My education began decidedly off-track, watching videos ranging from onboard camera angles to driving tutorials to tips from real-world drivers about finding speed on a changing track surface.

With that knowledge fresh on my mind, I hit the track for testing and tried to steer clear of the bad habits I developed during my first attempt at dirt racing last spring.  Namely, I tended to overdrive the corners by using too much throttle on entry, then scrub off speed mid-corner and not straighten up soon enough to set up for a fast corner exit.

The street stock was ideal for practicing each of those.  As a big, heavy car with no downforce to speak of, it punished overdriving by plowing on entry, and without much torque to compensate for a bad exit, it forced me to keep up my momentum to get a good run off the corners.

The circuit — Williams Grove Speedway — was also a good one for gaining experience.  Its paperclip-like layout with long straightaways and tight turns required mastering the driving line and approach to run consistent quick laps.

Street stocks sliding through the turns at Williams Grove.

With at least a working grasp of the basics, I hit the track in the class C street stock series.  I wasn’t eligible for the rookie street stock series because of my A-class dirt oval license, bestowed upon me after running enough dirt races when they were sanctioned under the regular oval license.

Instead, I settled for the street stock’s upper-class counterpart.  Like the rookie series, it uses a fixed setup, which helped diminish any doubts in the mind of this dirt racing beginner about lacking pace due to having a lesser setup.

The main difference from the rookie series is that the class C version uses iRacing’s new heat racing feature, which splits the grid into two heats before a consolation and feature race.  For me, that was a good thing since it meant twice as many chances per event to practice my starts and close racing around other cars.

Down and dirty in a close battle for position.

As I soon discovered, I definitely needed that practice.  No video or explanation can prepare you for just how frantic it is racing wheel-to-wheel while sliding sideways in a corner, or how to react with traffic ahead and a track covered in dust and rubber.

Those lessons had to be learned first-hand behind the steering wheel, and in my first race of the week, I had to learn them the hard way.

Rookie Mistakes

In my first qualifying attempt, I was 3rd out of 10 cars — a nice change of pace from the dirt late model races in which I struggled to make it out of the bottom half of the grid.

However, I found my familiar mid-field home early in my chaotic heat race.  On the first lap, two cars ahead of me spun and while slowing to avoid them, I got a tap from behind that spun me out.  After the dust had settled, I was in fifth place. It was enough to transfer to the main event, but once again, I’d be right in the middle of the action in the feature.

A messy start to my first heat race of the week.

The start of that race was cleaner and I even gained a couple of positions.  However, on lap 3 while following another car down the backstretch, I clipped the opening in the outside wall, which damaged my suspension and ricocheted me into the path of the car behind me, who received collateral damage from my crash.

To make matters worse, while limping back to the pits, I stopped on track and unwittingly brought out a caution.  To make matters worse still, I crashed again at the pit entrance.

While the chances of getting my car repaired enough to continue were slim, it added insult to injury and made me wonder whether I should have left my dirt career buried in the mud and shame where I left it almost a year ago.

Into the wall with a damaged right front wheel just three laps into the feature.

A One-Eighty

I decided to soldier on, and I’m glad I did, because my next race later that night included one of my best battles ever on iRacing.

That event started with another improvement, posting the top time in qualifying and snagging pole position for my heat.  At the start, I lost a position to the car on my outside, but in the eight laps that followed, we had the sort of race that might make even professional dirt drivers jealous.

Lap after lap, we raced side by side, with my car hugging the bottom and his running a groove higher.  One lap, I would edge ahead, and the next, he would have the advantage. Our cars were rarely more than a few feet apart but never touched, even while sliding through the turns.

Close racing for the win in my second heat race.

On the last lap, he entered the final corner a bit high and left me plenty of room on the inside.  However, the back end of my car slid a bit too much and I lost my momentum, costing me the victory.

It was a problem that I also faced in the feature.  After running in third place for most of the race, on a late restart, I nearly spun while pinned on the bottom and lost a position.

While this event proved that I had found some pace and skill at battling on dirt, I still had a ways to go at mastering basics like the ideal driving line and the technique through the corners.

Eureka Moment

The next day, my goal was to figure out what I was doing wrong, and I got my first clue during my first heat race of the day.  I had no issues in qualifying, posting the second-fastest time. However, even in leading my heat from start to finish, I found that my performance started to slip during that eight-lap race.

I chalked it up to the jitters of competition and proceeded to start from the front row of the feature race.  After losing a position early on, I couldn’t seem to match the pace of the two leaders. I knew my qualifying pace wasn’t that far off, so I had to be doing something wrong.

Holding the lead — but just barely — at the end of a heat race.

I learned by literally following the tire tracks of the cars ahead, and the answer hit me like a clod of dirt in the visor.  As the track rubbered in, my right-side tires were running on the slickest part of the surface.

By moving my line just half a groove higher, the car became much more stable on entry, less likely to slide mid-corner, and easier to set up for a fast, straight exit.  My old, stubborn habits were indeed dying hard, and the street stock was exposing each of them.

In the final laps of the race, I closed in on the two leaders and made it a three-way battle for the win.  While none of us could pass, it was a fun end to the race, undoubtedly because I had uncovered a secret to dirt driving by studying what had been right in front of me all along.

Closing in on the leaders by following in their tracks

Making Moves

Just when I felt like I was in control on dirt, my final race of the week challenged that notion and tested everything I had learned so far.  For starters, it was the largest and most competitive field I raced against all week, so nothing came easily.

In qualifying, I managed the 3rd-fastest lap time in the 21-car field, which put me starting 2nd in my heat race.  Early on, I was in a close three-car battle that ended in a crash. The car behind me turned into my right rear exiting a corner, which hooked my car into the one beside me and sent him into the wall.

Even though that incident wasn’t my fault, as I drove around to finish my heat in 3rd place, I was haunted by flashbacks to my first dirt experience, when I rear-ended several cars and got called out over the radio for my reckless driving.

Hooked into the car ahead of me to set off a heat race crash.

In this case, I was surprised that the driver I dominoed into had no ill feelings about the crash.  He was understanding and even admitted that he had bumped me in the previous corner, so it was all part of dirt racing in his mind.

With the dust settled from the heat, I watched the consolation race, and it was a doozy.  From the outset, cars were crashing and flipping all over the track, and only one survived to finish without damage.  Knowing that I’d be starting fifth in the feature race, I worried that it could play out the same way, and if it did, I’d be lucky to make it through unscathed.

The majority of that 50-lap race was indeed plagued by cautions, although the first few were for crashes behind me. After falling back to sixth on the start, though, I was eager for some green-flag racing so I could work on passing the cars ahead of me — something I hadn’t been successful at all week.

Working the upper groove to set up a pass.

By mid-race, I started working a higher groove and even got alongside the fourth-place car, but a caution fell before I had a nose ahead.  On the following restart, I made my move, this time dropping back to the bottom to make the pass. As I went by, the car to my outside impaled himself on the backstretch wall — a move I knew all too well, and thankfully avoided in this race.

After that crash was cleaned up, the race restarted again and I set up another outside pass on the third-place car.  I was nearly clear exiting the corner when the car I was battling bounced off the inside wall and into me, sending me sidelong into the outer armco barrier.

As the caution flew once again, I surveyed the damage.  My steering wheel was clearly 20 or 30 degrees off-center, but I didn’t seem to be down on top speed.  In the final 10 laps on a rubbered-in track where passing was becoming increasingly difficult, I expected that I could at least hold my position.

Into the wall after contact with another car.

To my surprise, instead of playing defense on the final two restarts, I was able to go on the attack, taking a peek inside the second-place car.  While I could have bumped him out of the way — he made a similarly aggressive move on me in our heat race — I kept it clean and settled for third, which was still an improvement over where I started.

For the first time all week, I was able to run multiple lines and make some passes.  While I did suffer a small hit to my safety rating, the confidence I gained more than made up for it.  And after losing 50 iRating in my embarrassing first outing, I recovered by gaining almost 200 in my final three races of the week.

While I certainly can’t consider myself a dirt expert after driving just one car and track, in my first week back on dirt, I think I met my goal of re-learning the basics and putting them into practice.

And compared to my previous dirt debut last year, just keeping my name off of any wanted posters around Williams Grove Speedway would have been a welcome improvement.

Because of its ominpresence, iRating has become something of a legend with plenty of myths and misconceptions surrounding it.  And in my more than 600 official races on iRacing, I’ve heard some doozies.

“If you start from the back in a race, you’ll gain more iRating than if you qualify.”

Wrong.

“If you get wrecked out, just submit a protest and you’ll get some iRating refunded.”

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

“If you have a clean race, you’ll get a small boost in your iRating.”

Wro — oh, wait.  Although that’s not how the calculation works, there may actually be truth to this one.  In my latest iRacing quest, I set out to prove it.

Setting the Stage

For the past three years, my road iRating has remained fairly stagnant, generally within a couple hundred points of 4,500.  Part of that is because I haven’t done too many official races — more on how participation affects iRating a bit later — but it also seemed like any time I chained a few good races together, they’d be followed by a bad one that cost me everything I’d gained.

