What Skills are Transferable from Simracing to Motorsport?

iRacing IMSA multiclass.jpg
Scott Mclaughlin credited iRacing for his win in the Sebring 12 Hours this weekend. This got me thinking, what skills are transferable from simracing to motorsport?

Image Credit: iRacing.com

This Super Sebring weekend saw an accumulation of amazing races taking place at the old airfield race track. None more so however than the headlining IMSA Sebring 12 Hours. Whilst the top class had its fair share of thrills and spills, the LMP2 category got a new, first-time class winner in the shape Scott McLaughlin.

More traditionally seen in Australian Supercars and, more recently, the Indycar championship, he has adapted very well to the unique challenges of endurance sportscar racing. In just his second race, the New Zealander claimed a class win and finished on the overall podium. After the event, he took to Twitter to credit iRacing for his win.


In the tweet, the three-time Supercars champion explained that the iRacing IMSA series helped him get up to speed for the real thing. Getting used to dealing with traffic is no small feat, with countless top level racers struggling with this unique part of motorsport. "The traffic patterns are so similar," he claims. He even goes as far as to recommend that young, up and coming racing drivers should use the game as a tool to practice for racing through traffic.

The most transferable skills from simracing to motorsport​

This all got me thinking about just how transferable the act of simracing is to real-world motorsport. Sure the seat of the pants sensation one gets from sitting behind the wheel of a real car is missing from simracing. And sure, every game has its own approach to what driving feels like. But the rest of the racing experience from race craft to strategy and even something as simple as racing lines can all be applied to the real world.

Personally, I would suggest that learning a track is the most applicable skill that can be taken from the sim and used come race day. Even the most prominent F1 drivers use simulators to learn new venues. That would certainly come in handy the first time the grid raced at the latest track, the Jeddah Corniche circuit. With a track all about getting into a rhythm and winding through the barriers at break-neck speeds, using a sim to learn the flow before arriving on-site would have been crucial.

What do you think are some of the most transferable skills form simracing to real motorsport?
About author
Angus Martin
Motorsport gets my blood pumping more than anything else. Be it physical or virtual, I'm down to bang doors.

Comments

..CatsAreTheWorstDogs: This way of silly reacting is probably one of the reasons a lot of people keep away from this forum and say its too hatefull and hostile..
Wait a second: in your first post you tried to ridicule everyone else's opinion without bringing any actual element to the discussion, and just hinting that people are delusional. This is called trolling. What did you expect exactly as an answer? Try some manners, they go a long way.
 
The only untransferable thing is the approach to getting fast. In the sim we all lock brakes, spin etc. until we get fast. IRL it's not like this. Even flat spotting the damn tires take lots of time to change & it rocks your world.
Everything else is transferable, you'll simply lack many other skills. Mostly feeling the car/kart through your ass... I was told once in a complementary manner that I was sliding the kart very nicely. Great, the problem is I didn't know the damn kart was sliding!
Most sim racers will adapt very fast, but they'll likely prefer very understeery setups & you'll be getting up to speed slow at the start of the weekend when grip is unpredictable... you won't be Verstappen bang on the pace from lap 1, unless you have a loooot of major pro sports experience. Grosjean was always oversteery driver, but he only started at 14! Before that, he was a competitive skier. Sato was crazy talented, he would save the car from impossible situations, but he started only at 20! Before that, he was a very competitive cyclist. Same for many other late starters in racing who had prior sports careers.
Sitting on your ass in the sim won't teach you to feel slight changes of yaw & that's by far the biggest problem you'll encounter ;)
 
Premium
That's a very thin line. Most racingteams outside F1 or top tier endurance use normal simulators programs like, rF1-rF2-Ac-AMS.
But they have much more accurate content (my job) and they have different goals while driving.
Even virtual setups can be transferred partially if the content is accurate enough.
Can you explain how you provide games with much more accurate content? How do you know it is much more accurate?
 
