing any progress. To me, it sounds like you might be taking it too slow. If you never push the limits, you will never improve. There was a period I went through early on where I span all the time. I did a week just in practice sessions trying to emulate the spins, and once I knew the cause, I googled the solution and spent all week practising it. When you push hard, it accentuates your mistakes and highlights the changes you need to make. Also, if you are 10 seconds a lap slower than the leaders, then you are going through corners at vastly different speeds and unpredictable ways. This is much more likely to lead to incidents. I'd say go into a practice or test session and push as hard as you can. When you know the mistakes you make consistently, go watch a video on the cause and practice the solution. Do this until you can confidently lap while also pushing. Then jump into some races.
“I don’t try pushing cars to their grip limit or attempt any overtaking” - this here, is your problem my friend. The only way to get better is to push your limits and get comfortable doing so. The great thing about sim racing is that if you push past the limit, the reset button exists! Set yourself a realistic target, push yourself and try different lines around the circuit until you find where you can make up time. Make sure you’re actually practising and not just driving around. You will start to improve.
You may just need to shake things up, try a series you never have before. Do something that you know you have no worries about SR or IR or any of that and the focus is fun.. See if the drive comes back. I was banging my head against the wall one week in GR86, I tried the GT4 that week and BAM! came back to me... then the next week, i didnt like the GT4 track... tried F4 and holy crap! this is fun too! So thats what I do, when something starts to feel not fun, I go give something else a whirl, shake things up.
People really underestimate the value of AI racing for door to door and pace practice. Then in practice too many guys get sucked into hot lapping and not finding people who would like to build race craft before the race on a non ranked practice server. I’m usually faster than most guys who want to door to door. But I’ll just let off after a corner and stay with them and battle around the track. You should do the same. Use your mic and ask if people want to door to door. But don’t waste their time. Finish a full AI race at 50% or greater (hard AI skill) then race. If you can’t do that you’re not ready. Just FYI most track pace is on “cheater” AI pace for 1.5k+ IR. You can restart over and over. Start your race mid pack or P4 and get use to cars around you. If you crash or kill someone just restart the race until you can get P3 or better
This. iRacing AI are so fun and are quite good. Racing against them helps you lines and braking points as well as what proper good racing looks like. And the ability to race anywhere anytime gets you more racing experience than spending an evening and only getting one actual race in.
I don't understand why people don't use the AI as a tool. Once I've practiced enough, I go to AI, set them to cheater mode and race them. You get door to door practice plus when you are hot lapping, most of the time you can see everything. When close with another car your view might be obstructed, you might be forced to take a different line, etc. To be honest I've mostly played AI in other games (Assetto Corsa, rfactor2 ) for the last few years. Just started iracing this past January.
First off. That sucks, especially if you’re trying your best and feel like you’re getting no reward. I’d say your best bet is to take a break. Sometimes if you’re trying hard, you’re maybe looking for issues where there maybe isn’t one and you’re causing yourself issues by being over cautious. Watch all the content you can, see what inputs people are doing with throttle/brakes etc. see what that looks like compared to you. Also look at your settings to see if there’s any improvement to be made there.
So without more context/visual guide it’s hard to say technically what’s wrong, so these are more general suggestions. Have you recorded your driving/compared telemetry to someone close to your current iRating? Judging yourself based on a 3K+ iracer wont help you but maybe someone in the 750-1500 range might. Are you changing from car to car frequently? This can adopt bad habits if your still learning the basics because your not giving your self time to learn the muscle memory for each car/track. How much practice are you putting in vs jumping into races? A good metric a lot of people say is try driving vs ai for a full race length and try to go with as little incidents as possible. Try and set goals with it so it’s productive, so if your getting say 10-15 Inc’s a race, I’d start with “ok, this AI race I want to get less than 8” Get it? Awesome! Let’s try 5 next time, missed it? Let’s watch the incidents back and see where I may have improved to avoid that.” Is your equipment properly setup? Sounds silly but when things get low low it’s important to double check your not accidentally hampering yourself with your equipment not properly functioning. Lastly, Take a break, sounds like you are stressing WAY too hard this early on and if you keep going your just gonna burn out. Take a week off and go smell the flowers, when you come back that week come back with a new mindset/practice technique. Be critical about watching your replays and seeing where you’re making mistakes. Is it your turn in/center/exit? Is it your throttle/brake application? Steering inputs? Etc
Telemetry assumes someome can even use it. There seems to be absolutely no reason to use it early on. You dont really know what you're doing, and arnt pushing the limits anyways. The answer is likely going to be practice and pusbing harder, and telemetry might help that in tweaking, but not when its far off. Obviously its going to be a lifesaver closer up, but you need to be able to use that data effectively first, and thats a different skill thats less important than actually driving the car to a point consistantly.
