League Race Preperation
One of the best ways to enjoy sim racing is taking part in a league, there are many leagues for drivers of all levels, but other than to just 'be better' what can be done to maximise your league result?
Well like all kinds of racing victory lies in the preperation. Back when I was racing i'd have at the very minimum one fulls days testing between each round, and often more. Testing is a great way to get track time without the expense of a race, and in sim racing testing is free, so your competition will have had much more practice than in real racing.
Practice Makes Perfect, Right?
Yes and no. It is important to practice the circuit but if you're reasonably competitive you wont have learned much more after 500 laps than you will have learned after 15. To improve your result you have to use your practice wisely.
There isn't all that much to be gained by driving round and round and round if you are not improving.
Use the downloadable WR hotlaps on LFS World to get an idea of how to drive the circuit if you are unsure initially, but there is only so much you can garner from this. The real learning has to occur live.
Learn the Layout
A quirk of human biology makes me ill advised to offer the best way to do this, women and men navigate differently, but in any case the concept is the same: It's very important to know the track inside-out, backwards, upside down and even if viewed from another dimension!
You must know every corner and what corners lead into what corners, know from a single image onscreen exactly where you are so that any lapse in concentration or moment of confusion doesnt result in you going off or losing time.
Copy, Steal, Leach
As a concept you should be practicing online with other drivers, rather than by yourself in single player mode. You might just catch a glimpse of something that will help, like following another driver through a set of corners where they take a different line - you can then try that line for yourself.
Dont be affraid of moving your view to that of another driver whilst sat at the side of the road (in a safe place) or in the pits, you can learn a lot from other drivers - even if you dont improve you learn a little about that driver who you may well be racing against.
Experimentation
Make sure you know your sector times, experimenting with your line is all very well, but over the course of a lap how do you know if one method of taking a corner is quicker than another when you have been slower elsewhere in the lap? Using your time through each sector makes this easier.
There is another method though, for corners that lead onto a straight, and this is where your ears come in: Mostly as drivers we guage our speed by what gear we are in and the sound of the engine, if you are using the speedo to know how fast you are going - stop that now, turn off automatic gearbox, and start the process of learning how to really race!
At a fixed point after the corner, when the car has settled and your well and truly past the last bend, listen to your engine revs and remember the pitch and volume. You can use this to compare how much faster your exit was even when the rest of the sector goes badly and the overall sector time is irrelevent.
If you are not that musically inclined or have trouble discerning engine revs from the engine note then you can use the rev counter, a totally alternative method is to see at what part of the next straight you change up gear.
Strategy
Longer races may require a pit strategy, so how do we go about preparing for that?
Well one method is to run the race multiple times with different strategies and compare the final finishing time - but if you have a lot of options to go through or it's a very long race this could be time consuming.
You can save a lot of time by breaking the race into stints, if you measure the time it takes to do a stint between pitstops you can use that and multiply it by the number of stints, but you can go one step further.
Take snapshots, get the car to a given fuel load, warm it up a bit with a few laps and get in a rhythm then look at your lap times over 5 or so laps. You can use this information to build a picture of performance on a given tyre compound and fuel load.
There is however absolutely no substitute for doing a full stint, or full race distance. It's good practice and if you have the time I would urge you to take that option instead, especially if you are unsure on tyre life.
Tyre Life
Tyre life is an important point because it can dominate your strategic decisions. I recall preparing for a league race by doing 3 full race distances, on the first I incurred a puncture through wear but on the second and third I adapted my driving style and completed the distance no problem.
Needless to say come the race it all went wrong, the extra pounding my tyres took from battling with other cars resulted in me pushing my tyres too hard.
Understand what limits your tyres have, or how close to the limit you are. Consider a harder tyre if pace allows or whether you need to change tyres in a pitstop.
As a rule of thumb air on the side of caution from test conditions so that your tyre choice survives contact with the enemy!
How Many Stops
Sometimes pace indicators leave you with a choice of whether to make a different number of stops, going either fast and short or steady and long. How do you decide which strategy to follow?
Generally speaking it pays to go long.
There are a number of factors in making your decision, firstly you need to be honest with yourself: Are you capable of driving your car without spinning if it's heavily laden for a long stint; and are you capable of overtaking enough people in a short stint without a shunt. If that doesn't give you an answer then we need to look in more depth at your race situation.
If you qualify in the midfield or lower then you can pretty much rule out a light strategy, sooner or later you will come across somebody you cant get past and your strategy is ruined.
If right at the front going light is a real option, if your just near the front then it can be a real dilema. Going light will always be the riskier decision - but sometimes risk pays off.
Know Your Plan B: Crib Sheet
In a race situation things can go wrong, you might find you've taken damage and need to make an emergency pitstop. The last thing you need as you limp in to the pits setting all your tyre and refuel settings whilst struggling with a car wanting to drive like drunken crab is to be having to calculate fuel loads.
One way to avoid this and minimise the cost to your race of any unforseen event is to make a crib sheet, write down the each lap, or each few laps, of the race and next to it the fuel load you will take onboard if you pit at that point in the race, and whether you will change tyres.
If the race is longer than one stop then fill up and use the crib sheet on your last stop to determine how much fuel is needed for the remainder of the race.
Loosing Focus
During a long race it's easy for 1 unforseen disaster to lead into another, and another, and so on. When you find yourself out of the zone you need to somehow get your act together, but how?
Well the first thing to do is to stop worrying about whatever it is you are doing wrong and start focusing on something else.
If your mindset had you thinking about apexes and when to put the throttle down, instead set yourself a goal with the car ahead or behind.
If you where too busy chasing a place you couldnt reach, start focusing on apexes and when to put the throttle down and ignore the race around you for a bit.
The main thing is, whatever you do, is to change what it is that's causing you to go wrong. Switching to a different thought process, or changing your goals, can work wonders in getting your focus back on a long race and get you back into a rhythm.
A Championship is for a Year, Not Just for Xmas
When preparing for a league race maybe you are having trouble with the track, or things are just not going so well. Turn up anyway, plod away and keep at it. I can recall one race when I was in the OWRL which was on the very popular FOX @ Blackwood combo, needless to say everybody else was highly skilled because it's such a popular combo, but I had never mastered the track.
Something changed the moment the lights went green on the day of the race and I started knocking out excellent lap times, right up until a disconnection anyway.
It's not just that things might get better though, any point you can pick up might make all the difference to your final championship result. All it takes to get near the top of the table is consistent points scoring, it's then a much smaller step from there to absolute victory.
