Master every corner: 5 fatal mistakes that’ll slow you down in iRacing

The good news is: Most of these mis­takes are absolute­ly typ­i­cal and, above all, cor­rectable. Our SimUl­ti­mate Head Coach Jesús Sicil­ia knows exact­ly where sim rac­ers leave the most valu­able tenths of a sec­ond behind from his eSports career and count­less teleme­try analy­ses. If you under­stand and elim­i­nate these mis­takes, you will not only become faster in indi­vid­ual moments, but above all more con­sis­tent over the entire race dis­tance.

Here are the five most com­mon cor­ner­ing mis­takes that Jesús sees in almost every dri­ver – and how a pro­fes­sion­al coach fix­es them.

1. The illu­sion of extreme­ly late brak­ing
The ego often whis­pers to us sim rac­ers that the one who brakes the lat­est is also the fastest. That is a fatal mis­con­cep­tion. Any­one who over­shoots the brak­ing point los­es the abil­i­ty to slow the car down suf­fi­cient­ly before the apex. The result is bru­tal under­steer. You miss the apex, slide wide to the out­side and ruin the entire accel­er­a­tion phase for the fol­low­ing straight.

The coach’s view: Jesús preach­es con­sis­ten­cy over aggres­sive­ness. In the teleme­try, he does not look for the lat­est brak­ing point, but the most sta­ble one. He works with dri­vers on find­ing fixed ref­er­ence points on the track – a sign, a spot on the asphalt or the begin­ning of a curb. Only when the dri­ver hits this point absolute­ly per­fect­ly ten times in a row and takes the cor­ner clean­ly is the brak­ing point moved back in tiny steps in order to explore the absolute lim­it.

2. The pan­icked, pre­ma­ture turn-in point
Out of a cer­tain men­tal rush, many dri­vers tend to yank the steer­ing wheel toward the inside of the cor­ner far too ear­ly. Ear­ly turn-in inevitably leads to an extreme­ly flat, tight cor­ner­ing line. This comes back to haunt you bit­ter­ly at the cor­ner exit: Because the radius becomes tighter and tighter toward the end of the cor­ner, you sim­ply run out of track. You have to lift off the throt­tle or, in the worst case, even brake to cor­rect.

The coach’s view: Here Jesús focus­es strong­ly on visu­al train­ing (vision con­trol). He trains dri­vers to aim for the so-called “late apex.” By delib­er­ate­ly delay­ing turn-in, you straight­en the car much ear­li­er again at the cor­ner exit. A straight steer­ing wheel means that you can get back on full throt­tle much ear­li­er and more aggres­sive­ly, which brings mas­sive speed advan­tages on the fol­low­ing straight.

3. The ignored weight trans­fer
Many sim rac­ers view their vir­tu­al car as a sta­t­ic box. But from a physics per­spec­tive, every­thing in a cor­ner revolves around the trans­fer of mass. If you brake hard, you push the weight onto the front axle. If you get on the throt­tle, you unload the front and press the rear into the asphalt. Any­one who ignores this dynam­ic and oper­ates the ped­als in a pure­ly dig­i­tal way pro­vokes mas­sive under­steer on entry or uncon­trol­lable over­steer in the mid­dle of the cor­ner.

The coach’s view: For Jesús, the feel for weight trans­fer is the key to the mas­ter­class. He ana­lyzes what is known as “trail brak­ing” with extreme pre­ci­sion. He teach­es dri­vers not to release the brake abrupt­ly when turn­ing in, but to reduce the pres­sure gen­tly and smooth­ly. This keeps enough weight, and there­fore grip, on the front tires to let the car rotate will­ing­ly into the cor­ner with­out desta­bi­liz­ing the rear.

4. The impa­tient right foot at the exit
The adren­a­line is pump­ing, you see the straight ahead and you ham­mer your foot onto the throt­tle far too ear­ly and too hard. The rear breaks out imme­di­ate­ly, the tires spin (wheel­spin) or the trac­tion con­trol bru­tal­ly reduces engine pow­er. All of this not only costs lap time imme­di­ate­ly, but lit­er­al­ly burns the rear tires, which takes extreme revenge lat­er in the race.

The coach’s view: Jesús con­veys a very visu­al con­cept here: The throt­tle ped­al is not an on-off switch, but a dim­mer. He teach­es the gold­en rule of cor­re­la­tion between hands and feet. The posi­tion of the throt­tle ped­al must mir­ror the open­ing of the steer­ing wheel. Only when the steer­ing wheel is almost com­plete­ly straight again at the cor­ner exit may the throt­tle ped­al be pressed down one hun­dred per­cent. This pro­gres­sion saves tires and lap times.

5. The gru­el­ing fight against physics (over­driv­ing)
Prob­a­bly the most fun­da­men­tal mis­take is demand­ing more from the car in every sin­gle cor­ner than the mechan­i­cal and aero­dy­nam­ic grip allows. Any­one who exceeds the lim­it of the tires forces the car into a per­ma­nent state of slid­ing. The tires over­heat, the grip col­laps­es com­plete­ly and lap times fluc­tu­ate uncon­trol­lably. This “over­driv­ing” usu­al­ly comes from the wrong attempt to force pace through pure aggres­sion instead of through pre­ci­sion.

The coach’s view: When Jesús sees wild­ly twitch­ing teleme­try graphs and over­heat­ed tires, he imme­di­ate­ly pulls the emer­gency brake. He takes the aggres­sive­ness out of the dri­ving style and asks the dri­ver to define a tar­get time that they can dri­ve effort­less­ly and with­out the slight­est mis­take for ten to fif­teen laps in a row. Only when this flaw­less con­sis­ten­cy – this “smooth­ness” – has been achieved is the pace grad­u­al­ly increased. Calm in the cock­pit is the true secret of speed.

Do you want to break through the wall?

There is no shame in being stuck on a plateau. But it is unnec­es­sary to stay there.
Jesús Sicil­ia brings not only expe­ri­ence from the high­est eSports leagues, but also an under­stand­ing of real rac­ing physics. He knows how to read data and teach dri­ving tech­nique that tru­ly makes you faster.

Stop guess­ing and start train­ing with pur­pose. Book your per­son­al 1‑to‑1 coach­ing now