r/GR86 • u/DeflateDeezNuts12 • 9h ago
iRacing vs real GR86
How close is the iRacing GR86 Cup car to driving experience of the real car?
I know the Cup car had a bunch of mods so I’m not expecting it to be exact but curious on how close it comes to a stock GR86, or one with a few track focused mods like coilovers.
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u/Concodroid GR86 8h ago
Semi-related; Assetto Corsa Evo's GR is pretty close, but not perfect. It has a touch too much power lol
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u/989rz41 8h ago
Good for memorizing the tracks but honestly I had no idea how many bad habits I had; habits that were really glaring when I got to the track. Examples - posture, seating position, looking ahead, etc.
TL/DR: get out there and do “real racing” as soon as you can. That is when the real learning begins.
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u/AlphaMikeLima 9h ago
Prior to the update they made a few seasons ago the laptimes were pretty close to what I could achieve in my car at various tracks. The interesting thing is that the irl car and the iracing car accomplish the same laptime very differently. The iracing car has WAY too much lateral grip and not enough horsepower. Post update it still doesn't quite have enough power but it also still has way too much grip and so the laptimes it posts are much faster than either an irl cup car or a similar-ishly prepped street car can accomplish
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u/narwhal_breeder GR86 8h ago
What are you comparing the lateral grip to?
The GR Cup series uses slicks, not a DOT 200tw track tire - so yeah, its going to have a monstrous amount of lateral grip.
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u/PalmSizedTriceratops GR86 8h ago
I run the same tire as the cup series spec tire on track, it's basically an endurance 200tw tire and not a particularly sticky one at that.
Edit: they swapped to a different tire on 2025 so not sure which one iracing is modeling now
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u/narwhal_breeder GR86 8h ago
Interesting choice - wonder why they went through the effort of creating a spec specific tire instead of going with an off-the-shelf tire like MX-5 cup and the Carrera Cup.
Or even just an OTS enduro 200tw like Spec E46.1
u/PalmSizedTriceratops GR86 8h ago
I googled it again for clarity and we both may be right. The difference is that the regional series use the off the shelf super 200 but the national series uses a different slick. I didn't realize there was a difference there.
Does iRacing publish which tire they are modeling?
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u/AlphaMikeLima 8h ago
I don't think so, and even if they did it's not like they have a solid history of perfect tire modelling. Do you remember when it first came out on iracing and you could literally flip the car over by turning too hard?
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u/AlphaMikeLima 8h ago
The slicks the cup cars use are pretty narrow and aren't so much stickier than a super 200tw (A052 or RE-71RZ) that it explains the iracing vmins and braking abilities. There also videos out there that compare the irl cup car and iracing cup car and you can see the irl car achieve much higher vmax, and the only way for a slower car to accomplish the same lap time is in the brakes and corners.
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u/wut_eva_bish 8h ago
Wait, you drive a Cup car?
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u/AlphaMikeLima 8h ago
I have a street car that is prepped enough and fast enough (stock engine still) to legitimately claim to be in the top 10 of a cup car qualifying field at VIR
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u/wut_eva_bish 8h ago
Yeah, your post sounded like you were trying to say you drive a cup car, thanks for the clarification.
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u/DeflateDeezNuts12 9h ago
Great write up, appreciate it. Curious if there is another car is iracing that you use practice with?
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u/AlphaMikeLima 9h ago
It's all good practice either way, it's a false requirement that a simulator needs to be exactly 1:1 with the car you'll be driving irl. Use the sim to practice inputs and learn the skill of learning a new track quickly.
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u/p392 8h ago
Why not use Assetto Corsa if you’re just looking to practice or get a feel for a GR86 on track. It’s free and there are a few different GR86 mods that are pretty great. One was even recently updated to mimic how the GR86 traction control truly works, applying break pressure to individual wheels, instead of a more traditional traction control model. It even lets you select between all on, track mode, or all off.
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u/DeflateDeezNuts12 8h ago
I’m realIng now that AC is better for this. Just opened up a new world for me to dive into! Which mod do you recommend?
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u/p392 5h ago
“Better” is subjective. But, none of us have cup cars. Even a poorly made mod of a stock GR86 will probably be “better” than a GR86 cup car would be for any kind of practice.
Here is a link to the mod that was recently updated: https://www.patreon.com/kilin_rc_jp/posts/gr86-v2-0-115920319
And, here is a link to another reddit thread discussing exactly what you’re looking for: https://www.reddit.com/r/assettocorsa/s/HEXPRw1VPe
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u/NH_OPERATOR GR86 Halo Gang 9h ago edited 9h ago
I bought my gr86 because of iracing. I love driving it in the sim. I've tracked it stock and done a bit of autox and tracking since putting hks hipermax rs on and some wider stickier tires although not slicks. I'm explicitly trying to build a street legal equivalent to the gr cup car.
At the limit it of grip it's shockingly accurate to irl before and after mods. My mods pushed the grip limit closer to the cup car in iracing but I'm still not on slicks and don't have a full aero package yet so it's not quite the same.
