Sim Racing Racecraft Guide: Overtaking, Defending & Wheel-to-Wheel Racing

Raw pace tells you how fast you can drive an empty track. Sim racing racecraft is your ability to make good decisions when the track is no longer empty. It is why a driver two tenths slower than you can beat you every week: they are not faster, they make better decisions in the two seconds around every other car.

This guide is the public version of the racecraft chapter of our Formula Masterclass, taught by a top-split Super Formula Lights driver who paused his own race replay corner by corner and explained what he was thinking. It comes with the footage: wherever the text describes a situation, there is a short clip of it happening, with the instructor's narration, so you can see where the cars are rather than imagine it. A few situations are described in words only, because the footage shows the other drivers' names. The page is not a list of rules. It is a way of thinking: reading what the other car is about to do, putting your car where it changes their decision, and choosing the move that gives you the best race rather than the most exciting corner.

What is racecraft in sim racing?

Sim racing racecraft is the ability to make good decisions around other cars: where to position your car, when to attack, when to defend, when to give up a corner, and how to plan a battle so that it costs you as little time as possible. It is separate from lap time. A driver can be very fast alone and poor at racecraft, and the reverse is also common.

The word is sometimes used more broadly, to cover race pace, tyre management and strategy as well. On this page it means the wheel-to-wheel part: what happens in the few seconds when your car and another car want the same piece of track. The other parts have their own guides, and the two that matter most sit either side of this one. Reaching the pace you already have on lap one instead of lap four is race pace. The habits that keep you out of other people's accidents are how to avoid crashes. This page is about the racing in between: how to pass, how to hold a position, and how to think one or two corners ahead of the driver you are fighting.

Racecraft is a different skill from raw pace

Being quick alone tells you where the tyre's limit is. It tells you nothing about the other car. That is why racecraft sits last in the twelve driving techniques: it is every other skill plus somebody else's decisions, and it is the only one you cannot rehearse on an empty track, which is why it tends to be the last to develop and the first to cost you positions.

The good news is that it is learnable in a way pace is not. Pace is limited by how much grip you can feel. Racecraft is limited by how much you notice, and noticing is a habit. Almost every example on this page turns on the instructor seeing something small a corner early: a car braking too soon, a driver leaving three car widths he did not need to leave, a battle just ahead about to compromise somebody's exit. The move itself is usually simple. The noticing is the skill.

The five racecraft questions

Every decision in a battle is an answer to one of five questions, and most incidents come from skipping one of them.

Answer the five questions, then commit to the answer. The rest of this page is the detail behind them, in the order the course teaches sim racing racecraft: first the small vocabulary of car position, then the three ways to defend, because you cannot attack a defence you cannot read, then how to overtake against each of them, then the thinking that makes the moves available in the first place.

Car positioning is communication

You cannot control what other drivers do. You can influence what they decide, and the way you do it is with the position of your car. Every driver behind you reads your placement in their windscreen, every driver ahead reads yours in their mirrors, and both of them make decisions from it before a single input reaches the pedals. The instructor's word for this is assertive: not aggressive, but clear. When you defend, you move to the inside as early as you can so your intention is unmistakable. When you attack, you show up in a mirror on purpose. When there is a gap, you put your car in it. That is how a car sends a message to everyone around it, and it is how you control a race start and a battle rather than react to them.

• The inside line, taken early says "I am defending this corner." It is a full defence.
• The middle of the track says "you can try, but it will cost both of us." It is a half defence, and it protects the exit.
• The normal racing line says "I do not consider you a threat here," which is either true or an invitation.
• Showing your nose in one mirror says "I might go this way." Sometimes it is true. The most useful moves on this page are the ones where it is not.
• Disappearing from the mirrors (sitting in the slipstream, straight behind) says "nothing is happening," which is exactly what you want a driver to believe just before something happens.
• Weaving says "I do not know what I am doing," and it invites the very move it is trying to prevent.

Position also works on the driver beside you, not only the ones ahead and behind. Approaching a braking zone with a car on his inside, the instructor stays in the middle of the track so that the other driver cannot open up the corner for free, then moves across to the racing line about fifty metres before the braking point. He carries more speed into the corner; the other car is stuck in the middle. Nothing was blocked. The space was simply never offered.

