Racedepartment iRacing Driving School (merged)

I have been tossing an idea around with Will. He gave me the go ahead to bring this topic to light and give everyone here a chance to voice your opinion and see what your thoughts are.

The idea is to have a Racedepartment Iracing Driving School which would be a privately hosted session for Racedepartment members only. Having some of the faster guys giving pointers, braking techniques, and basically in a nut shell teaching us slower guys such as myself how to drive faster, safer, and better during races. Perhaps showing some of a certain car or track weaknesses and strengths.

An example would be to ask Mr. Ascher, Mr. Hoogendoorn (just examples as I have NOT spoken to either one of them) or someone along their skill level to be the driving instructor to the class so to speak. They would then give us a small break down of the track either over Teamspeak or ingame voice. Then we could watch them through the replay features of the game going through a good lap or two. Ask a few questions, and then join them on the track with laps getting faster and the ability to follow their lines/breaking points/acceleration points getting information such as what they use for track reference. After that a moment to speak up about something that perhaps you didn't like or did and get feedback from the pros on just what to do. It's a bit more involved but not so complicated as it may sound. It would also be a good way for people to learn without having to be in a practice session with a mixed group of people that some are crazy fast and others you almost hit they are so slow. A friendly environment where anyone could ask any question without some smart $#@ 12 year old kid calling you noob and other goofy names.

I know that there are alot of helpful people out there in the iracing world however I have found a few jerks as well...lol... The main point of this whole driving school is for the newer, and slower guys to get faster and better. To learn GOOD habits on what to do from someone who is proven and known by the community. Also to bring the community together a bit more and make it stronger. In turn letting it grow into something truely great. (not that it isn't great now) Kevin, Will, and a few others are doing a wonderful job to say the very least.

One other point to make is something that we have tossed around as well. As everyone knows every race or practice session that is hosted for iracing costs someone real money. Such as the club races have been paid for by Mr. Marquez or the hosted practice during the week before such as what Mr. Nowell did for everyone for the Vette race. The idea is if there were enough people interested perhaps those that wish to learn donate $1 per hosted session for the school. This money would then be used for offical Racedepartment races, practices, or any other type of event for our community in iracing. Basically to help even out the blow to someones wallet that is paying for all this extra fun for us. The instructor would not have to pay of course since we are getting their experience and knowledge. This school could be a bi-weekly event or whatever it was agreed on so to speak.

Give me all your opinions and let your voice be heard.
 
I cannot really do anything on tuesday or thursday as I am at school all day long...
I might in the evening, but I tend to come back a bit tired lol
Best days for me are fridays and weekends. I can also on mondays and wednesdays, but I have to leave to school at 5.15pm eastern time (10.15pm GMT)
It would be nice for instructors to receive replays of a few normal laps, prior to "class"...
As we cannot see the wheel of the person or see the pedal pressure online.
 
I'll be honest and say that I can only imagine how many emails he gets with people wanting to be his friends and have him give them his secrets. I may be wrong, but I'm sure that I'm not far off base here... lol

Plus we have a few of our own here that aren't that far off of him and perhaps maybe a bit faster in certain cars.
 
I'll be honest and say that I can only imagine how many emails he gets with people wanting to be his friends and have him give them his secrets. I may be wrong, but I'm sure that I'm not far off base here... lol

Plus we have a few of our own here that aren't that far off of him and perhaps maybe a bit faster in certain cars.

Thats cool then Joe, I susspect you are correct. Lets get our own Guru's then mate. : )
 
I'm sure his team he races for...Redline offers one to one lessons, whether or not that's with the man himself is another thing. The guys a legend and very humble, i know it would never happen but would be cool eh?

Same with Peter Read that dude has some skills and is a nipper. But we have some very fast guys here already so all is good.
 
1. What days of the week are best for you? Weekends including Friday
2. What times are best for you? 4pm Pacific (GMT-8) onwards
3. Which cars would you like to learn? Spec Racer Ford (everytime I turn, I spin this stupid thing ;A; )
4. Which tracks would you like to learn? Any
 
I wanted to make some comments in regard to the iRacing School proposal.

#1 I have been proposing something along these lines since I joined iRacing in October of last year and I am so glad that some people have picked up the flame. Just earlier today teh OP and I met at Watkins Glen and he was able to give me a few pointers that actually helped me break the 1:46 barrier for the first time this week (It has been a very weird week with little practice). It goes to show that you don;t need GH to teadh you racing. Someone outside of your car with a good working knowledge can help a great deal too. If coaches were better than their players, wouldn't they play/race themselves?

#2 Someone commented that the only way to go is 1:1 and that group lessons wouldn't work as well. I may or may not agree, but 1:1 lessons are just not feasible since we would need a teacher per student. However, a teacher can roam among the students and then set them in pairs or threes to work on certain aspects of racing together and the students then can pool their knowledge and understanding of the topic to help one another. Also watching lessons given to someone else is almost as useful as getting your own lesson. In fact, you may not be able to cover all your weaknesses in one sitting,but hearing tips and corrections directed at other racers will fill those gaps.

#3 Formal lessons would be great and they should definitely be organized, but also we could try to devise a system to recognize one another when in practice so we can race together.