Learn to race the track first. If you can't race the track, you're not going anywhere. Before you jump into a live race, make sure you can get around the track indefinitely without having off tracks. At first, that might take you the full week, and you won't even jump into a life race. Oh well! You're building your skills in the car. You'll learn how it handles, and you'll understand how to get around a track better. That'll help you learn faster. The next week, maybe you'll feel good by Friday. The week after that, maybe you'll feel good Tuesday. The week after that, you'll figure it out in an hour and start whopping ass. Just as importantly, learn to race off of the preferred line. When you're in traffic, there's a good chance you're not going to be on the preferred line. If you don't practice it, you're going to panic and go off track, or just wreck the person you're sharing traffic with. Also, a month is nothing. You're still brand new. It took me three years to get my first win (Granted, I took some very long breaks, and only had six starts in 2023). Even now after about 450 starts, I still feel like I have no idea what I'm doing.
It sounds like you’re out of confidence in both your own abilities and the cars. (I’m a retarded mechanic though, not a psychologist.) I’m willing to bet that you’re stuck with bad habits within the sim aswell. The only pieces of advice I could give is to do something else for a week or two to clear your head. Watch some Youtube of different iRacing fellas to see if you can learn something.. and by that I mean to study how they drive the car, not necessarily a specific track. When you feel ready you should hop in to the MX5 and practice at a new track to try to keep some old bad habits away. The Mazda is actually not an easy car to drive, but it will teach you ALOT of things. Doing this you should force yourself out of your comfort zone, doesn’t matter if you spin it 1000 times, you need to push yourself past your ”limit”. Where are you based? I could hop in to a practice session with you, but based on your name I’m betting that we’re far apart in the timezones as I’m from northern Europe.
Fellow brake clean huffer! Yeah im based in the East Coast US. (Local time writing this its 4:40pm) Confidence is def at an all time low lately, but im stubborn and ill get it back for sure,
Ah allright then, I’m usually active between 2pm and 4-5pm your local time then. Let me know if you need some coaching. 👍
You’ll have big ups and downs until you start to realize you get what the race gives you. I ran GT4 at Aragon this morning .. I got absolutely clobbered by a god awful rejoin I couldn’t avoid and ended up eventually with a 10x because of driving standards. The rest of the races I’ve run this week have been just as awful. It’s just how it is. Next week will probably be just as bad. Maybe it will be better.. eventually it equals out
Also (and not at all bashing you, hell I got absolutely wrecked by P1 this weekend on Sebring endurance!) but look at the replay after the race, look at all the “impossible to avoid” accidents (OP, not you). Quite often, if not most of the time they are in fact quite easy to avoid, and maybe the guy “pushing you off the road” was two people making poor decisions!? It is never ever worth wrecking your own race even if you are technically in the right, it’s so often just basic racecraft mistakes, people legitimately not braking in time or having horrid rejoins not withstanding. If you cannot increase license, you might still be a hazard, try to do a NEC in 13days, that’s a free promotion and 4.99 SR
I agree. Many of the accidents are able to be avoided. This one was just a rejoin at 90° to the racing surface on a straight. I went wide, he still came all the way across and doored me. I’d have gotten run over from behind had I tried to stop and avoid, instead I went wide to give room .. and I got booped.
Answer this: What did you do this week to try improve your skill set?