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Everything that follows is built out of those six sentences. An ambiguous late move is worse than a clear early one, whichever side of the fight you are on.

How to defend in sim racing

The course teaches three ways to defend a corner, and the skill is choosing between them, not always choosing the strongest one. In order of commitment they are the normal racing line, the half defence, and the full defence.

The normal racing line: don't defend if they aren't close enough

Defending costs time. Every metre you spend off the racing line is exit speed you are giving away, and the driver behind is the person who gains most from that. So the first decision is whether there is anything to defend against at all. If the car behind is too far back to realistically make a move at the next braking point, you do not defend. You stay on the racing line, hit your braking point, take a good exit, and the gap grows. Here is the instructor doing exactly that as the car ahead, after a better exit from the previous corner has left the attacker a bit too far back to realistically make a move.

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This sounds obvious written down, and it is the decision most drivers get wrong most often, because defending feels safe and driving your own line feels exposed. It is the other way round. A driver who defends every corner is slow everywhere, and drivers behind notice. The same judgment closes the race walkthrough. In the clip the instructor completes a pass, covers the inside for a lap because the passed car is in his draft, and then, once it drops out of range, goes back to the racing line and stops defending. Three decisions, and all of them the same question answered three times.

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Half defending: move to the middle without closing the door

Half defending means moving towards the middle of the track without fully covering the inside. The gap is still there; the driver behind can still see it. What changes is the price. To take the inside now they have to commit to a line that will compromise both cars, and if there is a third car close behind, both of you lose to it. So the half defence works by making the move expensive rather than impossible, and it does that while keeping most of your exit. Here is what it looks like from the car behind: the driver ahead drifts to the middle, the inside is open, and the instructor decides not to go for it because a car not far behind would get a run on both of them.

The half defence is the one the instructor reaches for most, because it discourages a move without paying the full price of a full defence. Its weakness is a driver who reads it correctly: the gap on the inside is real, and someone patient and precise will take it. The section on overtaking shows how.

Fully defending: take the inside early and hold it to the corner

When the car behind is genuinely close enough to make a move, you cover the inside. Not at the braking point: early, on the straight, so that the driver behind has read your intention before they have to decide anything. In the example below the instructor is the car ahead, knows the driver behind is in range, and instead of moving over to the racing line on the right he stays on the inside all the way to the corner. The message is clear, the inside is gone, and the attacker's only option is around the outside, which, as he says elsewhere in the course, is almost impossible at most corners.

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The cost is exit speed. You will turn in from a worse angle, carry less speed through the apex, and be slower onto the next straight, which means the driver behind will get a run on you again. That is the trade, and the reason you do not fully defend everything: a full defence keeps the position for one corner at the price of the next straight. The way to pay less for it is timing. Move over early enough to be credible, but not so early that you drive the whole straight off-line. At the corner in the clip below the instructor puts it at about two tenths: he is the car ahead, the attacker is that close, and the thing to watch is how early he moves right, then how he drifts back towards the racing line as the braking zone arrives, because he is strong on the brakes at this corner and knows a dive from behind would only send the attacker across the track. The early move had already done the work.

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Weaving is not defending

Weaving on the straight breaks the tow for a moment, and it also tells the driver behind that you have not decided where you are going to be. The instructor's advice as the car ahead is blunt: do not weave, move all the way to the inside, hug the wall, show the car behind that you are defending as hard as you can, and open the corner from there. As the car behind, a weaving driver is a gift, because at some point they will leave the inside open for a moment. In the clip below the instructor admits he was not ready for it: the weaving distracted him, he was focused on an outside run, and the small inside window came and went. His verdict on it is the rule for every move on this page: once you have decided a gap is real, go for it decisively. It would have been an aggressive move, and it could have gone wrong if the other driver had reacted, but a decisive move on an open inside usually works, and a small hesitation is what turns it into nothing.

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The most common defensive mistake: forgetting the car behind

Defending is not a decision you make once. It is a position you have to keep holding while other things compete for your attention, and the most common way to lose a place is to start defending correctly and then stop, because something ahead became more interesting. The instructor shows himself doing it. He covers the inside properly, then gets absorbed in beating the car to his left and chasing the slipstream from the green car ahead, underestimates the tow (the slipstream) the car behind is getting from him, and leaves the door open. He is about to lose the position.

