Race critique - experienced racers advice sought!

[little P]

So as some of you may know from my re-appearance at league races I have returned to iRacing after a long break and I'm loving it. I've managed to get past the "omg this is too hard" stage and I'm really throwing myself into practicing and trying to improve my iRating and safety rating to boot.

I've taken a leaf out of Duke's book, by not trying to be the fastest but instead aiming for consistency and finishing races. Daunt also gave me some sound advice which I have taken on board and tried to put into action ie. stay out of trouble and run clean races, with my focus being on getting out of the lower splits where I have been struggling with bonehead bumper car shenanigans.

So with that in mind I have been approaching iRacing from a different angle than I did before and I'm thoroughly enjoying it.

I decided to enter the Blancpain sprint race at Suzuka after turning a few laps there, getting within 4-5 seconds of the fastest guys in any given practice session, which I was disappointed with but on the other hand I was pleased that I could turn lap after lap without spanking the car into a barrier. I had an eventful race, and really enjoyed lining up some overtakes and taking my opportunities when they presented themselves, my heart was pounding at certain points during the race. That was the feeling that no other racing game/sim can provide that I was looking for!

What I was hoping for from you veterans is to cast a wise eye over my race and answer a couple of questions for me.

1. Fuel. How do you figure out how much to put in the car at your pitstop?

2. How do you decide when to pit during a race? I pitted in the lap after the leader pitted because he did and I felt the tyres going off.

3. Do backmarkers get a blue flag notification? I couldn't understand why in the dying part of the race the backmarkers weren't behaving as they should?

4. What could I have done differently to improve my 4th place finish?

I think my pit stop thwarted my race really as I ended up 13 seconds behind the race winner (in 4th) at the chequered flag who pitted when leading and I was second, right behind him. I had a solid in lap although I had a slow pit entrance (something to improve next time), yet I came out of the pits well behind and lost a lot of positions. So maybe that's something I need to improve - how much fuel to put in?

I really want to improve and I hope you can spare some time to help me out by imparting some of your hard earned iRacing wisdom.

https://www.twitch.tv/little__p/v/99467306

 

[Kenadian]

That was a really good race John, well done!

I think the biggest factors of you losing the positions you did were the taking of tires. Nobody takes tires in these races, we just do it in League as that's the way it's done in the real Blancpain Series.

Also, your Pit In was really slow so you certainly lost a few seconds there.

As for fuel, you can use Kutus apps or Fuel Buddy. Kutus comes with more stuff like stream overlays and God only knows what else but apparently it's all awesome!

...Marc would know a lot more about Kutus stuff tho.

Aside from that there are some areas for improvement in your driving (the same can be said for everyone). I'm no expert but some things I noticed were as follows:

• carrying too much speed into a corner delaying your throttle input for a fast section.
• not using the entire width of the track by going too slow through a corner and not utilizing the track out area.
• not utilizing draft all the time
• you took on too much fuel. Ideally you want to end the race with the fuel light on and a lap or two in the tank.

These are just the things I notice in my own driving and correcting them certainly helps make me faster.

I'm sure the experts will have a lot better input.

I was impressed with your attempts at maintaining your line lap after lap, that was awesome to see!

 

[little P]

Thanks mate, oh I thought tires were mandatory! Oops... Ok well that took ages so that combined with too much fuel cost me the race then. Lesson learned!

I will certainly look at those fuel apps.

I will definitely practice my pit ins next time (forgot to do that this time round and we used a different layout for league) and now I know I don't need to take tyres on combined with taking on less fuel I should do a bit better (hopefully).

I think I gained nearly 70 iRating and 20 SR so not too bad considering the pit and fuel/tyres issue I guess.

Thanks for taking the time bud

 

[Noodleguitar]

Good to hear you're taking this seriously and are trying to find ways everywhere to improve. I'd say the majority of progress in iRacing comes from practicing and doing races but having a general strategy ready ahead of time means that you will be able to focus on racing against the competition better, instead of also racing against yourself.

1. Fuel. How do you figure out how much to put in the car at your pitstop?

I use Fuel Buddy quite often during practice. This will give me a usage per minute, which I then multiply by the race time to find how much fuel I will need. This is only accurate if you do regular-paced laps when Fuel Buddy is running. I usually add 3-5 L to the calculated amount to account for the pace lap, and an extra lap when the race time has already ended.

