SimHQ.com - Motorsports Zone - Feature: How to Succeed in Racing (without really trying)

Like the golfer who discovers all he ever really needed to swing like Tiger Woods was the same driver Tiger Woods uses. Pow! Right on the sweet spot.

Golf shops all over the world rely on this simple concept to sell millions of dollars of equipment to frustrated but technically lousy golfers. Want to be like Tiger? Buy his clubs and you will be. Would you like a Tiger Tee to go with? Only $2.50.

"Doh!" That’s the premise, the short-cut method to success. In the golf example it’s called buying your way to glory. In my auto sim racing example, it’s called read and you shall succeed.

In both cases there is very little buy-in from the participant in terms of work. Nothing too demanding, no hundreds of hours of practice and play time invested. Just glory and happy motoring.

I remember when I first installed Grand Prix Legends (GPL). At the time I was still racing with a Saitek X-45 joystick. I got into a Lotus 49, just like my hero, Jimmy Clark. I was at Spa, just like he was. I raced against Jimmy, and Graham Hill and other simulated legends. Neat, I was competing with the best.

And they blew my wheels, and my socks, clean off. Before I knew it, they were coming up hard in the rear view mirrors, to lap me one more time.

“What the heck is this?” I remember thinking at the time, “This silly sim is supposed to faithfully simulating the skills of the drivers who were the best in the world in their outrageously over-powered, difficult to control machines, and I can’t complete with them after 10 whole minutes behind the wheel, or more precisely, joystick?”

I knew that there must be something wrong with that sim. It couldn’t be my lack of talent.

Or could it?

If I could magically transport myself back in time to 1967, to Spa, or Silverstone, or Monte Carlo, and sit in the real car, see the real drivers turn real laps, would I assume I could go out there and be as good as they were? Or would I be scared to death, lucky if I could even negotiate one lap and walk away in one piece, thanking the gods of racing for my good fortune all the way?

Would I be uncertain of anything, trying to compare my years of driving in a 1965 Rambler American to a racing car like the Lotus 49?

I knew the truth in that imagined view of reality, but somehow it didn’t translate over into GPL. Wasn’t there something wrong with a simulation in which the finest Grand Prix drivers in the world were actually better than me, with all of my limited time, experience, and sucky skills? And a pretty darn good joystick too.

Driving against a faithfully simulated Jimmy Clark would have to be tough, wouldn’t it? If you could beat him after a day or so, what would it represent? Anything remotely simulating real life?

"Very upsetting!" I don’t know. Maybe it’s because the whole thing was a computer simulation, but I really thought I could do this. Be good, be fast. Without really trying.

Fast forward to more recent days and rFactor on my PC. My 1:07.06 Hot Lap at Toban Short, a distant memory, was about to be erased, eclipsed by, what, 6 seconds on the first go-round? At least, maybe a few hundredths better. Away I went. I had everything needed to bring that track to it’s knees.

Sitting there in front of my computer, in my shorts and raggedy t-shirt, with my TrackIR hat, the headphones over the top, my MOMO steering wheel in my grasp and actual pedals at my feet, I was ready. I started the simulation, opened the track and I was sitting behind the wheel of my Coffeemaker Special Porsche GT3. I loaded Chunx setup and as I listened to the engine, I gave the throttle a blip. “Blip”, another one of those technical racing words.

But oh boy, it sounded good! Things were going be different now that I had knowledge.

Today, I was going to fly.

Fly I did. I pulled out of the pits, onto the track and accelerated like a man possessed and with magic in his pocket. In an instant I was in fourth gear, pedal to the metal, charging up the first hill and Turn 1 right.

I flew so fast…

I flew right off the track, mowed through a grassy field and impacted into a wall. Just that quickly my Hot Lap was over. I didn’t even register a time. No seven seconds, no tenths, hundredths or thousandths. Nothing but severe frontal impact, a crushed hood and a dismembered bumper which flew off and over the top of the car.

"Any of you boys seen a bumper around here?" A real driver would have required medics and an air ambulance.

What happened?

I scowled at the monitor. Something in that game had screwed me up. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I had conspiracy in mind. No other explanation would do in my present way of thinking. It couldn’t have anything to do with my driving, of that I was sure.

I worked the steering wheel back and forth. That was probably it, the wheel just wasn’t responding the way it should have to my input. If it had, I would have been all the way around the track by now with a new Personal Best in hand.

Stupid wheel, I’d have to check the calibration. Maybe the Force Feedback wasn’t Forceful enough for Toban Short. Maybe it was the pedals, out of calibration.

In truth, there could have been a lot of things wrong with the game, or the hardware I was using, or my settings, or my chair or the room temperature that day, or the fact I wasn’t wearing socks. A lot of things could have accounted for my dismal performance. Such as the fact that my neighbor was outside washing his car. And I explored every single one of them as I reached for an explanation of what had gone wrong.

I would find the problem, fix it really quickly, and turn that Hot Lap I was sure I could do.

Instead, the bad things kept on happening.

The next time out I managed to make it past Turn 1, only to wipe out on Turn 3. Start again. Zoom, right off the track at the beginning of the first hill. I hit exactly the same spot on the wall on the other side of the grassy field as the first time. The front bumper ended up in the same spot as the first time. At least I was running consistently. Chunx had said consistency was important and I needed every positive sign I could find.

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