How do I accept that I'm crap?

I've been simracing for a few years and I've always had this same issue.
I go to the gym, and even though I know I don't have the best genetics and won't ever look amazing and lift a crap ton of weight, I like going because I'm competing with myself. My goal is to be better than yesterday and not better than someone else.
I sometimes play CS:GO, and even though I'm not very good, I have fun playing it and realizing when I improve even though I won't ever be the best.
Even financially, I don't want to be the richest guy I know, but knowing I did my best at work and with my investments is enough to be satisfied.

But for some reason I can never accept that I'm bad at simracing. When I'm in a race and I'm not as fast as the AI I end up overdriving the car trying to beat them and end up dead. When I'm practicing I end up frustrated because I'm at best 3s slower than some alien I've seen on youtube.

I always preach that people should compete with themselves in order to be the best version they can be, but for some reason I can't bring myself to act like that when it comes to simracing. I don't know, maybe it's the fact that it looks so easy doing a 1:51,9 at the Nurburgring on youtube and I struggle to go below 1:55,00. How do I just accept that I'll never be an alien and get satisfaction from getting better than myself?

 

You could always take comfort in the fact that I would love to be able to run a 1:55 at the Ring.

 

Hey you, my opinion: it doesnt matter if you (we) 5 sec or 5 hundreds off pace, i'm sure even aliens have sometimes the same state of mind...to accept the own borders of skillz is sometimes easy, sometimes not,no?
If it's not acceptable for now how the pace is, well then put all effort into it...take coaching lessons, analyze even deeper where you struggling (not only on track,also how your mind works) talking with more succesfull people,get more insight how to do it better...i'm sure you'll find more time on track, as long as you do the best you can, it is good....
Racing is so unforgiving, every thousand of an second we get displayed how we perform, how could we sometimes not get sick of it?

 

I'm fully with you mate.

All this is my opinion, which I know doesn't matter since I'm married.

The league I race in for the past couple years is great. Wide range of skill levels. Hard thing for me to accept is that it feels like everyone else is improving more than I am.
I used to be a leading midfielder, now I'm a back midfielder in my normal car. Go to a new car for 'fun days' then I'm 1 sec slower than everyone else, so I'm not adaptable. The banter is still great.

I've started to use Motec more and compare to CDA Motec to figure out which corners I need practice on. That has helped alot, as I couldn't figure out the differences in YouTube.
For me, its usually that I don't release the brake early enough on a corner thinking the car can't handle it.

Its hard for me to accept that other people that I've raced with for over a year can improve quicker than me, but then I look at my times a year ago and see the improvement, so I try to focus on that.
Trying to get closer to the alien time... I don't know how they can take a corner at that speed (oversteer / spin for me) or put down the throttle at that part of the corner (drop traction or spin), but I know its possible.

They guys in my league are awesome and help my slow butt by telling me which corners I'm very slow at while they lap me (instead of just slow on all corners).

Chin up mate... Look back at your times from 6 months / 1 year ago and see the difference

 

I spend most of my time being happy if I can improve on my own times no matter what the benchmark.

To cheer myself up about people who are 2-3s a lap faster than me I work out that it only means 0.xx seconds per corner better to add up to that sort of a difference. They're just that microscopically better on a consistent basis. Then I remind myself that overdriving to find pace usually has the opposite effect, it's better to slow down and come up to the limit from below. Then I get the red mist and forget all that and it all goes a bit drifty until I crash.

 

I keep frustrating myself as I fight the car and overdrive it while trying to beat the green hotlap car which keeps passing me after a few corners (Hotlap is crap I know but it's the only way for me to find a faster way around the track)
At the moment I'm trying to get fast around Snetterton in the Ginetta. It's a horrible track with reversed corners for added difficulty. I want corners which opens not tightens as we go around them.
I kick the brake hard to make the rear step out and get a better slip angle into the long turns but I feel I'm burning the tires too quickly. The car keeps understeering if I don't.
Whenever I race the AI I set them at 100 to have something to aim for and it also simulates any online race I might sign up for. Being a constant backmarker is annoying

 

you can get 1:55 at Nurburgring AND YOU THINK YOU ARE CRAP!!! I am at least a second and a half slower than you

For me there are two things I know that i am doing wrong

a) Lack of resolution and details
when I do a lap I look at the lap time and that's all I remember. If i do a good lap I am happy, if i do a bad lap i am frustrated. A good driver will remember each corner where they braked where they applied throttle etc and make changes on the next lap and repeat the process, basically what a racing coach will do for race drivers. When you get frustrated , you don't remember anything. Meaning if i do a really good lap out of nothing I don't really know why.

b) Thinking about what other drivers are doing
When racing other drivers I am subconsciously following the other driver in front of me, I know this because if the driver overshoots the corner I tend to do the same. Which means I am not concentrating on my own race.
Also I am constantly thinking about my position and performance as a whole and not spending the energy breaking down each lap.