After being tantalizingly close to 5,000 iRating for so long, I decided last week that it was finally time to grind it out.  I started the week at 4,819 — 181 points away.  Even averaging a gain of 20 points per race, it would take 10 races with no setbacks along the way, and that was far from a guarantee given the combo I would be running.

My series of choice was the Blancpain Sprint Series at Bathurst.  It was admittedly a risky pick since that series is somewhat infamous for its occasionally low driving standards, and a single mistake — by you or someone ahead of you — on the winding mountain roads tends to end your race.

Three years’ worth of road iRating, stuck in the doldrums between 4k and 5k.

My car of choice was the Ferrari 488 GT3.  This was also a risky choice since I’d never driven it before and it’s not the fastest GT3 car at the moment; the Audi seems to take that honor.  But after a few practice laps, I thought the Ferrari was fun to drive, so I decided to go with it.

I never adjusted the setup too much, and I found that a high-downforce, high-rake configuration worked best to optimize handling and lap times.  Of course, that meant I’d be sacrificing straight-line speed and making passes much more difficult, especially against the more well-balanced Audis and BMWs.

I would have my work cut out for me against some strong fields all week.  Many world championship-level drivers used BSS as a testing ground in preparation for their six-hour Bathurst race on Saturday.  Because iRating is a zero-sum system, in order to reach 5k iRating for myself, I’d need to steal some points from other 5k drivers along the way.

However, I didn’t mind the challenge.  I figured that if I could still reach my iRating goal, I could dispel another myth that only the fastest drivers in the quickest cars with the best setups can find consistent success.

A familiar sight on Bathurst grids: a lone Ferrari amid a sea of Audis.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

In my first two races on Tuesday night, I mainly hoped to get a better feel for the Ferrari over a full race distance; any iRating gains would be a bonus.

I had a few scary moments along the way, including tail-slapping the wall in my first race when I overdrive the Skyline corner, and narrowly missing a multi-car crash exiting the Chase in race 2.  But by making it to the finish in both races, I managed a solid gain of 76 iRating points.  At that rate, I started thinking that 5k might come sooner rather than later.

Running wide and tapping the wall coming down the mountain.

Just when things were looking up, though, the third race of the week happened.  It was a disaster from the start.  I had to take to the grass in turn 1 to avoid a spin ahead of me, and while I made it through without damage, it cost me five positions.

On lap 2, that extra traffic ahead proved fatal.  The cars battling in front of me crashed entering Skyline, and as is often the case at Bathurst, what started as a two-car crash blocked the track and collected several others.  This time, I was one of them.

That one bad result cost me 107 iRating — everything I’d gained the day before and then some.  Reaching 5k was starting to seem impossible — a Sisyphean task that, appropriately, was taking place on a mountain.

Wrecked and in the pits after two laps: not the recipe for iRating gains.

Crisis Averted

My road to recovery began later that night, and it would be a make-or-break race, as another bad result would have effectively ended my quest.  Fortunately, I managed a solid — and much less eventful — race, finishing fifth and regaining about half of what I’d lost.

My first race the next day had a frustratingly similar start to the previous day.  Entering turn 1, I was spun out and my car nosed into the wall.  As the rest of the field drove by, I saw another major iRating loss in my future.

Once I got going again, I realized that the car was driving fine.  However, I was slightly down on top speed, which meant passing would be nearly impossible, at least on the track.  That’s where my biggest strategy call of the week came in.

An ominous start to race 5: spun out while the field sped past.

On lap five — about as early as I could have possibly pitted to make it on fuel — I made a pit stop to get away from the traffic slowing me down.  In clean air, I logged laps, and once the cycle of pit stops was completed, I was up to 12th place.

I figured that was as high as I could finish, but the last lap brought even more surprises.  One car had to pit for a splash of fuel.  Another slowed down the backstretch, apparently out of fuel.  And a third spun in the Chase.

Suddenly, I went from limiting my iRating losses to managing a modest gain of 25 points.  I followed that up with another solid race, and by the end of Thursday night, I was at exactly 4,900 iRating.

Gaining Confidence

With each successive race, I was getting more and more comfortable with the car and the track.  Instead of a sheer fight for survival, I felt like I could actually race and even make passes.

Granted, my only real passing opportunity was down the backstretch and into the Chase since the Audi and BMW seemed to have better acceleration out of the first and last corners, but I became adept at taking advantage of others’ mistakes on the mountain to pass them coming off of it.

Passing an Audi with an inside move entering the Chase.

In my seventh and eighth races of the week, I honed this strategy and gained several positions through on-track passes. Some of them were a bit risky since the bumpy right-hand kink before the Chase can unsettle the a car and make a side-by-side battle difficult, but a bit of white-knuckle driving and cooperation from both drivers was generally enough to avoid disaster.

My biggest problem of the day happened at the other end of the circuit.  In my second race of the night, I exited the pits beside another car and we drag-raced to turn 2.  Under braking, our cars drifted into each other, which sent mine skidding into the outside wall.

I expected it would be a race-ender, but I hit the left side square and was able to keep going with only minor damage. Although it did cost me a position, I still escaped from that race with a seventh-place finish.

Hitting the turn-2 wall after a close battle ended in contact.

Weekend Warrior

Heading into the weekend, I was just 40 iRating points away from 5,000.  Despite my own confidence, I knew that Saturday’s races would likely have stronger fields and put me further back on the grid, in a potentially dangerous mid-pack position where unavoidable accidents can claim many innocent victims.

My first race of the day was indeed a tough one, and I qualified in 13th.  However, I avoided some first-lap carnage to move into the top ten, and I picked off a couple more positions the rest of the way to finish eighth.  I was then just 17 iRating away from 5k, so barring a complete disaster in the following race, I’d hit my goal.

From sixth on the grid, the first half of the race went well enough, and after the pit stops were completed, I was up to third place with the second-place Audi in my sights.  With just three laps to go, though, I saw my race — and my iRating — flash before my eyes.

The Audi ahead of me got loose on the way up the mountain and bounced off the inside wall.  It’s the sort of incident that challenges a driver’s instincts: Do you slam on the brakes or nail the gas?  Do you hold your line or swerve to avoid it?

A close call on the mountain sealed my best finish of the week.

I first hit the brakes, but as I saw his car careening right into my path, I steered as far to the left as I could and hoped for the best.  This time, luck was on my side.  I avoided his car by a few inches and held on to finish second and score 201 championship points, which was my best result of the week.

More importantly, I picked up 54 iRating to cross the 5,000 mark for the first time ever.  It took 10 races, which is what I predicted given steady gains each time.  Of course, I hadn’t factored in that one bad result, so still hitting 5k on target was a bonus.  However, I knew that another bad race could drop me below that threshold, so I decided that I needed a buffer.

I ran two more races, putting all my knowledge gained during the week to the test.  I made passes entering the Chase.  I calculated my fuel mileage to pinpoint precision and gained spots in the pits.  And I raced smart, backing out of several tight positions that could have resulted in a crash, even if it kept me from gaining a spot or two along the way.

After 12 races, I reached an iRating of 5,109.  It’s more than I ever imagined I might accumulate when the week started, and I did it in a car that clearly wasn’t the fastest or most popular choice.

By the end of the week, I was passing Audis around the outside.

A Skill Score?

The global rankings show that my iRating is ranked 630th out of a little more than 50,000 drivers.  So does that mean I’m among the best 0.2% of iRacers as the number suggests?

Certainly not, which brings me to some of the limitations of iRating.

Because it requires many races for your iRating to calibrate itself, I’m sure that some of the drivers ranked below me haven’t raced enough to meet their potential.  Likewise, it only factors in official races, so anyone who runs mostly leagues effectively misses out on potential gains from those performances.  This is the case for several of my teammates, who are consistently quicker than me but have iRatings a few hundred points lower.

One frequent criticism of iRating is that it lumps all cars within a discipline into a single number.  Per-car iRating has often been suggested so that a top-level Mazda MX-5 driver won’t be expected to perform as well in a GT3 car, and someone can’t farm overall iRating in a single series, especially a low-level one like the Mazda Cup.

I would also argue that iRating isn’t as much of a measure of driver skill as it is of driver fitness.  Put another way, over the course of a season, a team owner may be better off choosing a slightly slower driver with a higher iRating because they can more consistently finish races, even if they might not win as many.

One key to iRacing improvement: taking advantage of faster drivers making mistakes.

I witnessed this at Bathurst.  Several drivers with lower iRatings than mine were consistently much quicker, yet I tended to beat them more often than not because they made mistakes.

With that interpretation in mind, iRating as it’s structured now does a quite good job of predicting the finishing order of races.  Sure, there will always be outliers, but once that calibration period has elapsed, better drivers tend to come out on top.

What does that mean for me?

Statistically, not a whole lot, as the difference between 4,800 and 5,100 isn’t much.  But reaching that 5k milestone carries an expectation for speed, safety, and success, both in my mind and to my competitors.

It’s not exactly the da Vinci code, but like the Mona Lisa, there are some hidden complexities to iRating, and sometimes, you just have to look at them from the right angle.

