practice, practice, practice....oh and did I mention practice. For me track knowledge is 75% of the battle. Learning the proper braking points and apex of the corners comes with knowing the tracks inside and out. This may sound redundant but driving the same tracks over and over helps my speed. If I just jump onto a new track I am lost, where some of us can just jump right in it seems.

ok.. i've observed the existance of this thread for a while now... but never actually took the time to read it properly.. anyways.. here's my way of learning new tracks.

Drive lap after lap with a base setup and memorize the corners, go through them first a bit cautious, then a bit faster and then as fast as u dare, once you go off, in THAT particular gear, at THAT rev.count  remember those little info's, then connect the dots and try a faster lap, see where the particular car has difficulties with and try and see what the slow and fast bump settings in yer setups can do.  I usually like my rearwheel driven cars to be steering into a corner when tapping the throttle.. mostly if i let go of the throttle the car will turn further INTO a corner.. i think i heard Satain comment about that one once, power and coast is usually quite high, compared to most running them at 30/10  i'm usually up to 50/80  or wassit the other way around.

I'm not the fastest around here, but i do feel that consistancy in a race can give you a definate advantage compared to others, but they learn too.

i dont care about beeing high up on the scoreboard, it's fun to place in the top 6 or 8, but not a nescessaty. To be honest i've had loads of wins in Race driver 2 online and ....  it was rather boring to win all the frickin time  I love starting from near to the back of the pack so you can see all the accidents, my quali is mostly spent by driving with a full fuel load on tires that are warming up, in other words, 5 laps and i'm back in pits tweaking for a "safe" car so i can at least finish the race.

Mindset is also important, if i'm pissed off i make more mistakes, but if i'm relaxed it's not good either, so a small adrenalinrush is quite good, alltho it's still not a real life situation, i try and take care for other ppl mistakes and that's probly the truckdriver in me.

Popular example.. sry shite.. it's you.   I know Sh!teR!der has an agressive way/style of driving which gives him the fruits of labor, but i just know that when i brake early, he's gonna clobber me, i look ahead and behind and just know what the hell is going on behind me at almost all times. I know the lads we race with, what most of theyre styles are and where to be carefull for them. But also when i'm closing in on someone i plan ahead on where i want to pass them... so i'm keeping my distance in certain corners and roll in on others, just planning when they take a corner wide or something that i KNOW ill be faster outtof them, but allso considering the car i'm in.. if it's a mini .. ill overtake a mustang in the corner, but i wont be planning to overtake it on a straight! duhh!

I just love racing with all you guys and hoping not to hit you, i've seen nasty lag-accidents happening due to door to door racing, so ill keep those couple of inches between you and me for my own safety.

Good practice for learning tracks is indeed in the late hours, i remember Tornado and me testing out AF-GTL1 .. him in a Corvette, me in an escort. we were just inches apart in laptimes, which was awsome.. but the "follow the leader" or "bite the bumper and hold on" tactics donot work for all.

Not everybody has the ability to see beyond ones opponent and see the turn coming.. and this is where most ppl make mistakes, they just watch the guy infront and react to their brakelights.... but this would mean if i'm going to miss the turn.. so's the guy behind me.
I usually try and see where the track is going and just look past the guy infront.. or the multiple guys like at the start and just brake early... i just dont want to be rated like a coulthard on a Spa Gp rainy day!!?!
If i see someone is definately faster then me, he'll have to wait for a couple of corners and ill stray aside coming outtof a corner

The only part i think i've improved in is consistancy, knowing when yer car/tires are shot and not pushing harder then possible. I dont think i'm drifting it hardly enough either, but i dont care  i just love racing online.


Anyways.. i've made my points and no offence Sh!te, i know how you are on track and yer a fair one at it m8, no problem at all.. you can punt me anytime.  .. no.. not EVERYTIME! 

oh... and when i dont understand a particular corner, eg double apex or something i just stop there in Singleplayer, go to outside view and just look around and try and see a possible line through there.. whilst either beeing stopped or rolling slowly through the corner.

Woof ~ Woof

Well for me, my improvements honestly come from my mistakes.  Its like I have to learn what not to do before I learn what to do.  In GT4 I am used to a more frequent sector update, usually 3 or more for a track and here I see that its usually twice which means I have to go solely by how it feels, which is fine I am usually within a tenth of predicting my next sector times anyway but I just need all the help I can get.  I wish I could watch some F1, I can watch Nascar *yawn* but why?  If I think I'm doing well and have my buddy Curtis there to put me in my place, .  Practice is the key tho, if you have no desire to race than you will never improve.  I find any tips help really, whether verbal or visual, for me its probably pretty obvious what I"m doing wrong, haha.

