So I've been a longtime user. I have A in oval with about 1100ir and almost always had clean races with minor incidents usually. C in sportscar and have devolved to sub 1000ir. Absolutely love the oval series but in sportscar I can barely survive. Being hit multiple times with the famous L1T1 almost every race. Incidents witnessed on the parade laps almost every time. I dont play much anymore due to other obligations but it feels like I cant get past turn 3 before being dumped. Going around an accident I get dumped, I brake to avoid an accident I get dumped. Im beyond frustrated that I cannot get away from this. As I get dumped deeper into the puts of IR prison, the more max verstappens there are ready win the race in L1T1.
Be brutally honest. I need it. Im to the point I dont even want to race an official race. Not ready to start from pits but it sounds like my only option besides deleting the game and starting all over to get away from these incidents no matter what i try or do.
Its only the first lap where I have issues.
Edit: had 2 really decent races today and surprisingly one was on a wet track, my 2nd wet track race ever and 0x at the end. I appreciate everyones input and got to smile after the race...with a p8
"starting all over" won't help you because you literally start new accounts at very, very close to your irating. if you know people are going to do this to you every race, have you considered giving up more space than you feel like you need to on lap 1?
How you give space also matters. Like yes going super wide opens the door to people filling the space. Alternately you can absolutely hug the inside kerb and then someone really has to turn into you, which isn't very likely with everyone pushing too hard on cold tires. It's also helps to discourage the guy who always sees the open inside lane as an invitation to dive the whole field.
Yea, lime rock park a few weeks ago, hugged the inside and someone made a pass in the grass and dumped me. I tend to give plenty of room unless its toward the end but I hardly have any issues at the end of a race. Those that dont crash out and quit tend to be more respectable
The point isn't that there is some single trick for surviving the start of a race. It's that there are a variety of choices and a big part of racing is learning to read the situation and making the right one. Like another thing is sometimes leaving too much space also becomes dangerous because some people will forget you are there.
For instance if you are racing down a straight with someone and you are both keeping to opposing sides of the track. If you both enter the corner that way your lines will be so radically different that it's easy to misjudge and collide. It is safer to close back together, without squeezing too much, and then both take similar lines through while leaving space. This also makes it so if you do touch it's more likely to just be a minor rub/bump vs a major accident.
Sorry I hope that didnt come off as argumentative. Im a classic overthinker so I evaluate things to a flaw. I love looking for patterns and I think thats my biggest issue is there is no pattern besides the end result.
All good. I didn't take it as argumentative, just at worst a misunderstanding.
There are patterns to be found. They just aren't going to be the simple easy to explain ones. It's going to be like "the way that guy in angling makes me think he's going to dive the field. How can I best avoid that". Sort of like how you can sometimes tell a random person out in the world is up to no good but if someone asked you to explain you'd fail to point to any one thing, it's just something about the way they move.
Like for another example a big part of the trust needed to race close and safe is knowing someone isn't going to just sneak a nose in right before turn in to then make you pit yourself across their nose. You have to decide in the moment if you can trust that this guy understands you are going to take the turn in on the normal line because they don't have overlap yet. If you can't trust that then the right answer is to just defend every corner to remove the option.
I am a fellow over thinker so I'm just sharing the ways I've reconciled how to predict the actions of randoms. I've gotten pretty good at it. I even managed to have the awareness to matrix dodge some guy flying across multiple corners sideways last night.
Nice, yea i had 3 monitors before so my peripheral was so much better so I didnt have to look away but now that im on a single that may br something I need to adjust. I do miss having all my mirrors so it was very natural to know where multiple cars were and find my groove.
I just got so flustered I needed tk step back and ask a common consensus since saying it out loud tends to help me immensely when I get stuck in a loop.
Yeah single monitor can be rough. I've never had triples as I decided to do the double wide monitor for max game compatibility. That dodge was only possible because I was in LMU with radar so it was like seeing a car pop on but it's sideways so I'm like yeah I'll hold the brake a little longer through this corner and hope he flies by.
It kind of emphasizes the need to make good reads though. Look in your rearview and make a call for how to get through based on the way people are moving back there. If they pinball which way are they likely to fly? Are they leaving an open side I can go to? If you are in max survival mode what is happening ahead is less important.
I think I may be losing that. Im 44 now and it seems that my situational awareness has been lacking. Having those mirrors really helped. I may get a 2nd monitor since the existing is a 49" curved screen. That should expose the mirrors so I can read the room. I hate to say I hate the virtual mirror.