The first car on my list — the Skip Barber Formula 2000 — is one that I should theoretically be familiar with.  After all, it’s the closest car on iRacing to the Formula 2000 that I drove in the Bertil Roos Racing School at VIR ten years ago.

However, I’ve largely avoided that car and series on iRacing.  I drove a few races in it when I first earned my D-class road license, but since then, I have mostly stuck to the GT cars at higher license levels.

A field of Skippies slowly rolls off the starting grid.

My only foray into the Skip Barber series since then was a one-off race at Summit Point five years ago, which was a frustrating mid-pack run in which I was utterly uncompetitive.

Even though I haven’t been racing this car, plenty of other iRacers have been.  In fact, it’s the most popular non-rookie road series on iRacing, even besting the GT3 in participation numbers.  And with races going off every hour, it’s easy to find official race after official race in this series.

Despite being one of the oldest cars in iRacing, this car doesn’t seem to be getting old.  So as I stepped foot onto the open-wheeled ladder last week, I set out to discover the draw of the Skippies.

The Shakedown

One thing’s for sure: Compared to the GT cars I raced in recent weeks, the Skip Barber is a bare-bones racecar.  It has no anti-lock brakes or traction control, no fancy in-car dashboard displays showing lap times and fuel usage, and the front and rear wings are largely for show, as it has little to no downforce.

That makes it a great car for learning basic driving techniques and understanding how the car reacts.  If you brake too late or don’t turn in soon enough, you’ll miss the apex.  If you get back on the power too soon, you’ll push wide on exit.

With just 132 horsepower, this car also demands maximizing momentum and corner exit speeds.  That was especially important at last week’s venue, the Silverstone Grand Prix course, which has several long straightaways connected by a combination of low-speed chicanes and high-speed sweeping corners.

Close racing in a four-car pack.

The circuit is also very wide — enough to easily go three wide with several feet between cars — but as I found throughout the week, it’s not always a good thing to use the full width of the track in this car.  In some places, like exiting the Chapel corner or entering Priory, it’s better to keep the car toward the inside or middle of the road.  Anything wider is literally a waste of time.

Consistent with its bare-bones amenities, the available setup adjustments on the Skip Barber car are also limited. Other than changing the fuel level for qualifying, the only adjustment I made all week was lowering the tire pressures for a particularly warm race.

As I stepped into a completely different car from anything I’ve raced recently, it was time for a refresher on some fundamentals of racing.

Fundamental 1: Learn the Limits

For my return to the Skip Barber series, I wanted to dip my toes into the water rather than jump straight into the deep end.  So for my first event, I chose the timeslot just after a broadcasted race.

With most of the heavy-hitters choosing to run that earlier event, the competition in my race wasn’t as strong.  In fact, as the top driver by iRating in the field, I wasn’t just hoping to keep up; I felt the pressure to come away with a high finishing position.

I qualified in third but lost two positions entering the esses.  I re-passed one of those cars down the Hangar Straight, and it’s a good thing that I did, because the two cars behind me crashed entering the tight Club corner, narrowly missing the back of my car.

The cars behind me make contact entering Club corner.

Their crash took away any close competition behind me, so I could simply focus forward and run my own race.  I found myself on the edge of drafting range of the three leaders, but in the early laps, they were all cooperating instead of battling, which made my job tougher.

As I pushed harder to try to keep up, I started making mistakes as I overdrove the car’s limits.  Whether it was braking a bit too late or getting back on the throttle a bit too early, those mistakes added up and the lead trio was soon several seconds ahead and seemingly out of reach.

On the final lap, though, they started racing, and two of them spun out as they exceeded the cars’ limits themselves. Just staying on the circuit gained me two positions, elevating me to a second-place finish.  However, in a flashback to my mid-pack mediocrity five years ago, I couldn’t shake the feeling that my performance didn’t merit such a good result.

Skip Barber Race Series - Race 1

Fundamental 2: Don’t Wreck Your Teammate

For my second race, I was excited to get back on track with my teammate Karl Modig.  We had already raced together this season in the Porsche and Mercedes, and as in those races, we qualified within one position of each other on the grid — seventh for him and eighth for me.

The race started calmly enough, running single-file through the esses.  But as we rolled onto the Hangar Straight, the trouble began.

I was just behind Karl but didn’t want to pass him for fear of losing touch with the cars ahead.  So instead, I wanted to be a helpful teammate and give him a push down the straightaway — a move most commonly associated with NASCAR but not unheard of in open-wheelers, either.

Unfortunately, my attempt was less-than-proper bump drafting.  After an initial tap, his car lurched slightly to the left, and my second tap was nearly on his right-rear tire.  That sent us both spinning and crashing into the wall.

He laughed it off and said he expected no less from a veteran stock car sim racer.

“I can see why the Australians didn’t care for your driving,” he joked, referring to my tumultuous week in the V8 Supercar Series.

Alas, I broke the first rule of motorsports, and all we had to show for it was two wrecked cars and big iRating and safety rating losses.

Oops.

Skip Barber Race Series - Race 2

Fundamental 3: Patience is a Virtue

I ran another race that night, and probably wisely, Karl decided not to join me.  That meant I couldn’t fall afoul of the second fundamental again, but I knew I still had a lot to learn about actually racing in the Skippies.

A close, race-long battle with other cars was just what the doctor ordered, and that’s exactly what I got.  While a pack of four speedy leaders pulled away from the start, I found myself in my own four-car pack for much of the race.

Early on, I dropped to the back of that group, and it wasn’t because of mistakes or a lack of pace.  I mainly wanted to be patient and see how the car felt in the draft.

It didn’t take long before that patience paid off.  On lap 4, contact between two of the drivers at the front of the group sent one of them spinning in Stowe corner.  Our pack of four was down to three, and I was right in the middle of it.

Getting past a lap-4 crash at Stowe corner.

I was very much learning on the fly, so I still made a few mistakes as I got used to racing so closely with other cars.  Several times, I panicked in braking zones and locked up, but unlike in my first race, those mistakes didn’t keep me out of the battle.

Throughout the race, I wasn’t sure how aggressive I should be, and with my dumb mistake from the previous race still fresh on my mind, I played it conservatively.  Instead of making risky attacks, I worked together with the cars around me to keep our pack in tact and keep myself in contention until the end.

With two laps to go, I found myself in fifth place leading our pack, so I began to defend the position down the Hangar Straight.  On the last lap, the car behind me made an outside pass there, which dropped me back to sixth.

On paper, it wasn’t a spectacular finishing position, especially considering that I was more than 14 seconds adrift of the winner.  But I did learn a lot about how these cars race, which gave me confidence entering my final start of the week.

Racing hard for fifth place on the final lap.

Skip Barber Race Series - Race 3

Fundamental 4: Never Stop Improving

For that race, I again found myself as the #1 car, which brought back the pressure to finish among the leaders.  But after qualifying in fifth, more than half a second off the polesitter, I knew that task might be tough, especially if I lost ground on the first lap.

With that in mind, having the cars ahead of me go three-wide into the esses was exactly what I didn’t want to see.  One of them ran through the grass, which forced me to take a wide line to avoid him and nearly put me out of touch with the three surviving leaders ahead.

But between my own clean driving and their early raciness, I caught back up and found myself safely in the lead pack.

The cars ahead of me race three-wide into the esses.

As in my previous race, I mostly stayed toward the back, again practicing patience early on and working together with the cars ahead of me instead of battling them and splintering our lead foursome.

With four laps to go, my patience was again rewarded.  Contact between the top two cars in the Abbey chicane sent them both spinning while the third-place driver and I squeezed through to become a lead pack of two.

We weren’t in the clear, though, as a car further back caught up while we slowed to avoid the spins.  If I started racing the leader, that other car would’ve surely caught us.

Driving through the smoke of the spinning leaders ahead of me.

Instead, I stayed in his draft, and this time, I knew better than to bump him.  I also avoided losing time as I had in previous races by locking up in braking zones or running wide after carrying extra speed into corners.  That kept us clear of the car behind entering the final lap.

While I was firmly in the draft, I wasn’t close enough to make a move, which kept me in second place until the finish.  For the second time in the week, I finished second as the #1 car, but this time, based on my pace, patience, and performance, I thought I deserved it.

Skip Barber Race Series - Race 4

Newfound Knowledge

In a car ideal for learning, I certainly learned a lot in just four races.

In some cases, like with drafting and side-by-side racing, that knowledge came in the classroom environment that only a race can truly provide; practice just doesn’t quite have the same intensity or consequences.

I also learned from watching others.  By studying the laps of faster drivers, I discovered better lines to take, shifting points to use, and approaches to some of the trickier corners.

And, of course, I learned from my own mistakes by seeing how hard I could push and when to bump draft (hint: never).

A fun four-car, two-wide battle through Club corner.

But did I learn what makes this series so popular?  After all, that was my goal entering the week.

Although the car itself is uninspiring at best, I think its simplicity is a big reason why it’s such a draw.  Pro drivers always want skill rather than setups to shine so they can prove they’re the best, and the Skip Barber Race Series provides that opportunity.

Sure, the draft can be a great equalizer, sometimes keeping slower drivers in touch with the cars ahead, but it still requires speed and discipline to stay in the slipstream, at least to a greater extent than a NASCAR race at Daytona or Talladega.