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What he does next is the correction, and it is worth watching for how early it happens: the next time the same car is behind him he hugs the right-hand side of the track as early as possible, before the driver behind has any decision to make. The clip then runs on into the pattern the overtaking section is built around, a lift into turn one and a run into turn two.

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When to stop defending

Two situations end a defence. The first is a driver with real pace on you and most of the race still to run. Let them through on a straight, keep your exit, and sit in their mirrors for the corner where they get it wrong. The second is a queue. With several cars lined up behind you, a full defence protects one corner and hands the outside line to the next car along, and you end up defending against three drivers at once. With four cars behind him near the end of the walkthrough, the instructor half defends to the middle to show he is defending, then goes straight back onto the racing line behind the car ahead: a good exit, and the pack's draft broken. Nobody goes for a messy move, and the fight is over because he refused to have it.

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How to overtake in sim racing

An overtake is set up before the braking zone, not inside it. Every example on this page that works has the same shape: the attacker decides where the car ahead is going to be a corner in advance, positions for that, and the move itself is the easy part. Every example that goes wrong has the attacker deciding at the braking point. So before the individual overtaking techniques, the general rule: if you are still choosing a side when you reach the braking marker, you are not overtaking, you are hoping.

Set up the overtake before the braking zone

The clearest illustration is a pair of corners the instructor uses again and again at the Red Bull Ring: a slow first corner and a second corner at the top of a hill. Passing into the first corner is possible but expensive, because it compromises both cars' exits and the outside car often comes out ahead anyway. So he lifts on the run to turn one, stays close, and uses the exit to get a run into turn two, where the pass completes. Two corners, one decision, made on the straight before either of them. In the clip below the car ahead does not defend turn two, expecting a better exit from the outside, and the instructor carries more speed into the apex and is at least side by side, ideally seventy percent ahead, by the time it matters.

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Notice what "set up" actually means here. It is not a clever line. It is accepting a small loss in the corner you are in so that you arrive at the next one with a speed advantage and the inside line. The same choice, giving up turn one for turn two, appears three times in one race. Twice it produces the pass, and where it works it works for the same reason: the driver ahead leaves the inside open because he expects a better exit from the outside line. The clip below is the first of the three, and it produces the run on the blue car and then a decision not to complete it: the blue car cannot stop from the line it took, and the instructor opens his steering rather than drive into a car that is running wide.

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Use the slipstream without becoming predictable

The slipstream is free speed and it is also a hiding place. Directly behind another car you are out of their mirrors, which is exactly where you want to be until the moment you want to be seen. The easiest overtake in the course, on a car that does not defend at all, is nothing more than this: stay in the tow as long as possible, then, once you are close enough, step out to the inside. Two details make it clean. Once alongside, leave the other car a car's width or less, so there is no room for it to come across; and make sure you are about seventy percent ahead by the turn-in point. That much overlap makes it very hard for the outside car to turn in on you, and it means you are not sitting in their blind spot when they do.

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The predictability problem is the other side of the same coin. If every attack you make comes from the slipstream to the inside at the same corner, the driver ahead only has to cover one thing. That is why the section below spends so much time on being seen where you do not intend to go.

Make your intentions visible (and sometimes false)

This is the technique the course is built around. The driver ahead cannot see your pedals. They can only see where your car is, so where your car is becomes your intention as far as they are concerned. Against a half-defending car, the instructor sits in the slipstream showing nothing, then, as he closes, edges to the left just enough to appear in the left mirror. To the driver ahead that reads as "he is going for the outside", they relax the half defence a fraction, and the moment the instructor feels them commit to it he cuts back to the right and takes the inside for the corner. It is subtle, and it works on a lot of drivers, because "he's going left, he's not sending it up the inside" is a conclusion a driver reaches from a glance at a mirror.

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Same idea, other mirror: against a car half defending under pressure, the instructor moves quickly to the right so he is very visible in the right-hand mirror, which reads as not attacking; the driver ahead drifts back towards the racing line, and the inside opens. The lesson is honest about what happens next: he arrives there from too far back, there is no overlap into the braking zone, and the move does not complete. The signal worked; the distance did not.

