Free Guides
Sim Racing Guides
Want to actually get faster at sim racing? Start here. I'm Marian Barbieru — coach to 1,500+ drivers, 25M+ views — and these guides break down the braking, racing lines, force feedback and setup that win lap time on iRacing, ACC and beyond.
Free Tools
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FOV Tool
Sim Racing FOV Calculator (iRacing, ACC, AMS2 & More)
Get the correct field of view for your monitor + distance, converted for every major sim.
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FFB Tool
Sim Racing FFB Settings — Best Setup for Every Wheelbase & Sim
Pick your wheelbase + sim for cross-checked force-feedback settings — base firmware and in-game, for every major brand.
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Monitor Tool
Sim Racing Monitor Setup Visualizer: Single vs Ultrawide vs Triple Screens
See the visibility difference between single, ultrawide and triple screens before you spend anything.
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Ergonomic Tool
Sim Racing Seating Position: GT3, Formula & Ergonomic Rig Setup
Four angles from one photo. Which sit outside the band for what you drive, in which direction, and what to change first.
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Car Setup Tool
Sim Racing Setup Tool: Fix Understeer & Oversteer
A sim racing setup guide with a free interactive troubleshooter: fix understeer, oversteer and traction problems by corner phase, with real garage data for two cars.
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Driving Technique
Double-Apex Corners Explained: How to Choose Your Racing Line
Two apexes, one corner. The decision is how wide to run in the middle, and it has a real answer: car type first, then the straight that follows.
Driving Technique
How to Drive Chicanes Faster in Sim Racing
A chicane is decided by where you are on the exit of the first turn. One or two metres there changes the arc you get through the second.
Driving Technique
How to Take Hairpin Corners Faster in Sim Racing
The rounded arc carries more speed and the late apex gets you out sooner. Which one wins, why, and the drill that settles it for your car.
Driving Technique
Racing Corner Types: How to Recognize Them and Choose Your Line
Every corner belongs to a family, and the family tells you what it punishes before you have driven a lap of it. The shapes, seen from above.
Driving Technique
Sim Racing Racecraft Guide: Overtaking, Defending & Wheel-to-Wheel Racing
Racecraft is what you do once the track is no longer empty: read the other driver, position early, and choose the move that wins the race rather than the corner. With the footage.
Driving Technique
How to Induce Oversteer in Sim Racing — and Why Fast Drivers Do It
A little entry oversteer, created on purpose, points the car at the apex sooner and gets you to the throttle earlier. The four ways to induce it, and where too much begins.
Driving Technique
Sim Racing Steering Technique: How to Use Steering Through Every Corner
Steering and braking share one set of front tyres. Where the steering belongs in each phase of a corner, the kick that finds the limit, and the mistake of adding lock after the apex.
Driving Technique
How to Brake Later in Sim Racing Without Ruining the Corner
Why 'just brake later' never works, the four inefficiencies that make your braking zone longer than it should be, and the step-by-step way to move the marker.
Driving Technique
Sim Racing Race Pace: How to Be Fast From Lap 1 Without Overdriving
Why you take three laps to reach a pace you proved in one, the four modes fast drivers switch between, and the cold-tyre drill that fixes lap one.
Driving Technique
How to Read Sim Racing Telemetry and Find Lap Time
How a coach reads a lap: delta first, then line and speed, then the pedal traces — with real comparisons showing where the time actually went.
Driving Technique
12 Sim Racing Driving Techniques Every Driver Should Master
The twelve fundamentals that actually make you faster, in the order they should be learned — because each one only works once the one before it is repeatable.
Driving Technique
How to Drive Formula Cars Fast in Sim Racing
Aero grip, the decaying brake triangle, no ABS and no traction control: how open-wheel driving actually differs, taught from the Formula Masterclass.
Driving Technique
How to Drive GT3 Cars Fast in Sim Racing
Braking, ABS, trail braking, rotation and traction control in GT3 cars, taught the way the GT3 Masterclass teaches it, with three lessons and the instructor's drawings.