Of course, that’s easy for me to say now.  If only I knew at the start of the week that I shouldn’t drive the Skippy like a stock car.

Even outside of that headliner series, the GT3 participation dwarfs that of many other series.  The GT3 class in the IMSA series attracted almost 400 drivers per week and the team-based Blancpain Endurance Series had 254 drivers, on average.

It’s easy to understand the appeal of these cars.  In the real world, they were designed for gentlemen drivers, and let’s face it: While plenty of professional drivers use iRacing to learn tracks or hone their skills, the vast majority of iRacing’s subscriber base aren’t pros.

For those drivers, the downforce and driver aids of anti-lock brakes and traction control make the cars a bit easier to handle.  However, they still have the power and performance that you’d expect from a GT car, so they challenge top-level drivers to extract every bit of speed possible.

Also, until the recent addition of the Ferrari and Ford GTE cars, the GT3 class was the only one on the road side with multiple car makes.  The ability to choose a car that best fits your driving style, from the speedy McLaren to the quick-cornering BMW, makes these cars even more accessible.

A pack of cars heads into Les Combes early in the 24 Hours of Spa.

The Shakedown

Of course, multiple makes in a single class will always conjure up one dreaded phrase: balance of performance.  Just as in the real world, drivers favoring a particular car will always complain if it seems like they aren’t as competitive as they could be.

Sometimes, those complaints are legitimate.  Despite the efforts of iRacing and its beta testers to get the balance correct, at least one car always seems to get the short end of the stick.  The preferred car in last year’s Spa 24-hour race — the Audi R8 — was largely left untouched in this year’s event due to an unfavorable balance of performance this season.

Instead, last week’s grids at Spa were dominated by the McLaren and Mercedes, and at times, those were the only cars I saw around me.  Although it would be nice to have a wider variety of cars on the grid each week, ultimately, you can’t make anyone race a car they don’t like or aren’t competitive with.

A field of Mercs takes the green flag at Spa.

Fortunately, no matter which car you want to drive, it’s relatively easy to find a setup.  While setups are closely guarded secrets in some high-level cars, there’s typically no shortage of available setups for these cars, perhaps due to the sheer volume of people driving them.

No matter which car or setup you choose, though, the GT3 cars aren’t exactly arrive and drive.  You’ll want to put in practice to get used to the handling on new and old tires, with a full or empty tank of fuel, and in different weather and track conditions.

And while these cars can be fun to hotlap alone, it’s also important to get used to driving around other cars.  Feel the effects of the draft down the straightaways and of dirty air in the corners.

Given the popularity of the GT3 series, usually with two or more splits in each timeslot, you’re likely to find competition close to your own pace.  That makes knowing how to drive around other cars even more important.

Experience driving in traffic pays off when racing GT3 cars.

A Warmup Act

That close competition — and the consequences when it goes wrong — has given GT3 racing a less-than-sparkling reputation for clean driving.  More often, you hear complaints of aggressive moves and questionable driving standards.

With my safety rating still recovering from a rough pair of races in the V8 Supercar, a week in the GT3s was risky, especially at Spa, where it’s easy to accumulate off-track incidents by barely overusing the astroturf and paved runoff areas.

With one Blancpain Sprint Series race and five stints in the weekend’s 24 Hours of Spa planned, I had a lot of time for the incidents to pile up.

On that note, my week got off to an inauspicious start in the BSS race I ran.  Just after the green flag flew and the field plunged down the hill toward Eau Rouge, GT3 happened.  Two cars fighting for the same piece of road made contact, triggering a pileup in the middle of the track.

Karl and I avoid the first-lap crash at Eau Rouge.

My teammate Karl Modig and I started eighth and ninth, respectively, so we were among the first on the scene.  While he swung wide onto the runoff, I hit the brakes and snuck by on the inside of the track.  In the process, the car behind me rear-ended me, damaging my rear bumper but thankfully not my wing.

One corner into the week, I already had my first four incident points.  Sorry, safety rating.  I barely knew you.

Although I passed Karl while avoiding the crash, he passed me a few laps later and set sail up the road, trying to chase down the leaders that opened up a big gap amid the early chaos.

Even in the draft, I couldn’t match his pace, so I was left playing defense.  One high-iRating driver that started in the back of the field caught me and easily passed me entering the Bus Stop on lap 6, and another such driver was closing in quickly.

Conceding a position to a faster driver in the Bus Stop.

Once he got within the range of both my draft and my dirty air, he made an early pit stop — the BSS series uses a fuel limit to force all cars to pit once — and given his pace, I expected him to easily be ahead after I pitted a few laps later.

But to my surprise, I emerged from the pits more than three seconds ahead.  It seemed that he emerged from the pits in traffic and his undercut attempt backfired.

He made up some of that gap in the next few laps, but I was able to hold onto sixth place at the finish while Karl, eight seconds up the road from me, managed to stay ahead of the fast driver charging from the rear of the field to finish fourth.

Blancpain Sprint Series

A Eureka Moment

While I narrowly avoided the GT3 carnage and made it to the finish, being more than half a second per lap slower than Karl didn’t exactly inspire confidence leading into the 24-hour race, so I was determined to find some pace and consistency.

Each lap I ran, I became more frustrated with how the car was driving.  At one point, I described its handling as “push, push, push, push, push, loose, loose”.  I even found a different setup that drove more to my liking, but one of my teammates talked me down from the ledge of making a setup change so close to the race.

That meant I was left to figure out how to drive a car that didn’t drive at all like I figured.

As I ran more practice laps, it suddenly hit me.  It wasn’t the car or the setup that was bad, but my own driving — or overdriving — and I’d been too stubborn to notice.

Karl drives away early in our BSS race together.

My driving style is usually conservative and well-suited to cars that are easy to overdrive, but I’d never thought of the Mercedes in that way.  So why the disconnect?

It’s because I had been treating GT3 cars differently.  I’m used to driving car with clear limits — usually with their weight, brakes, or downforce — but I had been driving the GT3s as if they were limitless by comparison, braking deep into the corners, trying to carry lots of mid-corner speed, and getting back on the throttle early.

That aggressive approach doesn’t really work with the heavy, powerful Mercedes.  Driving in too deep created a push through the mid-corner as I struggled to get the car to turn.  And by the exit, I had so much steering in the car that the rear end wanted to slide as I got back on the throttle.

Once it clicked in my head to stop overdriving the car, I immediately found speed and comfort — the latter of which is arguably the more important for a long endurance race.

Heading through Eau Rouge late in the 24 Hours of Spa.

Unsafe at Any Speed?

As the race start approached on Saturday morning, I felt better about my driving but was still resigned to being the slowest driver on our team.  My three teammates were all strong, so I just hoped I wouldn’t weigh them down too badly.

We started from 20th place in the top split, and it didn’t take long before more GT3 antics unfolded around us.  On lap 2, several of the lead cars were collected in a crash at the Rivage corner, which our driver Steve McGarvey expertly navigated past while taking only a bit of cosmetic damage on the rear bumper.

By the end of the first hour, he had taken us from 20th on the grid into the top ten despite the incidents around us and the track becoming slick and slow from the hot tires running on it.

Cars pile up ahead of us in the Rivage corner.

The next few hours also went well, and when I took over the car from Karl just after the six-hour mark, we were in sixth place.  However, the three teams chasing us all had fast drivers in the car, so I didn’t expect to hold them off.  Instead, I just wanted a clean double stint running a decent pace.

Most of my laps were in the low- to mid-2:22s, a few tenths off of what Karl was running.  I considered that a largely successful start to my race, but as expected, I was the slowest driver on the team to that point, even despite the track rubbering in during the early hours.

The bigger obstacle was incident points.  Although taking lots of off-tracks wouldn’t hurt us in the race, we would feel the effects in our safety ratings afterwards.  Each of my teammates racked up more than 30 incident points in their opening double stints, and I joined them in that club with 42 incidents of my own.

Those included a car contact with the second-place McLaren that slowed down more than I expected braking for La Source.  Neither of us took damage, but it added four more incident points to my already lofty ledger.

Getting a barbecued grill after contact with the second-place McLaren.

Gaining Confidence, Gaining Pace

As the hours ticked away, our team continued to run between 6th and 8th positions, depending on the pit strategies in play around us.  When I hopped back in the car for a mid-race single stint, I found the track conditions slightly improved and my pace slightly better, as I was able to eke out a handful of 2:21s.

After that, I got about five hours of sleep before waking up early on Sunday morning for my final double stint of the race.  Our car was still running around sixth place, and the lap times of my teammates and our competitors had all improved as the track gained grip.

When I first got in the car, my pace wasn’t much different — still mostly in the low 2:22s.  But as I felt out the conditions, I found that I could drive a bit deeper into the braking zones and carry more speed through the corners.

It was still a far cry from the limitless driving style I once expected a GT3 car to tolerate, but at least to a degree, it did reward pushing rather than punishing it.  Although I had to contend with some traffic in the first half of that double stint, I was still able to run some laps in the mid-2:21s for the first time all race.

Marbles begin to accumulate off the racing line at Malmedy.