And inverted: closing on a car, the instructor deliberately stays out of the slipstream and moves all the way over to the racing line on the outside, to signal that he is not going for a move. The whole plan is a dive to the inside the moment the driver ahead gives up the inside line, and the signal is what makes them give it up.

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There is an honest version of this as well. Sometimes you are not alongside and the driver ahead owes you no space, but showing up in their mirror under braking makes them hesitate or open their steering, because they are worried you might drive into them. It can hand you a corner, and it can do nothing, in which case you must be ready to brake. The instructor meets both outcomes a few corners apart: first the green car ignores him and he has to back out; then, in the clip below, a driver sees him coming from a long way back, opens the steering, and the inside is his.

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None of this is weaving, and none of it is moving under braking. Each of these is a deliberate placement on the straight, early enough for the driver ahead to read it; the feint is one move out and one move back, both made before the braking zone. That is what makes it racecraft rather than a block.

Attacking the inside line

The inside is the line you want for most corners, and the clip above is the recipe against a driver who has not covered it. What is worth adding is how the instructor thinks about a car that is slow for a reason. When a driver ahead has made a mistake earlier in the lap and is slow on the straight, the instructor does not simply follow the car in front of him around the outside, because that will not get him past; he looks for the surprise down the inside. And when the other car has the better exit onto the straight, the counter is to brake a little later so that you are ahead into the corner, not alongside. Ahead means you are out of the blind spot and they cannot open the steering into you.

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Overtaking around the outside

Sometimes the inside is simply gone, because the driver ahead has done what this page told them to do and covered it early. Then the choice is between waiting and the outside, and the outside is a real option in the right corner. The instructor's example is turn one at Barcelona: the car ahead fully covers the inside, so once alongside he moves out to the normal racing line, brakes slightly later than the inside car, carries speed around the outside and gets slightly ahead before the corner so he can turn in normally. The track was slightly damp, which is why his line is wider than usual, but the idea is the same in the dry: if the inside is genuinely gone, commit to the outside, trust your braking and beat them on exit. He lists three conditions before committing, and they are the checklist for any outside move:

• Enough space. If the inside car does not leave you a car's width, the move is dead before it starts. You are relying on their behaviour, not just yours.
• An escape plan. If the inside car goes in too hot and runs wide, you need somewhere to go. At Barcelona that was the option of cutting the first chicane. If there is nowhere, the outside is a coin flip with two cars on it.
• Speed, then position. Brake a little later than the inside car, carry more speed through the entry, and be slightly ahead by the turn-in so that you own the exit. Being exactly alongside at the apex on the outside means the inside car decides your line for you.

There is a category of corner where the outside is not a compromise but a set-up: a corner whose exit leads directly into the next braking zone, where the car on the outside can get the better run and take the inside back for the corner after. The instructor meets it twice. Once at Red Bull Ring turn two, when a moment's hesitation covering the inside leaves him side by side on the outside and the exit gives him the run he needs. And once, in the clip below, when the driver ahead leaves him more room than it needed to and does not use the full track: he very nearly steals the inside back, the other car just keeps its nose there, and he settles for braking as late as he can into the following corner so that there is no overlap and he can turn in as if the other car were not there. The lesson is to know, for the corners you race, where an outside line quietly becomes an inside line one corner later.

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The switchback

The switchback, or cutback, is the move for a driver who has defended the inside and has to pay for it. A car that takes the inside line early arrives at the apex with a worse angle and a worse exit, so you let them have the corner, stay wide, and cross back behind them on the exit to take the inside for the next corner. It is the natural counter to the full defence, and it is why the full defence should never be the default. Two examples. In the walkthrough the instructor sees the driver he is fighting brake later than him on the inside, knows he will run wide, and has the switchback planned before the corner has begun.

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In a separate three-car battle from the overtaking lesson, the instructor is third in line: the second car sets up a switchback on the leader, the leader is slow into the braking zone, and the instructor uses the same moment to get onto the second car's inside.

The condition for a switchback is patience through the corner you are giving up. Turn in behind the other car rather than beside it, keep your car straight for the exit, and let their compromised line do the work.

