My First Race Weekend - From Sim Racing to Real Life
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- Опубліковано 25 сер 2024
- My Very First race weekend was a trial of fire. Everything that could have happened to make my first experience more difficult and challenging happened. We have a car that relies on ABS, and it failed. I'mc a sim racer who always practiced in the dry (including my first practice and qualifying sessions in this race weekend) and it rained. Three spins or crashes happened right in front of me. And we were hit by a tornado. But the most important thing for me was: can I bring the car back in one piece?
My first test session was surprisingly the scariest. I didn't know how the car would behave without ABS (and a friend advised that the BRZ without ABS has a very front-biased balance. As soon as I started braking into Turn 5 here at Mosport, I dramatically felt how easy it was to lock the front tires. From there I was trying to adapt and prevent the locking, but my confidence levels were already down because of the whole new experience!
On my very first run, all I did was try to feel the grip levels. The best way to do that is to be careful on entry but force a little bit more the fronts towards the apex, to feel how much rotation the car can do before starting to carry more speed on entry. The key is always to find the rotation capability BEFORE moving the braking zones further, since if you just guess a braking zone without knowing how much the car can rotate, you put yourself in a position where you can overshoot the entry and have a scary moment.
I was around two seconds slower per lap than my team mate, Nathan Blok, who is a real life driver with more than 15 years of experience. He was my benchmark. Our car was not competitive for the first round of this championship because of a problem with our Turbos, which cost around 2 seconds per lap against the top 3 competitors of our class, but since we had identical cars, I used him as a benchmark during the entire weekend.
Not only slower in laptimes, I was ridiculously careful with traffic. My spacial awareness was being developed as I drove through the session, but I preferred to be much more on the safe side until I gained confidence and my body got used to the real thing.
We're racing for ApexV2R, a racing team that focuses on the bridge between sim racing and real racing. We're racing in the Super Production Challenge Canada championship, and there were 46 cars registered for this weekend.
During the first test session, my teammate lapped a 1:39.7 and I lapped a 1.41.5.
I was almost two seconds slower. On the first qualifying session, was able to improve up to 1.39.5, 3 tenths slower than him! I was super proud to improve like that in basically one day, and the team were impressed that I was able to be 3 tenths slower on a car without ABS and TC.
That alone was a huge success on my race weekend.
Hopefully we'll become more and more competitive in the next rounds. Let's see how it goes!
Suellio Almeida, professional racing driver and coach
Congratulations Suellio really good work. It's really nice to see the experience of a simdriver! I'm sure you will be faster in dry conditions. Rain is really a necessity for iracing
The beginning 👍👍there is always a first time. GG :D
Awesome! Thank you for sharing, i have a Toyota 86 so loved watching this... good luck!
Absolutely love your approach to the first race weekend! It's amazing to witness your progression and looking forward to more of these throughout the season! Let's gooooo!
you did an excellent job all weekend, and made excellent progress. let's go get em this weekend 💪
Great video Suellio! So happy seeing you enjoy the experience! With your approach, I see getting really close to your teammate sometime this season. Good luck!
congrats man, so cool to see you taking these steps!
I almost cried watching this. What an experience!
you are the best sukka gogogoo for your trophy
What a wild experience! Happy for you!
Great stuff, exciting weekend in the rain :)
Caralho, Suélio! Parabéns! Eu vi você tocando piano na Unit há uns mil anos atrás e agora você tá aí no exterior e correndo! Surpreendente! Parabéns! Abraço!
I think you did really well. Though the skills may be the same, in real life you have all these forces and sound and fear and adrenaline that you just don't get in a sim. To qualify 0.3s behind your team mate is amazing. Of course you're going to be slower in the rain too as you have never practiced that.
Absolutely mindblowing. Careful on the 4x! =)
Top!!! bora acelerar essa jaca sem medo e passar esses lerdos ai em ahahah Acompanhando a série.
Amazing.
So COOL! Great racing, Bud!
Someday (soon?), iRacing will get rain and that will help you get a better handle on wet conditions.
I'll be keeping an eye on you if you continue to run in 2023, as I'm joining the tower crew this year.
Push push! bora!
What a great video, Suellio! Felt like I was there!
lmao that Off-track I'm dead
3:30 1x 😂😂😂
Parabéns, Suélio!!! Muito boa a sua descrição sobre os sentimentos dessa nova experiência. O medo é a grande diferença entre o real e o virtual?
E arruma uma lente de contato, faz toda diferença, acredite!
What, no dipping the tires into the grass to get more grip.... 😂😂
This is so awesome. I'm so happy for you. I got my first irl driving experience this week too. I'll have to PM you in discord