This is the 4th article in the Getting Faster series. If you haven't read the previous articles, you can do so here.

Article 2 described how you can quickly learn a new track, article 3 explained how to drive consistently on a track: up till now we have been using a rather safe approach to racing.

In this article you are encouraged to deliberately push your car over the physical track limits, because going over the boundaries is the only way to know where the boundaries are.

When talking about boundaries we mean both the physical track boundaries, but also the boundaries of your car and your driving skills: you'll soon find out which kerbs will kill you, and which ones will help you in driving that blistering hot lap. This is the big advantage of sim racing: you can easily experience how far you can go and trash your car in the process.

Track limits

There are two types of track limits: the physical ones and the ones enforced by rules and regulations. You can consider the latter as virtual track limits, and as you can imagine they can change relatively fast over time.

The physical track limits are most visible as kerbs in the corners. There are also track limits on the straight parts of the track, but that is not the place where you'll gain some time by going over the track limits.

The track limits enforced by rules exist of course in real life motorsport, often being the subject of long debates. In sim racing the rules will probably be dependent on which sim you are using. The rules could even change between series in the same sim: make sure you know where to find this information before you'll start your race. In most cases this will be described as part of the series or as extra track info.

When going over the track limits, you often will get a warning or a penalty. In iRacing for instance, you could get 1x inc (=incident point) every time you go over a track limit. In most races you'll get first a time penalty after 17 incs (depends on the type of race, length of race etc) or you could be disqualified from the race if you'll have more than 25 incs. Other penalty system is that you have "to give back the time gained" in a period of 30 sec, by slowing down for a couple of seconds. If you fail to do so, you'll get a time penalty by having to do a stop and go in the pits.

Remark: the track penalty system may change, for instance in iRacing in the 2021 season 3 update they changed the system to check if 4 wheels are completely outside the track, but this rule is not used in all corners. Read the release notes of your sim and read the rules per track.

Learn the track limits in your sim for a certain track by trial and error, do this first at low speed to make sure you are using every inch of the track possible, and that you have the time to investigate those track boundaries. Go intentionally wide over the kerbs to see when you get an inc, when you get a time countdown penalty, when you damage your car etc.

Once you know what the track limits are, start going faster. Don't be shy of really attacking some kerbs. At this stage you will be making mistakes, that's fine, as long as you'll learn from them. Remember, deliberate practice is what you are doing now.

Tip: it's possible that taking a kerb more aggressively will gain you some 0,2 s, but at the cost of making your car very unstable. It's your judgement whether to use this or not. You could attack the kerb aggressively in quali, but not in the race for instance.

Kerbs

How much kerb you should take depends on every corner and is different for every car. You could also change your car setup to allow to take more kerb without bringing your car out of balance. In iRacing, the LMP2 car doesn't like kerbs at all, where most of the GT3 spec cars can digest kerbs really well.

You are using the kerbs to make the track wider at corner entry and corner exit. Sometimes you should use the kerb to help rotating your car more quickly.

Tip: force feedback is the obvious way to try to feel what the kerb is doing to your car, but pay also close attention to what you hear: some parts of the track are made of different materials, giving you different traction etc.

So, start testing those kerbs and their limits for you and your car. You'll soon be able to read different types of kerbs by experience. For sims that also have rain in their simulation (hello iRacing??) don't forget to also do this testing in wet conditions. Kerbs and rain are normally not a good match.

Run-off areas

Check which parts of the track give you enough room in case you are over-braking or missing the corner. Where are the places outside the track where you could recover from a mistake? Where do you have very wide and thus comfortable run-off areas?

This gives you some extra risk buffer when an overtaking manoeuvre would be getting sketchy.

This is especially true for the potential lap 1 turn 1 madness: look for escape routes when things are getting out of hand. Besides that you want to avoid contact and car damage, being on the right side of the track gives you more options if in front of you the road is blocked.

Grass/Gravel

Your car has less grip on grass, but most of the time you can run over the grass if your 4 wheels are on the grass. Be aware when braking or accelerating with one wheel on the grass only: it quickly makes you a passenger in your car. For instance, the last corner in Lime Rock Park is not forgiving in that regard.

Driving over gravel is much trickier: if you still have enough speed and going in a straight line you could be lucky to escape the cat's litter box, but in most of the cases you'll just beach your car, with a DNF as a result.

Pit entry/exit

Practice how fast you can come in without getting a penalty for speeding in the pits. Don't forget that in long races where you start with a heavy fuel load, after a full stint you'll arrive in the pits with a very low fuel load and probably worn-out tires. Don't be surprised how your car than handles. For endurance races, practice in the same conditions how you would enter the pit lane.

Practice also the opposite case: how hard can you accelerate out of the pits with cold tires (and probably a high fuel load). Make sure you know where the white lines are to avoid crashing into incoming traffic.

Tip: on some tracks, the pit entry is very close behind a blind corner (for instance on Watkins Glen). Always bare this in mind when you are very close behind the car in front of you. It's possible that this car suddenly brakes much harder than what you would expect, because they need to slow down more to enter the pits.

Recovery from off-racks

Once you're gone off-track in a race, you want to recover as fast as possible in a safe manner. So, knowing how the area outside the tracks look like and feels in terms of grip, could help you in this recovery. I mean the areas that are 20 to 40m away from the track itself.

Be careful though for dips or elevation changes in those areas, you don't want to damage your car further after your off-track excursion.

For some tracks there are specific escape roads that you can or must use to get back on track. Again, this should be explained in a rule book for the track or the race.

Photo credit: Simography on Flickr under CC licence CC BY 2.0