What’s the best way to practice to become faster?

[ZeroSV]

I’ve been simracing about 5 months now and I was wondering what’s the best way to get faster overall? I ask because I want to go from being 2-3 seconds off the best times to making that gap smaller and smaller. I’ve seen some aliens say they weren’t good from the start but they spent the time to practice everyday and got faster by doing that. What I wanna know is what exactly is it that I’m supposed to do as practice because I feel that it’s a bit different than other things you’d practice for which is why I’m confused and feel like I may not be practicing right. What are the procedures/things that I should be doing everyday to improve on becoming an overall faster driver. I’m willing to put the time and effort but just don’t know how to practice. Thanks

(Just to clarify, I’m talking specifically about getting faster and not getting more consistent as that’s not a problem for me.)

 

[Bruno Iwanczuk]

@Bruno I
Senna was a great driver, he was not all conquering in the rain, he lost many races in the rain to many other
talented drivers.
you cannot start directly comparing the real world with sim racing.
I think Lewis is a great F1 driver, but if he had always been in the Williams he would have had no
world championships.
In sim racing usually all the variables start off as a constant. then its setup, hard work and talent.
You first statement had a modicum of truth, you just overplayed its importance.
You could argue from that stance , ultimately , but that lucky sod will still have to study and work
hard to beat all those who are at his pace, in fact probably harder than you need too.
this forum is ultimately for club sim racers, if I wanted to beat Greger Huttu, then I am positive you
would be correct, but its not the conversation for club sim racing.

I think i can, because talent has do to with any activity that requires skills. And we are talking here about how much the talent counts in the final result.

Simracing requires skills, as well as irl racing. Then yes they are comparable.

There is a why other soccer players can't do what Messi does, the way he does.

It is called talent. And practice doesn't give you that talent.


People who disagree with my post, can deny that truth as much as you want, it will keep being the truth.

 

[Kek700]

If you look at life with blinkers on, then you can believe only what you wish to see.

 

[Bruno Iwanczuk]

If you look at life with blinkers on, then you can believe only what you wish to see.

I believe in what makes sense

 

[Benutzername]

I think i can, because talent has do to with any activity that requires skills. And we are talking here about how much the talent counts in the final result.

Simracing requires skills, as well as irl racing. Then yes they are comparable.

There is a why other soccer players can't do what Messi does, the way he does.

It is called talent. And practice doesn't give you that talent.


People who disagree with my post, can deny that truth as much as you want, it will keep being the truth.

We are not talking about talent. You are talking about talent.

It was asked, how to practice properly to get faster.

 

[RasmusP]

It's also not about becoming the next Messi or Ronaldo, it's about being able to have fun kicking the ball around with other like minded on a casual day on the football field.
With simracing there's a huge variety of starting points. For some it's like they never touched a ball in their life. They can't just kick the ball and enjoy playing football. They need basic skills like how to kick it, how to stand, how to approach it. Learn how to run, build stamina etc.

Now you wanna tell us that you need talent to be able to have fun and enjoying a game of football with some friends on a Sunday?

 

[Miguel Batista]

Ok, go extend your vocal range and post a video here doing the same as Pavarotti then we keep discussing.

Let's see if it is only about "hard work".

I don't know what is more jarring. If your absolute lack of understanding of what practice does or the fact that you consider Pavaroti as some sort of holy grail of singing.

Talent comes into play by how fast you learn something and sure, even with tons of practice you might be 10s of seconds away from some of the top sim racers but you can definitely improve your tine by 3 or 4 seconds. In all my years as a professional athlete the athletes that were seen as the "most talented" by outsiders were the ones who worked their asses off. The ones who squeezed that much more out of practice due to strict discipline and organization. I had the fortune of training with what was at the time, the number 2 fencer in the world. His training regime was incredible. He did entire sessions where he only practiced two strikes. Those were 3 to 5 hour slogs where he perfected his technique. Do you think he had fun? No. But he did what he had to do. I suspect that if you look at the sim racing aliens you will see a lot of tgis behaviour. Of repetition of certain conditions until you reach perfection and once you reach a wall, fight until you brake it. I can also tell you that there is practice and there is PRACTICE and some ways of practicing are a lot more effective than others and part of it are to do with your attitude. Finally, it takes about 20% of the work to get about 80% of the performance. The slog begins in those last 20% and for the final 5%... well, then you really need to put in the hours.

