Hey there,
2023 season has ended and we are approaching season 2024. @ScarDuck14 has already opened a new thread regarding the new season.
See you there!
Buckle up, @TotosHeadphones and don't you dare ghost on this community at the end of the summer break now that you got me cooking and stitching these silly screenshots on paint.net, ok? Do we have ourselves a deal? If you disband from this flock again, I'll make it my life's mission to track your family down and introduce all of your offspring to this incredibly cheap and not-at-all time-consuming hobby of Magic The Gathering.
You've been warned 🫶
Here's the telemetry comparison for my recorded laps at Zandvoort. It's an outdated model of the track, prior to the F1 revamp and reprofile it got – but the rescan is already baking on iRacing's oven and will be released sometime this year already.
You can have this track guide to base yourself and get a general feel for the track. Please note that there are chapters in the video, don't go about wasting your time watching it from nil!
The side-by-side comparison of the most important braking events. Red is for my weekend's lap with the DD wheel and LC pedals, and Blue is for my Logitech G923 lap from May. The laptimes were respectively 1:55.590 and 1:56.614 so -1.024s. You'll notice how hard it is to modulate the brake pressure on these potentiometer pedals. I'm not a good driver by any means and there are a bazillion Logitech G29/G923 users that will still smoke me out of the water with their base kit, but it's all about one's journey, isn't it?
As a quick recap, potentiometers don't give a damn for how hard you press the pedal, just for how much you make it move. Load cells on the other hand will measure how hard you're pressing them, regardless of how much movement you act on the pedal.
The mind and body connection is way more fluid and intuitive when you base it on force. When not looking at my foot, I'll be way more consistent applying say 40kgf to a break pedal instead of making it move around 2cm. That's the gist of it.
The forum will most likely miniaturize the image, so right click on it and open on a new tab. Or download it from the attached files.
I asked you about MoTec because if you had it I'd just share my telemetry files with you so that you could analyze them as you please. The rendering above is from a free service, Garage61, that I strongly recommend. The link will probably lead you nowhere unless you have an account on their website, but I'm pretty sure my telemetry is public so anyone can access them. It's iRacing exclusive, but there are alternatives for ACC. Pinging @Monzstar83 as well as I know he digs a little data.
For my routine, it helps immensely that iRacing is quite generous with their data and we've got third-party services like this one, where I can get the average qualifying lap, fastest lap, and race pace/average race lap for the many performance brackets there are.
By performance brackets I mean iRating. iRacing has two trackers for every individual driver:
In the website above as you can see, we can select a cup, a week (every Monday iRacing opens a new week, with a pre-assigned track for every category), and then find those lap times based on the IR.
You can easily google bell curves for IR distribution across the whole player base, but generally speaking an IR of 2k is considered the big divider. Max Verstappen has a ridiculous preposterous IR of 9347 on his main account plus an IR of 8308 on his fater Jos' account – yeah, Max uses both haha
Just to give you an idea:
That's utterly ridiculous and just goes to show how much of a generational alien Max is. He dominates motorsport everywhere he goes. Don't tell Nico I said that 🫢
Anyway, I use that service to get a few benchmarks, and note them down on this pretty app, Notion. It's a multiplataform note taking and collab tool. Mine looks like this:
Below that I have a track map with corner numbers and names, as well as a track guide with my personal notes for:
G#: gear number at the apex
BM: Braking marker, my reference to establish my braking point. Oh how I wish these would always coincide with the distance boards at the side of the track 😂
BP: Braking pressure and technique
CE: Notes on corner entry
CX: Notes on corner exit
I've converted two of my track notes to illustrate. Here (Brands Hatch with the GR86) and here (Jerez with the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup). It's on Google Drive. Looks time consuming and it was at first, but Notion is sleek and I've got a template that will quickly generate all the relevant fields 🦾
It usually takes anywhere between 5-8h for me to get competitive on a new track and car combo. I could obviously set for less and jump in after 2-3h with no racing line and such, but my ego would snap at me if I'm no good to at least fight for a top 5 finish haha
Those personal notes pay dividends though. When getting back to a track I've already competed in, in 15 minutes of track time I'm back up to speed and can rapidly test my personal best again.