I also saw a familiar face in my mirror.  The high-iRating driver that blew by me in my BSS race was closing in, albeit at a much slower rate than he had earlier in the week.  Maybe he was holding something back since his team was a few laps behind us, but maybe our pace was also more similar this time around.

In either case, I held him off until I made my pit stop, and in my final stint of the race, I found mostly clean track ahead of me.  That allowed me to run my fastest laps of the race, consistently in the 2:21s.

Finally, it seemed, I had figured out how to push this car just the right amount.  Even better, I made it through those final two stints with only about a dozen incidents for a race total of 64.

As I handed off the car to my fourth teammate, Jason Gerard, for one final stint, we were solidly in sixth place and stayed there until the finish.  In the top split against many of the top teams, we had a strong showing with no major incidents and no damage repairs in 24 hours.

24 Hours of Spa

How to Work the Merc

For anyone fraught with frustration about driving the Mercedes or any heavy car that’s easy to overdrive, I hope my pre-race epiphany can enlighten you as well.  It’s as easy as A-B-C:

A: Abusing the ABS will cost you. With no threat of locking up the brakes, it’s tempting to put the middle pedal to the floor, but engaging the anti-lock brakes isn’t as efficient as threshold braking.  In the heavy braking zones, I aimed for no more than about 75% brake application.

B: Brake early, then brake earlier.  It seems almost instinctual for drivers searching for speed to try braking later for corners.  But in heavy cars, the slow-in, fast-out style really is best, and it will lead to more consistency as well if you also follow the final tip.

C: Control the corners.  Don’t get behind on your braking, turning, or throttle application, and don’t rush them either.  That was the case when I overdrove the entry, forcing me to fight a push, then crank in too much wheel and deal with oversteer on exit.  Essentially, my errors compounded throughout the corner, like a runner tripping over his feet at the start of a footrace.

Another tip: Stay off the astroturf at Spa. There’s nothing there but a dirty 1x.

Sticking to these tips will make you a smoother driver, and at least in GT cars, smooth is fast.  Plus, when you’re dealing with some of the crazy and aggressive GT3 drivers, that smoother approach tends to pay off as long as you can avoid their wreckage.

But why should you take any speed tips from me?  I was the slowest driver on our team, right?

Well sure, a couple of my teammates may have run faster laps than me with off-tracks, and they weren’t in the car near the end of the race when the grip level was highest.

But according to the results, which only consider clean laps and give no preference to the track conditions, my lap of 2:21.300 was our team’s best, making me our fastest driver.

The numbers don’t lie, of course.

Few things on the track draw more ire from drivers than a bad-handling car, and rightfully so. A successful setup can help make the most of out a race, while a bad one can cause an opportunity to slip away.

Of course, setup preferences are as different as driving styles. Each driver has certain tendencies and irritations with those changes under the hood, and during a race where tire wear, ambient weather, and track conditions change, the perfect setup is always a moving target.

You could fill an entire blog with thoughts about setup adjustments, but in this post, I want to look at how driving styles affect setups and vice versa.

To Each His Own

So far in this series, I’ve looked at driving styles in the context of inputs and downforce, gathering some illuminating insights by comparing my own style with my teammates Karl Modig and Dean Moll, whose styles are worlds apart from each other.

Given those differences, it’s probably no surprise that they have different setup preferences as well, especially when it comes to downforce.

Dean’s style suited toward high-downforce cars also tends to demand a higher-downforce setup, which helps him brake even later and keep cornering speeds even higher. That makes his job easier in racing situations.

“My preference is to run more downforce on the car,” he said. “I find the extra stability in traffic is beneficial, which allows me to focus on racing versus fighting the car.”

For Dean, the stability provided by extra downforce proves useful in traffic.

Because Karl’s style emphasizes slowing down mid-corner to get the car to rotate and getting back to the throttle sooner, extra downforce doesn’t help him much. In fact, he said he prefers a low-downforce setup because it gives him an edge in a different area: top speed. After all, passing in a straight line is much easier than in a corner.

There’s no one right answer to which setup is correct other than whatever is fastest, and that varies from driver to driver. For example, with Karl’s style, having higher tire pressures can help with his mid-corner rotation.

On the other hand, I can’t stand my tire pressures to be too high. By now, I’m sure Karl is sick of me complaining about “driving on basketballs” — the best comparison I can make to having overinflated tires. For me, it’s a matter of stability, or the lack thereof.

Instead of raising the tire pressures, one of my go-to adjustments to help the car turn is increasing the front toe-in. This especially helps with quick changes of direction, like the high-speed left-right Schumacher S at the Nurburgring. Although too big of a change can also compromise the stability of the car, in small amounts, I find it to be an effective adjustment.

When Adjustments Aren’t an Option

Not all cars are created equal in terms of available setup adjustments. While Indy cars and F1 cars offer nearly every imaginable adjustment, many of the lower-level cars only allow changing tire pressures, cambers, and a few other settings. These cars with a more fixed setup often require adapting your driving to the setup instead of the other way around.

One such car is the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup car, which was designed by Porsche to have limited adjustability to better highlight driver talent behind the wheel. Both this car and its predecessor on iRacing, the Ruf C-Spec, notably have a bit of oversteer on corner exit. Without traction control, adjustable dampers, or differential settings to dial this out, it’s simply a characteristic you have to deal with.

With no traction control, exit oversteer tends to be a common characteristic of the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup car.

This exit oversteer seems to be even more magnified with my slow-in, fast-out driving style, which means I have to be more careful with my throttle application in these cars. For comparison, in a car like the Mercedes AMG GT3, I usually run a high traction control setting and often tune the differential to shift understeer to the corner exit.

Perhaps the best example of adapting your driving style to the setup comes when driving fixed-setup oval cars. These series are hugely popular on iRacing because they don’t require much setup knowledge or time spent under the virtual hood.

A Fixed Setup Fallacy

One common misconception is that fixed setups level the playing field among drivers. In reality, certain setups suit certain driving styles better, and I have first-hand experience with that while racing in the fixed-setup Power Series.

When we raced at Indianapolis a year ago this week, I had a decent enough run to clinch the championship but certainly wasn’t a contender to win. However, when we returned there just a few weeks later during the summer, it was a different story.

While the setup was the same, the weather and track conditions made the cars much tighter around Indy’s flat corners, which are tough enough to negotiate in a heavy stock car as is. Even I — an early braker in the first place — found myself moving by braking points back so I didn’t push straight past my apexes. The cars were undeniably tight, but I adjusted to it and ended up getting the race win.

While my competitors fought a tight setup at Indy, I adapted to it and won the race.

While the setup and my tolerance for its tightness benefitted me on that day, fixed setups also worked against me several times over the years. I always tended to struggle when the car felt floaty through the center and exit of a turn, whether it was due to an overly loose setup or overly high tire pressures.

In general, I was and am a fan of fixed-setup oval series, but I realize that just because the setup is the same for all drivers, it doesn’t mean that no one will have an advantage. I like to think that good oval drivers can adapt their style to any setup, even if it’s not their preference.

What a Driver Wants

So what do drivers prefer in a setup? While different drivers favor certain adjustments over others, I suspect they almost all agree on the ultimate outcome: having a car that will effectively rotate in the center of the corner.

This is true regardless of driving style, whether you’re Dean looking to keep your cornering speeds high or Karl looking to get the car slowed and turned early.  In either case, good rotation maximizes the speed you can carry, and in essence, it means the car is working for you rather than making you fight it through the turns.

I’ve seen the benefits of this first-hand. With three races to go in my first championship-winning season in the Power Series, we visited the newly repaved and reconfigured Phoenix International Raceway for the first time.

Since no one had raced there yet, it was a huge wildcard in the championship fight. And somehow, I managed to drive that track and setup just right so that it perfectly rotated the center of the corner, especially in turns 1 and 2. I managed to win that race by almost 9 seconds, and in a season that was ultimately decided by a tiebreaker, those points gained at Phoenix were vital.

Rotating the center of the corner at Phoenix helped me win my first Power Series championship.

So in this race, how did I manage to make the car do something that most other drivers couldn’t? Am I a better driver than them? That’s doubtful, as in plenty of other races in that series, they outmatched me or we were at least nearly equal on pace.

More likely, it came down to differences in driving styles. I always found myself lifting earlier than most other drivers entering turn 1 at Phoenix, which could’ve been just what that setup called for.

In several return trips to Phoenix, I was never quite able to find the same successful recipe to rotate the center. That just goes to show how tough it is to make driving styles and setups mesh together perfectly, the inability to do so usually resulting in a frustrated driver.

And what’s a race without the sounds of cars revving, crews working, and drivers complaining?

By the 1960s, as racing tires became capable of handling a greater cornering load, clever designers like Colin Chapman began to equip their cars with wings to provide aerodynamic grip and push the cornering speeds higher still.

Since then, those aero devices have found their way onto nearly every race car around the world, with designers routinely exploiting gray areas in the rulebook to add more downforce wherever possible. Even this year, a handful of Formula 1 teams added “T-wings” in front of the rear wings for an extra aerodynamic gain.

Mercedes F1 cars from 1955 (left, by Lothar Spurzem) and 2017 (right, by Morio): spot the difference in downforce.

