Do racing sims make you a better driver in real life?

Do racing sims make you a better driver in real life? How much does experience gained in game translate over to real life?

 

Is it something you'll notice much on the streets? Not all too much. If you're a new driver it'll help give you a little more confidence. Driving in real life is actually much simpler than driving in sim though. There's full motion in a car that your body can react to. A simulation can only get the immersion down so far, but real life gives you the full deal which makes it much easier to comprehend what's going on. I've actually found that taking what I know from sim to street is exponentially easier to do than vice versa when it comes to drifting. I haven't done any track time though so I wouldn't be able to give much details on that but I'd imagine it's worlds easier. Even most professional race teams in the well-funded leagues have their own simulators for the drivers to practice on during down time that are full-motion rigs. Us guys without tens of thousands for those types of rigs still do get a great learning experience though.

 

Yes.

 

I suppose it gives you more awareness of what's going on around you and possibly quicker reaction times, however having a 'reset' button could also lead to a sense of being invulnerable to danger.

 

better eye coordination and placing your car on the tarmac l, corner apexes etc

Sent from my RM-875_eu_euro1_260 using Tapatalk

 

I have to give credit to crappy public servers for teaching me to keep my calm when avoiding accidents.

Just last week someone spun out in front of me on a roundabout (we may have been going a little too fast ) and I drove around him without so much as a "oh ****!". Definitely speeds up reaction times, which for an old fart like me can't be a bad thing.
15 years ago my heart would have been racing, now it's just "meh"....

 

I've done track time and its not that simple. A game cant replicate danger and fear. The one thing that slows most drivers down

Sent from my RM-875_eu_euro1_260 using Tapatalk

 

Hit some black ice on a long sweeping corner and the back of the car stepped out, just dialed in the right amount of opposite lock and held the power steady till the car regained grip and straightened up. It felt so normal it didn't even occur to me until afterwards that I'd never done anything like that in real life before, should have been a fairly big accident.

Similar thing a few years later, was driving down an unlit motorway and suddenly my headlights picked up two crashed cars sideways across the lanes with no lights. I slammed the brakes on and locked up the tyres, came off the brakes enough to get the wheels turning so I could steer for a small gap between the cars and there was a huge bang as I went through. I'd collected a broken plastic bumper lying in the road from one of the cars but avoided hitting anything solid, again it felt like something I'd done hundreds of times before in sim racing. Probably saved my life and the guy still sitting in the crashed car I was going to hit.

 

One thing I've noticed is I'm watching the road surface all the time while driving. My brains are always "calculating" for example, how the bump ahead can break the balance of the car..

 

yes

 

Yes it does.

The first time id driven on track with comparable cars i was just as fast as others who had done 10+ trackdays.

 

Adding another yes.
Personal experience, and secondhand experience.
As I dont race in real life, yet have had ridiculous things happen that I just knew how to react to naturally.. I can say honestly that racing sims like AC and Forza have saved me from ever being in a serious wreck.

In Forza I drove the 22b alot, and learned all the quirks of AWD. not long ago we had an ice storm, and the things I learned in Forza transferred over. More specifically, I was sliding into a car on a bridge, I knew to accelerate and turn away from the car, rather than brake.It kept sliding, but I managed to influence the slide enough to miss the crash entirely, something that I would not have known to do had I not experienced saving understeer and slides in Forza.
So, IMO, It prepares you for the mistakes you might make in real life.

 

IMO only gain is knowledge ab. track around world layouts. Rest is working opposite, real experience could (but don't have to always) result in understanding some reactions.
It's only pixels on screen, and even F1 drivers exercising on simulator tells mainly ab. visualization and muscle memory for actual layout.

Of course if i would be ex racer, hired as opinion leader i would perfectly justify why sim racing pays in real life
Thats my 2 cents, personally i love both but real one is always costly and sometimes bitterly ungrateful, peace.

 

Use your talent for race track and in real life and I assume you're asking about Public roads keep to speed limits. Its very dangerous for you g drivers to get all hyped up and confidant only to suffer an accident and god fobbid involve innocent people into it. For more meture it might actually be sim might be helpful to went and keep even calmer on public roads. Standard are very different, almost unconnected. Keep smart mate.

 

Look at the GT thing that they run.

They get the fastest sim racers from Gran Turismo then put them in real cars, take the fastest of them and send them racing. To see how much really transfers over to real racing, all you need to see is the difference between the guy who grew up on computer games against the guys who grew up racing real cars.

 

This.

Mostly car placement, I remember getting into a sticky situation back when I had like 2 days of IRL driving experience. Didn't even flinch almost, squeezed my car through a tiny passage (a tiny bit more than a car's width) at 90km/h, something I don't think I would be able to do if I didn't had prior sim racing experience.

 

Clearly not!

 

Yes, but depending on the sim

GPL, LFS and RBR made me a 'better' drifter/trackdaydriver. But as stated above, (G) forces and fear are not included in any sim.
Which means, a good trackdaydriver can be a good simracer. But a good (young, never driven a real car before guy) simracer needs to know/feel a real car on track first and that is not very easy.

Also a proper sorted out powerful (rwd) car can make YOU a better simracer and vice versa. Which means a difficult car in any sim or in real life can make you a better driver in both real life and in sims.

In AC : Just try the F40 S3 for just one week and don't touch any other car. After a week you feel how 'easy to drive' a 312T, 458S3, Evora GTC, 599XX etc is

Cheers
Robin, BMW 1M Coupé (real life and track/driftdays)

 

I disagree completely, idk about other drivers but all I care about is the road and other drivers on the track, fear and danger are some of the furthest things on my mind when driving at speed and I hope no one actually has "fear" when driving at speed with me on the track as well. If you are coming into a corner at 120+ then having fear of crashing you are in the wrong sport. Drivers in the 90s and earlier could worry about it, now it is nothing to worry about because safety is top priority, unless you are speaking about fear of damaging the car which again, you're in the wrong sport.

In reply to the OP, it depends on your background in racing on a track but in general yes I believe it does.

 

Racing sims' training certainly helps you to leave behind much faster the mess you've created.