Ideally, it would be nice to have a "Facebook like" status when we practice where we could indicate whether we are available for practicing or we are there primarily to run laps on owr own. In my case, most of the times I am eager to find someone else to practice with, but sometimes I need to do it on my own (but still be able to practice with otehrs, otherwise I just start a test session). We should be able to indicate that in our online profile somehow.

Since iRacing is not going to implement somethng like that anytime soon, maybe we could use Ventrillo or Teamspeak. We could create the "iRacing practice channel" and have 2 sub rooms in there. One room will be "do not disturb" while the other will be "Available for practice" (and if needed we can come up with other rooms, like one per series for instance).

this way if I join a practice room I just have to check my teamspeak rooms to see if anyone is available and willing to practice.

#4 I am a web developer so building a separate site for this and other uses (such as an NKpro West/central coast league or GTR2 FIA GT1 league) which have been rattling in my brain for a while) would not be impossible. I can build a site with a Facebook like community interface and I am also looking for some sort of score keeping script I could fold into it Unless someone here knows of some less involved way to have a central repository for this activity and any other that may come up.

If I end up building the site, I will do it only if I can find others willing to share some of the maintenance duties, such as answering emails, moderating the forum and posting news, etc.
I don't mind building the site and pay for hosting and bandwidth, but I don't want to end up running the site instead of driving :)

Anyway, these are some things to think about and I'd love your input.
 
Hey there Corrado, it was a blast to run with you and speak with you last night. I'll make my responses in a number format to match yours.

#1. I'm glad that I was able to help you get into the 1:45 mark at Watkins. I know that I am not the best nor the fastest guy in the SM but I do enjoy it very much! The great thing about what is coming with the Racedepartment iRacing school we are starting are the guys we have to be instructors. We have two that have agreed to do this for us. One is VERY fast, and the other is fast but is more human so he will bring the stable side of things first. I am planning on speaking with a third instructor however I have not had the chance to speak with him yet. They all race quite often so they will be able to teach both driving fast alone and in traffic driving.

#2. I agree with most of what you said. I am working something out now that will make it enjoyable for everyone and making sure that all the students that join will have the one on one time with the instructor as well. I think I've just about got it worked out but a few more things need to be done.

#3. I have found that most of the time if people don't want to run with anyone that they will do as you do and simply test instead of get into a practice session. However most of the time when people are in a practice session I have found that if you say something to the effect of "does anyone want to run together" a few people will speak up. The next thing you know there are two, three, or five of you running in a line. Something else that I have noticed in the SM is even the really fast guys that are hitting 1:44 or 1:43 at Watkins are willing to help most of the time. I had asked one gent the other night if he minded if I followed him around to try to get faster and he replied not at all lets go. I had a chance to see his lines, braking points, and acceleration points. I still wasn't as fast as he was, but that gave me a place to start. I think you are correct in saying that iRacing isn't going to implement something like what you speak of anytime soon. I also think that thanks to Racedepartment we have alot of tools at our disposal. On the TS side of things, I might think it would be better to mabye create one additional channel at title it "practice" and have the main renamed to "racing". I have found with this that most people here do not seem to take advantage of TS. Perhaps they do not know about it, or they may not have it installed. I know other people that are a bit shy and do not wish to talk. My wife is a prime example of this, as it took me three years to get her to talk on TS. However just as anything else I think there needs to be a great enough following to cause any changes to happen.

#4. I'm not entirely sure a new site would be the best thing. I know Racedepartment has a huge amount of information here and a great community in place already. I know you had spoken about only having a european time zone following for NKpro and the leagues they have in place. However I don't think that it would be very difficult to start a U.S. NKpro series on Racedepartment if that is something that you really had your heart set on. I know that RD has some sort of score/ratings/standings point system in place as I've seen it on peoples names. I do not however know how this works so someone else would have to speak with you about that. I think the most important thing that I can't stress enough about all of this is the great community here at Racedepartment. The community is what makes or breaks a site, and from the people that I have met so far here any site would be hard pressed to match Racedepartment in my opinion.

**EDIT**
I wanted to add one more thing about Teamspeak. From personal experience I have noticed that since they released TS3"beta" which it is still now alot of people including myself have had problems with it. I for one will lose ALL sound until I shut it down. After about 15 seconds or so my sound will come back as if it was all normal. This may be an issue for people as well for not using it. I had always like TS over Ventrillo until they brought out TS3. Now Vent has my vote, however the problem with that is Vent is more expensive to rent than TS3 when you get into the servers that have more than 25 slots.
 
RD iRacing Driving School

This will eventually be merged into the main thread. But for all that are interested please post in this thread and follow the format below. Any other questions/feedback about the Driving School should go into the main thread. This is to figure out an exact time and day that will work for everyone. Thanks :)

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1. What days of the week are best for you?
2. What times are best for you?
3. Which cars would you like to learn?
4. Which tracks would you like to learn?
 
1. What days of the week are best for you? Mon , Tues ...most days thru week
2. What times are best for you? evening GMT
3. Which cars would you like to learn? Skippy, Star Mazda, DP
4. Which tracks would you like to learn? Next track in iracing schedule
 
1. What days of the week are best for you? Weekdays
2. What times are best for you? Late evening GMT
3. Which cars would you like to learn? Riley DP, Vette, Dallara, 79, Skippy
4. Which tracks would you like to learn? Any
 

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