Practice makes perfect? PH Blog
One Academy race left, time for an afternoon of sim training
That question can't be fully answered until the final Academy race at Silverstone National this weekend. Obviously now I've mentioned prior simulator training it will be a day of bad luck and mistakes. But from the improvements through a couple of hours at Strakka and gut feeling, I'm a little more confident. Famous last words...
The benefits to Strakka's sim for the team are multitudinous. Drivers can use it to learn circuits and cars before a race weekend but also impart information from real driving to make the sim more accurate. Data from cars in build can be used to gauge an accurate lap times for when the car is complete and give drivers a preview of the finished product. It can also be set to different times of day and with different 'shells' on top so that it can be quickly switched from a 60-minute formula experience to a four-hour Le Mans night stint in a prototype. And all the time every input is monitored and relayed to a race engineer to pick out exactly what is good and what can be improved. There was rather a lot of the latter during my afternoon...
David Whiffin is Strakka's Formula Renault 2.0 Chief Engineer and assessed my performance. Because the computer stores so many car platforms it will never be entirely accurate of every race vehicle. So the Caterham had two pedals, paddles and a pit lane speed limiter button. Oh, and I was sat in an old F3000 tub.
But as an experience the Strakka sim is, unsurprisingly, spot on. Its Caterham is a R300 so there was a noticeable speed difference to the Academy car but the dynamics are right there. The propensity to understeer, the super quick transition to oversteer and the improved turn in with trailed brakes are just as real life. Oversteer is a bizarre experience as there's no feeling of yaw but it's easy enough to get used to.
The feedback from David and the telemetry on the first batch of laps is fascinating. Between a few spins, some time in the gravel and a roll going onto the Wellington straight (really!), there were some positives. Copse was good, for example. I was braking hard enough. And, er, there must have been something...
But a different line through Becketts and Brooklands made a huge improvement. In the second stint my best time was 1.2 seconds faster on a 63-second lap. David was really keen to stress that I should only be on the accelerator when absolutely sure it wouldn't be lifted. Sounds obvious but I was often too greedy and then had to back off, compromising speed down Silverstone's long straights. I never quite got Luffield right so it will be interesting to see what happens at the weekend.
To use the sim with a race engineer and all the telemetry costs £150 an hour, which initially seems a lot compared to a test or track day. But you could spend all day by yourself pounding the circuit doing the wrong thing or getting caught in traffic. The simulator will give you uninterrupted laps with data and expert advice on how to improve. Considered like that it's far better value. The proof will be in the racing of course. Bring on Saturday!
[Big thanks to Strakka Racing. More info on the simulator here]
The clip about the simulator in the program was too short (and the young female presenter too self-deprecating) but there was a lot of racing, including some great close action from an Australian saloon car series.
Gassing Station | General Gassing | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff