If you don’t have the perfect sim racing line, you won’t be able to travel through a corner at the maximum speed and you’ll be leaving lots of time on the table. In this video, I’m going to show you some tips as to how you can improve your racing line no matter what racing sim software you’re using, so you can become faster and more consistent when racing.
Hi, I’m Scott Mansell, head coach from Driver 61, where we teach you to better your technique win races so you can fulfil your driving ambitions.
Transcript
Some common mistakes with racing line is that the driver will turn into the corner too early. They could miss the apex, or probably the most common mistake is that they try to get out of the corner too quickly, end up running out of road and then having to lift on the way out of the corner.
This affects their speed all the way down the following straight. This is some footage that I’ve been sent from one of our subscribers. So thank you very much.
Actually, his sim racing the lines are absolutely fantastic. I’m using this video as a good example to show you how we should be driving the car through a corner and how we can actually carry more speed.
I won’t explain too much about the racing line. We all understand that you need to go from the outside of the corner to the apex and to the exit. The problem that we have is that most drivers aren’t giving themselves enough time or enough information to understand and how they should be driving that car through the corner.
The biggest problem for sim racers is that a driver won’t be looking far enough ahead of themselves when they’re on track. This means that the information is coming at them too quickly and too late.
Therefore, they can’t judge how to turn the car through the corner. Here we are coming through the first chicane. First of all, we need to make sure that we’re using our peripheral vision initially for braking reference. So you can see here that we’ve got the marker boards on the outside of the circuit. We’ve also got the change in colour on the barrier.
These are all points a sim racer can use to find a braking point. Here at Monza, that’s probably too late, especially in this big, heavy car.
However, you know, there’s there’s other markers back up the road that you can be using. But in terms of racing line, what we need is to have some attention on the outside of the track so that we are running the car up to the white line and actually using all of the track on the outside.
Now, the important thing here is that we are actually, in fact, looking down at the apex of the corner. We do want to have some kind of peripheral attention on the outside of the corner. As you can see in this example, the driver is using every inch of track by just allowing the car to go on this entry kerb on the outside, which is painted green.
If you do have that available in a corner, you should try and use it. These entry kerbs, when they’re tarmac are painted with a little bit of sand and then they actually have a little bit more grip than the tarmac itself. It’s a double bonus.
We want to be looking down at the apex here and then bringing our vision to the outside of the circuit and then back to the apex. So what we’re trying to do is triangulate our position as we’re coming down into the corner so we can understand how much speed we’re carrying in and whether the car is positioned properly and visualizing line up the line through the corner.
We still have our vision down at the apex as we are moving the car forward. And then as we’re coming in here, as it comes into view, we should have our vision down here and at the next apex.
Now, what’s interesting here is we’re still turning, right? Well, we’ve got our vision over to the left-hand side. And this is what some sim racing drivers can struggle with.
Obviously, if they’re looking down into the left here, that they sometimes want to just drive down to the apex. That means that you’re kind of straight-lining across the chicane in a situation like this. It means that you won’t be using all of the road on the right to open up the corner into the left.
Once you’ve got the car into the second apex here, we need to be looking around the corner as much as we possibly can, because we need to understand when we can get back on the accelerator pedal and drive this car out of the chicane.
It’s critically important that you follow the outside of the track here so that you understand the position of the car. And we’re allowing the car now to run to the outside of the kerb just here.
You can see that it is a good step forward. And when you do this, you’ll find the racing line will come naturally and your sim racing will be faster. You may have noticed in this video so far, I haven’t actually spoken to much about this specific point where we turn and where we apex, where we exit.
Because if you have your vision in the right place and it’s a step in front of where the car is, in that moment, you’ll be giving yourself the information at the right point. And the racing line for most sim racers just comes naturally.
We’re trying to make the arc through the corner as open as we possibly can, because that means that we can carry more speed. The wider the arc, the more speed we can carry through that corner.
I find with the hundreds of drivers that I’ve coached, that they understand this, you know, the brain understands that we need to find the easiest way through the corner. So if we just give them the right information from the track, then we figure it out and we actually carry more speed through a corner on the perfect racing line.
The other thing that you need to consider when you’re thinking about the racing line is how the weight moves around the car. In this footage, if we’re coming through the corner here and the car was actually a little bit wider around here, and then on the outside of the corner, we have to add in some more staring angle. So we’re pushing the car over the limit only in the last part of the corner.
You’d need to reconsider your racing line. What we want to do is distribute what we’re asking from the car through the whole corner, which then means that you’re carrying the maximum speed all the way through that.
Now you understand about the racing line, check out this short playlist I’ve put together just for you to really amplify your learning and make you faster in sim racing.