If you've been racing for a while and are one of the folks usually in the top ten, then this guide isn't really for you. In fact, I'm not sure if this guide has a purpose here since we seem to have a generally-good group of participants who race with us. Portions of this guide may (of course) touch upon Race 2 Play regulations and rules.

The concept of this guide is to give a bit of a "crib notes" crash course in surviving endurance races and sprints run at R2P (by sprints, I mean the 45 minute series we have; 45 minutes is a sprint compared to the 2 hour endurance races we have in GT-I, GT-O, and rFWC). I'm going to run the gamut of topics as they pop into my head; hopefully the guys who head up the rear of the pack on a consistent basis will take something away from this.

A small disclaimer: I'm not the fastest, but I used to be one of the slowest. I don't claim to be an aficionado of sim-racing; I've only participated in this hobby for approximately 2 year while others (such as Darin or Tim) have been doing this for, like, half a century or something. I have picked up a few good habits, though. That is what I intend to share with the R2P community.

Without further babbling...

SET-UPS
I was going to run through a quick-and-dirty guide of what options do what, but there's a lot of set-up guides out there, and word-of-mouth advice from the experienced drivers on TeamSpeak goes a long way. My advice if you're starting out with this hobby is to ask for setups from different drivers. Try out different styles. I prefer understeer monsters that are so "stable" I need to make them turn with my right foot. Others like "loose" setups that I, personally, find unstable and uncontrollable. Find what style you like, then look at the garage and see how that person set the car's "options" to make it drive that way.

Set-ups don't really make you go fast. Set-ups make the car behave in a way that you can drive fast.

DRIVING
The most important part of surviving a simulation race is consistent, smooth driving. It really doesn't matter what your brake point is; if you properly hit the apex of the corner; if you accelerate smoothly out of the corner onto the following straight. What DOES matter is that you race at the pace you're comfortable with.

When you enter the server, what's the first thing you see? You'll look at the laptimes and invariably see the top 5 or 3 with eye-popping laptimes that you haven't been able to even get close to touching in your preceding practice sessions. Here's your first bit of advice: ignore those alien laptimes. That's right. Ignore them. Just take a mental note of how fast they are so you can prepare yourself as to how fast they'll approach you when you're lapped. If you're consistently finding yourself at the back of the qualifying times, then what you need to concentrate on is technique. While a bad setup can rob you of a second or two (or worse, make you completely unstable) a good setup won't suddenly erase 10 seconds or so from your laps. Technique. Trail-braking, proper apexing, smooth exits. These skills are what make the aliens go so damn fast (plus their preternatural ability to use these skills with superhuman finesse, but that's something else entirely). I'll try to elaborate on what those three terms mean:

Trail-braking. All this refers to is late braking. You're basically braking almost all the way to the apex of a turn, then immediately transferring to a moment of coasting until you're past the apex and into your acceleration. Take the Circuit de Catalunya with its first-turn chicane with a downhill entry. Believe it or not, you can set your brake point at the beginning of the black mark and safely into the chicane complex without locking up your tires and going wide. Here's how I do it:

- I immediately smash my brake pedal all the way down to the stops and hold for about half a second, then as I begin downshifting to let engine braking assist in the process, I let up on the pedal. If you're braking from a very fast speed, you'll achieve awesome stopping potential by mashing the brake, holding for a second, then as you downshift bringing the pedal back to about 90% brake power. Continuing to downshift, I begin to turn in towards my apex of the turn. As I do this and my speed drops even more, I start edging back on the braking until I'm barely feathering the pedal.

- I've hit the apex (the "center" of the turn where safe acceleration can begin without understeering off the track as you exit the turn) of Barcelona's first corner chicane. I'm at the bottom of the hill. Barcelona has a big chicane here; it may not look like a chicane, but is is a chicane. When you're dealing with any turn, entry and exit are the most important parts. Therefore, I'm more concerned with how I exit this chicane into that long, sweeping right-hander. So I'm holding myself back from hammering the gas since I know it'll send me into the sand on the right side of the exit. I wait until I'm in my identified apex of the exit of this chicane, then I accelerate.

Sometimes sacrificing a bit of speed in a turn or a chicane complex with actually result in a higher exit speed. Two things you should worry about when dealing with turns: entering them as quickly as possibly, and exiting with the intention of achieving the fastest possibly speed in the following straight.

This is only one example, of course. Hopefully it gives you a bit of brain food to consider in regards to your brake technique. I've found that my laptimes have improved immeasurably once I abandoned my habit of gentle entry and timid exit. I'm not quite there yet, but I have begun to finish in the top ten on a fairly consistent basis.

PASSING
Another huge part of simulation races? Passing and dealing with traffic.

Remember, sometimes you don't have to make the pass. Take into consideration that when you close with a car and begin "dueling" with it, it's slowing both of you down. There's been a couple times when I've watched the approach speed of a car behind me, deduced that he's way faster than me, and simply let him by, preferring to let a fast car go by and retain my speed rather than battle with him and the field behind me a chance to close the gap and the field ahead the chance to pull away.

If you're coming up on a guy with a rather-inexorably pace where you're chomping and nibbly away at the gap in front of him then realize that you're putting pressure on that guy. Close the gap, run close to him, and simply let the pressure do the work. Trust me, sometimes the driver ahead will do your passing work for you by getting unsettled enough to miss his brake point or enter a turn a bit too hot and swinging wide. Try to rattle him by executing an excellent trail brake and zooming from a second back to right on his ass in the turn. He'll begin to consider that he soon try to brake harder in the next turn. The closer you can get him to the edge of his ability and the more you pressure him into running faster than you to keep his position, the more likely you're going to get an easy pass when he swings wide or spins. Never force the pass. Wait for that mistake. Think two or three corners ahead.

CONSISTENCY
Ask any of the top guys. One of the worst things to come upon is an erratic driver running in the rear.

Run consistently, and run the same line. Lap after lap. Look around the track for familiar landmarks to help you with braking points and acceleration points. For example, on Estoril in the final right hand sweeper there's a bright aquamarine panel on the safety rails. It pretty much marks the spot where you should begin to accelerate. Don't always rely on the brake markers because sometimes there's a better signal on the track or on the wall to give you a better mark for your line.

TEMPERMENT
Trust me on this one: racing while angry is always a losing battle.

Even if someone out on the track executes a completely boneheaded manuever and ruins your race by wrecking you both out... don't get all pissy. After all, its just a game, and you haven't lost any money. Just a bit of your spare time. Take setbacks with a smile. Be a gentleman racer. Don't cut off your opponents. Don't pull dirty tricks like "brake checking". If the accident is your fault, then don't blame the other guy for your mistake (waiting for him to come out of the spin even if it means you lose a shitload of positions also goes a long way towards becoming an accepted member of this community).

Calm, cool, and collected. Having a state of mind like that goes a long way towards finishing a race.

CONCLUSION
Hopefully this guide helps some folks out. If it makes you a safer driver, then my work is done. See you on the track. :)