Finishing the move

An overtake is not finished when your nose is ahead. The driver you have just passed is now sitting in your tow with a run on you, and the corner after the pass is theirs to attack unless you take it away first. So the last step of every overtake on this page is the first step of defending: the moment you are ahead, move to the inside for the next corner as early as you can. The instructor shows both outcomes. In the three-car battle from the overtaking lesson he gets past into turn one, hesitates for a moment before covering the inside, is re-passed immediately, ends up on the outside of turn two, and recovers the whole thing because at that corner the outside gives a better run to the next braking zone; the first thing he does once he is ahead again is take the inside and fully defend. At the end of the walkthrough, in the clip at the top of the defending section, he does it without the hesitation: pass, inside, covered, done.

When not to overtake

Two situations, and they cover most bad moves. The first is a clear pace advantage. If you are several tenths a lap quicker, you will pass this driver on the straight in a lap or two; an aggressive move into a corner risks that certainty for a few seconds. The instructor's divebomb lesson is his own case study in getting this wrong, and it is covered in its own section below. The second is the first corner of a sequence when the second corner is where passes actually complete. Sending it into turn one slows both cars and usually gives the outside car the better exit, which is why so many of the passes on this page are set up into turn two instead. The exception is when you know the driver ahead defends the second corner hard, in which case turn one becomes the option, and it is an option you take knowing the exit will be worse.

There is one more, and it is the hardest to accept in the moment: a move that cannot be completed cleanly should not be started. No overlap into the braking zone means no move, however close it looks. The instructor shows himself in exactly that spot: the inside opens, but there is no overlap into the braking zone, he stays cautious, and by his own account does not do enough to take the position. He calls it not doing enough. It was also the reason nobody hit anybody, and the move waited for the next corner.

How to think ahead while racing

Everything so far is about a battle with one other car. Real races have a pack, and the drivers who gain the most positions are not the best at any single move; they are the ones who notice what is about to happen a car or two ahead. The instructor's phrase for it is thinking actively: reading the cars in front, noticing small mistakes, and putting your car in the right place before the move exists. The question to ask is not "can I pass here?" It is "if I position here now, what happens two corners from now?"

The clearest example in the course: ahead of the green car the instructor is following, a driver gets a bad exit, has a small moment, and the car behind him leaves about three car widths of space. The instructor sees this early and draws the conclusion immediately: those two cars are going to be slow into the next corner and they are going to leave space. So he positions himself on the inside of the green car in advance, just in case, gets a run from the tow of the car on his left, and takes two positions in one corner. He did not overtake anybody in the usual sense. He noticed, moved, and was already there.

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The same habit appears when the cars ahead go three wide. Most drivers watch. The instructor aims for the inside line, because the outside car in a three-wide situation is always the most vulnerable and the middle car has to leave room for the inside car, so somebody is about to be compromised and the inside is where the run will come from.

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And it appears in defence as well as attack. When the driver behind him moves left to draw a reaction before diving right, the instructor admits he almost falls for it, but holds the full defence on the inside, and the attacker's only option becomes the outside. Later in the race he borrows the same feint himself.

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Awareness is the flip side of thinking ahead, and it matters most when you are the one who has made the mistake. Carrying too much speed into a corner, the instructor is about to run wider than planned; the red car alongside notices immediately and lifts, and that lift is the only reason there was no contact. Notice what the other driver was doing: not defending, not attacking, just watching the car beside him and acting on it before he had to.

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None of this requires speed. It requires treating everything you can see as information about where the space is about to be, and it is available to anyone willing to practise noticing.

Divebombs: when is a late move actually on?

A divebomb is a late, deep lunge for the inside from further back than a normal move, relying on the driver ahead to see you and yield. It has a bad reputation and it deserves most of it, but a blanket rule against it is not racecraft either, because a decisive late move on a car that has left the inside open is sometimes the right call. The question is not whether it is aggressive. It is whether it is a high-percentage move or a low-percentage one, and the difference is measurable.

• Distance and speed delta. A move from alongside or nearly alongside is a pass. A move from a couple of car lengths back at the braking board is a divebomb even with a pace advantage, and with a clear pace advantage even the close one is usually the wrong choice; the instructor's own example below is exactly that.
• Overlap. Can you be alongside, ideally ahead, by the turn-in point? If the honest answer is "level with their rear wheel", you are asking them to give up the corner rather than taking it.
• Visibility. Have you been in their mirror long enough for them to know you are coming? A driver who has seen you can react. A driver who finds you in their blind spot at the apex cannot.
• Can the defender react at all? If they are already committed to their turn-in, no amount of good intention on their part avoids the contact.
• An escape plan. If you lock a wheel, where does the car go? Into run-off is a mistake. Into the other car is a crash.
• What it costs if it works. A completed divebomb usually ruins your exit, which means the driver you passed gets the run on you next straight. If you were faster anyway, you have converted a certain pass into an uncertain one and a defensive lap.

The course is unusual in that the instructor shows one of his own bad ones, and explains why it was bad. He starts the race from the back, is about four tenths a lap quicker than the car ahead, and has just lost time in a messy first corner. The driver ahead takes the normal racing line instead of covering the inside, which from a couple of car lengths back at the two-hundred-metre board he probably thought was safe. The instructor brakes much later, sends it down the inside, and the other driver, to his credit, sees him, turns in late and opens the steering to avoid contact. The move works. It was still the wrong move: with that pace advantage the smart play was to wait and pass on the main straight. He sent it anyway because the race was running out, he knew he could pull away afterwards, and, by his own admission, he was still heated from turn one.

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The takeaways he draws from it are the ones to keep. If someone leaves the inside open, be ready to change your plan and go for it; do not lock yourself into attacking on the outside. Use car placement to control the other driver. With a clear pace advantage, be patient and pass on the straight; most of the time patience is the faster option.

Defending against a divebomb

The defence is the one this page has already taught: cover the inside early, so that the attempt is not available, and if it comes anyway, leave yourself somewhere to go. Your braking is the other deterrent. A driver who is already braking at the limit for a corner is hard to divebomb, because the attacker has to brake later than you and still make the corner, and most of the time they would simply miss it; the instructor points out that this is why, at one corner in the lesson, the car behind him did not try.

His nearest miss is not a classic dive from far back but its blind-spot cousin, at the same corner as the positioning clip above. The car on his inside brakes too early, then releases the brake to roll deeper into the corner from his blind spot; he is turning in, suddenly the car is there, both drivers react, he adds brake, locks up, and his exit is gone. Nobody hit anybody, but the exit was lost, and the pressure from behind on the next straight came from that blind spot, not from the corner.

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Which is also the answer to "is it fair that I have to give up a corner because someone dived from too far back?" No. But if you want to finish races and gain positions, you sometimes back out, avoid the crash, and live to fight on the next straight. Good racecraft often means avoiding the accident even when the other driver made the bad choice.

Side-by-side racing and racing room

Side by side is where technique and rules meet, and it is worth keeping them apart. The rules, meaning how much room you are obliged to leave and when, depend on the series: iRacing's sporting code, an ACC league's regulations, the stewarding in Le Mans Ultimate or Automobilista 2 leagues all differ in the details, and this page will not pretend there is one universal answer. What does not change is the technique of being alongside another car without either of you losing everything, and that has four parts.

Know where the other car is. Almost every side-by-side incident on this page happens in a blind spot: the car that rolled into the corner from the instructor's blind spot, the three-wide moment on lap one, the instructor himself running wide into a car that had made it three wide next to him. The instructor's rule for the attacker is to be far enough ahead that you are not in the blind spot at all; for the defender, it is to know a car is there before you turn in.

Choose the line that ends the fight. Two cars level through a corner are both slow. The driver who gets seventy percent ahead before the apex decides the line, and the driver who is behind should be planning the exit, not the apex. The three-car battle in the finishing-the-move section is the worked example: side by side on the outside of turn two, the instructor plans the exit, and the exit gives him the inside back.

Leave the margin you can afford. Squeezing a car to the edge of the track is legal in some series and not others, but in every series it is a bet that the other driver will yield, and drivers do not always yield. The instructor's best outside pass worked partly because the inside car left him a car's width. His worst moment on lap one happened because a driver behind decided to make it three wide next to the instructor's own car, which was already out of control after a lock-up; the full story is in the race starts section below.

