Aaaaaaa I’m an addict.
Intervention plz.
Yeah opiates tho… one of the many problems with heroin is that you develop resistance and the addicts take more and more to get the same high.
Ok hol up… that sounds like sim.
So, when I get back to sim, am I gonna OD?
This is pretty serious.
Seriously tho, have you ever been like “nah” don’t wanna race today but not felt right about it? That’s kind of what this is like.
There is something to the “because it isn’t real”. Maybe in real racing, I’m more chill. Less of a head case, more forgiving of imperfections and able to let them go and keep pushing, relentlessly. More rational and perhaps even sometimes wise.
Less needing to be perfect and less effort involved in racing as opposed to sim. It could be that racing is somehow less “hard work”. Simultaneously more fulfilling, meaningful and enjoyable.
I always have that moment before a real race where I wonder if I’m really gonna screw up and get that pit of the stomach feeling but it passes once you get focused and racing. You just let go of that because you have to and just focus on being elite, fast, and a real threat. So I transition from self-doubt and insecurity to full racer brain at Go time.
Sim isn’t that. It’s a long thing wherein I’m fretting over tiny time differences over a long campaign. It’s my work, kinda. I think I need to find that same mental focus or discipline for sim, where go time defines the moment.
Early days, I had the Stig (or the zone) to fall into and eventually land the record laps. But he’s gone now, having been replaced by full time me behind the wheel, as I have gained more and more agency over the kart and the driving. He just doesn’t show up anymore, which im ok with because I think im at the point where he needs to go bye bye and I become more responsible for my performance, metaphorically. I land my own laps, now.
But, like you said, it’s fake. End of day I’m just racing me, and that’s not really racing.
TJ is right, it’s not real. And, it sounds like sim is two things to you; 1) A method to train for IRL, and 2) An internal competition with yourself to find, and then make consistent those 100th of a second improvements.
All of that (pounding laps, and dissecting your performance) is WORK. It may be ‘fun’ work but it’s work. Maybe to you (and probably most racers) driving IRL is not work, it is the joy of becoming the kart… infusing it with your consciousness to bring it to life. That continuous cycle of energy>forces>traction>energy that is IRL (analog) driving is just not there at the same fidelity in sim… it’s just a digital simulation of it.
Again your approach to sim (pounding laps) is both training and work. It fills the void when you can’t drive IRL. However, as you get better and better at driving you absorb the Stig, and then it becomes a game not of ‘learning’ more, but of understanding and refining what you already know at some level. It also becomes a game of of simplifying what you ‘do’… stripping away (or automating) the details, so you are dealing with only the essence.
I wouldn’t worry about not feeling compelled to drive the sim; trust yourself and it’s likely you’ll do what you need to do, when you need to do it. Also, just because you’re not driving the sim does not mean you are not learning. Whenever you think about racing, or imag what the driver is experiencing when watching race footage, or racewalk, or take the long way home, it can all be training if you are open to learning.
“The wise see that there is action in the midst of inaction and inaction in the midst of action.”
-someone way smarter then me-
You always find something I can’t see. Thanks. Lemme digest. Much to think about.
You amaze me constantly. This is what I have been aware of for a bit, but hadn’t had it expressed in words.
That’ll be 5 cents please. 
TJ and I can split it.
Indeed. I am reminded of Karl describing looping for the Dalai Lama:
He’s got that going for him, which is nice. And so shall you both, someday. 
I just haven’t found the wisdom you need, yet.
Stop searching and it will find you. 
Gunga, Gunga-Galunga
The biggest gain from a simulator is learning the basics of a track but that pretty much is it. I find the sim as another form of relatable entertainment with a challenge. The sim might help with staying sharp and there might be some relatable techniques learned but nothing that will get to 10/10s, more like 6/10s, driving.
I also found, even at my age, that learning a new track with 20 turns for me takes about 2 sessions and 15 laps. By the time the main rolls around I know the track as well as if I had learned them in the sim.
Respectfully, massively disagree. I wouldn’t have been able to do what I did in terms of time spent/results if it were that simple. Sim is where I learn, irl is where I execute.
I think I’m a bit odd though. I put alot of hours in. My sim hours are measured in crazy numbers. The period I did the 500 races in iracing in 6 months…
I believe TJ said something to the effect of, “Congrats Dom, you’ve managed to give yourself a second full time job that you don’t get paid for.” And, he was right. That’s basically 40 hrs a week on sim on top of job and the occasional rental race.
