Darn, its been a long time since I played LFS...need to bump me up to S2.

Anyways, I've raced a little bit on real race and rallycross tracks and all I can say is that the experience is entirely different.

In real world, you drive your car more with your bottom than with other senses. When coming into a sharp turn in real life I can literally "feel" the moment when the car is going to slip. You simply feel how the car is behaving basing on vibrations, slight changes in acceleration, how the wheel behaves etc. Unfortunately there is no way (yet) to put this kind of experience into a virtual simulator. LFS is the best racing sim I've played ever.

One thing LFS helped me to learn and understand is how suspension & ratio tweaks affect the car. Im a type of person who understands things best when put into practice. Being able to tweak every single element of car's suspension and then putting it into a race track to see the result is priceless.

Also, LFS helped me to visualize a manouver that I later used in real life. It was during a classic car race on a racetrack and there were 2 laps left. I was driving a Fiat 124 SC (1.8 engine, around 120-130 bhp) versus a BMW 2002 Ti (2 litre, 130 bhp). The guy before me was slightly faster, but I had stiffer suspension. So, coming out of a turn, I was right on his tail. I did the turn slightly faster than he, so I started the straight with higher velocity. It was a short, around 70-100 meter straight and I decided to overtake. I almost passed him but the next turn (sharp angle, around 120 degrees left) came in too close for comfort. I started braking and had to brake until well into the turn. It was a bit risky, because if he hadn't backed off a little bit I could have ended out of the track.