Your First iRacing Races: What Actually Matters?
You've bought iRacing. You've picked a car, learned the circuit and done enough practice laps that you can reasonably expect to get around without becoming part of the scenery.
Now there's just one small problem.
You have to race other people.
And suddenly all those nice predictable practice laps feel considerably less reassuring.
Your first few races can feel enormous. There are licence points to think about, Safety Rating, iRating, other cars everywhere and a sporting code you've hopefully read rather than enthusiastically ticking the box and promising yourself you'll look at it later.
So what should you actually be concentrating on?
Probably less than you think.
Forget about being fast for a minute
Of course pace matters. It's racing.
But in your first races, being able to set one heroic lap time isn't particularly useful if the other eleven laps involve spins, missed braking points and apologetic messages afterwards.
Your first job is to learn how to race.
Can you drive predictably with another car nearby? Can you leave space? Can you adjust your braking when you're following someone? Can you recognise when a gap isn't really a gap?
Those skills are difficult to learn when you're circulating by yourself.
And you're not supposed to have mastered them before you start.
Finishing is useful
This sounds painfully obvious, but there is a lot to be learned from simply staying in the race.
You experience starts. Traffic. Faster drivers. Slower drivers. Being overtaken. Trying to overtake. Making a mistake and discovering that the race carries on afterwards.
If something goes wrong on lap three, resist the temptation to disappear immediately unless the car genuinely can't continue.
The remaining laps may teach you more than the first three did.
You are going to make mistakes
You will brake too late.
At some point you'll probably brake too early.
You'll misjudge a gap, miss an apex, get flustered because somebody is filling your mirrors or discover that the braking point you've been using perfectly happily in practice doesn't work quite so well when there are three cars in front of you.
Welcome to racing.
The useful question isn't “How do I avoid ever making a mistake?”
It's “What do I do after I've made one?”
If you've caused an incident, own it. If an apology is appropriate, give one. Work out what happened and try not to repeat it.
Then carry on racing.
Don't let the numbers take over
iRating and Safety Rating are useful. Licence progression matters because it opens more of iRacing to you.
But watching those numbers after every race can very quickly turn them into a scoreboard for whether you're any good.
They're not.
Especially at the beginning, they're going to move around while the system works out where you belong and while you work out what on earth you're doing.
Pay attention to them, certainly.
Just don't race for them.
Watch the people around you
One of the biggest differences between practice and racing is that the cars around you aren't following a script.
Some drivers will be cautious. Some aggressive. Some predictable. Some apparently powered entirely by optimism.
Start watching them.
Who brakes early? Who keeps trying to send the car into questionable gaps? Who leaves space? Who looks comfortable running side by side?
Learning to read another driver is part of racecraft, and you'll get better at it every time you race.
Give yourself a smaller target
You don't need to prove anything in your first race.
Try giving yourself one job instead.
Finish.
Or:
Make it through the opening lap cleanly.
Or:
Have one good wheel-to-wheel battle.
Or simply:
Make one better decision than you would have made last time.
That's enough.
Because your first races aren't an exam you need to pass before you're allowed to call yourself a sim racer.
They're where you start learning how to become one.
So when you've practised enough to control the car and you're sitting there wondering whether you should do another twenty laps before you dare click Register...
Maybe click Register.
There are some things you're only going to learn once there are other humans on the track.