Sim Practice in the off season
By Dave Ogburn
One of my experiments this off-season is to better use sim racing to improve my real- life racing. It started with thinking about my season – what went well and what could have been better? Simply, I felt my pace was good in the Spec Racer Ford and I typically qualified well, but I felt I could improve my racecraft and my mental approach to racing. I am going to focus on the mental part for this newsletter and we can discuss racecraft in a follow-up. How can I get better at this? Well, I can race more. But there are obvious time and budget constraints with more real-life racing and, apart from going racing in the Southern Hemisphere, I can’t really practice before the 2024 SCCA Super Tour season starts in February. Even if I ran the full Super Tour season next year, that would be 10 race weekends and 20 races. Some of those may not end up being great battles and therefore not the practice I want to improve in close wheel to wheel racing. With sim racing, I can realistically race 2-3 times per week (or 10 times per day if you don’t have a job or kids!). So that is somewhere in the neighborhood of 100-150 extra races per year to practice how I race. I can tell you my wife is thrilled with this approach 😉
Much of racing comes down to what is between your ears. This is a huge topic we will discuss more, I’m sure, in later sessions and newsletters. What I want to improve is my focus and my ability to control my nerves when battling for position. I have much more confidence in a real racecar than I do when sim racing. In a real racecar, I have confidence in myself, I can get into flow state, run a fast race pace, make decisive passes, make few mistakes, and generally stay focused on driving “my lap” even with other cars breathing down my neck – but I can improve in all of these areas. Sim racing challenges me immensely in all of these categories:
- I have less confidence in my car control and ability to make passes in the sim
- I struggle to stay focused for 25 minute races (too much thinking “hey I’m in 3rd this is pretty good”, is the baby monitor turned on?, what meetings do I have tomorrow, or man that guy is up my ass every lap, etc.)
- I struggle to get into flow
- I make many more mistakes and am typically less consistent
So if I can get better in the sim in all of these areas and it challenges me, then it should make me better in the real car, right? That is the theory I am testing out. We all have different ways of describing the feeling of being overwhelmed in the racecar – the “brain is full” feeling where your leg might shake, you become less coordinated (ie might mess up a shift in a weird way), you become easily distracted, you have less confidence, and you tend to start driving more abruptly and lose some smoothness. When this happens, you tend to slow down, lose your “attack”, and become more prone to mistakes. None of this is good for driving your racecar.
As I was writing this article, I took a break and ran a formula ford race in iRacing at Phillip Island circuit in Australia. It’s a high speed drafting track with flowing corners like Watkins Glen. I qualified 2nd behind a super fast alien-type sim racer who I knew would kick my butt. He gets the lead from the start as expected and then chucks it off in Turn 2 to my amazement. My first thought was “I just won”. Wrong. I got passed and then almost passed again before the first lap ended. I had to reset focus on racing – there were 12 laps to go. I made my way to the lead but the second place driver was on my gearbox. There goes my easy win – now I have to earn it. This is a mindset shift and one that I struggle with at times.
At first this driver was a bit erratic and I was too focused on my mirrors, but he quickly played it smart and just stayed glued to my gearbox letting me pull him along as we dropped 3rd place. “Ok now we have a two car shootout” I thought. He did some usual “drafting track” tricks like showing a nose and then pulling out of a pass signaling to me “hey I’m faster, just wait for the last lap dude.” All race he was killing me out of Turn 2 (Southern Loop) which sets up the second longest straight, but I was faster in the high speed Turn 1 (Doohan) which ends the longest straight. He gets a run, but doesn’t pass into Turn 1 on the last lap clearly setting up for the run out of Turn 2 where he is strongest. I run a good-for-me Turn 1 and he spins trying to keep up. Race over. The result sheet shows an easy 5 second win, but mentally it was much harder for me.
I went from:
- Thinking there is no way I can win
- To well this is an easy win
- To oh crap I’m in 3rd, I threw away an easy win
- To now I have a shootout building to a last lap battle with a driver who has clearly showed he can pass me in a draft
- Back to ok now I won
Ideally, I would have never thought about any of these things while racing. But it happens. We let our current performance dictate whether or not we get in a positive or negative mindset in the racecar. I would prefer to drive like a robot and just focus on maximizing my performance in every phase of every corner on every lap. This is much easier to say than do, but recognizing how I want to approach my racing mentally and then evaluating “how I did” allows me to be aware of the issue and improve.
In the real car, I have capacity to think about things “other than driving”. In the sim I have much less which is why I think it’s good practice for me. I would estimate that driving a race lap in the SRF3 takes about 30% of my mental capacity. In the sim it’s probably 70% or more. It is harder to feel the limit in the sim because you cannot feel the g’s – you are relying solely on the visual cues, audio cues (tires, engines), and the feel you get from the pedals and steering wheel. This means that in the simulator I have much less capacity to think about anything else other than just driving the racecar. This race was great practice in expanding my mental capacity to refocus, run consistent laps, and think about racecraft while driving which is why I have been and will continue to sim race this off-season.
Do you use a simulator to improve your racing/driving? There are many ways to use the simulator:
- Specific driving technique practice (like rotating the car)
- Learning new tracks
- Practice racing (racecraft, race starts, in and out laps for endurance racing, etc.)
- Working on getting “up to speed” more quickly
I’d love to hear from you if you use a simulator for practice or are interested in more topics related to sim vs. real racing.
I have a few days available for private coaching for the rest of 2023 and am working on my 2024 Calendar. So far I am thinking about attending the NOLA Super Tour, Hallett Super Tour, June Sprints, and the March ECR Majors for SCCA in addition to CVAR and SVRA races. Let me know if you’d like to work together at an upcoming race or want to schedule a 1-on-1 day at any track. Thanks and talk soon!