Day 58: July 21st, 2013

Consider this the calm before the storm, if you will.

I've taken a bit of a break from iRacing after feeling a bit of burnout handling the Miata. It’s not a tough car, but it’s not fun trying to squeak the seconds of time I need out of it. The Skip Barber Formula 2000’s rather fun to drive, but without friends to compete against like I have in Forza and other console racing games, I need something to be on the line before I get the urge to jump in and race. In this case, that would be a championship for 2013 season 3.

Yeah, I’m aiming high. It’s not going to happen, but it’ll be fun to try.

I should be practicing more with the Formula 2000, but I don’t feel so bad about my laziness, as an update next week will change the tire model for the car. It might not have thrown me off any, but it’s comforting to know I wasn't comfortable with an outdated tire model.

I did some practice, though. Here’s the video I shot of my second Skippy test session at the easiest Watkins Glen configuration:

Practice and laziness talk aside, here’s how the next Skip Barber season will break down:

1. July 30th: Summit Point, 18 laps
2. August 6th: Road America, 10 laps
3. August 13th: Suzuka, 10 laps
4. August 20th: Watkins Glen, 12 laps
5. August 27th: Okayama, 14 laps
6. September 3rd: Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, 15 laps
7. September 10th: Laguna Seca, 15 laps
8. September 17th: Mosport, 16 laps
9. September 24th: Road Atlanta, 15 laps
10. October 1st: Lime Rock, 26 laps
11. October 8th: Sebring, 10 laps
12. October 15th: Interlagos, 15 laps

I've italicized Suzuka and Okayama because these fall on weeks where I’ll be taking vacations in order to travel to GenCon and PAX Prime, respectively. Those weeks might be without blogs or much in the way of coverage, as a result, but I’m determined to run races on both weeks nevertheless.

If you enjoy watching the videos I post, I will have race recaps for each week, and I plan to have a test session or practice video for each track as well, time and focus permitting. In addition, I’m looking into the possibility of following another driver around as their spotter for a race each week. My intention is to showcase a higher level of racing or something uniquely different than the struggles I’m going through, since there’s a crapload of variety in iRacing.

Finally, one more point I wanted to address that has been a recurring comment:

“Why aren't you letting off the gas when you shift up?”

It’s a completely fair quirk to note, since in reality, this is a terrible practice. In sim racing, however, there’s not a tremendous detriment to keeping the throttle buried, especially since I’m using an automatic clutch. I've practiced with lifting during the shift and staying on the gas, and it makes no noticeable difference in my lap times. With that in mind, the choice is between awful-sounding shifts and putting my throttle pedal through what feels like uncomfortable wear. For now, I prefer the awful sound.

I said very early on that I wasn't comfortable using a clutch pedal with flappy paddle shifters, but maybe that should change. Perhaps I’m not jumping into the rough bits of sim racing hard enough right now. Perhaps more of this battle and experiment should involve learning through suffering.

Musing aside, business picks up next week, as I look to begin my campaign for a divisional title in the Skip Barber Race Series. It should be interesting, if not a little bit humiliating.

A word on shifting the Skip Barber F2000. There's actually a few ways to do it:

• The Sissy Way: You can use the autoclutch provided by iRacing but have to accept that you will never be so manly that you can grow hair on your eyeballs.
• The Realistic Way: In reality, the steering column in the Skippy separates the clutch from the brake and throttle and so to be truly "realistic" the way to shift is to heel-and-toe. It is physically not possible (or at least tremendously difficult) to left foot brake in the Skippy. This is not uncommon in such small race cars. Jim Clark added a second brake pedal on the left of the steering column to one of his cars back in the 60s just to make left foot braking possible.
• The Fast Way: Pretty much every car in iRacing will happily shift without using the clutch at all so long as you are able to manipulate the throttle with sufficient grace. In fact, even if you are using the clutch, some amount of good throttle work goes a long way, which is why heel-and-toe exists at all. This isn't necessarily to try and exactly rev match the two gears you want to mesh, simply unloading the transmission by removing the input of significant engine torque is usually enough. That sounds more complicated that it actually is. All it really requires is that you lift momentarily when you change up and blip the throttle when you change down. You don't even need to lift in any of the GT cars (McLaren M4-12C, Ford GT, Corvette) since they all come with an automatic throttle cut that does it for you on every up-shift. This is the reason that the Skippy will shift up without the clutch when you're on the rev limit, since banging into the redline has the effect of significantly reducing load through the transmission. That's not really recommended though since you're out of the engine's power band when you're redlining. Lifting for up and blipping for down is not a particularly difficult skill to learn (especially compared to the full heel-and-toe) and it can make you faster for a couple of reasons. The first is shared with the realistic approach and it is that you can always shift faster than the automated system. It's like that to try and migrate you away from the assists. The second is that (in my opinion anyway) left foot braking is faster than right. You're doing this already but I think it helps to hammer home the fact that having one foot on the brake and one on the throttle at all times gives you much finer car control than you would have otherwise, especially in cars without a limited slip differential like the Skippy which have a tedency to break free at the rear when you're off the throttle. Clutchless shifting like that can reduce transmission lifetime somewhat but iRacing doesn't model transmission damage* and there're no mechanics back in the garage to piss off.

You should have fun in the Skippy championship. It's usually very well populated. Pretty much every race goes official and usually with several splits. The physics update that got applied to the Skippy in the build yesterday is unique to the Skippy and Lotus 49 and should bump up participation even further. I hope you're ready for some close racing :)

* You can blow up the engine with an incorrect shift, but you can't damage the transmission with a bad shift.

(btw, I've got Fanatec pedals too and they (touch wood) work just as well as they did the day they came out of the box despite what must be tens of thousands of blips and a lot of general use.)