I too put the same concern to him and he came up with some good reasons.
* A real driver is used to all the physical forces acting on them and, consciously or not, these are influencing how they drive. This is why it can be harder for a real driver to transition to sims than vice versa, as they are losing sensory inputs instead rather than gaining them.
* NASCAR are big on entertainment, one aspect being lots of cameras mounted on cars. You can compare what the driver is doing with the wheel and pedals compared to driving in the sim. In fact he has been quite critical of iRacing in places, which has surprised me.
* He's chatted with drivers too and can compare the techniques he's using at a track with what they do. He's also worked out the general setup of a car from watching it go round the track and confirmed this with the teams. Clearly his attention to detail is excellent.
* On the assumption that iRacing has got some aspects right, he can compare how adjusting something in that sim affects the car in a different way to our sim, and we can think about why and if we want to do anything about it.
We have tuned to the tyre slip to get the car to yaw in a way that matches telemetry data, and then he mentions the same figure for tyre slip, is very encouraging. He's honest too, if I ask a question he doesn't know, he'll outright admit so. This gives me confidence to trust what he's saying. Plus he really likes my new force feedback system which cheers me greatly, although I suppose thanks should go to Todd Wasson for conveniently explaining how it all works on this forum some time ago.