Some others around here use live apps that calculate the fuel for them based on how many laps are left in the race and average usage, which also works well.

2. How do you decide when to pit during a race? I pitted in the lap after the leader pitted because he did and I felt the tyres going off.

This is where the strategy can vary. You should be able to do more than half the race on the initial tank. These are a few methods you can choose from:

• You are stuck behind somebody slower than you and they defend hard, costing you time. You can choose to pit early and then hope you end up in front of them after they pit later on (leap-frogging). The drawback is that you might end up in slower traffic that hasn't pit yet which will cost time to pass as well. Also keep in mind that you can't pit too early because the fuel cap for the race is still in effect.
• You can choose to pit as late as possible. This will give you a longer time on grippier tires, because when you're stationary or going slowly in the pit lane it is believed your tire surfaces heat up from the inside of the tire, which is still hot, and there is no moving contact with cold road patches to cool them down, making your out-lap especially slippery. Also, when pitting late you'll be running on lower fuel for longer which is usually slightly faster.
• If you're behind somebody or a train of cars that are increasing your pace through draft it's probably better to follow them into the pit lane, maximizing the time you spend following them.
• If you're closely behind somebody it's better to pit on a different lap than them because of the Accordion Effect. This says that if you both have exactly the same car, braking at exactly the same braking point with the exact same force you will still crash. (Theory from maths: Say car A is ahead of car B. When A starts decelerating (m/(s^2)) at point P his velocity (m/s) will start decreasing. This means his distance per time will decrease, while B is still going at a constant velocity, now higher than A's velocity. Considering A travels less distance per time, the gap (m) between A and B will decrease, even when B reaches point P and starts decelerating, resulting in a crash if the gap was too small before deceleration.) The opposite also works in acceleration zones.

3. Do backmarkers get a blue flag notification? I couldn't understand why in the dying part of the race the backmarkers weren't behaving as they should?

They get a blue flag when you're within 1.5 seconds behind them. There is no rule that says they have to go out of your way to let you pass but it is generally seen as normal sportsmanlike behaviour if they're in the same class.

4. What could I have done differently to improve my 4th place finish?

Will have to watch the video later and come back to this

 

[little P]

Thanks Noodle Taken all that on board! Cheers for the good response and yes, I'm taking iRacing way more seriously this time. You get out what you put in right

 

[Noodleguitar]

4. What could I have done differently to improve my 4th place finish?

Like Duke said, the main problem was the pits. You lost about 5s by slowing down to pit lane speed before the yellow cones, another 26 seconds getting new tires and a couple of more seconds getting more than ~30 L of fuel in the pit stop.

Your line looked very good in the esses and in the chicane. In other places you could have used more of the track. Also, the braking zone in T1 is tricky. Ideally, you want to only brake/lift until the apex, no throttle in-between. You have to moderate it a lot though because otherwise 15:48 will happen.

You can push a bit more in the two Degners for example and the corner before it. The car should drift towards the outside of the track in the two right handers, at which point you can resume throttle.

When you were racing the 1st place guy there are some tricks to make him nervous. He's already nervous because you're right behind him. If you go on the inside line and then brake early he'll get confused and look where you've gone, because he expects you to dive in from that line. That's when they are most likely to make mistakes.

Lastly, you have too much steering input sometimes, for example at 15:19. That will make the car understeer more and ruin the tires. I've also seen it a few times in the exit of Spoon. Generally, you shouldn't need more than 90 degrees of input (depending on car a little) through pretty much any corner. If that doesn't work, you need to steer with the brake and throttle more .

Wow, 30:30 was scary!

Also, I have found proof that there is a Piece o' Candy at the pit entrance:

 

[Daunt]

All good points from Noel. I forgot I wanted to also mention his last point as well. Saw it a lot through 130R (very fast left hand kink near the end of the circuit) that as the car was understeering, you turned more. It's tough to resist the urge initially but more input will only make it understeer more. You need to back off throttle or use brake, etc. The front is not getting enough grip so in one way or another you need to give the front tires more grip (let more weight transfer back to front, either by braking, more lift off, etc.)

And yes, in general, BSS is fuel-only quick stop. Unfortunately, I don't see iRacing surprising us with any pit-requirement changes (forcing pit stops for tires, for example) so it will stay that way for a while.