Which means i am not really concentrating on the individual parts of a lap or recording in my head in any recognizable way what I am actually doing wrong. Forcing me in to a rut , in which the longer i stay in the more difficult it is for me to get out of.

I think if i did the above I would be a better driver. I don't do this because I an lazy and having too much fun.

So I think you should not challenge yourself ,as you will end up fighting yourself , you can't win or loose. You will just get frustrated. You have to challenge the track, car and conditions. You say you lift weights, in the moment are you fighting yourself or the weight?

 

Brilliant

 

Ran my first online race last night. It was at the Ring. Me and two other drivers were the only ones there. I won the race with the next guy a lap down and the other guy 3 laps down.

I set fastest lap of the race as well.

2:02.3

Yeah. I would be ecstatic with a 1:55.

 

I think it's human nature to be ecstatic when you do something better, until that becomes the norm and now you want even more. I mean, the guy I saw doing a 1:51,9 on yotube may very well be frustrated because he cannot find another 50 miliseconds on his lap. I don't know if that's the case, of course, but it's quite possible.

 

Well said. Good point.

 

My take, as a thoroughly below-average nearing-40s with the natural reflexes of a sloth:

The only clear baseline metric to compare yourself to tends to be the lap records, and/or the laptimes routinely set by highly able youtubers.

To feel at peace with my unarguable mediocrity, I found I needed a clear established baseline to measure myself against. To that end, the "RCI Race Pace chart" has proved to be my new best friend.

- they supposedly put this together after months of studying the full range of abilities on their multiplayer servers, and coming up with reasonable classification bands for each track (alas, they have yet to update it with Imola and British GT tracks)

The great thing is, now I can set my sights on a solid, attainable goal for my abilities - getting my average, consistent laptimes up from the Rookie band squarely into the middle of the AM time bracket for each track. That's my ultimate aim, not to chase that mythical 1:48.5 at Monza that everyone else makes look easy for months on end and never get close, but to pick one car to really get to know, and become a well-rounded AM-level driver at all tracks. Honestly, if I can attain that goal, I'll be over the moon.

What you can do along with that, is fiddle the AI level slider on each track to find the level that gets the AI field running approximately within that same AM band (it's usually within 1-2% of 95%), so you know that you're racing AI that are running there-or-thereabouts at the level you want to achieve.

(If you're at 1:55 Nurburgring, sounds like you're already knocking on the door of "Pro" anyway, so perhaps you could do with not beating yourself up as much too!)

 

That seems like a good chart. Instead of setting my sight on an unrealistic time I've seen an alien do I can more or less set my sight on a "silver" time for every track before trying to get to pro.
Just a little correction, the table is about race pace. I've done a 1:55 on a hotlap session, so I'm not that close to Pro, but a good baseline nonetheless.

 

Heh, fair point. I'm not quite consistent enough yet to separate the two concepts clearly in my mind
Hope it's a help anyway, perhaps in a year or five, I'll start edging into Silver territory myself

 

For myself i separate a bit between "hotlappers" and racepacers"
A succesfull race it needs so much more then pure pace...consistency, good overview, patience, luck,ect,ect...

 

For me, it's consistency.

It doesn't bother me that I'm slower than other people. What bothers me in the extreme is if I run laps more than a couple tenths of a second different. I figure if I can be consistent while pushing my ability, then I'm doing well.

It's a lot like lifting weights: It doesn't really matter how much the other guy lifts. All that really matters is that you can control the max weight you lift consistently. Every time.

 

That chart is great. I'm silver in a couple, AM in most and Rookie in a couple.
What am I going to practice..... Silver of course..... I don't want to, but I just have to.
Its like reading FB. You don't want to, but you just have to spend 3 hours doing it.
I heard someone tell me that FB its like reading the worst novel in the world that will never end, but we still try.

I'm trying for consistency just like Parminio. The league I'm in really helped. I was fast enough to be a midfielder, but not consistent so I had offs couple times a race. Eventually listening to their advice, I don't push 100% as its not sustainable for me, but closer to 80% as I can usually handle the car that way and stay on the track. I'm now a low midfielder, but finish higher than before.

 

Good chart! Now I have something to aim at. Should be fun!
A while ago I had one goal and that was to be able to get under 1:50 at Monza. After following track guides and watching onboards of aliens I finally did it (hotlap though). I'm thinking that if I do this for all the tracks that I enjoy then it should be a lot of fun. First goal is to secure at least Am status on all those tracks.

 

Once you realize that your not an "Alien" and never will be then SIM racing can become fun again.
Join a random online lobby and hoon around the track like an Alien lapping people then you quickly realize that your pace is not that bad..........
Join a league and find people of similar pace and have great racing.

 

I hope this helps a bit. 1:51.9 around Nurburgring is insanely fast. That is on the brink of what's possible. It's probably set over a year ago before some (bop) changes made the ring a bit slower. And even then the best simracers on this planet would have needed perfect conditions, very low fuel, very low temps and very optimum track to get that done.