Like may sim racing games, you cannot just go out onto the track for the first time and expect to be fast - the game will hate you until you show it some respect. Taking it easy and learning the track is the way to go here.
For many people - myself included - the restriction of having the in-cockpit view as the only option can be quite frustrating at first. Personally, I have always used the bonnet view with many sim games, as it provides a much greater vision of the road ahead which just isn't there when you are sitting in the car. People with multi-monitor set-ups may find this less of an issue, but for the rest, expect it to take an hour or two to get the hang of car position in this view.
Around 10 laps in, and you will have the hang of the track, and this is where you can start to push a little more, and throw the car around. It is now time to find the limits of what the car is willing to take, particularly when it comes to hard-braking and cornering. This will no doubt result in a number of spins and visits to a number of walls around the track, but that is one joy of sim racing - you don't have to pay for the repair bill!
The Mazda MX5 in particular requires you to be apex-perfect, it typically understeers in high speed corners, and due to its low power, your lap times will be crucified by bad corner exits due to the fact you missed the corner apex (even by a small amount). While frustrating at first, this car will teach you how to consistently hit apexes, which in faster cars becomes even more crucial. In a slow car, missing the apex means you will probably suffer corner exit speed and may run a little wide of the exit of the turn - do it in a faster car, and you will almost certainly be a long way off the road, or in the wall.
This is where these types of games can become quite frustrating. As you push harder, you find that you keep making mistakes, and keep running off the road. Even when you do manage to keep it all together for a lap, sometimes it just isn't faster, even though you thought you did better, and you cannot always understand why.
When it comes to being fast, there is something to be said for being a 'smooth' driver. When I say smooth, I mean turning the car in a little more gently, not being forceful on the steering wheel, and being smooth on your clutch, brake and throttle inputs. When it comes to pedal inputs, remember to treat it like a real car, you can not just stand on the brake as hard as you can - a real car will just lock the brakes and send you sailing off the road, and iRacing is no different. Similarly, stamping on the throttle can cause wheel-spin, particularly in low speed corner exits, and even in a car like the MX5. Low power cars suffer worse than faster cars from a bad corner exit due to the car sliding around. This is certainly something that takes time and discipline to learn, but will be more than worth it in the long run, particularly when it comes to longer races where tyre wear becomes a real factor.
So, onto my actual on-track experience. The car and track physics felt more realistic than any other sim racing game I have played. I had better feel of the car, and felt like I could push and understand what the car was doing. Occasionally, the car would do something quite unexpected compared to what I would expect in real life, however this was for the most part a rare occurrence. As mentioned above, I struggled with the view for a short while, but soon got the hang of it and it began to feel very natural to me.
There were a few things I noticed in this game that made it stand above other sim racing games:
- You can feel the tires start to wear - the car begins to slide, and doesn't turn in as well as you complete more and more laps
- The bumps in the road can really upset the car, and bumpy race tracks create a whole new challenge
- I could feel the lock-up of the car under brakes, I wasn't just relying on the sound of the lock-up in order to know what was going on
- It wasn't too hard to control a bit of a slide - again smooth inputs help here - by feathering the throttle or applying some 'opposite lock' on the steering
As always, there were also a few things that I wasn't so impressed with:
- No matter how I played with the brake settings, the car would well and truly lock up with only about 70% brake applied - this means that I had to always press the brake pedal about 65% of the way down to obtain full brake pressure. When pushing, it is easy to push the pedal just a little bit further, resulting in a lock-up and a ruined lap (or car)
- As mentioned above, on the rare occasion the car would do something quite unexpected - however this may have just been my driving and lack of understanding
- Working in a full manual mode with no clutch assistance, the car would occasionally 'miss a gear', even though I pushed the clutch down at the time I changed. Again, this may have been me, but it seemed I had to slam the clutch to the floor to ensure I clean change, which feel a little unrealistic
This sums up part 2. Part 3 will look at my first race in the MX5 at Okayama Short. Thanks for reading!
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