An iRacing Coach’s notes on: Finding the Limit on Entry

Hey All,

Like usual, I’ve written a short article sharing my thoughts and experience on a given topic in sim racing. My goal with these articles ultimately is to help give people a bit more information about the hobby we all love, while also hopefully making for an interesting read.

If you don't know me, I'm Tom, and I've been working full-time for the last 18 months on a sim racing coaching business. My thoughts in this mini essay draw on the 700+ hours of coaching I’ve done in the past year. Just to say that the things I’m sharing in these articles aren't pulled from nowhere, but come from everything I’ve seen during the last 18 months coaching hundreds of drivers, of all ability levels.

Finding The Limit on Entry

There are so many things that could be said about finding the limit in motorsport, but I want to keep this article short, actionable, and simple. Actually, the focus of this article is specifically about simplifying your inputs on entry to make it far easier to identify the limit. On entry, we have 3 main inputs we can modify to change how the car reaches the limit, the throttle, brake and steering.

The main message I want to get across is that it is far easier to identify the limit when we are changing only one of these inputs at a time. For example, imagine a high speed kink, that doesn't require a brake, but does need a partial lift of the throttle. In these kind of corners, when do you lift, and when do you steer? For a significant portion of drivers, the answer is that they will do both at the same time, lifting off of the throttle as they add their initial steering angle. For some drivers, they might not even be sure the order in which they add their inputs. But the problem with this approach is you are changing two inputs simultaneously while trying to identify where the limit is, trying to find the magic combination of lift and steering to stumble across the limit. Instead, the way you initially bring the car to the limit should be by changing only one input at a time. For example progressively increasing the steering while at full throttle, finding the point at which you reach the limit of the steering, and only then lifting off of the throttle, enough to transfer weight to the front tires and tighten your path through the corner. In some corners, you will turn before you lift off of the throttle, in other corners you will lift off of the throttle (and potentially brake) before you start turning in, but there are very few, if any, situations where you want to do both at the same time.

In regular corners with straight line braking zones, this idea of changing one input at a time is obvious: you brake on the limit of grip with no steering, so you have found the limit before you start turning into the corner. But in connected corners, it isn't so obvious. But you can lock one of your inputs, say lock the steering at 20 degrees, and progressively creep onto the brake until you find the limit. Once you have found the limit, it is fine (and correct) to modify your inputs simultaneously to manage the car at the limit.

Hopefully this article helps some people out, if you want to give it a try, boot into any track with some high speed corners/connected corners that require steering before you begin braking, and see how it feels to find the limit only by modifying one input, hopefully you’ll find it more consistent to reach the limit, and easier to avoid stepping over the limit excessively. I appreciate the support on these articles, and it's always nice to hear people's thoughts and experiences in the comments :).

Cheers All
Tom
Noakesy Coaching