Depending on your perspective, discovering and harnessing downforce is either a triumph for innovation and fluid dynamics, or a competition-crushing scourge on motorsports that can’t be unlearned or undone.

Trust…

Okay, maybe that’s a bit extreme. But I am somewhat wary of downforce, largely because my driving style isn’t well-suited for high-downforce cars. I described one reason in the first post of this series: my early braking is inefficient in cars that can be driven deep into a corner. Another reason has to do with a quirk of downforce itself.

Wings, spoilers, diffusers, and the like don’t do anything when you’re sitting still. They only produce downforce at speed. And as speeds increase, downforce increases by the speed squared. So if you can carry more speed into a corner, the downforce will be much higher, which keeps the car even more planted.

Downforce: the unseen gummy worms that hold our cars to the track. (Image from TotalSim)

While I understand this concept, actually putting it into practice has always been tough for me. During preparations for my first 24-hour race at Spa driving the McLaren MP4-12C, my teammates had to repeatedly talk me into lifting less and carrying more speed through the fast Blanchimont turn since the extra downforce would actually make the car more stable.

At least for me, trusting these unseen factors, even in a racing sim, is akin to blindly falling into the arms of someone behind you. Even if you believe that they’ll catch you, how hard are you actually willing to fall?

…but Verify

To get more insight into driving with downforce, I talked to my friend and teammate Dean Moll, who enjoys driving high-downforce cars and has lots of experience in prototypes and open wheelers. Growing up in Indiana, Dean said the Indy 500 guided his sim racing progression, including both the old Dallara IRL05 and new DW12 Indy cars in iRacing.

Dean started our conversation by assuring me that he’s no expert on driving with downforce, but he’s certainly more of one than I am. As proof, I witnessed him put in one of the greatest drives I’ve ever seen in last year’s Daytona 24 Hours, pushing our Daytona Prototype as hard as he could lap after lap en route to a narrow win.

Dean’s ability to drive deep into the braking zones in the Daytona Prototype helped our team score the win.

That uncanny ability to consistently find the limit under braking is one thing I’ve always struggled with, which is another reason why I’ve generally stuck with a slow-in, fast-out style. But even Dean said it was an acquired skill for him.

“It did not come naturally at first, but my driving style evolved over time to prioritize mid-corner speed,” he told me. “My approach in practice is to keep moving my braking point deeper into the corner while applying the same amount of braking until I can no longer make the corner exit without pushing wide.”

Even outside of a high-downforce car, those same traits show up in Dean’s driving style. Compare each of our fastest laps from the NEO Endurance Series’ 24 Hours of Le Mans race earlier this year driving the Mercedes AMG GT3.

Relative driving lines (top) and speeds, throttle and brake percentages, and steering angles for me (solid blue) and Dean (dashed purple) through the esses at Le Mans. Charts from Virtual Racing School.

Entering the esses, Dean stayed farther to the right than me, allowing him straighten the braking zone. He also used less steering input; by the middle of the corner, my steering angle was 20 degrees greater than his. This approach allowed him to carry about 5 km/hr greater mid-corner speed.

The advantage of my style — the fast out part — kicked in exiting the corner.  I was able to get back to the throttle sooner than him, and his bigger lift off the throttle over the exit kerbs meant I was a bit faster than him. Ultimately, our times through this sector were almost identical, further showing that no one style is always best.

Dean’s Top Tips

One thing that impresses me most about Dean’s driving style is that he’s always working on it. And in his quest to keep his cornering speeds higher, he’s picked up a few bad habits — “not slowing enough to the corner apex and picking up the throttle too quickly”, he said — that he’s trying to correct.

These mainly show up in GT3 cars, which don’t have the same downforce levels as an Indy car and therefore can’t handle that style as well. He said that working on those two areas alone helped him gain almost a second per lap in a recent GT3 race week at Barber Motorsports Park.

Dean also shared a few pointers for getting up to speed in downforce cars.

“You want to run the widest possible arc through the corner to maintain the highest speed possible,” he said. Of course, this was clearly evident in his style compared to mine through the esses at Le Mans.

Dean uses all the track to ensure a smooth line entering the esses at Le Mans.

“Second is braking application,” he told me. “When you first apply the brakes, the car is at speed and will have the highest downforce, so apply maximum pressure. As your speed slows, so does the amount of downforce, so you need to bleed off the brakes correspondingly in order to prevent locking up the tires.”

This approach to the braking zones is a stark contrast to my own braking style, which I described in the previous post.

“This is a little different than other cars where threshold braking is based primarily on weight transfer. The open wheel cars are good for learning this technique as you have the visual cue of seeing the front tire lock up in addition to the feel and sound.”

Aero on Ovals

Just as a certain driving style is more suited to high-downforce road cars, different downforce packages on oval cars also demand specific styles. These differences have come to light in recent years with NASCAR’s changes to the Cup Series aero package, first adding downforce in 2014 and 2015 before removing it in 2016 and 2017.

The virtual representations of these cars in iRacing also received the aero updates, and they certainly affected my ability to perform well. On the blog, I previously described the struggles I had with the Gen6 cars when they had a high-downforce package. It demanded driving the cars deep into the corner and keeping mid-corner speeds higher, neither of which fits my style.

Dean holds a big lead over me and the rest of the field at Kentucky.

Not coincidentally, Dean performed at his best with this high-downforce package, picking up his only Power Series win at Kentucky in early 2016, just before that year’s real-world lower downforce package came to iRacing.

While I struggled in the first few races of that Power Series season, once the aero changes arrived, I was back on my game. In the seven races with the old aero package, my average finish was 6.7. In the ten races with the lower-downforce package, my average finish was 3.7, and that series of strong runs helped propel me to the championship.

That’s a big change, and all because of that strange, invisible force that rewards your faith in it and amplifies your advantage from it.

I still don’t trust it.

At the most basic level, driving styles come down to inputs: what drivers are doing with their brake, steering wheel, and throttle. As the other two posts in this series will discuss, some styles are better suited to certain characteristics, like driving with downforce, or to certain setup types, like driving a tight oval car.

However, by and large, there is no right answer for how to drive, other than “as fast as possible”. Well-matched drivers in the same car or series may use very different styles, or variations of the same style, to achieve a similar pace.

Like any skill, driving can be coached, and driving styles can evolve because of that. Personally, though, the basic mechanics of my style developed largely as a result of circumstance.

My Style

For many years, I raced with a Microsoft Sidewinder wheel and pedal set. It was a solid piece of hardware when my dad and I bought it nearly two decades ago, but over time, it became outdated and subject to plenty of wear and tear.

The greatest wear came when one of the two springs in the brake pedal broke in half. In a pedal that already didn’t offer much resistance, that provided even less, which meant the difference between minimal braking and full pressure was extremely small.

Even with plenty of experience using that pedal, I — or it — still wasn’t good enough to consistently brake late. My desk at the time couldn’t support a different wheel or pedal set, so I just made do with what I had. That meant braking earlier and getting back on the throttle earlier to maximize my exit speed.

The Microsoft Sidewinder wheel and pedals: designed for Windows 98!

That slow-in, fast-out style works well for stock cars and most road racing tin tops. Since that’s mostly what I was driving, my threadbare brake pedal wasn’t much of a problem. In fact, even when I upgraded to better pedal sets that would support later braking, I largely kept the same driving style.

In my experience, this is not a common or even an intuitive driving style. Braking late and hard seems to be a better way to maximize the time spent at high speeds and minimize the time at slow ones. For that reason, when people are trying to find extra pace, their first inclination is often to drive deeper into the corner.

While that can be a viable strategy when executed well, more often, it results in overdriving the corner, which means missing the apex and getting back to the throttle later rather than earlier. Even I am guilty of trying this sometimes, especially in downforce-equipped GT3 cars, and I almost always find that I’m faster with my more disciplined slow-in, fast-out style.

Braking

At least one Formula 1 driver in every generation, from Ronnie Peterson to Lewis Hamilton, gets bestowed the nickname of “last of the late brakers” for their ability to push their braking points as deep into the corner as possible.

I certainly will never be a candidate for that nickname. In fact, I’ve joked before that I’m more like the “earliest of the late brakers” since I generally get on the binders sooner than most of my competitors.

Going back to the origins of my driving style, braking has rarely been an opportunity for me to gain time. Instead, I try to get my braking done as soon as possible so I can get back to the throttle early — slow in, fast out.

Brake lights into Blanchimont: a common sight on my car at Spa.

That means braking is usually an exercise in weight transfer for me. Whether on road or oval, one characteristic of my driving style is using my initial brake application to get the nose planted, then backing off on the brake pedal as I approach the corner entry, with some occasional minor trail braking as I turn in.

This weight transfer is so important to me that I often use a dab of the brakes for corners where other drivers only lift off the throttle. The Blanchimont corner at Spa is a great example of this; it’s not quite flat-out in a GT3 car, so I typically tap the brakes before turning in to plant the nose and make the car a bit more settled through that tricky corner.

On ovals, my style is very similar. Even at high-speed tracks like Atlanta or Charlotte, I still tend to use a touch of the brakes entering the corner before coasting through the center and rolling back onto the throttle. Along with being a bit more fuel-efficient, this approach can help save the tires.

