Modern racecars is bad for your driving skill !

Alright, first of all sorry for a bit of a clickbait title, it is not really true, you'll certainly speed up your mind, reflexes, will become more precise. However, I think there really is true side to such statement. Let me explain.

So you drive modern most recent race cars, probably mostly newest S397 cars. You probably do it a lot and put great efforts to get closer to those guys in competitions. Maybe some of you would also enjoy different kinds of cars, maybe something like 90s street car, or maybe some oldie historic racecar, but when you try it - you don't enjoy it. Or do you ? If you do, then you probably are driving it frequently and keeping in touch with it.

What happens ? You probably get so custom to speed, grip levels, braking distances and cornering speeds, it just becomes so normal to you. You switch to car that is less modern, or has lesser performance - suddenly it has no grip at all, brakes are terrible, it can't stop, you can't put the power down - keep spinning out, in turns car wouldn't hold the line you expect - it is disaster, it is super unenjoyable and undrivable !

There is of course a chance that car is configured to handle worse than it should, it is possible. But even more possible and even more likely is that ten minutes you gave for a drive wasn't enough for you to get used to different extremes, and tell your mind new different limits of different car. Because of driving one or a few types of cars that aren't that different you might lost flexibility of perception and anticipation, which maybe is ultimate sense to have.

The same could be applied to driving in the rain. Suddenly limits of tires reduces extremely, and for a driver it is necessary to get into new way of thinking, differently perceiving and anticipating car.

Everyone should frequently drive something else to stay flexible, also frequenlty drive in the rain, do not always drive only with fully rubbered surface settings most grippy car you can choose. Same goes to guys who never drives modern cars, I do it way too little, I wish I have driven modern race cars a little more often to get more familiar with crazy performance they have.

Little storry: once I was working with 1954, I drove them continuously for few weeks maybe, then suddenly jumped into Radical it seemed so pitched up, I pressed ctrl+x to disable acceleration, and then learned that it was actually true speed. It took some time to adjust to new "normal" speeds and to quicker responses.

The older cars and street cars requires gentle and respectful approach, less of a rush while at the same time asking more work to do from a driver with steering and pedals and gears, but not that much requiring jet fighter pilot reactions and perfect precision. Technically if you are over 40 you most likely still could be competitive with those.

Do you agree ? Do you disagree ? Subscribe, leave a like, comment.

 

I love all types of cars (or almost) and I would like S397 to make extremely diverse official cars (more).

Regarding modern cars of type GTE and GT3 (S397), personally I have NEVER driven them with driving aids.

I hate this and I hate the principle.
I think it makes them more interesting to drive.

 

+1 from a
100% pure historical contents user!

And gpl lover

 

I agree (with the post - not the title!). And unfortunately I think it takes longer to adapt when speeding up - which is bad news for you and me

 

Yes. But on the other hand if we get from lower performance car to more modern high-end race car, we instantly underdrive it, which is very good as a way to begin driving new car. No crashing, no loosing of control - great immersion and joy, crashing is perhaps worst thing to immersion, and the only guy who seems to enjoy it (and only crashing) is Brad from discord.

Many of those who mostly drives just super high performance modern cars will very likely immediately overdrive lesser performance car in simracing. Correct approach would be to start driving very slowly, almost at street legal speeds, and increasing speed every lap gradually. That would be great experience for many, and a lot of failures avoided and more joy achieved, car understood better.

Perhaps having too little time and too much "cars to try" gets in the way of doing anything else, but pushing tires to the limit on the very first lap on the very first try of a car.

Here is awesome interview that includes Rudolf Uhlenhaut talking about how he tested Mercedes W25, to find out what improvements are needed. P.S. he used to be as fast as Fangio in some tests when developing F1 in 50s.

59:30

 

What the hell? 7 minutes of what sounds like a newbie drummer practicing then more noises that finally resolve into an engine running very lumpily at about 12 minutes? Eventually it gets to some great engine sounds before finally getting to the interview at 59 minutes!

Ah, now I spot the "59:30" in your post.

 

Yes agreed.
My approach and suggestion is that you master the skills of controlling the car in a slower car with no aero. When grip and baking distances are lower/longer you have more time to practice modulating throttle or brakes, more time to contemplate what you could have done better. The skippy is one ideal example where you might even need to add throttle in a braking zone to keep the rear stable (and if adding AI you might come across my name! just sayin).
Then once you acquire these skills you can start to speed them up and have less and less time in each phase of braking-turn in-apex-acceleration as you choose faster cars.

A slightly related point is that modern carbon brakes make braking zones so short that passing moves under brakes are so much trickier. An early or later braking point might be 5m apart vs 15m apart. Maybe now it's the tyre as the weak point vs the brakes and tyre state is the difference. I will ask my favourite late braker Daniel Ricciardo.

Driving a track in the wet is another perfect practise scenario, again more time and slow motion as poor line punishes you.

Assists just dull the experience and feedback more. They also make for a poorer online racing experience as the little micro errors of the raw experience allow for passing opportunities whereas assists mean more risk is required.

 

Porsche Cup is a pretty modern car but still extremely difficult to master.

Actually, "helps" don't prevent the difficulty to master any car, fact is in a race, all pilots have the same kind of car with same helps, the goal is still to beat other pilots in a fair manner.

That being said I also agree on some points but the most important of all is that driving really different cars with very different performance is a MUST if you want to get better with ANY car. By driving very different cars, you develop your "sensitive" driving, I mean your skills to drive with your senses and not your memory. Always driving the same car (and most of the time on the same track) is only enhancing your driving memory for that car on that track, very little "sensitive" driving will progress if any.