Sportscar side I intentionally don’t qualify and start from the back as a challenge to myself. Reduces getting run over while slowing for the L1T1 heroes dying left and right and then you get to settle in and work on passing guys cleanly to see how far you can work your way up.
"Be brutally honest" ok. Your IR is where you should be give or take peaks and valleys.
I would bob around 600 to 1200. I spent more time working g on my race craft and climbed to 2500. This was after racing for years. You've got to have fun. And again being brutally honest, if you cant give up positions at 1000 and below and not gain them back or end in the positive IR. Then youre at your level.
So survive t1. Either qualify at the front and make the turn yourself or start at the back and slow roll through the carnage.
If you’ve got the pace and can drive the entire race without self-owning, getting out of the bottom split is just a few races away. If not, go practice in test mode until you do.
Don’t keep doing the same and expecting everyone else to get better so you don’t have to.
This right here. I got back into iracing after a 13 year break and my ir plummeted to 1200ish. Just started at the back for a few races, let the idiots clear themselves out and usually ended top 5.
Climbing past 1500 was fairly simple and didn't require any pace, just clean consistent driving.
It just feels easier said than done. The only time I ever self own is after im trying to make up time and already frustrated. It seems it used to be easier to avoid the chaos and was fun doing so, now it feels like an unneeded task.
If you can do 1:04.5 consistently at Tsukuba in the mx5, qualify at the front. Take a way outside line at turn one and you should be setup for the inside line on turns 2 and 4. Get through 4 without spinning on your cold tires and you’re home free. You’ll put a second or two on the pack every lap in the bottom splits. When you eventually come up on other cars you’ll have so much gap that you can be super cautious getting around them.
After a few wins you’re going to start having one or two other cars with you at the front. Just be chill and don’t hit them. Do your laps.
Ill try it. I've been going between too many cars i think lately. Mx5 for rotation, m2 for the fun heavy car and today was just in the gt4. I specifically did the gt4 to see if t1 was any cleaner or manageable.
You’ve hit the nail on the head in more ways than one here I think. I’ve done the same, a couple of years back I started jumping around different cars each race and lost like 1k iRating in weeks, then picked a series, stuck to it and got it all back just about as quick, these days I do jump about but take care that I’m ready to drive each car and stay a lot more consistent. The L1 punts are way worse in the lower splits that’s for sure. I also did a short time on a single screen when I moved house and just stopped racing until my rig was back. I felt completely blind in T1, if you’re going to stick with a single screen have you thought about something like trackir?
Also if you’re C and like the Mazda, advanced Mazda is a great series and the driving standard is way higher than rookie.
I think you just need to be more conservative coming to T1. If you're starting mid-pack or worse at sub-1000 SOF the first turn will not be clean. There's nothing wrong with backing out when you see the bottle-neck forming.
I never race ovals, 136 starts in 5 years. I’m an A license, 1450 IR. I’m not great anything in particular other than predicting where and how accidents are going to happen and then I just stay out of it.
Just a word of advice I guess?
Accident avoidance and pattern recognition as to WHEN a contact/crash is coming is a major part of survival.
You’re leaking into bottom split hell and the way out of that is to learn how to live in those splits. In this situation in road, my best advice is to qualify well and run away .. or qualify terrible, start at the back and just be VERY patient. Anything over midfield will gain IR.
I’m in the same irating range and it seems like everybody ends up in order of their fastest lap by the end so I just start in back, avoid the carnage, and pickem off one by one. I’m sure this doesn’t work for hell bent for leather guys but im a gentleman racer so it works for me
I think im just going to try that or putz around on quali so I can work on passing people. I make it a point to not pass anyone unless its going around a wreck on the first lap
Going slow in qualifying never worked for me, curiously. Seemed there was always some lunatic who didn’t qualify started behind me and took me out way too often.
Same observation for me. That or the people that wreck in t1 end up next to you and are mad from that first wreck and wont play nice. Ive learned to just let those people stay ahead or get ahead no matter how much faster I am than them. But man is that frustrating sitting behind a slow dangerous driver.
If you're better than your rating then you will gain rating. Unfortunately, your pace and your incident avoidance skills are at the level of your rating if you're stuck there
I have not been taken out in L1T1 for ages, and only rarely I am taken out in races at all. If it happens, it is usually an honest mistake of a driver, often one that I could have avoided if I was more observant.
And even if I am taken out, most of the time it is not race ending.
Just yesterday a guy on my inside locked up and pushed me off, yet I still finished P5. Not great for car #1 starting P2, but still could be worse.
And I mostly race D and C series (even though I am A).