Races are basically hourly, 24/7. But it's tough to squeeze that preparation in on a busy week, so I don't always find the time to compete.
My favorite classes for far are the GR86 cup, the GT4/LMP3 multiclass, and the Porsche Cup with the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup car – similar to the GT3 R but with no electronic aids 💞. There are many, many series with all sorts of cars, including open-wheelers, but driving standards for the lower IR splits are horrendous so I keep a wide berth from them – even though the FF1600, the Dallara F3 and the F4 cars are all delightful to drive.
@ScarDuck14 wrote:
@mariohomohyou are a super geek
@ScarDuck14 honestly @mariohomoh technical posts are a thing of beauty 😍
@TotosHeadphones many congratulations. Following from what Mario said, I made the switch from pots to LC pedals a while back - honestly they are game changing. The consistency you can achieve is incredible under braking.
I did do a bit of research on LG LC mods for my then g923, and there wasn’t much out there but having a quick look now I see MVH (based in UK) have a LC mod (https://mvhstudios.co.uk/products/mvh-load-cell-for-logitech). I highly recommend that company, I bought their wheel rims and they were good quality and customer service was fantastic. I know they put a lot of effort into testing their products and don’t ship junk like others out there.
3DRap also a good company, bought some mods off them. IIRC they’re based out of Italy.
One of my favourite races ever.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtBiLCa8vcs&t=602s
@mariohomoh been using LC since early 21. I have a Playseat challenge, and I originally used thick zip ties to secure the pedals, and this worked great. Since then I’ve got the LDS mod to angle the pedals: https://www.lowdownshifter.com/pedalbaseanglesystem.html. It works well, but am finding a bit of roll flex when braking as I’m using my “rig” on a thick carpet.
I’m currently designing a wooden frame the whole rig will be attached to so 1) I can raise the pedal platform even higher so I can achieve formula style seating 2) main seat parts will be anchored to the wooden frame for extra rigidity to help minimise the pedal roll flex on my carpet 3) wooden frame will be modular or foldable still so I can put it away if needed
@TotosHeadphonesThe schedule is a major constraint indeed. It had been a month or two since my last race due to not being able or willing to dedicate my free time to work out a new track.
iRacing has a good AI system in place and they've officially announced a sort of career mode in the works. That one will probably look like what we had in Project Cars 2. I can't recommend iRacing if online official races doesn't appeal to you, it's not cheap, but AI racing has got me going in between online races and that career feature could be fun.
And how was your MO with those short clips?! I remember doing some low quality highlights back in F1 2020 I think but that wasn't as easy as I needed it to be, timewise.
In unrelated news, Moza just announced a bundle compatible with Xbox. No word yet on a playstation offering, and even that may prove tricky as the security chip that enables hardware compatibility usually sits in the wheel base for the Sony ecosystem, but fingers crossed for proper inexpensive (?!) console DD competition 🤞🏼
@mariohomoh wrote:Looks like Jerez has found a way to fix their track limits situation
Wow - that is radical. The further out you go the higher it gets. No way to straddle that kerb either.
Think drivers need to starting wearing gum shields for that track. Gunna shatter some teeth
@mariohomoh wrote:
@Monzstar83 wrote:No way to straddle that kerb either.
Not with that attitude 🙊🥳
😂
Lando !!!!! On realistic pole !!! 😁
Simply the best (Max) Better than all the rest (Lando). 🤘🏻😁
@ScarDuck14What about the gloves? 🤭
Damn the rain…. Damn Lando for not coming in early. And damn is this the most rain effected season ever? It’s got to be
Only intermediate wet weather tyres exist?
George Russell:
@TotosHeadphonesI laughed so damn hard when that radio pop-up showed up 🤣
Also this was fun:
https://twitter.com/McLarenF1/status/1695773003613602115?s=20
He does say some stupid things…. Think back to him being outraged at Bottas 😂. Georgie boy keep your mouth shut😂
Butttt Mercedes need to sack their strategist. I’ve said it time and time again. They always react too late. Hate being nice about Red Bull but can never fault them when it comes to in race strategy,