My takeaway is just how much concentration and focus you need to not make mistakes. Having no idea about real-life car handling or anything like that I couldn't comment on how 'realistic' various software or hardware are, but sims can still recreate real-time competition without a restart button. Trying to actually sit down and concentrate for a solid hour's race (or hour's worth of stages) brings home how difficult it must be to be reliable enough to actually be employed by a pro team to do this. I used to be impressed by the 'fast' drivers but now I notice the ones who win the championship because they didn't keep screwing up.

And I did once save my real car on black ice once with fancy wheel work so maybe there's something to the Muscle Memory thing too.
 
That you dont die, no matter how hard you crash. WASD and joypad controles...also very important to bring in a real car. Ehm...at least 60fps. No training needed Just put me in a f1 car and i will outdrive Max easily
 
Can you explain how you provide games with much more accurate content? How do you know it is much more accurate?
Racing teams often have better data than the manufacturers. Especially aero & tires! It's hard to believe, but very often the supplied aero maps are incomplete or flat-out wrong. The race teams pay for lots of specialized testing... Remember when Dallara screwed up their LMP2 royally? It's the teams that found out the aero gaps, Dallara's aero setups were lacking a lot, even though they've tested a lot...
Same thing happens in GTs & single-seaters. I.e. the first season of Tatuus T318 when Prema had 1 sec pace advantage. McLaren isn't popular in GTs also for this reason, on paper it should be by far the best car & it never is...
Also track grip data(evolution, tire use etc) is better derived from the teams' historical db.
 
Premium
Just a heads up, Scotty’s from New Zealand, not Aus :p

As to the question…learning racing driver excuses, that translates well from sim to real world…
Reported the post.

All of NZ is outraged, and we are shaking our fists and stomping our feet in rage and upset, even the hobbitsis with their hairy feets.
 
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If you want to check out how Im doing in the virtual world then check most AMS2 TT LBs out.
Hehe take almost any high powered Formula car on almost any track.

My name in the other world is Bruno - BrunoBæ :roflmao:
Well no wonder you don't think anything translates. You're playing a quasi-sim and always bragging about literally the most arcade mode in the game (Time Trial) :roflmao:
 
Years ago I drove a Volvo XC 70 in a very icy Swedish winter on a smaller road. All the sudden the backend just stepped out on a thick patch of ice.

I countersteered the car when it was almost compeltly sideways and I did it without thinking, it was instinct. I would 100% crashed unless I knew HOW to countersteer and doing it so FAST.

I credit this 100% to simracing because a normal driver doesn't know about countersteer, I certainly didnt before simracing.

Other than that I think the track layouts and racing mentality is the same, people seem to think and act in the same way they do in real life. (Maybe a lot less aggressive though lol)
 
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It's always great to know a circuit before you drive/ride it. I remember going the ring irl and it was pretty much not too different to the virtual one. Well actually it felt narrower that it does in sims but at least I knew every bend and wasn't going to make rookie mistakes of charging into corners I'd underestimated.

For me the biggest difference is the reality of speed. The fact it can kill you. There are no real consequences to mistakes in sims (unless you're a pro and it just cost you some money) but even some low speed accidents end up fatal on motorbikes.
 
Wait a second: in your first post you tried to ridicule everyone else's opinion without bringing any actual element to the discussion, and just hinting that people are delusional. This is called trolling. What did you expect exactly as an answer? Try some manners, they go a long way.
He's simply got a different opinion. That's not trolling.
 
Nothing!
Thats my experience.
Virtual driving is so different from driving in the real world that you cannot use skills from the virtual side on the real side.
Thats also the reason there is no causal relation between being a skilled driver in one of the worlds to also being it in the other.:whistling:

But if I work a bit on my imagination then I can quite easy convince myself that there actually is a causal relation :roflmao:
I disagree.

In the past five years I have driven over 250K miles, just for work, in my personal vehicles. Sim racing has helped me anticipate the actions of other drivers and has allowed me to avoid numerous accidents just by being able to anticipate. \

Perhaps this may be considered a small advantage, but it helps.
 
