Virtual F1 Grand Prix- Leclerc vs Albon

That race was entertaining, did'nt think Leclerc would hang on to him with the hard tires. The kid has skills

 

Well, maybe I´m an outdated dinosaur but I don´t read anything at all in virtual racing. Lando Norris beat all the "real" indycar guys at the virtual Indy 500, I doubt that it would happen in the real one. A far more experienced Fernando Alonso, with one of the best cars and real seat time had a hard time just to keep up with them (I´m talking about his first try with Andretti, let´s forget the second one).

Also they´re using "commercial" simulators, that even are not on par with the simulators the teams use. At Formula 1 they use something that is no a lot more than a videogame.

 

The official F1 game has absolutely ZERO to do with being a simulator whatsoever. It's about as realistic as a mario kart game. iRacing comes a LOT closer. Of course the real thing is another thing entirely. Certain simulators are getting better and better simulating an actual racing line, dirty air, marbles, weather changes and puddles + line drying and so on...but it's not at real world level (yet).

Tyre models are some of the hardest to get right as the real thing is closely safe guarded. However, certain sims such as iRacing and Assetto Corsa Competizione do a pretty damn good job.

The hardware used these days is (or rather, can be) pretty damn realistic. Real replica's of your real indycar wheel for example can be made. And I do mean exact replica. A direct drive motor dialed in properly will give near as makes no difference the same feedback. Some pedals are so good they give incredible feedback, and up to 200KG of pedal force. They do simulate what's important to real driving, muscle memory...hell with some you even get the sensation between the brakepads touching the disc.

Serious simulators such as iRacing have ALL their tracks laser scanned. Every mm of track is accurate put in and you can feel the variations. Hell, you can even tell the different tarmac you're driving on. Iracing and some others also use manufacturer data to give an as accurately possible simulation.


The one thing sim racing can never replicate is the ''hero factor''. Entering a corner over the limit and throwing it into the wall at 200mph has no consequences apart from not finishing. In real life....you do still dice with death, or, at least, serious injury.

Of course, F1 HAS to use the codemasters game (I refuse to call it a sim, despite the developers laughingly saying it is), because of licensing presumably. There's a reason why NO f1 driver uses it for anything remotely serious. Lando even uninstalled it on a live stream the other day as it's so awful. It may look pretty and do the blue/yellow flags and safety car thing...but it's dogshit. But people new to F1 E racing haven't a clue why the codemasters game is terrible and why sims such as iracing is so much better.

FWIW, the sim used by F1 teams in their simulator is/was a modified version (not commercial) of rFactor. I've no idea if they upgraded to rFactor 2. Most drivers at home use iRacing, and I've seen Kimi, charles and a few others use Assetto Corsa. Kimi never in any form of hybrid cars...always V10 or V8 lol.

Charles Leclerc used Assetto Corsa and the wonderful aftermarket Formula 2 mod from Race Sim Studio's to learn the tracks and have an idea for setup in his F2 season. He wasn't sponsored by them and didn't make a big thing out of it, he casually thanked them and complimented how accurate the car was.

as wrtten above....the Codemasters game used by the F1 E series is ****. My laptimes are similar to F1 drivers when I played it for a while (mostly for the offline ''racing'').

Max has been very successful in e-racing. He's just won the ''real racers never quit'' title, a sim series filled with the worlds fastest sim racers and real racing drivers. As for Albon ''outscoring max'', there where mitigating factors in those races...previous penalties (engine/gearbox whatever), collisions and so on. If we take like for like, Max was faster by considerable margin than Albon...

I'm not aware where Vettel was racing, was it on a sim? I don't think any driver should be allowed #1 status purely based on their success in online racing, especially on the codemasters game.

 

Ferrari if I´m not mistaken uses custom stuff made by Kunos Simulazioni, the same ones of Asseto Corsa. The same company that makes those FCS Wold flight simulators started making "real" flight simulators. Actually, the "videogames" are just a small part of their business. So I mean that there are in the market many things that are more than just "games", but even the teams with their multimillion simulators made with unlimited access to real data are always having correlation issues, so I don´t think that it´s possible to get close to the real thing at home with a 50€ software.

 

I like i racing, but you have to be dedicated and spend a lot of time with it you want to move up in class and drive the cars you want to. their online racing is great. I agree Assetto corsa is great on driving/feel and one of the top sims i enjoy, but the track selection- particularly for the US is lacking. Project Cars has the best graphics, great sounds and driving, if they were a more consistent polished sim it would be my top. The F1 game needs better sounds and physics.

 

True. I don't know if Ferrari uses Rfactor or the custom software from Kunos...I know Kunos started out making the Ferrari F1 game with only fiorano as a track, which laid the foundations for Assetto Corsa.

It's happened several times over the last few years now that a team couldn't find a setup on Friday and had their test driver (that knows the real car and the sim) in the simulator all night and found a decent setup. Certainly not using Codemasters, I'll give you that!

You'll never get the real thing, of course, you can't account for 6g braking for example!....but you can get relatively close. There have been sim racers that made the switch to pro racing.

 

Virtual is for young people! I have no interest at all!