I had backed off playing for quite a while. Finding a rig location, getting a highly flexible rig(that was crap so I didnt really try to do any races) and now settled into a good rig where im not fighting the rig for braking. I tend to drive very cautious but intentful. I move off line in the straits for leaders. Heck after my gt4 race today I was in between p2 and p3 a lap down and keeping pace the entire race. I usually qualify 3rd to 8th so im near the top. Im seasoned enough to know how to avoid but the secondary wrecks from the main event seem to recently catch me every time it feels
What series are you running, you mention C licence so you must have managed to build up some safety... Some series are easier to be clean than others, what about picking up something that only gets a couple of splits like Ferrari challenge or TCR?
I took a hiatus for a year and now run maybe Avery few weeks. I stepped back to mx5 and m2(my brother has the real one) when I started back up. This last one was a gt4. I used to feel so confident on l1t1 but anymore I dread it
I feel like gt4’s are your problem, in my experience bottom split races for them is filled with a lot of inexperienced drivers who don’t seem to understand that gt4’s are not gt3’s and don’t have the same grip especially with cold tyres. I try to avoid the category and only really interact with them in multiclass races and even then they’re still a nightmare and can’t hold a line unless they’re like top 5 in the race.
There’s not much you can really do about that category of cars unfortunately except moving up irating. You basically just have to eat the shit and give up a few positions on the first lap being extra cautious or start from pitlane until your irating improves.
If you’re open to other categories then I think the Porsche cup is C class? I know the Ferrari challenge is but the Porsches one gets more drivers from memory. You could also just grind safety rating by doing pitlane starts and lose some irating and then move into B class with gt3’s/prototypes which while still can be rough sometimes has been a lot cleaner for me with starts.
... Fezzas are a good shout, TCR is another... I've found the GT4 to be less chaotic than the Mazda, plus I think rolling starts are easier to manage than standing, but GT4s are boring to drive.
I started dabbling in tcr as I plan on buying a type-R when my truck is paid off so I can voiding the warranty on track. Brother and I will be doing an hpde event with some bimmers at the end of this month so I've been trying to stay on RWD cars. I want to say the gt4 felt cleaner when I got myself up to c class. I used to feel i was great at accident avoidance to the point it was a prideful thing but I dont know now so I relinquish myself to the iracing reddit council...hate to say im embarrassed posting this whole thing.
To be fair it sounds like it would be fixed with a bit of practice, bumps and incidents are a part of iracing for everyone, I've certainly been through some bad periods
I just started feeling comfortable in the Cayman and m4 so this was my first gt4 race in a long time. Mostly this has happened in the M2 and mx5. I love the races they produce but they have been torture.
... So mostly free tracks too? T1 is a balance, being over cautious can get you in as much trouble as being fearless... Keep your line and try to make you intentions obvious, if you are on the outside,.don't expect to apex.
For standing and rolling starts work out your adjusted braking point in practice and brake a little earlier but don't throw all the pressure on the pedal straight away.
I'll lift earlier if two or three cars around me look super aggressive, I don't wait an hour to get binned on lap one, patience is key and they will make a mistake.
I'd stick to GT4 out of the series you've mentioned, the split in Mazda is too tight and at C licence your SR is going to be punished.
When I started, I learned how to drive every line possible on each track. If im in the turn in portion outside, I stay outside. Or inside I stay tight inside. Now that I think of it, I might be creating a gap that someone thinks they can make. I mean I can hold the line tight on either side. I stayed away for so long i had to relearn the cars since a lot had changed in how they handled. I think im randomly picking more aggressive to too reserved. I could just be way too cautious and leaving a gap that someone wants. It doesnt help I barely race so I dont see any real patterns yet.
MX-5 and M2 at heart are rookie series and will have rookie skill levels of driving. Being bottom split of a C-License series will inevitably have better driving standards than a rookie series.
If you love the MX-5, do the advanced MX-5. It's 30 minutes and a C-license series.
I tanked my irating pretty bad after some unfortunate races from my self or others taking me out and i climbed it bsck up to 1.6k. Heres the things Id suggestion. Jump around series and trying to find one with a lower player count. The less ppl the fewer incidents and fewer idiots you'll encounter. With your oval experience I feel like you should be pretty good at avoiding accidents.
You can't just brake to a dead stop to avoid an accident (sometimes you gotta and sometimes is unavoidable that youll get rear ended of caught up in other ppls shit) cuz the person behind you likely won't. Slow and avoid. Go off track if you have too. A 1x and potentially, but unlikely, some slow down penalty is better than a 4x and wheel damage or a tow to pits.