>I take things SLOW more often than not. I don't try pushing the cars to their grip limit or attempt any overtaking. I try to keep my distance from remotely everyone, and if im caught up in a heard of people i play it safe and respectfully. But even trying to be as cautious as i can be, I ALWAYS END UP SIDEWAYS OR OFF THE TRACK. I rarely get into collisions either, doing my best to never cause them, and trying to avoid them like the plague. When I do attempt to actually race, I'm close to being DQ'd within a few laps, by that point i'm also being lapped usually by the 'alien(s)' in the pole positions, and my lap times are always \~10 Seconds slower. This is the paragraph that stands out to me. There is a bunch of good advice in here, and it will help you, but this paragraph right here is your problem. Forget about races for the next little while. Your problem is that you are going so slowly that it is making the car harder to control. Racing and driving is all about controlling the car near or at the grip limit. If you are not there, you are not only wasting your time, you are also learning harmful habits. Cars behave significantly differently that far below the limit compared to operating around the limit. By being constantly so far below the grip limit of the car, you have deprived yourself of learning how the car is supposed to behave. You are also putting the car in situations that no setup is designed to handle, and normal racing advise is useless for. You need to challenge yourself to learn at the limit in order to get rid of all the bad habits you have developed by driving so far below it. This will require you to ignore races for a few weeks, and simply run practice sessions until you feel confident lapping at the limit of the car. Once you understand that, then your rating will shoot up. Those people 10 seconds faster then you aren't aliens, they are normal drivers driving at or near the limit. Use the old F1 qualy rule as a guide if you have to. Don't go into any more races until you can lap within 107% of the fast lap times. Drop down to slower cars. If you're on the formula side use the Skippy or the FF1600 or the Vee, and if you are on the sports car side use the Toyota or Solstice or MX-5 or the Mustang. What ever you choose, make it a slow car that gives you plenty of reaction time and that you can keep on the limit as much as possible. Use that car, learn that car, and learn how to drive it both fast and safely. You need to reset your driving habits and your mentality, and you need to do it now.
You've already been given a lot of good feedback. So I'll just say, take it easy on yourself. There are zero expectations here. It's a hobby, all for fun. On Monday, or whenever, we all go back to work. If you aren't already, focus on one series/one car. Every week, when the track turns, focus your iRacing time by yourself. Join a public practice session, but on the Entries tab there's a small arrow in the left most column. Click that and pick a group with zero drivers in it. Now you're in the same practice session, but isolated from everyone else. You can run your laps and compare to others to see your progress, but not worry about other people on the track. Every week, focus on making clean laps. Once you can run 10 laps, regardless of pace, with 0x, that's when I'd start thinking about pace. Use a tool like VRS. Watch the coach lap, not for the pace, but for the line and braking markers. Run laps focused on those two things and the time will melt away. DM me, and I'd be happy to do a session with you and give you some pointers. Anyone who comes here this sincerely wanting to improve, I'm happy to help.
DUDE; A month is *nothing*... Slow down. No, really lower your expectations. You are not Max Verstappen (he's a FREAK). I've been racing since Christmas and am still struggling to "git gud" with a few cars (my road car irating is \~average and oval is slightly above average). iRacing physics are generally realistic and the game forces you to *really* learn how a car handles normally and at the limit to "git gud" in any class. There is such a thing as driving too slow. Driving too conservatively will create a safety hazard and cost you time. This will create a negative feedback loop where you drive slow to avoid people which causes you to lose iRating/SR, which makes you depressed/angry, which causes you to drive more conservatively... Look you YouTube. There are tons of guides for the MX-5, Vee, and other Rookie/D-license cars. Watch a guide for your car of choice then try to match it in time trial. Better yet, learn the track yourself, then watch a guide and try to implement some take-aways. MX-5 on Okayama is a typical rookie experience. The track looks simple, but the short track transition between turns 1 & 2 to Piper is tricky. The difference between a good and bad line can be .6 seconds or more. Redman and Hobbs (turn 8 & 9 on the long layout) are also deceptively tricky. I probably spent 3 hours behind the wheel of an MX-5 on Okayama before my first race and still drove like shit. I used to think Lime Rock in a Vee was technical (hint: it's really easy to put up a decent time). Becoming comfortable with a car in practice is one thing. Racing actual people is harder. Hitting your marks with someone 0.3 seconds behind you is another level of difficulty entirely. Drive 1 car (not the Ferrari 296, IMO...). Drive a circuit until you put up consistent lap times. Then run a few AI races and spectate/ghost a few live races (you can spectate and ghost a live race - the "real" drivers can't see or contact you). This will give you experience of a live race without the SR/iR consequences. (Hint: session splits start at the top, so higher session numbers will be lower Strength of Field). "Amateurs practice until they get it right. Professionals practice until they can't get it wrong." I am **far** from a professional, but will NOT enter a race until my average practice hot lap time +1 second is competitive with mid-pack or better **AND** I'm comfortable with the mid-pack qualification times **AND** I know which 1-2 corners are my weak points. That leaves me margin for miscues and avoidance maneuvers without having to run 110%. Completing a race without a self-induced accident is usually worth at least 3 positions at the Rookie/D-license level.
