How to Avoid Crashes in Sim Racing: 20 Habits That Work

There is a version of sim racing where you spend most of your week practising and most of your Sunday being taken out by someone on lap one. It is a miserable loop, and the usual advice — "be more careful" — does nothing, because almost nobody crashes on purpose.

What follows is a set of habits rather than a plea for caution. Some of them are counter-intuitive: two of the most useful ones involve being less polite and less slow. They came out of a stretch of ten consecutive races without an incident, and the ones that made the most difference are not the ones people expect.

A note on scope before we start. This page is about the tactics — what to do with your eyes, your position and your race. If your problem is the pattern rather than the moment, two other pages cover it better: how to get better at sim racing has the incident-review method that turns crashes into information, and the iRating trap covers the specific case where you are taking risks to repair a bad result.

Part 1: see more

Most avoidable incidents are information problems. You did not make a bad decision so much as make a decision without knowing something that was available to you.

1. Widen your virtual mirrors

Most sims let you set the field of view of the virtual mirror separately from the cockpit view, and most drivers never touch it. Widening it is one of the largest single gains available, because the default shows you a slice of the road behind and hides exactly the car that is about to be alongside.

Is a very wide mirror realistic? No. Is it what the drivers at the sharp end are running? Yes, essentially all of them, because the competitive advantage is obvious and the realism cost is a mirror.

2. Get your actual FOV right — but do not confuse it with the mirror

Your cockpit field of view is a different setting with a different job. Too narrow and you lose the sense of speed and of where your car is on the road. Too wide and distances distort, which makes judging a gap harder precisely when it matters.

We are not going to re-derive it here, because it depends on your screen size and how far your eyes sit from it, and there is a calculator that works it out for you. Set it once, properly, and leave it alone.

One honest caveat that most FOV advice skips: a correct, fairly narrow FOV makes you quicker alone and more vulnerable in traffic, because your peripheral awareness genuinely shrinks. If you race on an ultrawide or a single screen, bind look-left and look-right to wheel buttons and use them. That recovers most of what the correct FOV costs you.

3. Run a radar overlay and a spotter

A proximity radar and a working spotter are the closest thing to a cheat code in this list. They tell you about cars you physically cannot see from a fixed screen, which is the single biggest difference between a sim cockpit and a real one.

Yes, it is more to process. It stops being extra load within a couple of races and becomes the thing you glance at without deciding to.

4. Look further ahead than the car in front

Tunnel vision is the most common vision fault in sim racing, and it has two flavours. The first is staring at your own braking reference instead of the horizon. The second is locking onto the bumper of the car ahead.

Both leave you reacting to things at the moment they reach you. Keep the car ahead in your awareness, but put your attention past it — at the braking zone, at the corner after this one, at the spray of dust that means someone three cars up has already gone off. That is where your reaction time comes from.

If you regularly get collected by incidents that started ahead of you, that is not bad luck, it is this.

5. Watch the mirrors for a dive bomb before it happens

Dive bombs look unavoidable and mostly are not. A car closing much faster than the corner allows is visible in your mirrors well before the braking zone — it means either an attempt is coming or they have already made a mistake and are a passenger.

Either way the response is the same: know they are there, take a defensive line early, and leave yourself somewhere to go. Being surprised is what turns a dive bomb into a crash.

Part 2: hold your ground

This is the section that surprises people, because it argues against politeness.

6. Do not leave more space than the situation needs

A lot of crashes come from a driver being generous on entry. It feels safe and reads as good sportsmanship. The problem is what it does to the next three seconds: you have handed away the line, you arrive at the apex in the wrong place, and now you are the one who has to make a correction mid-corner with a car alongside.

Give the space that is genuinely owed. Do not give away the corner and then have to retrieve it.

7. Slowing down too much is not safe

The reflex when things get busy is to lift. It feels like the cautious option and it is one of the more reliable ways to cause an incident.

Braking earlier than the cars around you expect makes you an obstacle. They have calibrated their braking to the pack, not to you. And having scrubbed too much speed, you now have to add it back mid-corner, which is exactly where you have least control.

Drive at a consistent, predictable pace. Predictability is the actual safety mechanism — being slow is not the same thing, and is sometimes the opposite.

8. Do not force a three-wide

Three abreast is thrilling and has almost no margin. One driver being slightly off — not even wrong, just slightly off — takes out all three.

Unless you are confident you can hold your line exactly and you know the drivers on either side of you, it is not worth the position. Take it later in the race, or take it from a driver you trust.

9. If you end up three-wide, do not be the middle one

The golden rule, and it is worth internalising as a reflex rather than a decision: do not be the meat in the sandwich.

The middle car has zero room on either side and therefore zero ability to correct anything. Outside or inside, you have somewhere to go. In the middle, you are relying entirely on two other people. If you find yourself there, prioritise getting out over the position.

10. Know which corners are not worth an overtake

Not every corner is a passing place. Some are too narrow, some are too fast, and attempting a move there is a coin flip regardless of how well you drive it.

As a rule of thumb: high-speed corners are rarely worth it, and low-speed corners — hairpins, chicanes, anywhere with a long braking zone — are where passes actually complete. Learn which is which on the tracks you race.

The cost of forcing it is not only the crash risk. A failed move usually loses more time than waiting two more corners for a good one would have.

Part 3: arrive prepared

11. Have more than one braking reference per corner

This is the tip that quietly does the most work, and it comes from a simple problem: your braking reference is often behind another car.

Alone, one board is fine. In a pack, the board is blocked, the car you are trying to pass is exactly where you look, and you end up guessing. Guessing in a braking zone is how contact happens.

Give every corner two or three references at different heights and angles — a kerb start, a fence post, a change in the tarmac, a shadow. It buys you flexibility in traffic, and it has a useful side effect: hunting for references trains you to pick them up faster, so you learn new tracks quicker too.

12. Practise the inside line, not just the racing line

Almost all practice happens on the ideal line, and then every defensive moment and every overtake in a real race happens somewhere else.

The inside line is a different corner. It is often dirtier, the grip is genuinely lower, and the first time you find that out should not be with a car alongside you. Spend part of your practice off the racing line so that defending and passing use a line you have actually driven.

13. Race the AI before you race people

AI racing is underrated as preparation. It gives you wheel-to-wheel situations, decisions under pressure and racecraft reps without anyone else's race being on the line when you get one wrong.

It is not a substitute for online racing. It is a good place to make your first mistakes.

14. Do not start from the pit lane

Starting from the pits feels like the safe option when you are nervous, and it removes the single most instructive part of the race. Starts and first laps are where racecraft is actually built — the pack, the pressure, the decisions.

Take the grid slot. A messy race you learn from beats a clean one you sat out.

Part 4: survive the moments that catch everyone

15. Give more room on the cold-tyre lap

The first lap produces more incidents than any other, and the reason is mechanical rather than behavioural: nobody has grip yet. Braking distances are longer than the ones you rehearsed all week, and the car is less predictable at the limit.

Leave a bigger gap, brake earlier than feels necessary, and let the field sort itself out. Close it up as the tyres come in. There is no version of the championship that is decided on lap one.

16. Going off track is allowed

Plenty of drivers treat leaving the circuit as failure and will stay on the tarmac into a car that has spun in front of them. That is the wrong trade every time. An incident point and a few seconds is cheaper than a barrier, a retirement, or ending someone else's race.

This is really the vision problem again: under stress, attention narrows onto keeping the car on the road, and the escape route stops being visible.

17. Rejoin like someone is coming, because they are

Rejoining badly causes a second crash after the one you just avoided. Two tools: your mirrors, and the delta bar.

If a car is less than about two seconds behind, assume they are arriving on the racing line at full speed and do not rejoin onto it. Wait. Losing two seconds and keeping a race is a trade worth making — and the driver you did not collect gets to keep theirs too.

18. Turn off force feedback crash effects

Crash and kerb-strike effects are fun until the moment they matter. When you are trying to catch a car that is already sideways, the last thing you need is the wheel fighting you with a canned effect. Plenty of saves are lost to wrestling the wheel rather than to the slide itself.

Turn the collision effects off in your force feedback settings. You keep the road feel and the grip information; you lose the part that only ever arrives when things are already going wrong.

Part 5: the two that are about you

19. Hide other drivers' ratings

This one is a personal favourite and almost nobody talks about it.

Knowing the rating of the driver next to you changes how you race them, and it changes it in both unhelpful directions. A high number makes you tentative and you concede space you should hold. A low number makes you assume a mistake is coming and you commit to moves you would not otherwise make.

Turn the rating display off in your overlays and race everyone the same. You end up more alert, because you are reading the car rather than the number attached to it.

20. Stop after one bad race

Racing angry produces more crashes. That is not a moral point, it is a reliably observable one: frustration shortens your patience for exactly the situations that need patience.

After a genuinely bad race, stop. Not for the day necessarily — twenty minutes is usually enough. The instinct to immediately reclaim what you lost is the same instinct that causes the next incident.

And the mindset that makes the rest work

When it has been a rough run, change the goal. Not a position, not a rating target: finish the race.

It sounds like a low ambition and it is a surprisingly effective one, because most of the decisions that end races are decisions you only make while chasing something. Take the chase away for a few races and the incidents fall off on their own — and the results usually come back with them, which is the part nobody expects.

Where to start

Twenty habits is too many to adopt at once. If you take three, take these: widen the mirrors, find a second braking reference for every corner, and look further ahead than the car in front. They are the three that stop incidents you currently think were unavoidable.

Everything here is about the race. If the underlying problem is that the car is not doing what you ask on entry, that is a different fix — start with the braking mistakes a coach spots in one lap.

Avoiding crashes FAQ

How do I avoid getting dive bombed in sim racing?

Spot it before the braking zone. A car closing much faster than the corner allows is visible in your mirrors well in advance, and it means either a move is coming or the driver has already overcommitted and is a passenger. Either way the response is the same: take a defensive line early, leave yourself an escape route, and do not be surprised. Being caught unaware is what turns an attempted dive bomb into contact.

Should you go off track to avoid a crash in sim racing?

Yes, almost always. An incident point and a few seconds is cheaper than a barrier, a retirement, or ending someone else's race. The reason drivers do not do it is vision narrowing under stress onto keeping the car on the tarmac. Rejoining is the part that needs care: check the mirrors and the delta bar, and if a car is within about two seconds assume they are arriving on the racing line at full speed and wait.

Why do most sim racing incidents happen on the first lap?

Cold tyres. Nobody has the grip they practised with, so braking distances are longer than everyone's references assume and the cars are less predictable near the limit, all while the field is at its most tightly packed. Leave a bigger gap than feels necessary, brake earlier than your marker, and close the gap gradually as temperature comes in.

Is driving slowly safer in a sim race?

No, and it is a common way to cause an incident. Braking earlier than the cars around you expect makes you an obstacle, because they calibrated to the pack rather than to you, and having scrubbed too much speed you then have to add it back mid-corner where you have least control. Predictability is the safety mechanism, not slowness. Drive at a consistent, readable pace.

Where is the worst place to be in a three-wide?

The middle. A car on each side leaves you no room to adjust in either direction, so you are entirely dependent on two other drivers holding their lines exactly. On the inside or outside you always have somewhere to go. If you end up in the middle, prioritise getting out of it over holding the position, and avoid creating three-wide situations at all unless you trust the drivers beside you.

Should I turn off force feedback crash effects?

Yes. Collision and impact effects shake the wheel at the exact moment you are trying to catch a car that is already sliding, and plenty of recoverable moments are lost to fighting the wheel rather than to the slide itself. Disabling them costs you nothing useful: the road texture and grip information that actually help you drive come from different effects and stay on.