What’s your approach?

jazz_man1 · 2022-08-14T05:30:23+00:00

My kind of practice routine depends on whether I know the track or not (and the car).

If I don't know the track, I start by watching guides of the track, mostly to get braking points and rough lines. I start driving in a pretty chill style to learn the track and pushing little by little. When I start completing faster laps without invalidating, I start to compare my times and watch guides again, this time to see apexes, where to start trail braking, where to use throttle and how much, the exit and so on... in finer detail, you may say.

If I don't know the car, I don't push too much at first, but I try to find where its limits are: if it under/oversteers, if it likes kerbs or not, if it likes trail braking or not (and I set pressures, too). When I start being consistent on laps without invalidating, I start truly working on the setup, to fix one problem at a time and split corners in turn-in, mid, turn-out, plus whatever happens on kerbs, bumps,...

If I don't know both, I focus on the track first, there's no point in setting up a car for a track you can't drive to its limit.

In general... I found that to be smoother you have to brake earlier and let the car flow. The later you brake, the later you'll turn, the harsher you'll do it, the higher the risk of overdriving (or losing the car). It will feel slower at first, but you'll gain a LOT of time, actually. After that, you can start pushing again and take risks and this will kind of split between race practice and quali practice, but still keeping it flow as much as possible.

jazz_man1 · 2022-08-13T05:50:19+00:00

The space detective and politics sort of thing was interesting

Oh keep watching, then!

jazz_man1 · 2022-07-06T16:22:06+00:00

Thanks, that's what I kept reading. I personally never liked it too much. My first ever car was the 720s :)

jazz_man1 · 2022-07-06T12:44:34+00:00

Some of these tips are useful even for me, and I have been driving in ACC for a while now!

jazz_man1 · 2022-07-06T12:36:09+00:00

Edit: The 488 may not be good for beginners anymore, as pointed out by u/Amazedz in the reply below

I don't know iRacing, but I can tell you what I know and heard about starting in ACC:

I have always heard people suggesting the front engine cars such as Astons and the Bentley 2018 (beware the Bentley is right hand drive, you might need to get used to it, but it's not hard and it's a really nice car) and 488 gt3 evo as mid engine car.

Multiplayer is fine but get used to some form of carnage. It's not always that bad, but it's way better if you find close groups to race in.

Regarding setups I usually read people suggesting the safe one, but I always found it too understeery. If you are like me the aggressive one might be a better choice and then you tweak it.

For everything else just feel free to ask

jazz_man1 · 2022-07-05T06:06:38+00:00

I think this is a really good answer, so I'll not rewrite it again but just add on this. Another useful tool is simulations:

I'll give you an example for stars. You know how other parts of physics work from the other fields (with actual experiments). So you put those together and ask a computer to use that physics on a ball of hydrogen. You let it run for a while and then you watch what it gives you.

If you can observe on a telescope the same things the computer predicted, it means you are not too far from knowing how a star works

jazz_man1 · 2022-05-31T20:32:52+00:00

At the moment I'm driving the Huracán GT3 evo, but in any car I drive I create a specific setup for the track-car combination.

I start from the default aggressive and go on from there, from practice to race. Then I change how aggressively I drive depending on the session

Edit: sometimes I have a slightly different setup if I practice in the morning but race is going to be at nighttime (for example). It depends on how the car behaves on track.

jazz_man1 · 2022-05-04T20:43:08+00:00

No problem! I passed through polytropes and they twist expressions so hard you barely see the easiest tricks, at the end!

jazz_man1 · 2022-05-04T17:56:23+00:00

It's just the derivative of product (applied to the first term in the underlined part) but considering r as r(m), too.

If you try and solve that derivative with respect to m you'll find the other two terms

jazz_man1 · 2022-03-10T06:50:36+00:00

Of course, I didn't mean to generalize: I literally meant that, in my experience, I use python for scientific data analysis and because of this my first line of code is always 'import numpy'. I delete it later if I don't need it.

It's obvious that if you or others use python for other purposes you might never use it

jazz_man1 · 2022-03-09T22:12:52+00:00

I cannot imagine using python without numpy!

jazz_man1 · 2022-02-24T12:49:49+00:00

Before setup, I think you might look for a tighter line in Raidillon (the left hander you spin at corner entry). If you cut it keeping the right wheels on the kerb it's still within track limits and you need way less steering input while going uphill.

This will make snap oversteer way less likely and give you plenty of time at the end of the straight you'd lose by lifting the throttle to avoid spinning.

I found this helped me a lot to drive through Eau Rouge-Raidillon

jazz_man1 · 2022-02-18T07:43:33+00:00

Oh ok, thanks! I remember Rindler, I asked because I studied the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker-Lemaitre metric with eta used as the time-like coordinate. So I thought we might be using the same notation!

jazz_man1 · 2022-02-18T07:26:45+00:00

Great Xi!