The "sensitive" driving is at least as important as the memory one, if not more actually. Just develop it, as soon as you can. You can think of sensitive driving as your core skills and your memory driving as your knowledge of a car on a track to use your core skills. Both are important, of course.

Some people talk about "Reactive vs Predictive driving"....exactly the same idea.

 

Mostly agree with the OP comments. Not a fan of driver assists and mostly I just run either open wheel or Group C cars from the mid 60's through late 90's vintage, and focus on developing setups rather than multiplayer. Honing the setup for the best lap times and following up with even tire heating & wear, once I get to match decent lap times I'll move onto a different car or track.

My best results in the real world were better in wet than dry conditions, but I tend to prefer simracing in the dry. Wet setups in simracing just don't behave the way I'm used to, its still got a ways to go, kind of like development is still about 10 years behind dry behavior.

 

Honestly I haven't listened those parts before, now after reading you it is very funny to listed to it -42:30 for W125 sound, best sound ever of an engine IMO. I greatly enjoy listening to Uhlenhaut, everything he says simply makes great sense and is incredibly clear as for example talking that those cars had to be driven under the limit (tell that for a simracer who would only overdrive everything all the time). No wonder - a great engineer and great driver too. I wish there were more interviews with him, also I wish he would have written a book.

Thats very interesting to read. I think wet surfaces are great piece of puzzle to understand tires better. If tire doesn't work remotely right in the simulated wet track, then something could be wrong not only with its wet specific parameters, but with its general parameters too. Of course here in rF2 there aren't sever things simulated such as puddles hydroplaning, high speed hydroplaning, viscous hydroplaning - aka slippery when tarmac is rubbered smooth. Also as much as I know in the wet higher pressures gives better grip because water gets removed better, and low pressures on the contrary traps water under, and that shooks rF2 with its allways lowest pressures thing. I think rF2 tires still could be modeled to feel alright in the wet, at least not to be behaving totally wrong. What wet setup things don't work for you in a sims ?

 

The rf2 approach has always been different: effect must be simulated somehow, tweaks and canned effect in place of simulated one, are no go. Until they will be able to simulate one or more effect to reflect real behaviour, there will always be shortcomings. If things will change, I expect it to be step by step one effect at a time.

 

I agree with the OP. I've just started racing the Barber car and will run a season with just the Barber cars to relearn how to drive.

 

Describing the differences (and pardon the Surface Tension Properties, they are critical):
When the track is just moist/slightly damp its pretty good. That's when there is not quite enough water to make the high surface tension of water become effective.

Once the track goes to full damp typically where you'll begin getting an excess that allows even the slightest flow it changes. That's also where the surface tension o water reaches its limits of cohesion. That's where the siping action of the treaded Intermediates or even Full Rains come into play.

Under full wet, toe changes, spring and damper setting changes seem pretty muted. As tires drift between sliding and gripping reduced spring rates and damper stiffness add quite a bit more reserve by giving more feedback time to the driver to respond and maintain a better feel to keep the tires more in the grip range when driving on the edge. Its a subtle difference but very noticable.

Its not that they are hard to drive in the wet, its just that it doesn't respond in the same way to tuning changes. Not that dry is perfect, but at least in the dry responses to tuning (aside from inflation) are pretty close. No other Sim I've tried comes close on that.

Its certainly not a complaint either. Adding the complexity of the processing required to simulate siping action alone will consume a lot of Instruction Cycles, not to mention the added dimension of complexity to generating tire models, so I'm quite satisfied with what we already have.

 

I agree, but have in mind that they are completely different in terms of handling. I will improve your driving skills, I have no doubt about it.
I learned it racing historic cars since rFactor1 and a lot this year racing in an online championship with the Lola t70 mod in rFactor 2.. I think if you achieve completing an hour race in historic Spa without critical mistakes (with big rear wing and medium front wing tunned) is a big step forward for improving handling skills, it's really a challenge give it a try !.

Respecting modern racing cars (like F1, GTs, Prototypes..) you need quick turning and fast reflexes too, but you don't think so much about the grip like racing with historic ones.

Right now I am searching for good street car mod, I haven't tried them since rF1, any suggestions are welcome.

Best regards

 

Yes, the Skippy cars are a great tool for learning how to drive in rF2. And you can't try and compensate with setup changes. The ISI BT20 is still my favorite sim racer of all time. The ISI F3 cars are a good way to learn about momentum and line. Everything else from the 1950s and the 1960s is fun too.

 

Same applies to different sims, often playing different sims can give you more ideas about their physics differences and gain some different driving styles that you may never thought it before.

 

I find with the older cars I tend to saw the steering wheel back and forth. Works with soft suspensions like the GPL 2.0 mod or the 1967 Le Mans Endurance mod, but if you take those swinging motions to a modern car, you are risking life and limb.

 

Yes with old plywood tires you live in a semi permanent slipping condition. This make constant correction with the wheel a necessity

 

Yeah, it's a very different driving technique. Even though I had (and have) a lot to learn driving modern racers, real world 'civilian' driving still carried some of the skill set in.

The historics are (to me) a different beast entirely.

 

I sure got better personally when i went from modern race cars to older beasts. Started out after having done no sim racing for a long time in AC when it came out in EA. When i tested the little older cars i couldnt drive them. Was impossible. However i also didnt do really good with the modern cars. Later on when i got rF2 and AMS i started driving the older cars and it was hard as hell at first but when i started getting the hang of it and then going back to modern cars it all just clicked. After that i could drive anything. I think that swampy, soft, powerful, turbo lag, sliding added a skill tolerance that wasnt there before. It was a very narrow skill and if i the car did something that went outside of that tolerance then i crashed. Since you need to do so many inputs to keep older cars on track i gave myself a much larger skill tolerance and could drive anything within that "skill space".