 

[aphidgod]

I believe in what makes sense

From reading your other threads I know for an absolute fact this is not true.

 

[Bruno Iwanczuk]

Now you wanna tell us that you need talent to be able to have fun and enjoying a game of football with some friends on a Sunday?

I did never say that. I said that IF he hadn't have the talent to improve his times, if he had already touched his limit, he would never make it.

 

[Bruno Iwanczuk]

I don't know what is more jarring. If your absolute lack of understanding of what practice does or the fact that you consider Pavaroti as some sort of holy grail of singing.

Talent comes into play by how fast you learn something and sure, even with tons of practice you might be 10s of seconds away from some of the top sim racers but you can definitely improve your tine by 3 or 4 seconds.

Quote the post where i said practice wouldn't improve times.

I said practice wouldn't improve times IF talent isn't there.

 

[Bruno Iwanczuk]

We are not talking about talent. You are talking about talent.

It was asked, how to practice properly to get faster.

Ok, but don't tell me talent has nothing to do with how fast someone is, otherwise everybody would be as fast as Greger Huttu.

 

[Bruno Iwanczuk]

the fact that you consider Pavaroti as some sort of holy grail of singing.

Ok, post a video doing what Pavarotti does then. If you can't, which i'm sure you can't. Then he is at least much talented.

 

[Mr Deap]

What I've learned so far which is very important when reading sim racer telemetry...
Smooth mean stomp
Sync mean overlap like crazy
Overdriving mean underdriving (fix edit)
Setup don't matter mean only setup matter.
Call someone a troll mean it's the most trolled person in the forum

 

[RasmusP]

If you practice like you post on forums, it's no wonder you're still very slow and think it's your talent...

 

[Bruno Iwanczuk]

If you practice like you post on forums, it's no wonder you're still very slow and think it's your talent...

I already tried, for many years, 100% of effort and 80% of talent = 80% of skill, that's me. Doesn't matter how much i practice i still 4 seconds off. My talent isn't in simracing.

Anyway i have fun.

 

[Rogerbee]

Just keep at it! Even Lewis Hamilton has off days.

 

[manu68]

The other Day I have looked at the acc monza event, and I have been astonished to see that the winter are laping at laptimes within 1/100!!
It need talent and thousands of km practise.
Incredible

 

[RasmusP]

The other Day I have looked at the acc monza event, and I have been astonished to see that the winter are laping at laptimes within 1/100!!
It need talent and thousands of km practise.
Incredible

Winter is coming and apparently lapping very consistently

Jokes aside, I have 1.1k hours in all sims together. My very fast friend has about 3.5k hours. Same amount of years in this statistic!

But yeah it's all about the talent

 

[Kek700]

@Bruno Iwanczuk
Our whole society is hugely complex, lots of people see it all as paper thin, thats why they have
hero’s and see them as sort of perfect gods. “Everyone” on this planet is, well, basically a man or
women, warts and all.
Some do have exceptional talents, there usually is, not a very pleasant reason for
their abilities. Quite often there is a price to be paid for that talent.
Sometimes ( often ) the truly great people are never recognised, they struggle with great adversity
and achieve the amazing things, are never noticed by the people who seek the paper thin
heroes in life. ( thats why our media is the way it is )
Everyone , or lets say “most“ people can achieve a lot-in our privileged western society by working
to their best “ability”.
I am never going to be Greger Huttu , but do i really want that, no, i just enjoy trying to improve
and that is the crux of all this . You and anyone can improve to a point in which they can enjoy
their pass time fully.
I started with RF2 with Ai, learned how to do 40 laps without incident but got bored of AI.
Started and preferred racing against other real completion, warts and all, hence AC.
First race at Silverstone GP GT3 , 7 seconds off the leader. i have had 2 years of great fun
trying to improve, to use your statement, i really have no talent for this at all.

