Sim Racing Vs Real Life Racing - Race Driver Comparsion

So how is everyone holding up during the self isolation/lock down?

These are testing times for all of us, our health, economy, businesses, family…..everything!

We are always adamant about adapting to changes both personally, in our business and in our race team. Our personal lives have changed dramatically which we have adapted to (plenty of snacks at home and a fresh Netflix subscription) , My business Radical Mechanical has gone through some big changes to stay open as an essential service, and Cody McKay Motorsports has now invested in a Racing Simulator to keep our reflexes up whilst carrying out some major modifications and maintenance on our Aussie Racing Car in preparation for the next race… or Zombie apocalypse, who knows!

I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with SIM racing. My first SIM wasn’t much to look at, I built it out a lounge chair and a wooden sawhorse! A few years ago, I decided it was time to upgrade, and created a “rig” with a built in tv, a seat out of an old car and the latest Logitech steering wheel. With this new rig built I had a chance to spend a couple of years practicing my skills to help bring cost down in the team - by racing on the simulator rather than hitting the track and all of the costs that come with it. While SIM racing certainly did help in some ways - I quickly came to notice the faults of sim racing compared to the real world. Here’s my thoughts on the peaks and pitfalls of SIM racing:

Rick Kelly jokingly posted on Twitter his current sim setup, whilst funny it is where most people start, and don’t laugh it works!

First thing is feel. One thing a race driver realise on is the feel from their car to themselves to determine what it is doing. Taking your feelings from the steering wheel, pedals and generally your behind you can feel a car pitch and roll, oversteer and understeer, lock brakes etc to know how to control the car before your drive off track, with most common simulators the only feeling you get is through the force feedback provided through your wheel, it does help in replicating some feeling but definitely not all. This is also relevant when it comes to simple things like gear changes. When changing gears its all reliant on feel, you can feel the touch point on the clutch, the engagement of the selectors, the clunk through your body to make your mind register a gear change. With a simulator it is hard if not impossible to replicate due to the amount of cars you can race all being different and having their own traits.

Next lets talk about the racing. Now the option is there to race against the computer but most people want to have a realistic experience so choose to race online with racers all around the world. When someone decides that they want to go racing in real life they have to pass a certain amount of test to ensure that they are not only capable but can also race safely. Fail the test and its no track time for you, pass and you follow strict grading to be signed off to allow you to compete in bigger series. With sim racing, if you own a gaming console or a pc, have bought the required software then you are eligible to put your V8 supercar on the grid at Mount Panorama, what does this mean? Turn one carnage, big accidents, races ruined and a lot of people smashing the reset button to do it all again. Some simulators do this better than others, example Iracing has a strict ruling system that will grade your licence and disqualify you for to many incidents where as Forza, Gran Turismo, Project cars are free for all, survive the turn one carnage and there is a high chance you’ll win the race.

But we cant talk about the faults without also talking about the benefits as well!

Now lets talk benefits.

The big one - A Sim is cheap practice. For our team to take a car out for a practice day we look at a minimum costing of at least $1000. Now that minimum can sky rocket depending on what we are testing, but general rule of thumb if we factor in old tyres, tank of fuel, travel, track fees, staffing we are around that figure, pretty much just to do happy laps. With a sim I can select the most expensive cars in the world with the biggest staff required to run them, select a track wherever around the world and be racing and testing in less than a minute, all for the price of $0.00. This became extremely helpful when we paired up with http://www.virtualracingaustralia.com.au/ in preparation for the Newcastle 500 street circuit race, Being a street circuit it is only available to us for 3 days of the year at a high entry fee cost to go racing. Shaun at Virtual Racing Aus custom built the circuit in his pc to plug into his simulator so I could do lap after lap of the circuit in preparation. I must of done at least 600 laps virtually before suiting up for race weekend, which in turn helped immensely in getting me up to speed.

If Ferrari made simulators, this would be it, full motion for the best experience.

Second - Availability and accessibility. At any time of the day or night I can push a button, sit in the seat and be racing in less than 5 minutes. The race car could take a week of prep to just go out for a test day, and hey on the sim you don’t even have to be wearing pants to play, although if your streaming I would highly recommend pants. Being so available and accessible means that anyone can race anyone from around the world in the comfort of their own home. This has morphed into another category of racing on its own, with Supercars and Formula one hosting dedicated E-series racing championships that are sanctioned by the FIA, and even some e-racers making more money that high end racing drivers! Now personally the racing is no where near as entertaining, but during these isolation/lock down times ill take all I can get.

So in conclusion - whilst sim racing can be a valuable tool it does have its limitations, depending on your hardware setup such as pedals, wheel, if the simulator moves or not will reflect on your experience with sim racing.

I’ve played a lot of simulators from the best of the best to the cheap and cheerful and have determined that you can get about 50-80% accurate depending on your hardware and how much you spend, but regardless of your hardware you still have as much chance of winning with a wheel in your lounge room on a wooden saw horse than the guy that put down enough for a small deposit of a Sydney house for his new equipment.

Its not much, but it fits in our apartment, packs away easily and does the job, race seat not featured as it was being made.

Cody Mckay Motorsport Setup

Wheel: Logitech G29 with H pattern Shifter

Monitor: LG Tv (donated)

Stand: Next Level Racing Wheel Stand (can be folded away, handy for an apartment like ours)

Seat: Racing seat found on Gumtree, Rails from SAAS, Seat mount built in fab shop

Pc: Asus b250f Motherboard, Nvidea GTX1050Ti GPU, Intel i5 processor, 16gb Ram (we found this pc in bad shape on Facebook Marketplace, pulled it a part and cleaned it up and it runs games at over 80 FPS quit easily, all on max settings and all for less that $500)

All these items were sourced by either thinking out side the box, making them ourselfs, buying on sale etc to keep the cost down as much as possible. Adding everything up we calculate that this setup cost us no more that $2000 and does the job quite well.

You’ll see us using Iracing lately for racing and practice, make sure to join us for our online racing!

-Cody