improving driving

whats the best way to improve your driving skills is it just practice? joined a server last night for some online racing i was about 8 seconds off the pace, it was really good fun pushing myself. hope to join everyone on a dedicated server soon :)
 
Practice of course is essential. But one of the things that helped me the most (don't get me wrong I'm still not good but i got a lot better over 2 years) was reading "Going Faster". It is a great book, and when you understand what is going on with the car and what the techniques are to go faster you go faster.

Driving simply by feel, ignoring all the great theories about how to drive fast is not going to get you anywhere I think. Your brain has to absorb all this information so that you do not think about it, understeer, oversteer, how to brake, how to apply gas in a manner that does not upset the car...

I might be wrong but what I learned after 2 years of simracing, is that driving fast is maybe 60% knowledge and 40% talent. If not more than 60% knowledge. So except if yo are a natural born driver, learning about the theory is a HUGE help. At least it was for me and it still is ;)

I am now somewhere between 2 and 3 seconds to world records, which is still huge, but satisfying enough to have some close racing with a lot of people
 
and sometimes it helps to watch onboard vids on YT ... some corners may be better on different gears than you would expect, sometimes there could be faster driving line or good place to overtake you haven`t figure out .. but in regards of driving itself - mostly practice ...
 
I have read so many 'good driving' articles over the years and it made little difference to me.
I think only by analysing your own driving via replays, telemetry and comparing yourself to other people, can you understand how to be faster. A worse driver isn't aware of the mistakes they're making, otherwise they'd be a better driver.
A book doesn't know the mistakes you're making, or the physics of the car, game or sim you're using. How many champions in real life have ever read a book on driving faster? I'm sure racers only need subjective experience and objective analysis to get better.
Also in sims and real life, driving fast is about minimising a loss in speed and weight transfer. However in a sim or game you can't feel anything other than faked steering weight (not even that if you use a controller) so it's completely different.
 
How many champions in real life have ever read a book on driving faster?
They may not use a book but they would have instructors and as they advance a team of people analysing their driving to find flaws and places where they could push more. Raw talent doesn't cut it in todays world.

I found the skip barber video excellent it helped me deal with a problem I was having with lift oversteer. Basically I didn't know about lift oversteer, but once I knew about it it became a tool for driving faster rather than absolute frustration.

Watching other fast guys also helps a lot. One example would be how I dealt with turn 15 (the hairpin) at vallelunga, I was doing the normal thing of going wide as possible and trying to straighten out the corner as much as possible. But I watched someones replay where they basically slowed the car down to nothing turned the car around and accelerated without going to the edges of the track, it worked, I Guess because it takes advantage of the braking and acceleration of a race car rather than relying on the grip of the tyres through a corner.

Driving cars fast isn't always obvious. You won't go from being slow to having world class speed over night either. It takes time and experience to get the times down once you have the knowledge. It's taken me months to get some times down to a competitive one but once you have the experience built up it gets easier. Now I can go out onto a new track and put in pretty decent lap times quite quickly.
 
Great post. I am just learning the ropes, and did my first organized race last night - probably same race. Driving online with other racers definitely helped me out. Braking points - in the last turn of Monza i realized i was braking way too early by watching other cars. Also just conversing with the other drivers I learned about some good/bad techniques. I will definitely taking some suggestions from this thread, again thanks for starting it.
 
Once you know all the right things to do (do watch the Skip Barber video) it's just a matter of practicing until you don't make any mistakes.. .which is easier to say than to do. If you can't tell where you're making mistakes you have no hope of correcting them, and even if you know they're mistakes some are hard to avoid.
 
I have read so many 'good driving' articles over the years and it made little difference to me. I think only by analysing your own driving via replays, telemetry and comparing yourself to other people, can you understand how to be faster. A worse driver isn't aware of the mistakes they're making, otherwise they'd be a better driver. A book doesn't know the mistakes you're making, or the physics of the car, game or sim you're using.