Driving Technique
How to Learn a New Track Fast in Sim Racing, Step by Step
An eight-stage order for learning a circuit you have never driven, with lap time kept out of it until it starts telling the truth. Plus a protocol for a weekly track rotation.
Driving Technique
How to Find the Grip Limit in Sim Racing
The grip limit is not a speed or a steering angle — it is where more input stops producing more. What a tyre needs to grip, the four limits, and a drill for bracketing yours in one corner.
Sim Guides
Best Sim Racing Game 2026: iRacing vs ACC vs Assetto Corsa
Six sims compared by what each one is actually for, not by rank. A decision table up front, then honest notes on iRacing, ACC, Assetto Corsa, Assetto Corsa EVO, Le Mans Ultimate and Automobilista 2.
Setup & Gear
Sim Racing Upgrade Order: What Should You Upgrade First?
There is no universal upgrade order. Upgrade whatever is currently stopping the hardware you already own from doing its job.
Driving Technique
The Problem With Fixed Setups in iRacing
A good place to start and a bad place to settle. The cost is not lap time; it is not being able to tell whether your technique worked.
Driving Technique
How to Avoid Crashes in Sim Racing: 20 Habits That Work
Two of the most useful habits involve being less polite and less slow. Predictability is the safety mechanism, not caution.
Driving Technique
5 Tracks That Teach You to Drive Fast
A circuit is not a neutral container for practice. It is a syllabus, and each one teaches a different subject.
Mindset & Improvement
The iRating Trap: Why Chasing iRating Makes You Lose More
Race from where you are, not from where you think you should be. Loss aversion turns one bad result into five.
Mindset & Improvement
Can an AI Sim Racing Coach Actually Make You Faster?
The usefulness curve is a U, not a line: strong for beginners, strong again for quick drivers, and weakest exactly in the middle.
Setup & Gear
Brake Bias in Sim Racing: How to Use It to Go Faster
The goal is not maximum rear bias. It is neutral balance: move rearward until the rear objects, then take one step back.
Driving Technique
6 Sim Racing Mistakes a Coach Spotted in One Lap
Six faults in one lap, and the sensation underneath four of them. What a coach changed, and why he refused to fix them where they appeared.
Driving Technique
iRacing Tire Management Guide: How to Keep Your Tires Fast
If your tyres are gone by lap six, the setup is usually not the problem. The habits that cook them, and the corner-by-corner method from two coaching workshops for keeping them alive in a race.
Driving Technique
Weight Transfer in Sim Racing: How to Use It to Rotate the Car
Why lifting sometimes rotates the car beautifully and sometimes does nothing at all — and what actually decides which.
Driving Technique
How to Take Corners Faster in Sim Racing: A Step-by-Step Method
Most of your deficit is in one or two corners. Seven steps for taking one apart and putting it back together.
Driving Technique
5 Sim Racing Drills to Fix the Most Common Beginner Mistakes
Five exercises for one corner, each with a pass you can call from the cockpit. Not tips — things to actually do tonight.
Driving Technique
How to Get More Car Rotation in Sim Racing (Without Overusing Trail Braking)
His trail braking was textbook. It was costing him a second a lap, because he depended on it for too much of the rotation.
Driving Technique
5 Sim Racing Braking Mistakes a Coach Spotted in One Lap
Five separate problems in one lap that turned out to be one habit showing up in five places.
Setup & Gear
Best Sim Racing Accessories: 9 Rig Upgrades I Actually Use
Not a research list. The accessories I bought with my own money and still use — and the one that is pure decoration.
Driving Technique
iRacing Qualifying Guide: How to Qualify Faster & Nail Your Out Lap
Half a second on the same track, same car, same setup — and nothing about the flying lap changed. It was the out lap.
Mindset & Improvement
How to Increase iRating: What the Number Is Actually Scoring
iRating is a scoring formula, not a skill score. What moves it, what does not, and why the climb slows.
Setup & Gear
How to Mount Simagic Haptic Pedal Reactors to Heusinkveld Pedals
No custom 3D print needed. The parts to order, the bracket angle, and the pedal bolt you borrow to hold it on.
Driving Technique
The Sim Racing Braking Mistake That Makes Your Apex Speed Meaningless
Same apex speed as the reference, still two tenths down. The release, the pressure spike, and why your pedal is working against you.