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Plan the exit trajectory. Being alongside is temporary. What matters is which of you is on the racing line at the exit, and that is decided by who has the inside for the next corner, which brings you back to setting things up one corner ahead.

Above all: an incident that costs both cars three seconds is a defeat for both of them, whoever was entitled to the corner. The point of side-by-side racecraft is to arrive at the exit ahead, not to be right.

Race starts and lap one

The start is the most concentrated racecraft you will do all race, and the walkthrough opens with it. Three things from the instructor's approach transfer to any car and any sim.

Have a launch procedure and practise it. Know the clutch and throttle the car wants, and rehearse it until the launch is not something you think about, because you need your attention for everything else.

Be assertive, not safe and not aggressive. This is counter-intuitive. A driver who is too safe on lap one becomes unpredictable, and unpredictable is what gets hit. The positioning section above is the whole method; on lap one you simply apply it faster, with more cars reading you at once.

Take the inside into turn one. At most first corners it is the safest place to be, because if a crash happens the cars are most likely to go outwards. The price is a worse exit than the cars ahead, and on lap one you pay it happily. Here is the instructor's own start.

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Then the honest part, because lap one is also where the instructor makes his worst mistake of the race: a hopeful dive up the inside into turn two, expecting everyone to check up, a lock-up, a car out of control, a driver behind who makes it three wide anyway, and contact. Everything in the divebomb section applies double on lap one, when the tyres are cold, the field is packed, and nobody has the grip they practised with.

What he does next is the part most drivers get wrong. Having lost time, he does not try to get it back into the next turn one. The field is still bunched, the tow is enormous, and a move there would compromise both cars, so he lifts on the run to turn one and takes the run into turn two instead; the pattern from the overtaking section, applied on lap one when it is worth the most. And the mistake he makes two laps later in a different race, the divebomb he did not need to send, happened, in his own words, because he was still heated from turn one. So the first job after a lap-one mistake is to reset, not to repay it. The fourth of the five questions matters more in a pack than anywhere else: with six cars within a second, every side-by-side fight is a gift to everyone behind both of you, which is why the instructor's lap-one moves are all set-ups into the second corner, and none of them are lunges into the first.

The mechanical reason the first lap is different, and why it needs more margin than feels necessary, is in the race pace guide, along with the argument for reaching your real pace as soon as the danger has passed rather than three laps later. Starts have enough in them for a page of their own, and one may follow. For now: practise them, take the grid slot rather than the pit lane, and treat every messy first corner as a repetition of the skill this whole page is about.

Accident avoidance is part of racecraft

Good racecraft sometimes means avoiding a crash even when the other driver caused it. This page has stayed away from "how to race cleanly" on purpose, because it has its own guide and because clean racing is a consequence of good racecraft rather than a separate subject. But that one sentence belongs here, and the course makes it part of the craft rather than an apology for it.

The instructor opens his steering for a car that has missed the corner in front of him, opens it again for a driver who has rolled into his blind spot, and is ready on the brake when a car he is pressuring simply turns in as normal. In none of those cases did he lose anything he could not get back. The clearest of them is the lap-one run on the blue car: he had the run, he thought there was a double overtake on, and then he saw that the blue car could not stop from the line it had taken and was using more track than it needed. He opened his steering. No contact, no lost lap, and the position was still there to be taken a corner later. The fast option and the safe option were the same option. A driver who insists on the corner and finishes in the gravel has proved a point to nobody.

The cheapest avoidance is positional, and it is the same positioning this page has been teaching. The full defence removes the divebomb by removing the gap it needs. The seventy-percent rule removes the blind-spot incident by putting you where the other driver can see you. Most of the incidents that look like bad luck on a replay were a car placed where a mistake by either driver had nowhere to go. The rest, meaning the mirror habits, the rejoins and the twenty routines that make the looking automatic, are in How to Avoid Crashes in Sim Racing; this page hands the subject to it and does not repeat it.

