Have Your Say – What’s the Hardest Style of Sim Racing?

Hardest Types of Sim Racing.jpg
Sim racing is a diverse hobby, encompassing dozens of categories and sub-categories. Which do you find to be the most challenging?

In our latest Have Your Say article, where your responses are the real story, we want to hear about what style(s) of driving you struggle with in sim racing. Whether it’s something you can’t seem to grasp despite a concerted effort to learn, something that involves skills you’re too intimidated to learn, something you thought you understood before looking at a leaderboard ranking, or any other reason, we want to hear it. Below are some ideas, but whatever makes you shake your head in frustration, we want to hear about it in the comments below.
  • Drifting – Whereas some driving styles involve frantic activity from the driver, drifting done right is smooth and seems like it should be achievable. Scratch the surface of drifting, however, and you realize that drivers are sustaining perfect levels of traction loss in high-horsepower cars while moving the car around a complex course just inches from surrounding walls.
  • Rally racing – Speaking of traction loss, how about taking a racing car with acceleration comparable to the best supercars out to snow or dirt covered winding tracks, often at the edge of a cliff. Oh, and you probably won’t have the course memorized; you’ll need to listen to coded calls from your passenger to determine what challenges are ahead, only seconds before you come across them.
  • Formula 1 – Whether it's the modern generation of F1, which are the fastest cars to ever compete in a race series, or older, more unforgiving F1 cars with brutal speed and less downforce, watching real-life F1 drivers gives us an appreciation the incredible pace and precision demanded by these cars. This is something hard to replicate for most of us at home.
These are just a few examples, but of course we want to hear your specific story. What is the most difficult form of racing for you?
About author
Mike Smith
I have been obsessed with sim racing and racing games since the 1980's. My first taste of live auto racing was in 1988, and I couldn't get enough ever since. Lead writer for RaceDepartment, and owner of SimRacing604 and its YouTube channel. Favourite sims include Assetto Corsa Competizione, Assetto Corsa, rFactor 2, Automobilista 2, DiRT Rally 2 - On Twitter as @simracing604

Comments

I'd say everything that drives without TC or ABS (or H-shift). When I look at how many people spin their GT3s on a regular basis I cannot help but think that racing without electronics is becoming a forgotten craft. Also Simracing appears to become more and more about learning one car plus maybe a few tracks, rather than being able to jump into anything and be decent ("What car in ACC is the best for beginners?" and so on). And I find jumoping around different types of car and multiple tracks in a short time both satisfying and challenging.

Personally I would put anything without downforce on top, having to feel tyres, manage grip etc, you can be decent fairly easy but finding the limit is not.
 
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For me, anything that heavily relies on downforce because a) I'm bad at setups and b) I'm bad at being accurate with my lines. I prefer cars I can vagely steer into the direction of the corner and then wing it through on throttle.
 
Rally! Nuff said, we can end it here! Rally has got to be THE hardest discipline for me omgosh who would subject a car to this behavior. Turn Bends Jumps Drifts, and then there's the Dirt... Why is Dakar Desert Rally in my Steam Wishlist library? Glutton for punishment I guess.
 
All of them! But the thing I find hardest is consistancy.
Exactly. I find that pulling one great lap s not that hard but man...
doing it consistently is must be the hardest thing to do.
Rally is hard but hey at least you don't have to drive same laps over and over
trying to be perfect and you can gain some time that you lost somewhere else.
But basically... I'm pretty lost in any racing game that doesn't have rewind button :unsure:
:D
 
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Its hard to say what is hardest. There is a range of cars from modern to retro. Older cars tend to be looser and harder to drive. It's all about skill set developed by the racer. The skill set for road racing will be different for oval racing. And the talent of other drivers if you are online. Personaly i run rFactor 2 against AI with a Joystick on low skill setting's as i am not verry good. And my experience racing online was a negative expierence.
 
A very good topic to discuss! I was just thinking about this the other night.

For me, it has to be Rally. While I do enjoy it a lot, I am not very good at it, and if I manage to nail a stage, I tend to screw it up at the next one. I think it is a practice thing, however, and most of my racing is done on tarmac, so it would be weird if I did worse there :D
To add a sub-category, open-wheel oval racing is tough as nails as well. As an avid IndyCar fan, I love it, as it is thrilling and very satisfying if done right, but it's such a different discipline compared to road course racing that a lot of driving and setup tricks do not apply here. The experience is really damn cool, however, especially on super speedways.