Jerome

By learning the track, I've then had a basis to construct a setup. I work out a basic set that I can get around the track with. Then I start winding it up for ten laps or so till  I feel I can tell were biggest troubles are. If I lock up the brakes all the time I wind back the brake ratio . If I keep spinning in while turning off throttle, I **** the ***.
Remember to use varying amounts of throttle/brake. Full throttle and full brakes are a recipe for full crash.
Develop your own setup as you'll never learn how to develop speed otherwise. I always use my own setups. It's half the fun!
Learn the track.
I race against the robots to learn how to survive the first two laps. This really helps iron out the setup basics. But the online track has different traction, response to input etc and so fine tuning is needed.

I race OSJ and really rate their season structure. With the fastest drivers taking slower cars it gives the new/slower drivers a chance to learn the lines, get in the race and learn to compete.

And learning takes time.

 

I agree with the setup thing... by making your own setup you have to run laps and laps and laps to iron it out, thus killing two birds with one stone, learning the track, and having a "sticky" car.....

i've learned that, if i don't like a car and track i don't break my neck trying to learn them, i just don't race them.

but i still like driving rally style when learning and also still use an alfa or cortina with a "know" good (safe) setup to learn a track.

Hey guys,

cool thread! As you know I'm still a freshman in both the simjunkies and simracing in general. I always thought I was a pretty good racedriver (played so much Gran Turismo ) and then I discovered real simracing!

Probably, because I'm so new, my learning curve is still going up pretty steep, really making a lot of progress. Where I always ended up last or not even finishing at first, I'm able to keep up with the back of the grid a lot better now. I really only started doing online simracing when I joined the Simjunkies so I never really spent any time on public servers. It wasn't until I recently joined a public server with Caspar and actually beat everyone!  that I noticed that I am really making improvements and learning a lot here at Simjunkies! Simjunkies are just very good drivers, I especially noticed that because we drive pretty long races in Simjunkies (30 mins, 20 laps, that's long to me) that consistency and not crashing is something that SJ is much better at than the average simracer. People on public servers generally crash a lot more than we do at SJ.

I use a G25 wheel, clutch and H-shifter where it's used in real life and I always drive on a 145inch projected screen. This makes the driving experience very immersive and fun but also very intense and therefore maybe a bit harder. When I'm closing in on a corner and I'm slowing down as fast as I can, my whole car bouncing up and down from the G-forces, then I don't just see a small square of picture that bounces (normal monitor) no, instead my whole world is shaking and I panic a lot easier.

Since I'm nowhere near the times that some of you guys are driving, I'm not gonna worry about the small bit of time I might lose because of this. I race mostly for fun and I know my own limits. I'll gladl sacrifice some speed for the sake of immersion. Probably, if you would get used to it, it wouldn't even be a disadvantage anymore. I've even heard someone say that when he switched back from projector to monitor he was having a hard time with his coordination.

I'm pretty sure I will improve a lot more in the future, I definitely will keep practicing with you guys! Always fun! Thanks for the tips in this thread! 

Again, Thanks to all contributers of this thread, much appreciated. Very usefull information.

take care, Kevin.

Well, as i now have done simracing for about 3-4 months i find myself still way of in most sims.
still i know that i have improved alot in all rFactor,GTL,GTR2 and Race.

Race gives me more of a feeling that i can do some good. the cars feel a bit more tricky to drive but are more forgiving to errors.
Doing laps on default setup and then tweeking to match my drivin style seems to be the right way to go and then at the same time you learn a way to get your own setup right.

Even though some people say that setting up your car individually is not the way to go for other cars than stockcar racing oval tracks, i have found that for me it is definately  a matter of setting up the car individually instead of symetric.

A good example is this: you have a track with 10 left turns and 4 right turns. it is easy to get that the wheels will be more under pressure on the right side of the car doing many left turns(you can see that in the temperature of the tyres). setting up the wheel base and pressure on each wheel to get it the way you feel is right, is one very good way to feel the difference on track.

also i have learned alot of my limits. trying to be faster than you really are is never a good thing. go harder every time you feel you can and try to have a good flow when driving. if you can match your own laptimes over 10 laps it meens you are doing something right unless you are going unbelieveable slow :biggrin:
Take your time with it and things will come.
I have still ALOT to learn but i feel things are comming along.

Another day another race, it might just be you there on the top of the podium.

I have almost exactly the same cuff-links as Prince... now that is plenty cool