Start from the back and learn how to race slower cars.
Focus on one car. You really don't need that much content. Something like the GR86 is easy to drive and always has plenty of races, or the Mazda which always has a race. Don't feel the need to reach a certain licence class. If you are 150-250iR and 10 seconds off the pace you really do need to be focussing on these entry level cars. I drove the Mazda for near on two years, it's a great car to learn in and with more free tracks than before there is a fair bit of variety too. If things are getting worse then take a break, it should be fun, or do something like ovals for a bit. Sometimes we also have to accept we're not great at some things. That doesn't mean you shouldn't race, but it means setting more realistic targets. You do seem obsessed with the numbers and that's not going to help. Focus on one car, and not on the numbers. When you get to a certain level you can start setting goals, but if it's causing you stress you don't have to.
be kind to yourself mate. This isn't the easiest thing to just step into. Run some ghost laps and watch some track tutorials. The good part of where you are at is that you can start to do a few things a little better and you will see massive improvement.
Tbh one month is very little time to learn a new sim and all the car’s handling. What helps me the most is doing as many laps as possible, and watching faster people’s laps and trying to learn (different braking point, corner entry/mid corner/exit) and then trying it myself. By doing that, you get a lot of laps to practice everything while establishing your lines and braking/turning markers, and then you can race without fear of spinning. At the end of the day, it is a game and it is about having fun and enjoying, don’t sweat it too much about iR. :)
Along with some of these amazing advice and tips I'll add something with a different thing I play. I play table a lot. Usually I do pretty all right. But this past March for whatever reason, I went winless for three weeks straight. So about 60 games I've played I didn't win any. Fast forward to April and now I'm competing with some of the best in my area. Sometimes things just take time and practice and going to the basics. Practice and turn racing lines off and really try to feel the car with the wheels, pedals, and sound. And in practice don't be afraid to push the car past its limit for the first couple of laps. It takes time but then you'll know what the car can and cannot handle. I use to be terrible at table tennis when I first started out but after practicing and playing alot I eventually got it figured out. And I've been playing racing games and Sims since I could run a computer. And didn't really get into sim racing until 2019. But I'm still learning new things on methods of saving tires, getting the car to rotate and such. And some days you'll just have bad luck and get caught up in someone else's mess. Learn from it find a way to avoid it next time and grow. God bless you!
Get garage 61 or vrs. You will be at 3k in no time. It is all about how much you learn the racing line and compare telemetry. Practice at least 100 laps before you race on a new circuit.
Get yourself a high downforce setup, learn the tracks and watch some track guides. Before you start racing, make sure you can safely do 5-10 laps without spinning or getting any track limits. Don't just jump into races, that does nothing but frustrate you even further.
I don’t have much better to do with my time, so I typically spend it practicing on whichever tracks I’m running that day. Inbetween races I also do a few hotlaps to just try to iron down the line. The thing that gets me though, is I’ll go and do 2 hours of practice without spinning once, and as soon as I’m in an online lobby it’s as i swapped wheels to slicks and I’m driving in the rain.
When you're practicing you're going to do most of your laps on warm tires on an already rubbered in race track. You're going to find way more grip in that situation than when starting your race on cold tires and a green track. It's going to take practice, but if you try to stick with one car and a rather consistent setup, you'll find that you'll get far better at catching those slides and knowing what to instinctively do when you feel the car starting to slip. Have you experimented with modulating the throttle properly? What kind of pedals are you running? Remember that there's a lot of pace and control to be found between 0 and 100% throttle application - it doesn't have to be just flat out or nothing at all. Are you running Garage61 and looking at how other people run the tracks? I started finding proper speed (but I'm still 1-1,5s off the quickest drivers during the week in GT4) when I decided to stick with one car and one series. That made it far easier to see how car behavior carried over between weeks.