Drifting, on the other hand, I have never tried, so it is not part of the equation for me. Though I suppose if you want to be very exact, my answer would have to be drifting then, unless I possess an unknown talent for it :D
Oval's are hard as it is easy to have a car draft you up high or low. It is not as easy as it looks on TV.
 
I’m not sure that this really answers the question (!) but I’m slowly learning how to blip the throttle on downshifts when using the H pattern. I am gradually getting better at it, but I’m in awe of F1 drivers who did this in the 80s turbo era consistently lap after lap.
 
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I actually don't think it's very easy to say what's the hardest style of sim racing.

I see many here mentioning rally, but for me, rally isn't the hardest, most likely because I'm used to it. F1 can be hard in actual racing situations, because everything happens so quickly. Multi-class is something I do a couple of times each month in the rFactor 2 club here.

To take a boring view on it, I think all kinds of racing have their own challenges. 43 stock cars at Martinsville or 43 stock cars at Daytona with restrictor-plates. Completely different style of oval racing, but each as challenging as the other. IndyCar at Indy? Needs precision like F1 at Monaco.
Group C monsters at era-correct tracks. Try to handle those monsters on a bumpy track with no ABS or TC, not easy.
Touring Cars, try to keep the front tyres alive for a race, without actually going slow.

I could go on. I am fairly sure the hardest style of sim-racing is the racing you don't normally do :)
 
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Any of the above, while battling a slipping office chair, dancing pedals, and an ill-fixed steering wheel on a wobbly table... :mad:
 
Ovals. Seems easy, just turn left. Then you get on the track with other people and that opinion gets quickly shot out of a cannon into the sun.

Doing 230 in the draft surrounded by cars less than a foot away who will all berate you if you make a tiny mistake.
 
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I think rally is the hardest. Try to steer or brake while you are in the air.... grip is varying, widths of road varying, lots of blind turns, insane speed in relation to road width.

Second is hillclimb, because it is basically tarmac rally.

Third is endurance, because cars are super intense due to extremely high sharp edge grip, long duration, changing conditions, multiclass.

Fourth is F1 due to most extreme peak performance windows, highest speeds and biggest punishment for every little mistake.

But in simracing anything can be made to be much easier than it should be though, by tiny manipulations of parameters. But also could be made much hardest, so it is up to debating all the time. At least it would be if simracing would not have been massively blue pilled.
 
I could go on. I am fairly sure the hardest style of sim-racing is the racing you don't normally do :)
Honestly this point I agree with most. I read how some people really struggle with f1 and yet i started out with it so see no issue, but less powerful, low downforce cars i really struggle with.
Id say there is no clear answer to the hardest style, they all require a unique skillset and i respect anyone who can master them all.
 
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If by most difficult, you mean most humbling and lap-time deficient, then for me it must be the more recent F1 machinery; i.e., those formulae covering both 2.4L V8 and 1.6L V6 turbos. As soon as the red lights go out, it's an inexorable reversion towards the dull end of the grid. I just leave so, so much time on the table, I hardly ever bother anymore. I can almost hear Sky Sports slag my driving from the broadcast booth.
 
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All of them! But the thing I find hardest is consistancy.
You cannot be consistent in a sim as you would be in a real race car.
The answer is simple - fear of dying or getting hurt.
In reality, that fear is always with you on a subconscious level. Even Senna admitted it back in the day.
And fear is forcing you to be consistent. That applies to most people on this planet except for lunatics like Gilles Villeneuve and Stefan Bellof. Those guys had no fear.
But in a sim, even on a high end VR setup with all the motion gizmos, you still know it isn't real. Your subconscious is telling you that.

I know this may not be a popular opinion, but the only way you can really forget you're in a simulation and start driving it like it's the real deal is - smoke some funny cigarettes and crank up the FFB on a DD wheel to the point it gets dangerous. Put your VR on. Pick a vintage open wheeler on a bumpy track.
That was the only time my subconscious stopped telling me it wasn't real.
And I was pretty consistent.
 

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