So for me sim is the reality and I just visit irl from time to time. 
(and I’ve gone from being a Scrub to fast Boi, (in my own little world of KK and rental racing)).
And this is why I struggle with the statements that Warren and TJ made: that it’s not real. That is true.
But, how then did I get gud (relatively)? How is it that my on-track driving has improved in parallel? Simple. I learned and polished it all in sim.
I cannot be the only one here, folks. There has to be other obsessive simmers that found their on-track laptimes getting tighter and tighter and podiums and stuff.
I dunno. Maybe I have some natural talent up to a point and that I’d rise to that level regardless of sim practice. But, that seems inconsistent with lived experience.
Driving is a process and it’s the seat time that allows you to absorb it, become it. You have to DO this to feel it and own it, imho. And, sim, for me, has provided massive amounts of seat time in an environment that, while imperfect, is close enough, to provide meaningful, lasting lessons.
How are you measuring your improvement? What metrics or data are you seeing that indicate you’ve gotten to be a better driver? I’m not doubting you’ve improved, but my guesstimation would be most of that is from all the rental racing you do, rather than the thousands of sim laps. The clip you posted the other day chasing fast times at AMP showed you essentially four-wheels in the grass in that final corner and the wheel cranked full lock to initiate rotation. I’m fairly certain you aren’t using that technique in real racing, otherwise you’d be on your head in a tire barrier.
Sim racing has it’s benefits that correlate to real-life racing, no doubt. But I’ve all but given up on sim racing for the moment as a training tool because I was not seeing any noticeable change in my driving from it. I was using it as off-season training, but I don’t feel like I came into this season of karting more or less rusty than I was before. Maybe driving MX-5s at Oulton Park isn’t a direct enough comparison to a KA100 at Dousman to provide any actionable benefit. But still with KK I didn’t feel like I had a lot to apply from sim driving.
I know, right? Can’t square that one. I’m guessing that’s because the game allows it and it works. If it worked on track maybe I’d be learning to do it there as well. But it doesn’t so I don’t make the big gestures to force release.
Basically laptimes results and how I drive. The general thing with sim is that it appears to allow me to drive enough to have tighter laptime dispersion irl and in sim. Sorta like your recent badger laptimes that you showed.
Over time, I’ve gotten way, way tighter.
Because family health issues I have not been able to have consistent racing irl. We shall see. Ultimately, I’d like to have a full season of actual races to weigh. For now, we shall see how I do in this league. So far, I’ve done well, landing in Div 1. I’m paying attention to what goes down and hopefully I can find some data points that are useful.
Yup. I can understand that. I’m not sure about this one. You seemed to have a really poor experience with the karts handling and it seems to me you are not alone. I really do wonder wether there is something to the comment one of our contributors made. He stated that his experience completely changed when he changed from the Logitech. Might be something like that, partially.
I feel a lot more than you do, a lot more than Warren does in sim. You guys talk about how there’s no seat of the pants. I have that in sim. I feel the kart (not completely but enough). In the sim it feels like in the kart. This may be because of the time I’ve spent in it.
You are a pro who learned the normal way. You already know what you will know. I think that matters, here. Somehow.
Just to be crystal clear here… I am speaking in relative terms about MY experience. I am under no illusions that I have learned how to drive really well or anything like that. But in terms of how I’ve developed, my expectations, hopes, etc, I can’t help but see steady improvement via sim.
I am totally free in the kart and feel like I have complete control over everything without having to think about it. I can merely observe at higher level and sort of exist in this zone out in track where it just happens. I control but not. Hard to explain. This is not at all how things were years 1-7. That came from laps. Lots and lots of laps. Year 8 I started noticing significant changes in how I think and execute.
Now stick me back in x30 and watch me suck for 3 months.
I could be living in an elaborate self-deception. It’s possible, but it doesn’t feel that way. Regardless I may be the fool. But, it’s been a hell of a ride and it doesn’t show any signs of wanting to stop.
I can’t help but feel that I must come off as a grandiose narcissist. I get that. But what I’m trying to communicate is that this really worked, for me. Wether I made it happen in sim or it’s just innate, either way I ended up pretty decent at it, within the confines of my little world. I’m basically shouting it from the ramparts, hoping to find the others whose experience has been similar.
It is possible that maybe things are different now or are changing. Motorsport is alien to me and my family. I did not grow up with access. The actual driving/racing is step 2 or 3 for a lot of folks, after sim. I only got on track because sim suggested to me that this would be something I should be doing.