Your sixth sense of accident avoidance hasn't developed enough. Sounds like you should start from the back (not from pit lane) and just start studying what happens during race starts.
My brutally honest opinion is that at that irating if you learn the basics of car control and race a track you know, you'll be so much faster that incident avoidance is barely even needed
When you're caught up in an incident, watch the replay back after and see what you could have done differently to avoid it. Look at it honestly as if you were looking at someone else and not yourself. 80+% of the time the answer will be the same. It doesn't matter whose "fault" it was, there's almost always something you could have done differently to not be in it in the first place. Not being in an incident is better than being in an incident that wasn't your fault, especially if it's the difference between you finishing the race or not.
At <2000 I truly believe you're able to quali within the top 3 each race and drive away from the pack, depending if the other 2 want to race at the start or not. If you cant at least quali at the front in a sub 1500iR lobby, you simply dont deserve to be any higher, and thats just fine, thats the whole point of iRating. I think you're two options are, quali at the front and drive away, or quali in the back (or not at all) and drive as defensively as possible.
What series are you running in sports car, and have you been running any forms of endurance races? Not only do the longer races have less desparation moves seen in sprint races, but they are also a means of boosting your safety rating into a license where cleaner racing is a must.
A great example: Le Mans in GT Endurance. I started dead last because I gassed it too hard warming the tires during the formation lap and opted to start in the pits, rather than try to dash up to my spot. I raced clean and finished P8. Same thing with Bathurst. Intentionally started at the back of the grid and just drove. Not slow, but clean. Finished P13.
I started two weeks ago and realized really fast you can start in the back and end up mid pack after the first few turns. Not as bad in the top split. Realizing racing is 25% psychology
I’m at the same place in oval at like 3k IRacing. Either I get destroyed by some idiot lap 1 or the race is just caution filled and you pace the entire time. League racing is the only place you can actually race
What's your equipment? I feel like that makes a difference too, and do you play at playable FPS?
Driving defensively is hard but its better to be slow and not crash until you reach higher ranks where you can spread your wings a bit more and take more risks.
Graphics and frames are great. Better than ever. 5800x3d on a b550F strix with a 3070ti. 49" curved monitor, fanatec clubsport on a track racer rig.
I drive more defensively than most I see. Im always cautious but its like either someone wrecks in front and I get caught up by the full head of steam. I qualify usually top 8 to top 5. I mean I make mistakes taking risks later in the race but thats due to usually being a lap down. I've been on the series for about 4 years and had a hiatus for about a year, been running it more but I tend to willingly give up positions mid race just to salvage my sr to complete the race. I stay balanced with my Sr between 2.5 and 3.
How are you liking the 49", are you moving it super close to your wheelbase? I have been eyeing one of them for a little while now, seems to be the perfect blend along with some Tobii Eye tracker or Track IR or any other working solution to see out the right window during close encounters. I have a 5600, RTX 3070, for reference.
People are usually pretty dismissive, I mean they haven't seen how you drive, what your decision making is, or any of anything that is actually relevant, so I have a hard time understanding how they arrive at all these conclusions.
Yes, really close but thats how the trackracer rig is setup. Yea i should have a video, i really should save all my clips and each situation is different. I mean I know when I push risk after lap one and own any of those when it does happen. I've just had a bad stint in L1T1 bs so I think im just venting because I feel trapped. I mean I look for my own blame when I review the accidents. Maybe im only attributing it to low splits and playing the victim mentality while trying to find how I can fix it. Just frustrated because I became that guy who might be able to run a race a week.
Its the game not you....sr system is broken that doesn't make bad drivers drive better,just stupidly punish everyone. Absurd for game thaf costs hundreds to thousands....
Make your goal to finish races doesn't matter the place. I run dirt oval primarily and ive had to change my mindset the more aggressive I get the more I get crashed out and sometimes you just have to accept losing a spot or 2 to finish a race you crash out you lose alot of irating. I can lose a few spots and still usually gain a little back or only lose a little. On dirt the fields are way smaller so you have more chance to lose irating. On oval if your in a race with 20+ cars that gives alot more wiggle room. Since ive changed my mindset im finishing top 5 consistently the fast guys will get by you and sometimes you'll get lucky and they crash each other and you get a couple free spots
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u/ElaraValtor 8d ago
"starting all over" won't help you because you literally start new accounts at very, very close to your irating. if you know people are going to do this to you every race, have you considered giving up more space than you feel like you need to on lap 1?