Steering

Steering isn’t only about how much (or how little) the wheel is turned; you often steer the car as much with the brakes and throttle as you do with the wheel itself. Great drivers are masters of this, and perhaps none are better in this department than the late Ayrton Senna.

His driving style was famous and truly unique, largely because of how he steered the car. Senna often used less brake entering the corner but, using a combination of the steering wheel and the throttle, still managed to get the car turned. By mid-corner, he often made severe steering inputs — for a left-hander, a brief jab to the left — and began pumping the throttle to force the car to rotate.

While few drivers have Senna’s talent to execute such a style, I have seen elements of it in drivers I’ve competed with. Namely, my teammate Karl Modig has a similar tendency to use a mid-corner flick of the steering wheel. That is evident in traces of our respective speeds and steering angles from the tight Bico de Pato corner at Interlagos.

Driving lines (left), relative speeds (top right), throttle and brake percentages, and steering angles for me (solid blue) and Karl (dashed purple) in the Ford GT through the Bico de Pato corner. Charts from Virtual Racing School.

In this particular sector, he made a much wider corner entry culminating in a sharp mid-corner right turn, using 30+ degrees greater steering angle than me to get the car turned sooner and get back to the throttle earlier. However, because my mid-corner speed was nearly 8 km/hr higher, we had identical times through this sector — evidence that there isn’t one correct driving style, but multiple ways to achieve the same result.

Karl’s big steering inputs often mean that he diamonds the corners to get the car to rotate. I have copied this technique in corners like Rivage — Spa’s 180-degree right-hander — and found success with it as well.

In general, though, I tend to have smoother steering inputs, rarely making sudden movements. Just as with braking, much of this comes down to having predictable weight transfer.

Diamonding the Rivage corner in the Ford GT.

This approach can be particularly useful on an oval. In my earliest races driving the then-Nationwide Series car on iRacing, I would have good speed early in a run but fall off a ton by the end; in one race at Iowa, I had a line of a half-dozen cars behind me that I’d passed earlier but was eventually holding up.

After that race, another driver suggested that I try turning the wheel less. It was tough to consciously change that and it required other adjustments as well, like earlier braking and more mid-corner coasting, but in my subsequent oval races, I became more aware of it and was eventually able to make it a part of my driving style. That made me a much better driver when it came to maintaining long-run speed.

Throttle

On the surface, acceleration would seem to be the easiest input: Just hit the gas and go, right? That’s true for most cars, and yet throttle application may be my biggest area for improvement in terms of inputs.

Time after time when comparing against Karl, I’ve noticed that I’m far too hesitant in getting back to full throttle. While he is able to get on the gas 100% and stick with it, I generally ease back on the throttle as if I’m afraid of spilling the drink in my cup holder.

I have often attributed this aspect of my driving style to muscle memory from driving so many heavy cars, especially stock cars, that don’t turn very well and can’t handle the sudden rearward weight shift caused by a sudden burst of acceleration.

Wrestling a stock car around Watkins Glen.

In addition, when trying to match Karl’s pace, I often find myself rushing back to the throttle too soon, which forces me to feather it for longer. Just as with braking later, trying to get back to the throttle earlier is a common tendency for drivers searching for speed, but it rarely pays off.

While it’s tempting to try to match Karl’s timing, I have to remind myself that he can get back to full throttle so soon because his high-energy but speed-bleeding mid-corner steering inputs set up a straighter, faster corner exit. I, on the other hand, have to wait for the car to finish rotating and roll onto the throttle more slowly.

It’s probably worth reiterating — if for no other reason than self-preservation — that my approach isn’t all bad. It does build up less heat in the tires and often means a more predictable balance throughout the corner, especially in a stock car. I fully admit, though, that I could gain a lot from adopting parts of Karl’s style when driving more maneuverable cars.

Putting It All Together

The differences between my and Karl’s styles are illustrated well in one corner: Pouhon at Spa. The double-apex left-hander requires precise braking, steering inputs, and throttle application, and it tends to highlight my flaws with each.

Relative speeds (top), throttle and brake percentages, and steering angles for me (solid blue) and Karl (dashed purple) through the Pouhon corner in the Ford GT. Charts from Virtual Racing School.

Karl uses maximum braking for less time than I do, which gives him greater entry speed. However, he also trail brakes for longer than me, so he bleeds off that speed and then some by the middle of the corner.

However, while he’s trail braking, he is also getting the car turned, all while using less steering angle than me. He pointed out that I tend to have more entry and mid-corner understeer than he does, largely because his inputs allow the car to rotate a bit more effectively.

The biggest difference comes with our throttle application. Once Karl has the car slowed and turned, he immediately gets back to 100% throttle and never wavers. Meanwhile, I feather the gas and get back to full throttle much later in the corner. By then, Karl is going nearly 8 km/hr faster than me. Not coincidentally, that’s where he makes up the most time. In this sector alone, he was nearly two tenths quicker.

Karl runs ahead of me at Spa: not an unusual situation given the suitability of his driving style to GT cars.

Karl and I both use a slow-in, fast-out style, but his is a more optimized and aggressive version of it. By comparison, my style is smoother but more conservative, which may work well for cumbersome cars that don’t like braking, turning, or sudden throttle application, but it leaves a lot on the table in most other cars.

With that in mind, it’s probably no surprise that I’m almost constantly chasing Karl’s lap times. In fact, the running joke between us is that he’s always a half-second quicker than me, and if I manage to get within that gap, it’s up to him to find more speed.

Even disguised behind a computer screen, my driving style can’t hide; the telemetry and lap times tell all. And as racing drivers for the past 100 or more years have found, the differences often come down to inputs.

It started in the Power Series race at Kentucky.  I struggled to come to grips with the setup and driving style it required, and early in the race, I got loose and hit the wall.

The following week at Indianapolis, I qualified mid-pack and struggled to gain spots early in the race.  During the first round of pit stops, a car was sitting sideways in the middle of pit road, and I couldn’t avoid it.  That hit gave me irreparable damage, and I puttered home in 14th place.

The next Sunday night at Pocono, I finally qualified better but took damage early when my lane checked up on a restart.  After getting that mostly fixed and recovering to 7th place, I got caught up in a wreck on a restart.  It wasn’t my fault, but it didn’t matter.  My race was over.

My chances at Pocono went up in smoke after a wreck on a restart.

The worst result came in a heartbreaking run in iRacing’s 24 Hours of Spa.  Together with my teammate Karl Modig, we decided to try a two-driver effort for the full 24-hour race.  I billed it as a way to test my own endurance, and see how long — and how late — I could last.

Despite a few mistakes in my early stints, Karl kept us in contention and even took the class lead with eight hours remaining.  After his valiant triple stint, I jumped in for a triple of my own around 2 am.

The first two hours were difficult as I worked through traffic trying to preserve the lead while staying safe.  Halfway through my third stint, the second-place car — and our only real challenger for the win — wrecked out.  It was a huge relief knowing we only needed to have a clean race for the final four-and-a-half hours.

But three laps later, disaster struck.  A faster GT car looking to unlap himself was catching me going into the fastest corner on the track, Blanchimont.  As I contemplated where to let him pass, I momentarily lost focus and carried a bit too much speed into the high-speed kink.  The car spun and smashed into the wall.  A single mistake that happened in less than a second cost us a 24-hour-race win.

Hard contact with the wall at Spa brought an end to our 24 hour hopes.

In this particularly disappointing four-race stretch, I went from a championship contender to an also-ran at best and a road hazard at worst.  And it was capped off by losing a race not only for myself, but also for my teammate.

In the weeks since then, I managed to recover and go from wrecking to winning once again.    Here are three steps I used to dump my sim racing slump.

Move On from Your Mistakes

I used to be the worst about dwelling on my mistakes, especially in racing.  One weekend before going on vacation, I lost a Spec Racer Ford race at Watkins Glen because of a late spin, and I agonized over that moment all week at the beach.

A few years ago, I resolved to stop second-guessing myself and living in the past.  After the four recent wrecks, those moments replayed in my mind for a bit — that’s only natural — but I didn’t continuously question “what if I had been on the inside at Pocono?” or “what if I let the other car pass sooner at Spa?”.  After all, you can’t change the past no matter how many times you re-live it.

Instead, I tried to learn from the mistakes, whether it was pushing too hard at Kentucky or losing focus at Spa.  The other two wrecks were arguably cases of bad racing luck: just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  And no reminiscing, no matter how thorough, can change that.

Get Back to Basics

Back in the spring, I wrote about a great race I had in the Volkswagen Jetta at Monza.  After that race and a few other good ones in the Jetta, I decided to run that car for a full season this summer.

Although it’s a slower car, it often offers closer and more competitive racing than in most high-level GT cars.  And running a car like that can be a great way to bone up on basic racing skills like braking, hitting apexes, attacking, and defending.

The one bright spot during my slump came in the Jetta.  In a 40-minute race at Suzuka, I managed to take an early lead over the talented drivers behind and score the victory.  It ended up being the highest strength-of-field for that class all week, so my 155 championship points led all drivers.

