A couple years back I asked if a sim could be used to practice heel-toe, and the consensus was no. This time I'm wondering if folks who use their sims to help their real world experience have found ways to help learn to control oversteer. I was thinking a skid pad exercise, but when I tried to go to a skid pad with a Skippy car and practice, it was pointless and ended up just being lap after lap of understeer practice.

So . . .

Have any of you found a place, car, and technique that works to practice correcting oversteer on a sim?

 

Skippy should be fine. The Virtual Racing School Skippy coach did a counter-steering exercise on the centripetal circuit last year, so it's definitely possible. I went back and looked at it. He's using 3rd gear and using the 110m mark. He raised the front to -4 SPO and set the rear ARB to 1 (softest). So it's actually extremely forgiving once you get the rear slipping, but may not be that easy to get it into the slide. It looks like he's using a "Finnish flick" to induce the oversteer, then using steering and throttle to maintain it. He also showed that increasing the tire pressures to maximum made it so that you could peg the throttle and control the slide with steering input only, if you find the combination of steering and throttle too demanding at first.

If you're doing it right, you'll be maintaining steering angle opposite the direction of the turn pretty much continuously. Some folks did comment that it was hard to initiate the slide, so it may take a few attempts to get it consistent.

 

Thanks! That's precisely the info I was seeking. I figured someone had done it somehow. I'm a VRS subscriber as well do you think I can find that lesson? I'll send an email to their support as well. They have been quick to respond in the past. Thanks again.

 

Absolutely! Although I would focus on control-pause-recover to avoid tank slappers... Rather than a drifting exercise.

 

Peter, do you know of any YouTube videos or other similar lessons online that one might study before trying out for myself?

 

It was 2021 Season 1, Johnny Guindi is the coach. It was the bonus section for either the Zolder race or one week +/-, on counter-steering.

 

Yes. Simdriving is highly visual. You'll be able to visually see the slightest of over/under rotations and make the adjustments quickly. With a Direct Drive wheel, you'll also get the self aligning torque aspects but the visual will be your first point of observation. The wheel will 'confirm' what you're seeing.


This lap should be a good indicator of using rotation to get the car in n out of the corner and only making micro adjustments to not let the car get out of the optimal angle. Due to the lower grip on the server (97%), using this rotation was key to getting the laptime out of it. But all that is done by using my eyes to judge the amount of rotation in the car. The eyes lead the car. The pedals create and control the rotation. The wheel inputs correct the mistakes.

 

From my own personal experience, the sim can teach you about 80-85% of controlling oversteer/drifting.

A few years back I had very little experience drifting. On my first day, I could hardly control doughnuts or figure 8s. After this experience, I spent about 3 months on the sim before returning to the track. When I returned, I almost knew what I was doing and was able to slide the full track with little issue.

I completely recommend the sim as a way to learn.