With race one scheduled for May, the race season has definitely felt like something that is pretty distant. However, things are certainly feeling a little more distant with the announcement that all motorsport is to be postponed until further notice due to the Coronavirus. With a lockdown now firmly in place, the first race weekend at Brands Hatch in May has been cancelled, together with a track day booked in for April to get to grips with the Indy circuit. Not sure how long this will last but am definitely looking forward to when things can kick off again. To be honest, not that confident that things will get started again this year, but happy to be proven wrong!

With the current situation in mind, I thought it might be a bit of fun to get into a bit of sim racing. Having picked up an entry level Logitech G29 steering wheel a while ago for the playstation, I was pleasantly surprised to find out it was also compatible with my PC. Hoping to go for a more competitive and realistic environment compared to the public servers on Gran Turismo and Project Cars 2, I decided to give iRacing a chance since it was always the one that came out on top when it came to reviews.

Some impressions:

A more in depth format in iRacing makes for a more serious space when it comes to online racing. At first this comes with its price point. In comparison, it is no doubt more pricey than the standard options. With that in mind, that in itself probably has the effect of pushing most non-serious drivers who do not want to ‘commit’ to iRacing out.

Probably the most important part about iRacing is your iRating. A number that dictates who you are put together with races, I found it really important to try and maintain a higher level to help ensure I wasn’t put together in lower ‘splits’ that had more crash ready opponents. Both positive and negative, I’ve found it to be a time consuming exercise because it’s not really possible to be competitive and maintain a high iRating without pre-race practice.

So far, I’ve seen it as a way to keep entertained with cars during the lockdown, but there’s definitely a part of me that says it is in some way a form of practice for the real thing in the future. Although there is no way to compare it to the physics of a real world car, the principle of sim racing is the same - It’s a skill that needs to be practiced to be perfected, and I believe it is something that might be able to be transferred as a real life and practical application.From pedal and steering inputs to race craft, it’s a fairly difficult learning curve when you have such limited sense of the physics involved. It helps that the first car you can compete in while in the Rookie class is a MX-5!

With iRacing, I’ve decided to concentrate on using the sim as a way to experience as many racing situations as possible - how to make a successful and safe overtake, when to make a move or give way, dealing with pressure, etc. Although racing is a different and more intense beast, I hope that behind the wheel of a sim can at the very least replicate some of that and make this time in lockdown semi-productive!

Video below:

Some clean final lap action in the MX5 at Lime Rock. As well as chasing the leaders, I was also being followed very closely by another car - iRacing honestly does do a good job of getting the heart rate going!