Perhaps because you didn't relate what the book was saying to what you were doing or not doing on track. I've read a lot of them, more than once. When I first started, I had a general idea of how to drive, but to drive fast, not so much. So I turned to the experts, not having the luxury of access to a professional racing instructor, it was books. I was able to take bits and pieces from each of them, and not necessarily on first read. For me it took getting proficient with the basics of going fast before I could start to fine tune, use and understand the subtler/advanced racing techniques.

If you don't know what you're doing wrong (by knowing what is right) all the analysis in the world isn't going to do anything for you. A book knows the right or more right way to drive fast, if you can absorb what it's saying to you and use it to correct your driving, you'll get better.

How many champions in real life have ever read a book on driving faster? I'm sure racers only need subjective experience and objective analysis to get better.

I'd guess most of them have. As a broad statement, race drivers are obsessed with racing. To paraphrase from one of the books, 'A real race driver will sell his mother to gain a 10th of a second a lap.'. They live, eat and breathe racing and anything they can use to gain an advantage, they'll use, especially in their younger years.

Also in sims and real life, driving fast is about minimising a loss in speed and weight transfer. However in a sim or game you can't feel anything other than faked steering weight (not even that if you use a controller) so it's completely different.

It's not completely different, it's just different. You can't feel the weight shift, when the car takes a set or when you lose grip as effectively as you can in real life. Racing sims have gotten much better, but still can't provide as much data to your brain as the physical world can. But again, it's still up to you to use what is available to you, whether on track in real life or in a sim.

My 2 cents from a mid pack perspective ;)
 
Watching other fast guys also helps a lot. One example would be how I dealt with turn 15 (the hairpin) at vallelunga, I was doing the normal thing of going wide as possible and trying to straighten out the corner as much as possible. But I watched someones replay where they basically slowed the car down to nothing turned the car around and accelerated without going to the edges of the track, it worked, I Guess because it takes advantage of the braking and acceleration of a race car rather than relying on the grip of the tyres through a corner.

I don't think it was the grip, rather that you found out how to apply the accelerator much earlier and quicker?
 
I don't think it was the grip, rather that you found out how to apply the accelerator much earlier and quicker?
It's hard to explain now but I was trying to do the traditional thing of straightening the corner by taking a wide line in but it turned out it was a pointless endeavour, the corners so slow you gain nothing by it.
 
To those posters above I did understand how the techniques should be applied, but they didn't help me. Analysing my driving or comparing myself to other drivers works for me, and you learn more about a car or track every time you drive.
The problem I have, is that videos and articles on driving faster are produced with no knowledge of the mistakes you're making.
There is, I think, a placebo effect when reading or watching techniques. Perhaps in an effort to go faster you analyse yourself, change things and concentrate more. However if you're faster it wasn't anything you watched or read that made you faster, you helped yourself.
I guess If you're a beginner and you don't know about being setting up a car, being smooth, traction circles, weight transfer, etc it would be a good idea to learn that stuff.
 
The problem I have, is that videos and articles on driving faster are produced with no knowledge of the mistakes you're making.

And if you don't know what the correct/better way of driving is, you have no basis to judge whether you're making a mistake and what specifically the mistake is.

If you understand the correct techniques for driving fast you can, as you said, self assess and make the corrections. The how to books and videos aren't there to tell you what you're doing wrong, they're there to tell you what to do right.

It's up to you to bridge that gap, what you're doing wrong versus what is the correct way.
 
Watched the skip barber before but watched it again. The theory all made sense and while racing i had it all in mind but still laptimes did not improve.
I helped myself by turning on a assist during practise: ideal race line. I started to race and i noticed that i was everywere on track except at the ideal line. I am not saying that line is the fastest but it showed me different angles, braking and accelarating points. And that was the moment skip barbers theory felt in place for me. I felt like NEO who suddenly was able to bend the spoon. I improved my personal laptimes. So the question remains: would i have ended with the same spoon bending without the skip barber vid? I dont think so. To walk the path you first need to know and understand the path. This will not work for everybody but i guess that searching for a way to bend the spoon is the first important step. Now im going to take a blue pill to beat the insomnia.
 

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