Although such success isn’t always a guarantee, stepping back down to a lower-level series can be a great way to feel competitive amid an otherwise frustrating slump.

Getting back to basics meant more seat time in the Jetta.

Run What’s Fun

When your confidence is low, racing can sometimes feel like a chore.  To avoid burnout and regain interest in racing, the best solution can be to take a virtual vacation and find a car, track, or both that you enjoy driving.

For me, there’s no better combination than stock cars on a road course.  And in that sense, I got lucky that the NASCAR schedule — and several NASCAR-based leagues — hit the road in mid-August.

To help cure what ailed me, I signed up for the ITSR B-Car Series, which races Xfinity-spec cars every Thursday night.  My debut appearance was at Watkins Glen, and I took the win over a long-time competitor and former championship rival.

The next Sunday night, the Power Series went to Watkins Glen, where I had won before and badly wanted to win again.  Although several strong challengers showed up, I was able to out-qualify and out-race them all to score the victory.

Nothing like stock cars on a road course to cure a slump.

And the next Thursday, the B-Car Series went to Mid-Ohio.  Historically, it hasn’t been my favorite road course, but I again found the speed and consistency to take the pole and the win.

The final test of my recovery came in my return to the McLaren for the first time since the Spa crash.  Karl and I again teamed up to run the three-hour Blancpain Endurance Series race at Monza, and while he would start and finish the race, my tasks during the middle stint were to stay competitive, save fuel, and bring the car back in one piece.

Although several spins around me nearly knocked me out, I stayed focused and completed my tasks, ultimately handing the car back to Karl in sixth place — a position we held to the finish.  It was an eight-position improvement from our starting spot, and a checkered flag I waited through a month-long slump to see.

Back in the McLaren — this time at Monza, and this time, with a clean race to show for it.

For those reasons, I tend to avoid running at draft-heavy tracks if I can help it.  Chief among those are NASCAR’s ultimate draft lottery races at Daytona and Talladega.

But recently, in an effort to boost my safety rating after a few incident-filled races, I decided to rekindle my relationship with my first favorite car in iRacing — the widely hated front-wheel-drive fixed-setup diesel Volkswagen Jetta TDI — and it happened to be running at the draft-dependent cathedral of speed in Monza, Italy.

In my first few races, the draft didn’t matter.  The small Jetta fields, widely varying in talent, tended to spread out quickly.  However, one late-night race was different.  The Jetta grid was only three-cars strong, but the polesitter was an Aussie who had turned the fastest qualifying lap thus far that week.

How could I ever keep up with a Jetta alien for an entire 25-minute race?  Simple: By turning an old foe — the draft — into a new friend.

To explain the Sun Tzu reference in the title of this post, realize that a draft race is a battle.  Speed gives way to strategy, but strategy begets speed.  A successful strike comes neither too early nor too late.  And at the end, there can be only one winner.

I’ll belabor this comparison as the post continues, so humor me and read on as I break down the main steps I used in my draft battle against a worthy opponent, and how you could use the same basic strategy to win your’s.

Know Your Enemy

A qualifying time half a second faster than mine, plus a lower car number and therefore a higher iRating, told me my opponent was quick

Before the race even started, I knew one thing about my opponent: He was fast.  That meant I would need a nearly mistake-free race to even keep up with him, because if I slipped, I would lose the draft and its advantage.

Once the green flag flew, I began to learn more about my opponent as I saw where each of us was strongest.  In some ways, Monza is a simple and repetitive track.  It basically has four straightaways separated by slower corners and chicanes.  But the differences between myself and my opponent around the track were anything but redundant.

In the first two chicanes, we were basically even.  In the next two corners — a pair of right-hand sweepers called the Lesmos — he tended to get great runs on corner exit and carry good speed down the next straightway.  In the chicane that followed, his driving was somewhat erratic — aggressively jumping kerbs and kicking up dirt — but he carried excellent speed through there every lap, and a few times almost opened up a draft-proof gap as we hit the following straightaway.

Monza’s final corner is the Curva Parabolica, a diabolical right-hander that tempts you to carry in tons of speed but seems to fall away on exit.  This corner was my one true advantage: The place where I was consistently quicker than my opponent.  And being the final corner, it seemed like the perfect place to set up a winning move.

Play the Waiting Game

Tucked away in the draft through Monza’s Curva Grande

Even with a potential winning move in mind, I wasn’t about to try it before the final lap or two.  In fact, for the first ten and a half laps of the 12-lap race, I didn’t make any moves.  I just rode behind him, soaking up his draft and keeping his mirror filled with my gray Jetta.

Along with keeping your secrets safe until the end, that patient strategy can serve a few other purposes.  For one, it keeps the pressure on the other driver, forcing him to look in his mirror as much as his windshield and increasing the likelihood that he’ll slip up.  Also, in a multi-class race like this, your opponent can clear the way through traffic, giving him an extra worry that you don’t need to be as concerned with.

Sometimes, such extreme patience can even inspire paranoia for the other driver.  “Is he just going to follow me all race?  Will he ever make a move?  Is he holding anything back?”

Of course, as Tom Petty sang, the waiting is the hardest part.  Several times, I got great runs out of the final corner but ran half-throttle down the frontstretch to avoid passing him.  As the laps wound down, it seemed so tempting to dart to his inside and just make the pass.

However, I couldn’t chance making a move too soon.  Waiting isn’t always a surefire strategy, but in this case, it seemed like my only strategy.

Plan Ahead

Mustangs on the move around us threatened to ruin my plan and my chances of winning

Growing up, I was always terrible at the game of checkers.  Actually, I still am.  And it’s because I just can’t see a few moves ahead to find the best strategy in the long run.

Fortunately in sim racing, my vision is a bit better.  With about five laps to go in this race, I started planning when and where I might make my winning move.

The “when” was pretty easy to answer: It had to be on the last lap.  Any sooner or I’d risk giving both the draft and mental advantage to my opponent.

As the race progressed, the “where” became easy to answer as well.  I had the edge in the final corner, so I had to use it to either set up or make the pass.

In this race, though, there was a wrench thrown into my plans.  A few Mustangs — which are faster in a straight line but often slower in the corners than the Jettas — had caught us from behind and were trying to pass us while engaged in their own battle.

A few times, one of the Mustangs got between my opponent and myself, which could have been disastrous.  Fortunately, they slowed him down as much as they did to me.  And I was able to use them as part of my plan.

Execute the Plan

Completing the pass for the lead in turn 1 of the final lap

On the second-to-last lap, the pair of Mustangs was just ahead of us entering the final corner.  I wasn’t close enough to my opponent to attempt a pass, but I saw a different opportunity.  He would be slowed by the Mustangs mid-corner, so if I could get a better exit, I could set up a pass down the frontstretch.

And that’s exactly what happened.  We took the white flag side by side, at one point going three-wide to lap a slower Pontiac Solstice.  After playing the role of a conservative driver all race, I finally became a bold one, outbraking my opponent into the first chicane and taking the lead.

My winning move was completed as planned.  But would I need to make another one?

Finish the Fight

Side by side entering the final corner

For the rest of the final lap, I hit my marks and kept my opponent behind me, even as we approached his strongest section of the track with him in my draft.

As we headed down the final straightaway, it was clear that he would get enough draft to make a move into the final corner.  So I had two options: I could take a defensive inside line, forcing him to the outside for that corner.  Or I could give him the inside but try to pull a crossover move on corner exit.

With the knowledge that I’d been better in that corner all night using a conventional outside line on entry, and with the experience from the previous lap of getting a good exit, I chose the latter.  I went outside and he went inside entering the braking zone.  I braked slightly earlier than normal while he charged the corner.  He surged ahead, but I got back to the gas sooner and pulled to his inside.

We were again side by side on the frontstretch, this time set up for the most exciting moment in racing: the photo finish.

Our Jettas hummed along at all of 110 mph, and as we approached Monza’s famous elevated victory lane and crossed the finish line, I had the edge.  It was just 0.027 seconds — maybe a foot and a half in total — but that was enough.  In this draft battle, I was victorious.

Crossing the line in a photo finish

Here’s a closer look at the final lap and a half in all its strategic glory:

Maybe I was just lucky in that race.  My strategy worked this time, but it probably wouldn’t have worked in some other cases.  But in a draft-heavy race against a formidable opponent, your options will be limited.  Screw up once, or give away your secrets too early, and your chances may be gone.

Your time may also be limited.  In this race, I had 20 minutes to plan a winning move.  You may find yourself with 10 minutes, or five, or in some cases, needing to make a split-second decision.

And there may be other complicating factors.  In my race, it was a one-on-one battle for the win.  You may have to fight multiple opponents, any of whom could lay waste to the best laid plans.

Those limitations aside, if this story proves anything, I hope it’s that drafting duels don’t have to come down to pure luck and aggression.  Granted, they will still be stressful, frustrating, and often requiring a bold move to win.  But armed with a good strategy, you can be smarter and better-prepared, which is a luxury in any race.

Footnote: After this race, I realized something interesting: I was wearing my shirt inside-out.  That’s not a required part of your strategy, but if my race proved anything, it can’t hurt!