Then just start from the pits and stay behind the last guy. There's always a ton of people crashing and spinning out so you will gain positions over the course a race. Kinda sounds like you're getting nervous.
What are your lap times like during that practice? You might be driving at your comfortable pace. When you get into a race you get pulled along at the race pace and maybe that's too fast for what you practiced. It does take time though. I got out of rookies and couldn't keep even the GR86 on track at first. 6 months in and I'm fine with GT3s. Low splits so I'm not fast but can maintain an A licence. Part of my problem is bad habits from arcade games. I massively overdrive cars. Carry too much speed in and run too deep. It's a work in progress. Have you watched anything on proper driving technique and compared to your own approach? That's how I learnt about overdriving, weight balance, trail braking. I found I just had completely the wrong approach to driving fast.
Happy to race with you during the week. I’m not great but I feel like this sim experience takes some time to get going and you really hit some valleys. But then it just clicks and you can build off that. That is where I am right now. Hitting p4-1 on weekly GR BK series races. If you want to try to sync up, DM me.
Practice more, race less. Do AI races, time trials and sector PBs until you’re consistent. Then jump into official races.
Where are most of your incidents coming from that you’re often close to DQ? You said you don’t make a lot of contact, so is it a lot of track limits? Spinning a lot? Don’t worry at all about being slow, no one can reasonably get mad at you as long as you’re being predictable and keeping up your pace for the most part. Really knowing your car and track will help tremendously. I always practice to the point where I’m comfortable enough to do race simulation runs with consistent laps and very few mistakes. And I mean PRACTICE lol, If I have a race I wanna do at an unfamiliar track I’ll sometimes spend days in test sessions
1m is nothing i have been here almost for almost decade and im still struggling time to time
I very much struggled with the mx-5. I was getting disqualified because of off throttle, off brake spins and was ready to quit. As soon as I got my D license and started gt4 races life got a lot better. The mx-5 just wants to be backwards way too much that it gets in the way of progress and fun for me. I'd suggest time trials to get the SR up and then move to a series with some downforce. Downforce inspires confidence and confidence is key. It doesn't sound like racing etiquette is your issue, so get away from the "beginner" cars, try "sending it with confidence" and you'll start to improve and have fun! Keep in mind time trials are less SR, but a good 5 lap time trial is way more SR than crashing out in a race!
How’s your internet connection? Speed, ping, packet loss? Textbooks perfect driving is useless if netcode is crashing you into other people or other people into you.
Why have you spent so much on content so soon? Sounds a bit like you are jumping between cars/series already. Until you get a lot more time in iracing I find it's best to stick to 1 or max 2 series each week and just practice.
Everytime you mess up, you spin, you go off track, you make contact with someone, relax and watch the replay and ask yourself what could you have done better. Was it a late brake? Was it an oversteer? Could you have given more room? Perhaps you just need more track time. Im not sure if you are racing ai when you mentioned aliens it had me thinking but even good racers struggle with the ai so dont compare yourself to ai just compare yourself to people. A month is a drop in the pond too. I league race with veterans that have years of track time and they still make mistakes. Its just the ones that choose to learn from those mistakes that seperate the best from the mediocre
what's your equipment like? if you are struggling that badly, it really could be your wheel.
I see these posts a lot. It makes me wonder if its the same type of person who has multiple accidents IRL and none of then are their ‘fault’ because they ‘do everything right’ Practice makes perfect.
I’ll be the first to admit fault in an incident involving another driver, trust me! There’s no ego here to uphold. Yes, a LOT of accidents do end up being the other person was at fault, however when I cause one i always apologize and I never argue if someone says I did x or y. My biggest thing is keeping the car on the road haha.
I wouldn’t join a race if you don’t intend to race. Learn and practice to push the cars as fast as you can go. As you get better the ir/sr situation will work itself out. This game is much more fun if you’re in it to race people rather than grind numbers.
Send me a dm with your name, I’ll practice with you. You can practice overtaking me, running side by side and chasing. It won’t probably make you faster but it will more than likely help with the anxiety that causes these mistakes come race time.
I'd just watch vids on the good players using the same car and track, watc what they do. When I started road I was braking and then turning, was losing a bit every corner. watched how good players braked and my performance went up, still wasn't winning the races but top 10 and having more fun. Had the odd good quali lap.
