
When I was a kid I wanted to not only drive a race car, I wanted to design and build it. I was fascinated with the story of Bruce McLaren who not only achieved those feats but excelled in all. There were no racing-related resources where I lived, but after a five hour trip to [...]

We may argue for centuries about who killed JFK, but if there was someone suspicious on the grassy knoll, I can guess he didn’t make his getaway in a car with lots of torque. Given my online racing experience with iRacing, he likely would have been another easy target for Jack Ruby since he’d be [...]

Alright, I wouldn’t go so far as to call this a retraction, but let’s call it a little clarification of the last article I wrote on the optimum shift RPMs for the Skip Barber car. Based on the calculations of horsepower and RPMs, I put together a prescribed set of shift RPMs for each gear [...]

Lately I have been running the engine so hard in the Skip Barber F2000 that it wails in such a way that I think I need to call Father Karras. In the past I was kind and gentle to the powertrain, but now I’ve learned that it needs to be pushed closer to the limit [...]

Let’s face it, if you’re angling for a great gift this year it’s probably a big-ticket item like a monitor or three, or a high end CPU, pedals or video card. But if the budget is tight or you just want to tack-on some extras, here are a few items you can give to yourself [...]

I was working on some acceleration tests at Indianapolis with various cars to determine their power curves and stumbled upon an interesting idea. I figured I could estimate the drag coefficient from the cars by capturing some telemetry data. I wanted to remove the aero drag and rolling resistance forces from the data in order [...]

In the past, when I configured my video each time I upgraded my system, I made sure to check-off the box for V-Sync under the graphics options because the resulting effect on the sim was quite smooth and produced the best moving image quality with little or no stutters or “artifacts”.
So I have been quite [...]

I’m a Type B personality. I don’t over-plan my vacations, I don’t make lists, I let things happen. But I concede that there are advantages to the type A personality – not forgetting to pick up things at the grocery store, not scrambling to deal with a lack of available hotel rooms, etc., so I’ve [...]

It’s time for an intervention. I read with interest many forum posts on pedals and how different brands, constructions, and components can yield a big gain in performance on track. Every such proclamation made me quite skeptical. My belief has always been that it’s the poor writer who blames his pen, and if ‘aliens’ were [...]

Editor’s note: 2009 Season Three saw the introduction of dramatically enhanced camera functions to the iRacing service. “inRacingNews’” Tech Tip guru Ray Bryden was kind enough to put together the following camera editing primer:
To Activate the Editor
Hit <Ctrl> <F12> on the replay screen. This brings up the Camera Edit box. You can edit either [...]

I’m no stickler, but ‘telemetry’ is not the right word for collecting data from a simulated car. I’m not holding my breath about a change in nomenclature, but I’ll just note quietly, that the true meaning of the term ‘telemetry’ is something like “far off + measure.” True if applied to a real racecar, but [...]

When iRacing threw in the free skidpad to the list of goodies in the recent update, I decided it was time to learn things about car handling systematically starting with a car with only a few setup variables – the Skip Barber F2000.
I checked four different rear anti-roll bar (RARB) settings, and at least 3 [...]