Quick Car Driving Tips

  • Thread starter sandboxgod
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sandboxgod
The intention of this thread is to list some quick car driving tips to get GTP newbies up to speed. For detailed tips, they should refer to the iRacing forum. So the goal here is for us to collect quick easy-to-read info extracted from the "master" iracing thread.

I've seen people just give out quick 1-2 line tips thats help me tons more then all the long reads at the official forums

Skip Barber:

I've been thinking of it recently as a sort of reversed V8. In the V8 if you want the back to come around, you put your foot down. If you want traction you back off the throttle.

In the Skippy, you back off when you want the rear to come round, and plant your foot when you need traction. Which means when you go into a corner hot, your normal instinct to lift gets you in heaps of trouble. :crazy:

Do play around with the settings, they can make a surprising amount of difference. Put the brake balance forward if you haven't already, that'll take some of the snappiness out of the braking and let you touch the brakes mid-turn. Then play with the rear bar. Stiffer bar slides more easily but also more predictably. Softer bar gives you better traction, but when it lets go it's much harder to catch and recover.

Mazda:
TBD

Legends:
Legends...never brake. 4th gear. Never shift out of it.


If I feel like I can take a guy sometimes I just brush the brakes to pull the nose in to get an earlier drive out of the corner. But as a rookie, you just need to focus on getting out of rookie. But don't do it so quickly that you don't learn to drive.


Use the driving line to help (you can do so in the rookie series). Turn in and let off the throttle at almost the same time to help the rear end turn, then coast through most of the corner and feed the throttle back in on exit.


Most importantly with the Legend, do everything smoothly. Roll onto and roll off of the throttle. Its tires are really hard so you don't have much traction to work with.



Advanced Car Tips?

Acura HPD:
TBD
 
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Should be noted that "never brake" regarding the Legends only applies 100% to Lanier and South Boston...I'm not responsible for your repeated failures using that strategy at a road course or possibly other short ovals. :lol:

Spec Racer Ford: I've read that this is one of the hardest cars to learn to drive fast, but doing so will let you jump into a lot of other cars much more easily. The car is relatively light, with short, stiff suspension, midengined, and has an open differential. Those are the important things. It hates bumps, Lime Rock Park is a nightmare for it. Being midengined, its very hard to make it through a turn if you lift or apply brakes. Learn to be able to left foot brake. Brake hard before the turn (with about 58% front brake bias you can brake HARD and not worry about lockup) and then reapply some throttle. I tend to get it slowed down then give it a hard jab of throttle to settle the weight back for slow turns like at Summit Point. Do note that the open differential will help save you in slides if you add throttle, and it otherwise will understeer if you apply too much throttle.

And short shift it. At about 5500rpm, higher than that and it just runs out of power.
 
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1. go to iracing forums for the car that your driving and read those guides

2. watch the iracing driving school

3. read the sporting code of conduct.

amazed at how many people skip these steps.
 
Go to the forum for the car you're racing and get a setup. Any setup. They all will be better than the default ones. The default settings range from average to downright awful.

I'm not a setup guy myself, I just bludge off other people kind enough to share theirs until I find one that feels right for me. Madison Down has shared all his previous setups for the V8, and there's people sharing on the go for pretty much all cars.

Also, the higher up the license tree you get the more setups help. The Skippy and the Mustang drive fine as is. You'll improve your stability and feel but you won't go much faster with a good set. A good setup on the F1 car will knock multiple seconds off your lap from the word go.
 
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