I’ve seen several articles on taking on a new thing by doing that thing for 30 days in a row, such as running a marathon (30 marathons in 30 days), stretching 10 minutes a day for thirty days, meditating, doing 15 burpees per day for thirty days and so on.
Why?
Usually it’s help start a new habit, kick a habit or accelerate development in something. No difference here, I’m doing this to get faster and have fun!
The goal: 1 hour of racing per day, everyday, for 30 days.
While I wish I could race a real, physical race car each day, I don’t have that kind of scratch or logistics setup but I do have a pretty sweet sim racing setup and iRacing.
So everyday, usually in the early AM’s, I’m going to practice and/or race on iRacing. Through the next 30 days, I’ll also have at least 2 full race weekends where I’ll be racing in the real world. So for those days, I won’t be on the simulator but instead on a race track, in my race car! Yeah!
What do I expect to happen?
I’m not exactly sure but I am at least hoping to get noticeably faster in the virtual world, hammer out details on my sim setup and be better at learning to get fast.
To stay focused and reduce variables, I am going to focus on just one car and one track. The Mercedes AMG GT3 and Road Atlanta. Why? Having a rabbit to chase. I’m a huge believer and advocate in the power of data + video.
Here is a good review of the car, right before it was released by the crew at Inside Sim Racing.
There is a new service that recently launched, Virtual Racing School, and while I’m new to it also, I am in love with the premise and potential of what they are doing. With a simple download and activation, VRS logs all of your iRacing data and video and saves it to your profile. No downloading, uploading or anything to deal with. Just install, activate, drive and you’re all set.
As part of the service, they also have data packs for certain cars and track combinations and even setups, that you can automatically use as a reference point to work towards. This is massive! Having someone else who is much faster than you, in the same car, same track and similar conditions is one of the best ways to learn and learn fast.
Getting ready
So I decided to start the journey, one day ahead and get my day 1 as smooth as possible. I booted up my computer, installed updates to Windows, iRacing and NVIDIA. My goal was to be able to simply wake up the next morning, do my morning routine and be up and running, in a race car within 15 minutes of getting out of bed.
I’ll create a post later on with the details on my current sim setup, so you all can get the full details then but at a high level, here is the setup:
- Custom built PC – my first.
- About a decent level up from minimum specs to be able to handle Oculus virtual reality.
- Intel i5 processor (can’t remember the exact model)
- 32GB of RAM
- 1 TB hard drive (not a SSD)
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070
- A standard 5.1 Creative Sound Card
- Logitech 5.1 surround system but I can only get 2.1 to work. 🙁
- 3 AOC 24″ Monitors – got them on Best Buy on sale. They’re pretty good but the back sucks for mounting them to a triple monitor stand. More on that in a separate post.
- Simxperience Accuforce feedback hub and steering wheel.
- Next Level Racing cockpit and v2 motion simulator system – note, they have a v3 version now.
- Fanatec Clubsport Shifter SQ v1.5
- DSD Wilwood Professional Grade Racing Pedals – absolutely insane!
So, while I technically have a motion simulator and I have an Oculus and have used them for iRacing, I will most likely not use them very often over these 30 days. Main reason: we live in a tiny apartment and I’ll be doing most of my daily racing in the early AM, while my wife and 2 year are asleep, 15 and 40 feet away, respectively. The motion simulator isn’t super loud but it makes noise and my wife has complained about it before.
The Oculus is AWESOME but I sweat easily and have found that when I’ve worn it for 20 minutes plus of intense driving, I sweat pretty bad and the lenses start fogging up. So I’ll be using the triple monitors and headphones, without motion.