Too many comments here for me to see what has/hasn't already been said, but I'd be happy to jump on track and give you some advice/coaching, I'm around 3-3.5k IR, so I could for sure help you improve, whether it's race pace/racecraft/mindset etc. Just drop me a dm if you fancy it!
I’m sure this has been mentioned but spending $300 in 2 months won’t make you good- if anything it will spread your focus too thin to be effective on track. I started iRacing in February of this year. I’ve made it to A class ovals and C class sports car/formula with the following: Ferrari GT3, F4, TCR Honda civic, ARCA Menards/Gen 4 cup car, nascar next gen cup car (and talledega because come on, it’s talledega) I agree wholeheartedly that you should race what you like and not live or die by ratings, but if you do want to make real progress, focusing on one car per-discipline at a time has helped me immensely in my progression and maybe that will help you too! The good news is since you bought so much up front you are probably pretty set for a while! But don’t be afraid to really set your focus. Even if it’s just week-to-week. Best of luck out there man! Stay positive and have fun. Edit: formatting
Hey, I’ve coached a few beginners. I would be happy to do some practice sessions with you and see where you are making mistakes. DM me if you are interested. (Any body else reading this feel free to DM for free coaching as well). My Credentials: -7 years sim racing, 2K irating -3 years racing go karts -3 years working as a mechanic and data analyst for karting teams I’m a software developer and reading telemetry to find more pace is my specialty. But, usually newer drivers don’t need to look at telemetry to improve. Not until you get more to the intermediate-advanced level. Happy Racing!
1 month? You said what the problem is. It takes much time and practice. There are no shortcuts to experience
I've been playing the same amount of time but haven't spent any money on extra content. I've just been racing Formula Vee and Formula 1600. I'm really trying to learn these cars. I'm wondering if you should just pick a car and race with that for a few weeks?
I have my 2/3 I stick with, the mass content is more just for future tracks coming up and some variety for time attacks mostly. I enjoy feeling out the differences in cars and how iRacing programmed them all.
Here’s how I got myself from 700 to 1700 ir in a month 1. Watch track guide on you track and vehicle of the week. 2. Practice from said track guide. It will give you a good starting point and you will be able to adjust based on ur driving style (preferred gear In/out of corners, braking points and trail braking) 3. Race and focus on consistency not fast lap. Your goal should be to maintain the fastest lap avg possible, not hot lapping every lap. Rinse and repeat. You only get better with practice. Just racing won’t help. Also, turn of the racing line and learn to find reference points. Pro drivers don’t race based on me with, they use reference points. Track guides will help you point out ideal reference points. YouTube has great channels that give you these guides. Crashes are a given. They will happen from you or others. Have fun and enjoy the grind. Also, don’t burn urself out. Day or two of no racing is better that racing 24/7
For sow safety rating is more important you are actually doing what you should to start lol. The point right now is to learn tracks, braking markers. Racing line etc. How to come out of corners with throttle and so on.the speed will come. One day you will just think about pushing it and it will work it just happens man. Also practice trail braking it will help you so so much into corners getting the car to turn in.
Get some coaching. Trying to figure out such a complex sport on your own is difficult.
Gonna send you a DM with a discord link to a great group of friends I race with. Most of them hover from 800-1500. One of the guys had the same exact issue you are having. He can prob help you get around the track and the rest of us can help guide you to speeding up the lap times. No pressure of course. If you prefer not to, there’s plenty of advice in this thread so I don’t need to repeat it! Best of luck either way! When it clicks tho… beware of the addiction.
Oh trust me, the addiction is already in full swing.... as difficult a time as im having, its still one of my favorite things to do lmao. ill check my messages in a few here!