Setup & Gear
Sim Racing Head Tracking: I Tested a Webcam Eye Tracker
It moves the window; it does not make the window bigger. What a webcam tracker is genuinely good for on one screen.
Setup & Gear
SimHub Bass Shaker Settings: ButtKicker and Pedal Haptics
The effects and numbers I run on two seat shakers and the pedals, and the one I deliberately keep off the brake.
Mindset & Improvement
Sim Racing Progression: The 5 Stages From Beginner to Alien
Five stages take a driver from survival to alien. What each one feels like, and how to tell which one is yours.
Mindset & Improvement
How to Get Better at Sim Racing
The method behind a 1.5K to 6K iRating year: what to fix first, how to practise, and the weekly routine that made it stick.
Mindset & Improvement
The Things No One Tells You About Sim Racing
The hidden costs, plateaus and mindset traps that catch new sim racers off guard.
Mindset & Improvement
50 Brutal Truths About Sim Racing
Racecraft, self-awareness and practice truths that actually change how you drive.
Driving Technique
How to Be Faster at Sim Racing: The Fundamentals
The fundamentals that actually create speed — and the practice that makes them stick.
Setup & Gear
10 Cheap Sim Racing Upgrades That Make You Faster
Where to spend first for the biggest speed gain per euro — pedals, feel and mounting.
Setup & Gear
10 Cheap Sim Racing Mods That Feel Illegal
Ten clever, low-cost mods — button boxes, brake feel, eye tracking and more.
Setup & Gear
Fanatec CSL DD: Avoiding the Common Issues
Setup, FanaLab and firmware gotchas that trip up new CSL DD owners — and how to dodge them.
Setup & Gear
The Best Force Feedback Settings for Sim Racing
Set FFB strength and clipping so you feel grip instead of clipping noise — and go faster.
Setup & Gear
5 Sim Racing Brake Pedal Tips I Wish I Knew Sooner
Mounting, feel and calibration tweaks that make your braking repeatable and fast.
Setup & Gear
The Best Brake Pedal Settings for Sim Racing
Set brake force, curve and feel so you can trail brake consistently — on any pedals.
Driving Technique
Trail Braking Explained: You've Been Learning It Backwards
Why copying pro brake traces fails — and how to build trail braking from the exit backwards.
Driving Technique
3 Steps to Fix Your Trail Braking for Good
Three fixes for the most common trail-braking mistakes that keep drivers stuck.
Driving Technique
How to Trail Brake in Sim Racing: A Practical Guide
The weight transfer, two drills, pedal feel and when not to do it — trail braking made practical.
Sim Guides
How to Be Faster in Automobilista 2
Dial in the FFB, pick a car to master, use Test Day, and apply the fundamentals that create pace.
Sim Guides
How to Be Faster in Le Mans Ultimate
Setup, which class to learn first, the braking fundamentals, and the endurance racecraft that wins stints.
Sim Guides
How to Be Faster in Assetto Corsa Competizione
FFB & FOV, tyre pressures, the electronics, and the GT3 driving style that finds lap time.
Sim Guides
How to Be Faster in iRacing: A Beginner's Guide to More Pace
Setup, iRating & Safety Rating, the right cars to learn in, and the fundamentals that build pace.
Deals
Sim-Lab Discount Code: GITGUD5 for 5% Off + Rig Buying Guide
5% off Sim-Lab — and what a rig really costs once it is actually usable.
Deals
GO Setups Discount Code: GITGUD for 10% Off — Is It Worth It?
10% off GO Setups — plus the pricing, the sim support gaps, and the refund catch.
Deals
Sim Racing Discount Codes (Working Codes, Checked)
Partner codes for sim-racing gear, each with an honest verdict on whether to buy.
Driving Technique
How to Practice Sim Racing Effectively
Stop grinding laps. One objective per session, corner-first reps, and the review loop that turns practice into pace.
Driving Technique
Why Your Lap Times Are Inconsistent
The eight usual causes of inconsistent lap times, and a diagnosis order that finds yours instead of guessing.
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