First Timer Laguna Seca: iRacing Simulator vs Real FF,

Recap on my first outing at an SVRA Laguna Seca event in my Toyo tired Swift SC93 prepping with a simulator. This would be my 4th race in a FF and from what I understand SVRA races are bit more serious that the club races I've run. So, to be as ready as possible, I purchased a used Logitech G923 wheel and pedals and copy of iRacing, which was loaded in a laptop connected to a 27" flat screen monitor. Pretty basic stuff. I probably logged 30 hours on it over a period of couple of months with best lap times in the 1:35s driving it at 11/10s (11/10s = crashing a lot). In addition, purchased the Laguna Seca edition of Secrets of Speed with Ross Bentley video.

As I hit the track for the first time around, the track seemed familiar and I was able to visualize the geometry of the corner and knew the basic turn-in, apex and track out points, as if I had been there 10 years ago. In addition, the simulator helped with the basic entry speed and gear selection. The S of S vid was extremely helpful in picking out landmarks and helped refine my lines through the corners. I think the combination of the two worked as well as hoped for.

I felt that the simulator and training video put me further up the learning curve in a shorter period of time but unsure of whether it helped much after 3 or 4 sessions. Laguna Seca is an easy to learn but a difficult to master track. There are tracks that have many, many more turns and I believe the simulator would be most helpful with the more complex tracks. As expected, the sim was ineffective at establishing max cornering speed and braking limits due to the lack of motion, these would have to be explored on track. Ultimately I was somewhat disappointed in my driving, even accounting for the 30 session Toyos. I think I was being too conservative in my driving but the car felt a bit slippery and never developed any real side bite. Maybe that is the way it is a LS.

There is another aspect of the sim, I was a safer driver in the first few session of a new track because I had vague sense of familiarity of the track and therefore was a lot less absorb in learning and could be mindful of other cars on the track and still run at an reasonable rate.

The one place which I didn't expect the simulator to be wrong was Turn 1. On the track, the steering gets very light because of the slight crest at the end of the bending straight, which initially made me back off on the throttle as it felt the car was on the edge of spinning. I do not believe the sim replicates this feel through the steering wheel. (My sim rig is in AZ, so I can't confirm)

Haven't driven a real FF yet, but I'd say iRacing gets hill crests wrong in some vague but noticeable way causing you to wind up with understeer rather than oversteer. (Weirdly, flat-top drops give you oversteer like in real life, it's something specifically about the crest of an up-and-down it gets wrong.) My experience at CotA in the SRF was that I was able to jump in and on the outlap of the very first practice session, I was just immediately familiar with the place to a much higher level than my first time at tracks that I had only seen videos of. So, it definitely works for that. I also agree that it doesn't help much beyond that because it's the "feel" of the real car that gives you the ability to actually drive it to the maximum limit, but it's so much worth it just because your first couple sessions are a lot more productive as a result.

Not only does it fast track you with track familiarity, it accelerates your awareness of where the passing zones and how to "race" others if practicing the sime with others or competent AI. Buy yes, sim racing doesn't replace all aspects of real life that's for sure. Until a sim can put you into a hospital or draw repair costs out of your bank account, it never will be able to. ;)