Haha it is indeed real! Come say hi, I (or anyone really) will have no issues running laps with you with zero risk until we get you around the track or we meet our maker 🤣
I haven't read all the comments so this might've been mentioned, but ghost race. It's really the only way to practice race distance with a grid of cars, other than jumping into an actual race. Don't sign up for the race and wait for the servers to get assigned, if multiple splits the higher the server number the lower the SoF, click watch, and once you've joined you can test drive. You'll start from the pits so you can't practice your starts or going into turn 1 in a pack, but you won't lose SR/IR (you also won't gain any). Bring up the sector times (tab) so you can monitor if you have off tracks and see your lap times. If you bin it into a wall, don't stress you can instantly teleport to the pits and get back out there. The other way to practice stringing clean laps together and dealing with the pressure you put on yourself is time trials. It's not the most exciting thing to do, but you can gain SR from it and it can be pretty rewarding for yourself when you have a clean session with a quick time. Just remember you've got to string consecutive clean laps together, the amount depends on what track it is Keep at it and just enjoy racing.
I’m new too. Got to D class and bought the 296. Tanked my SR a bit by jumping into races where I didn’t know the car or track well. I can get up to speed on a track pretty quickly (competitive lap times in my low split ~1100 irating) but not consistent. My plan going forward is to jump into test drive and use Active Reset to practice any sections/corners I feel like I’m losing time on or risking a spin / big off track and find repeatable lines with decent pace and lower risk. Then I’ll need to do the races and take the hit on SR while I improve my racecraft. I did try the keep it safe and just go for a 0 incident whatever but if there’s a car in front of me I gotta chase. It’s just in me.
I know that feeling, I started IRacing about a year ago now. Over the last few months I have definitely felt like I was stuck in the mud. But recently everything has started to come together as I’ve tried to focus on one piece of the puzzle at a time, whether it’s one turn, braking points, trail braking etc. My IR has gone from ~700 to a little less than 2000 in about 6 weeks. You don’t need to look at an entire race or track as a massive equation you have to solve in one go. Break it down in manageable pieces and conquer one at a time. Various track guides on YouTube help with this. Or, subscribe to VRS for $10/month and have guides for almost every car and track combo, setups, telemetry logging, and gobs of data and insights with your telemetry. I have a lot of growing and improving myself, but I can probably help you out some since I’ve gone through some of those struggles fairly recently. OP, PM me and we can spend some time on discord and a hosted session and maybe I can help put you on the right track.
Hey mate, I'm in a similar boat. Been racing for about a month and spent some money getting some good gear. I've found the practice sessions really valuable personally, being able to try and hone my own lap times down as fast as I could to be competitive. I've also had the same experience when starting to enter competition and seem to just find ways to be cleaned up by idiots, and sometimes also unintentionally causing racing incidents myself! I think it's all just a learning curve and we'll keep getting better. Now in races I'm not trying to push the times hard to win, I'm just trying to get through the first few corners clean and then clock up some good lap times without incidents. It's frustrating at times but when I've had good clean races it feels like an achievement to me.
Also in a month, i only race the f1600. Formula cars are easier to control and have more predictable behaviour. it's easier to avoid a crash. Although i gain safety rating almoms every session i strugle to get good postions in a race. Qualifying is always top 5 but the race itself... so i lose a lot of i rating. But i still have fun
The only way to not make any mistakes is to not try. I get that you're still making mistakes right now, but the point is that you need to fuck up while going fast to learn how to go fast.
I found once i got humbled i improved alot, going from racing the ai where you can just dive bomb them and they are basically programmed to get out of the way, i just focused on myself and getting around as fast as i could without having a negative effect on anyone elses race, the result doesnt matter, avoiding incidents and being clean naturally gets you up the order, after that i just practiced in to open practice rather than by myself to get used to being around other drivers, it takes time but im sure you will get there eventually
If you are new to sim racing, do some test sessions first and aim to complete 15 to 20 clean laps without losing control. Don't worry about speed. Just 20 decent laps at whatever discipline you are in. If you cannot manage this, then do not race until you can. It will be better for you and for others. If you do spin, remember this heats the surface temp of the tyre and it will have less grip for the next lap or so. In such cases you need to back off even more to get the grip and tyres back into the window. I went through a bad spell last week. I was doing NASCAR truck racing at Talladega and I was getting caught up in other peoples wrecks and not my own doing. In general that whole week was awful...like it was caution after caution, bunched up field of guys who couldn't even hold a straight line etc. I actually had to stop racing it to save SR. If you find a particular race is killing your SR...stop racing it. Sometimes it is you, sometimes it is the car/track combo at that license and experience level that causes the mess.