Now I imagine that there’s some 7yr old kid out there with a bunch of talent and parents that aren’t dripping in money. Prior to recently, he’d be Warren, finding ways to engage with racing as best he could, but end of day, he’d be mental racing under the old model of learning to drive. Unless he’s actually Warren, it’s pretty likely that his potential will remain just that, never being properly explored due to a lack of opportunity for “real” driving and real development.
This is just not the case, anymore, with sim. There are people developing as aliens who have never set foot in a car.
I play against 2 guys that fascinate me:
Zycos and Tazzy. Both are European uni students and broke as fuck. They don’t kart. They don’t have the money or time. Zycos, for example, I think has only driven a rental kart once or twice.
But here’s the thing. These guys can drive. And you know what’s mind blowing? Tazzy does it on keyboard only (no mouse, even).
This means that Tazzy MUST straight line brake. He MUST be at full throttle or zero throttle (no in between). And yet, he has complete control over the cycle and drives at the pointiest end, time wise.
He clearly has come to understand all the major lessons that define the basics of how we drive and then gone further and can execute these laps handicapped by keyboard inputs. His results show he is intimately familiar with the cycle, it’s stages, etc.
What I’d like to do but don’t have the wealth to do it is to develop someone like that. Find a kid that has gone really deep and gotten very very skilled in sim but has no “real” driving experience.
I bet someone like Tazzy jumps in a kart and gets to fast in a very short time as compared to the guy who just goes straight to karts. He’s already got the knowledge and skill. It would just be a matter of then adjusting that skill set to the demands of the real track, which I think he’d do easily.
Now there’s also another TJ who goes by TIZI in kk. He’s 19, think, and if I’m not mistaken I’ve been racing him in KK for 4-5 years. I used to be faster than him and I noticed when he started beating me. Anyways, he’s a “normal” driver who primarily races cars and karts irl. He developed that way. But, clearly he also developed somewhat in Kk. It would be interesting to ask him what he thinks sim did or didn’t do in terms of his skill/learning.
“I also found, even at my age, that learning a new track with 20 turns for me takes about 2 sessions and 15 laps. By the time the main rolls around I know the track as well as if I had learned them in the sim.”
-Larry
It’s true that you definitely can get a sense of the track via sim. But, to your point, once you have the experience, your ability to learn a new track gets very quick (at a putting down a decent lap) as the Rolodex of turns in your brain becomes more full. At least, that’s what I’ve noticed in past 2 years.
I can get to a fast(ish) lap pretty quickly on a totally strange track. But, that’s not KK. That’s all the tracks I’ve been on and all the races I’ve done. That’s my accumulated experience at work.
Example: in the league I started I have zero track experience (also never driven those karts at speed 4). So my first laps were time trial, utterly cold, no idea what’s next.
I did just fine first session and by the second session I was sub 49 and top 10 overall out of 120+ drivers.
Sim may be useful for learning a track but that isn’t its strong point. It’s nice but like you said, not particularily powerful a tool. Though it would be stupid to not sim a track you have nott been on to prepare.
To me, the power of sim lies in the fact that the tiny details that get lost in the noise of real life racing are much more accessible in sim. It’s more casual and playful and it’s ok to make mistakes and break things.
The folks who run the TKC karting rental series also run a bunch of sim races and have a series. They are also including a console racing game in one league this year. The leagues seem to be popular. I like the idea of a sim series associated with your race series. Gives an opportunity to punt the folks you race without costing either of you $ on repairs.
It’s a pity iracing didn’t use this opportunity to come back with a savage burn.
“Any time before the last driving input that preceded the spin.” - iRacing
Thank you for standing up for the oppressed race directors.
Hey Warren,
If you really want to appreciate a track, it would appear that cycle-karts are the cats meow.
Here’s a rather deliberate corkscrew at Laguna Seca. These are utterly charming, imho.
@speedcraft
Terence posted a thott on IG that I found interesting. I wonder what you and @tankyx think. I think you’d probably be an alien and Tanguy for sure is/was.
Terence has a substack account and that’s where the good stuff is, I just discovered. Really interesting stuff.
When I’m watching a driver, the amount of confidence I have in them is directly related to how much simmering ill intent I can sense bubbling away below the surface. I think it is the x-factor that we all look for, but rarely speak about, when describing what makes a driver special…