I have to work quite ( i will refrain from using the over used word “very” ) hard at this
simulator racing.

I with pleasure watch all the drivers when i am racing racing, and, quite often amazed at how
naturally quick they are, especially compared to me. ( there are a few old blokes in my league ).
But this forum wants to help people, wanting to improve, or especially improve when they first
start out.

But when i put the effort in , i can now just about get 6 seconds faster in the same conditions.
i am never going to be Greger Huttu , but someone starting out maybe, try not to piss on their
bonfire before he has the pleasure of that journey.

“You” can improve greatly by humbly listening to what the more knowledgeable people on these
forums tell you, there are a lot of very smart people here that can help “you”, if you listen, and
serve your ever lasting apprenticeship.

None of this is rocket science, it’s bleeding obvious, if you open your eyes and allow yourself
to observe without prejudice.

sorry about my on going ramblings.

 

[RasmusP]

One thing people don't get is just because they lack all the "sub-skills", it doesn't mean they have no talent. They just have a very very bad starting point.
Referring to my football analogy, the skills for simracing in a quick list that comes to my mind:
- hand/eye/feet coordination
- imagining the real car from the 2d monitor view
- precision with hands and feet
- reaction time
- being able to repeat the same things
- concentration
- judge speeds
- memory for brake markers etc
- adapting to new things quickly

Depending on how good you are at these things in general, you gonna improve in shorter time. If you have to learn it all, then it'll take a long time. And it's also about efficiency.

Not to talk bad about you Ernie, really don't. I'll just use you as an example:
You have some real life racing experience and a **** ton of real life experience! I guess you're not a "gamer" though and are not the youngest chap around.
So you might lack some points at:
- imagining the real car from 2D monitor view
- reaction time
- adapting to new things quickly

And you probably learnt how to do things decades ago and burnt "wrong" things into every cell of your body.
You are a bloody save driver and awesome fun to compete against! I have nothing but respect for you man! Any time we came together on track I always enjoyed it

Then on the other hand you might have a 16 year old who has never driven a car but played all hectic games you can imagine.
His vision and approach to a hotlap is a completely different world.
If you coach this chap correctly he'll be like a sharp knife with only good inputs.
But it takes years to become a good racer on track and that's where he will probably suck massively. No awareness, bad judgement of risks to take etc.

 

[BrightCandle]

We have known for quite a while that mastering something mechanical like playing an instrument takes 5-10 thousand hours to master. Surprisingly perhaps you can get 80% of the way in about 100 hours. For the untrained it is hard to distinguish the difference between 1000 hours and 10000 hours of practice, but there is a difference and as a society we do notice the higher skill. Many of the professionals around us have over 25,000 hours or more in their profession at the age of 20, they started when they were children and have been putting in the consistent hours ever since.

This post in my opinion is about how to execute that practice well. Which involves many of the things others have mentioned but I think also direct skill practice including learning to drift and driving on a track radius to understand minor tweaks to the car balance. I actually wish more games had a basic circle and basic tarmac areas to drive on to practice a variety of things but it seems they don't appreciate that some people do need these things to get better.

Once you hit 5k probably 10k hours of simracing and you have tried a lot of different types of practices to improve performance then you are at the stage where more might not bring much benefit. But if you only have 100 hours it is hard to say you are limited by talent because you definitely can still improve, no one was born knowing how to drive a car at the limit of its grip. It mght then be worth looking at some fundamental measurements like your reaction time eye to finger and nerve impulse time from foot to finger and you may find you are not as quick as the best and it may limit your peak. But once you have these sorts of hours of decent practice you will be lapping well and consistently.

Apparently in preseason testing Schumacher did 150 laps a day. He would just get in the car and start driving. A sim racer recently did this with a track they didn't know (I tried to find the video again I can't, was on YT) and by lap 12 they were getting around relatively consistently but still pushing to find time until about lap 30 by which point he calmed down and just tried to be consistent and then gradually the time came and the last 50 laps were all consistent and it was in this period his fastest lap was set. Try doing 150 laps of the circuit just trying to sustain a consistent pace and tell us how that goes for improving lap times.