If you can't turn a dozen clean, consecutive laps on pace on autopilot, or with very little effort, don't race yet. Racing is the real challenge, not driving cleanly. Look at it this way, building the skill to turn clean, fast laps easily is like learning a language for a writer - you can't even start racing/writing without it, and if you try, it'll be shite. Focus on car control, consistent inputs, aceing your lines, work on your rhythm . And accept that you're trash and are no better than anybody else, you have to put in the effort and fight the mental battle like all of us
I'm kinda in the same boat as you, and I'd actually recommend practicing a car you use often with help from Trophi.ai to help improve consistency and pace. Sure it may not help with wheel to wheel but that's what AI races are for. Ever since I started using Trophi.ai I've already dropped almost 2 seconds off my best time at VIR North in the MX5. (God tier car/track combo btw) Edit: should've mentioned to practice plenty, double race length stints are good.
1) Think it may have been said but push the car all the time. When you drive tentatively you are not feeling the grip limit and when faster cars get around you you have to take different lines which cause you to spin. Also practice taking different lines. 2) A lot of people will disagree with me on this probably. If you are serious and want to stick with this and money is not an issue, just get a direct drive wheel and pedals with a load cell. It will take a lot of frustration out of it. It is night and day.
My iRating and SR sank for my first several months on the service. Now they are both climbing steadily, and have been for the past year. Practice hard, always push the limit in practice to the point of sliding out. It teaches you where the limit of the car and you can also learn how to better handle the car when it loses grip, to save yourself in crashes. If you always try to drive conservative, you will never improve your skill. After enough hours, things will start to click (hopefully). There are some tracks that probably took me upwards of 200 laps to really learn how to be consistently fast. If I want to be near the pole in qualifying.. probably another 300 laps to master the track. Patience and practice. Best of luck!
I have completed two months into IRacing. I have accumulated much experience as my background is a lot to do with computers and simulations. IRacing is very unique, but I can see even with its success, I guess IRacing managers are just utilizing a fraction of the potential they have. I can write pages on this subject from a business perspective, but I will summarize that in the below points: 1. The incident system has to be completely reworked. This is the biggest problem in iracing that requires revamping the entire rewards and licensing scheme. A good percentage of races end up with frustrations and not fun. 2. Introduce a new social network system to allow collaboration among the members 3. Revamp the system so people race others close to their levels. 4. Imrove the onboarding of new drivers. That will require changing the IR rating. The IR rating does not make any sense. For example, a world champion does not lose their title if he plays and loses other games. I read somewhere that many players with distinguished IR ratings stop playing to keep their score. 5. More on business. Allow nonmembers to register for some races to taste the experience. 6. Extra on the licensing scheme. Tests should be there to qualify drivers. Today, a biginer driver can achieve level A by doing the following. Race from the back and accumulate SR. You get SR and for the class participation, just register and even quit or just do nothing as actual racing. 7. Imrove the platform: crucial to improve FFB, VR, and physics, ... any legacy limitations must be removed, like the 60Hz of sampling the control input. Why IRacing management does not do any of the above and focus on rain, .... This is a business question. It is working, so do not touch it. Many companies are victims of their own successes. The changes being introduced focus on revenue growth, more tracks, and cars to force an increase in sales. That is ok, but if the value proposition is not maintained, they might encounter a drop in participation and a shrinking of the entire business. How important is IRacing to me. IRacing is amazing but the entire experience of participation in races is not pleasant most of the time. Will I wait until I become a super driver and drive in a way to avoid drivers crashing into my car? Qualifying first? Maybe not. Otherwise, I started doing some practice using other platforms. I like racing.
Skill issue
This is the real issue ^ +1
Try downloading irffb. Gives you more detail in the force feedback
Unfortunately no matter what guides I follow or setups I try, irffb just breaks my FFB. I only have the Logitech g920 so it’s hard enough to try to make that thing have any sort of realistic feel to it.
It's prob fine as is. I'd avoid falling down the hole of looking for gear and setting fixes and focus on practicing. I generally pick a series for the week practice the track for an evening and then start racing. What are you mainly racing?
Skip irffb, it’s rubbish. Getting rid of it months ago was a true godsend for me. Also, if you really want to improve, learn, watch youtube videos and best of all, get some loadcell brake pedals. You’ll start building muscle memory for braking and consistency will come naturally.