Of course they have - but do you think they would have been competitive without any prior sim racing experience? That would mean that virtually everyone can jump into a race car and be competitive after a couple of sessions with coaches - (almost) competitive with others, that have been racing their whole life since being a little child - which is obviously nonsense. 90% comes from their sim racing experience, the last 10% to make them competitive comes from the coaches.
Let me put it this way. We all know all sims handle differently; real life is again a different experience. It's like preparing for an iRacing race using rFactor 2.
I'm not saying that a simulator doesn't help, I'm saying it only gives you a basic understanding of car control, like you are claiming yourself (catching slides is not exactly driving 10/10s out of a car), it definitely takes away most of the anxiety for a first timer. Almost none turned into a professional race car driver by playing sims alone. You still need time adjusting to real life (seat time).
Take the Broadbent example, he still had to do some karting in Club100 or whatever it's called, then he did some testing and then he started racing. But again he had a team to back him up (which I repeat, it's not a small thing to consider, in real racing you race real cars, which need to be mantained and set up to perfection, which not everyone can do) together with a coach. So it's not immediate. But the main point still stands, the real skill can be learned only by driving for real, when building that feedback between inputs and driving feelings. Going back and forth from sim to real is the definitive answer; sim racing alone is not very helpful for real driving.
So for me 90% is too much - I can't say a number, I just can say it speeds up the process.
 
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Premium
This is an interesting subject. The question is clearly what is transferable from the sim to racing in real life and not what the similarities and differences are between the sim and real life. The differences are very large. But if you are aware of these differences and the similarities, you can practice a lot on a sim that will help you in real life. I don't know this from hearsay or fantasy but from my own experience. I have a son who raced karts for 10 years and practiced on the simulator all that time. He drove in the simulator at a young age and took that experience with him when he started karting in real life.

Most importantly in his situation, he was very aware of the similarities and differences between the simulator and the real thing. In addition, he was very good at indicating what was wrong in the simulator and I had the opportunity to adjust that.

In the simulator you can learn a track very well, not only the layout of the track but also the racing lines. It is very important that the track is exactly right. Not only the layout, but also the location and shape of the kerbs and the driving characteristics of the kerbs and the tarmac. Some circuits have a flat road surface, others have a convex road surface. That drives very differently and has not been properly copied in many simulators. It is also very important that the physics of the car in the simulator are really correct. If there is a difference between the physics in the simulator and the real thing, you will have a lot of trouble with that in real life after practicing on the simulator.

My son had the advantage of me building the tracks for him and correcting the kart physics for him. He was very good at indicating what was wrong and he was also able to indicate very well whether I corrected it properly. That's why it made sense for him to practice a lot on the simulator.

An important difference to take into account is the track conditions of the real track. This has a great effect on the driving characteristics of a kart. Outside they are different every day. The difference between summer and winter is big and the difference between wet and dry is very big. Simulators are very bad at mimicking driving in the rain. Circumstances are constantly changing in real life. Some simulators can mimic changes but there is very little resemblance to the real thing.
It differs enormously per track how the grip on the race line is in the rain. Depending on the type of tarmac and the shape of the road surface (flat or convex, no camber or negative / positive camber) there is a lot or no grip on the race line. Rubber and water don't mix well. When you know very well what it's like in real life on a specific track, you can recreate it in the simulator. But that is under exactly one weather condition. All changes due to changing weather conditions are up to you. A lot of practice in real life in the rain is the best solution.

Driving in heavy traffic during a race in real life is different than in a simulator. Most AI reacts differently than real drivers. That differs enormously per simulator. Strangely enough, the AI in Codemasters F1 games is the best, or least bad you could say.

In summary, if you know what you're doing and have the ability to adjust track and car in the simulator if something isn't right, then it makes a lot of sense to practice on a simulator for real-life driving.
 
Hi Guys,

as long the driver sees a benefit from his trainings he will achieve better results.

I have the honor to help some guys preparing their races - and until now the feedback is positive.

if i need to select 3 items
- track preparation (in case the track is not known or ontrack training is not possible)
- gear usage (eg very interesting when preparing cars like xbow)
- focus and concentration

Peter
 

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