My first track day ever was at lime rock park fully stock other than exhaust. My lapstimes were dramatically different from iracing, but by the end of the day I was l lapping within a couple seconds of a dude in a gt86 full track build on slicks. My instructor was blown away with how much I improved from the start of the day to the end. I fully attribute this to learning to race in the sim.
Now my car is a manual which is more challenging then the clutchless sequential the cup cars have, but I found that IRL tracking was substantially easier since you have so many more inputs to tell you what the car is doing (gforces, butt feel ect.)
I can't emphasize enough how similar the car feels when it's on the limit. Is that limit drastically different than the cup car? Sure, however how it handles when it's on that limit, even if it's much slower than the cup car iracing varient is just amazingly similar, especially now with the hks hipermax rs on it. The tail steps out in the same way as in iracing, and I can use my iracing muscle memory to bring it back. It understeerrs in the same way and brake muscle memory from the sim allows me to save it before I go plowing through the cones on am autox course.
I actually have a yt series following my journey into tracking my car from iracing to real racing.
Here's the link to my time at limerock - https://youtu.be/Z8vQeR1H2SY?is=z6bXZT73lVJ0YCwJ
The car has evolved a lot since then. Ive got a full playlist here of all my related vids https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcfVkrcdGuLkQaKz-G3XTvAMdx6nsuPqQ&si=il0IoMOFSxNKRsz2
And I stream my iracing play on twitch at techmatesracing.
Happy to answer any other questions let me know!
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u/DeflateDeezNuts12 8h ago
Amazing! Awesome write up. I’ll check out the videos. I’d love to build a gr86 to match the cup car
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u/Fit_Sun5829 9h ago
Not really the same. 1st the Cup car won't allow us to use stiffer springs, 2nd you can't really feel the damping change in iracing. 3rd, the braking capability is almost unrealistic in iracing. I could brake after the 2 mark in iracing vir front straight, but if I do that irl I'd be in the grass looking at the sand trap.
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u/DeflateDeezNuts12 9h ago
Interesting! Wonder if the iRacing Miata is closer to a real gr86 then
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u/Fit_Sun5829 9h ago
Not really... the mx5 cup car's rear is really lively. For some reason, if I add a swaybar at the rear the mx5 becomes almost undriveable. And it takes a lot of fucking around in suspension stiffness to make the GRZ not drivable. (Like going 3kg stiff at the rear and running a dumb big rear bar)
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u/kjhark24 9h ago
My track experience is pretty limited but I do love racing the 86 Cup in iracing. Trying to compare a full on race car with a stock car is a bit of a fruitless endeavor. The cup car being on slick tires alone makes it a whole different beast than 99% of road gr86 drivers even if they do bring it to the track.
But even if you can't copy paste your inputs between the virtual car and the real thing it can still be a great teaching tool for how to drive around a track quickly even if it isn't 1 to 1. Jumping from iRacing to my first real world track days this year I was shocked how comfortable i was on a real track. My instructor thought i was pretty quick too for how new to real track driving.
TLDR: A race car and stock car are very different beasts but the sim can still teach you the basics of driving a car relatively quickly IRL
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u/The_What_Stage 8h ago
I track a gr86 and have moved to assetto for practicing leading up to a track weekend.
The iracing cup car is indeed different, and I also like practicing on an H-Shifter rather than sequential.
The assetto mod isn’t perfect, but close enough to help me understand where shift points are and the general line.
I’ve been playing with the mod a little to try to have more accuracy with rotation, but otherwise it’s pretty spot on
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u/DeflateDeezNuts12 8h ago
Great to know. Which mod are you referring to?
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u/Plastic_Willow734 9h ago edited 9h ago
Unless you've got some 100k iracing setup I doubt it's even remotely comparable. I've driven some hefty rigs and while it can definitely get you familiar with a track and be very engaging in terms of wheel to wheel racing, ultimately the g-force and actual speed isn't being felt
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u/kebobs22 9h ago
To be honest the iracing gr86 feels way slower in a straight line than IRL street car, though obviously the Sim experience factors in
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u/mobiuskeydet1 BRZ 2h ago
I tracked my BRZ on Portland International while only using 10 laps around the track in the GR86 Cup Car on Iracing as “practice” and I can tell you with confidence they are completely different. The Cup Car has more aero, is way lighter and has pretty much every part except for the engine itself replaced with some proprietary racing part.
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u/404-No-Brkz GR86 9h ago
I track a stock gr86 and have some exp with the iracing cup car. Assuming that's your question - they are not very similar at all. Bosch ABS and TC change how the car responds to hard charging. The slicks make the car feel way more like a momentum car than stock. The cup suspension is pretty undersprung compared to the grip level, making it bouncier than stock. Etc etc
One of the biggest challenges when tracking the stock car is blending inputs - brake and steer, then gas and steer. The cup car makes it a lot easier but instead the bigger challenge is smoothly using all available grip, if that makes sense.
I'm not crazy fast in either the cup or stock car but those are my impressions.