Introduction

In the exciting world of virtual racing, I recently participated in an online race using a Toyota GR86 on the popular iRacing platform. As a racing enthusiast, I was eager to delve into the world of data analysis and improve my performance on the track. In this article, I will share my progress and insights gained from analyzing the telemetry data collected during the race leveraging the tools provided by garage61.net.

iRacing

iRacing is a popular online motorsport simulation platform that offers a realistic racing experience for virtual racers. It is considered one of the most realistic and immersive racing simulations available. Developed by iRacing.com Motorsport Simulations, iRacing offers a wide range of officially licensed cars and tracks, allowing users to compete in various racing disciplines, including road racing, oval racing, and dirt racing.

While expensive, it provides the best online platform to easily participate in some good fun and respectable racing. With great career progression and a good system to rank the players in their ability to drive fast and safe.

Garage61

Garage 61 is a free platform (at least for now), started in 2019 by Ruben Vermeersch. It’s since grown to a larger community with more than 10.000 drivers and over 50 million telemetry laps available to compare yourself to.

It provides the following services:

• Effortless telemetry data gathering. Install the agent and you’re good to go.
• Compare and study driving telemetry and setups.
• Built-in setup and ghost lap synchronization.
• Leaderboards to find good data to compare to. And honors for those who claim the top spot.
• Extensive team support

To collect driving data when you’re simracing, you’ll need to install the telemetry agent.

Production Car Sim-Lab Challenge

This series focuses on production car racing, where participants get the opportunity to compete against each other using a variety of real-life production car models meticulously recreated in the simulation.

In this season, the choices are:

• Mazda MX5 Cup
• Renault Clio Cup
• Ford Mustang Cup
• Toyota GR86 Cup

Having spent the last season on the rookie MX5 cup seat, this season I decided to move up to the GR86. It meant I didn’t need to buy a new car, however I would need at least 4 more tracks to complete the championship.

Note this series allows the drivers to setup their car. For now I am still learning and so I use the base setup, this does not allow me to be as fast as the car can be on the track. But enough excuses :laughing:

Analyzing the Race

The race would be held in one of my favourite tracks, officially known as WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, it is a legendary motorsport circuit located in Monterey County, California, United States.

This iconic track is renowned for its challenging layout, dramatic elevation changes, and breathtaking scenery. Fun fact, which I learned while typing this, it’s name, Laguna Seca, translates to “dry lake” in Spanish, paying homage to the dry lake bed that once occupied the area.

Finishing where I started

Starting off in 5th position, with the qualifying time of 1:39.360, the laps ahead of me, were interesting, with tipical class D crashes, most of the drivers in front of me where faster and sharper than me. And after 16 laps around the dry lake, one off track incident and one car contact due to late braking, I managed to finish where I started, in 5th position.

Here is a great overview Garage61 provides of the race:

Best Lap

We can start by loading the fastest lap I was able to achieve during the race.

From here we get a layout of the track, the line I performed and the respective graphs for speed, throttle input, braking input, gearing and wheel steering input.

After the Long Straight

We can start by observing that I hit the ABS of the vehicle after the long straight, for somewhat prolonged time, represented by the background red color on the braking graph.

We can also observe that I keep doing small tweaks on the accelerator after hitting the apex. I should improve this to be much more consistent, but this is by far the worst corner for me in this track.

Sector 3

In sector 3, I can see that I am not trail-braking (check the light blue highlight) on a corner where trail-braking is definitly important and will help you carry more speed for the up-hill section that comes after.

I can also see that I am losing too much speed on the following corner (highlighted in green).

Sector 4

And in sector 4 we can again observe small tweaks on the accelerator that I keep doing.

Comparing Laps

Now as I already stated above, Garage61 allows you to compare laps, and we can load any available lap from other drivers that have shared their telemetry.

However, I decided to do it differently, instead of comparing myself to someone much faster than I, I decided to compare it to myself, to my other laps on the same race.

Andretti Hairpin

Comparing your own laps is perfect to be able to understand specific things, for example here on the first corner, also called Andretti Hairpin, you can see how incosistent I can be with both braking and throttle input after the first apex.

Corner 3

However on corner 3, I show good consistency with braking (highlighted with dark blue), this is likely because I have actually visually memorized where to touch the brakes to weight shift. Although how I ease into the accelerator after is still inconsistent (highlighted with light blue) and something to improve upon.

Corkscrew

The most challeging corner of the whole track, and as highlighted with light blue, I am terribly at braking for it, definitly I hold it too much on 100% and as such the ABS is activated.

We can also check that the fastest lap is the one with the lowest steering input. This is obvious of course, but it is still important to understand.

Corner 10

This corner is fast and probably my favourite part of the track, where I am able to gain on opponents and create a chance to get side by side before the last hairpin.

What I noticed on this corner, is that I am always making corrections on the steering and as can be seen on the last graph, my steering input is all over the place.

Conclusion

I started my adventure with telemetry, thinking that I would use it to allow me to show my laps to more experienced drivers so that they could provide me insights and to compare my fastest laps with faster laps.

However alone and with zero experience on telemetry analysis, comparing myself to myself was great to see where I would need to improve on this track. It allows you to see where you are most inconsistent and what you may be doing that you think is right but may be wrong.