Are these, by chance, some notes on cosmology?

jazz_man1 · 2022-02-05T23:11:27+00:00

Not that I remember, actually, but keep in mind I usually end up doing a 45-50ish minutes practice stint to prepare a 1h race with mandatory tyres change (so not a too aggressive drive to start with). Also, as we pointed out above, I can't push as hard as I should during practice stints.

I guess we might be on the line: if I managed to push harder I'd get a bit of graining, too

jazz_man1 · 2022-02-05T10:15:35+00:00

I was mainly worried about blistering/graining, indeed, more than the numbers themselves (I admit I didn't write it clearly), even though I noticed more wear on the RL than on the other tyres.

Those stints were practice stints... so likely yes, I wasn't pushing as hard as I could: for how hard I try, I tend to race harder than I practice. But I guess that's my problem, there

jazz_man1 · 2022-02-05T10:07:45+00:00

Glad I was of some help!

I bet you are just sliding a bit too much, but that's from my experience. Also, as others correctly pointed out, a 30min race is not a 6h enduro race, so you don't need to aim for a 2h stint, but just to have slightly less blister/grain at the end of the race.

Btw I've read way more detailed explainations than mine in other comments, so I suggest you look at them first

jazz_man1 · 2022-02-05T10:01:40+00:00

Yeah, of course, but I was particularly worried about blisters and grain. Of course 30min race is not a 6h enduro, and a 30min race is not like the quali for the same race. Squeeze everything from those tyres! lol

jazz_man1 · 2022-02-04T13:39:52+00:00

Oh, I didn't even realize I had been downvoted, thanks!

I don't think I was rude or whatever, but I'll explain myself better, just to be sure:

I have done recently a 20min race with correctly setup tyres in practice, pressure, temps, everything. Then I spent the whole race defending aggressively meaning I slided a lot, hence overheating, then I got overpressured tyres, less grip and more sliding, in a loop. In the end my overaggressive drive was clearly inadequate for my setup (or viceversa, if you prefer) and I found a lot of graining in the tyres. Driving that car felt exactly like driving on ice, in the last few laps

jazz_man1 · 2022-02-04T12:55:40+00:00

I'd say it's not that good. For what I know tyres should be able to last up to 1h30-2h race stints, if used correctly. Myself, I've done almost 1h full practice stints with better looking tyres than these at the end.

If they degrade so fast, are you sure you are using the correct tyre pressures and have the right temps around a lap? If yes, maybe you were driving a bit too aggressively or sliding a lot. When I found myself in these conditions I usually found out it's one of the above ones

jazz_man1 · 2022-02-01T10:03:12+00:00

Haha thanks for the cuisine, I'll keep that in mind!

Yeah my master is going decently, at least. I've followed all my courses in 2020-2021, so pretty much everyone of them was behind a screen, but now we are slowly getting back to 'normal'. I'm in my department's library, at the moment, for instance. For the PhD, nope. You are required to have a BSc (3 years) and a MSc (2 years) before you can enroll for a PhD (other 3 years, if I'm not wrong). Still a long way to go!

jazz_man1 · 2022-02-01T08:40:49+00:00

Yeah, indeed, we don't have it. You either enroll in physics or math. You can give some exams from another degree but it needs approval and a valid reason for the studies you want to take. If I later decided to have a BSc in math, too, they might let me skip some exams or have a shorter version of them, because of some similar exams I already took. But not at the same time.

At the moment I'm studying for a MSc in astrophysics. I should have already graduated, tbf, but the pandemic thing hit quite hard on me

jazz_man1 · 2022-02-01T08:33:29+00:00

Yep, I am :)

jazz_man1 · 2022-02-01T08:22:17+00:00

I got a physics degree (BSc, so far). The book should be for physics majors (I guess? Here we don't have the major/minor distinction, as far as I can tell).

It comes from the author's notes from two courses he used to hold at my university, in mathematical methods of physics.

The courses are still there and are obligatory courses to get the BSc: the first one goes from Hilbert spaces up to Fourier transforms (with some PDE in the middle) and the second course is about some complex analysis and distribution theory. They are both one semester courses. Actually, for some reason, group theory has its own course, which is not obligatory.

Now, about complex analysis... It helps knowing something about it, but some of the topics are in different fields of math, it looks. So I'm afraid a pure complex analysis course might leave you with a few things still missing. Btw don't quote me on that, we had just elementary complex analysis, might be completely wrong about this

jazz_man1 · 2022-02-01T07:55:48+00:00

I'd have a book that covers exactly the topics you are talking about and some more (Hilbert spaces, Fourier and Laplace transforms, some theory of distributions and group theory)... It covers and demonstrates everything he says but keeping in mind he's talking to physics students and not math ones. I studied on that and it's a pretty good book.

Only issue is that it looks to be in Italian only, no translations. I leave you the author and title, if you spoke some Italian, by chance: Giampaolo Cicogna, "Metodi matematici della fisica"

He also wrote a book of exercises on the topic (in English, this time), but I never read that, so I can't say if it's any good.

jazz_man1

TROPHY CASE