A short note on etiquette

Etiquette is the set of expectations that make racing with strangers possible, and it is mostly a different subject from racecraft. The short version that matters for this page: be predictable, leave racing room, one deliberate move to defend rather than a reaction under braking, rejoin the track only when it is clear, and respect blue flags when you are being lapped. Blocking, meaning a late move in reaction to the attacker's move, is the thing that turns a defence into an incident and it is penalised in most series for that reason. Everything on this page is consistent with those expectations: the feints and half defences above are all early, deliberate moves made on the straight, not reactions under braking, which is exactly what the rules ask for.

Where etiquette and racecraft meet is mindset, and a lot of drivers have the wrong one. The right one is in the racecraft truths: most people are not deliberately divebombing you, you are just not defending in a way that makes it obvious it will not work; every fight has a cost; and a higher rating gives you no special right to a corner.

How to improve your racecraft

You improve sim racing racecraft by racing, and you cannot practise it alone or by avoiding it. The three habits that get you into more battles in the first place, taking the grid slot, driving the inside line in practice and racing the AI, are in how to avoid crashes. What this page adds are three sim racing racecraft tips that actually change how the battles go:

• Run the five questions out loud. For a few races, actually say them. "Too far back, racing line." "He's in the middle, he's half defending, third car behind, not worth it." It feels ridiculous and it builds the habit faster than anything else, and it turns a vague feeling of pressure into a decision you can review afterwards.
• Race more than you hotlap. The drivers who improve fastest spend most of their driving time in races, not on empty tracks; the improvement guide has the numbers. Every battle is a repetition of exactly the skill this page describes, and there is no other way to get the reps.
• Review the battles, not the lap. Watch the replay of every position you lost and every one you gained and ask which of the five questions you skipped. This is what a coach does in a lap review, and it is the one thing a written guide cannot do for you: pause your replay and say what the other driver was about to do.

The full lessons this guide is built from, with every one of these situations paused and explained in the instructor's own races, are the racecraft chapter of the Formula Masterclass inside the Academy. The technique is the same in a GT3; what changes between car classes is the size of the braking zone and the cost of contact, and those differences are in the Formula guide and the GT3 guide.

Sim racing racecraft FAQ

What is racecraft in sim racing?

Racecraft is the ability to make good decisions around other cars: where to position your car, when to attack, when to defend, when to give up a corner, and how to plan a battle so that it costs you as little time as possible. It is separate from lap time. The word is sometimes used more broadly to include race pace, tyres and strategy; this guide uses it in the narrow wheel-to-wheel sense. What racecraft is.

How do you overtake in sim racing?

Set the move up before the braking zone, not inside it. Sit in the slipstream, where you are out of the mirrors, step out to the inside late enough that the driver ahead cannot respond, leave them a car's width or less once you are alongside, and be about seventy percent ahead by the turn-in point so you are out of their blind spot and they cannot turn in on you. Against a driver who has covered the inside, the options are the outside, the switchback, or waiting for the straight. How to overtake.

How do you defend a position in sim racing without losing time?

Only defend against a car that is genuinely within a few tenths at the braking point; defending against one that is not costs exit speed for nothing. When it is, cover the inside early on the straight so the intention is unmistakable, or use the half defence, drifting to the middle of the track with the inside still visible, to discourage a move while keeping most of your exit. Never weave. The three ways to defend.

What is a switchback overtake?

A switchback, or cutback, is the counter to a full defence. You let the driver who took the inside have the corner, stay wide and turn in behind them rather than beside them, and because their early inside line gives them a worse angle and a worse exit, you cross back behind them on the exit and take the inside for the next corner. The switchback.

When is a divebomb actually on in sim racing?

Only when it is a high-percentage move: from a couple of car lengths back with a real pace advantage, able to be alongside or ahead by the turn-in, already visible in the other driver's mirror so they can react, with somewhere to go if you lock a wheel, and worth the ruined exit that follows. With a clear pace advantage the smarter play is almost always to wait and pass on the straight. Divebombs.

What does your car position tell other drivers in sim racing?

Taking the inside early says you are defending. The middle of the track says a move will cost both of you. The racing line says you do not consider them a threat. Showing your nose in one mirror says you might go that way, and it is sometimes a feint. One deliberate, early move is read cleanly; a late, ambiguous one invites the very move it was trying to prevent. Positioning is communication.

Should you take the inside line into turn one at a sim race start?

Usually, yes. If a crash happens at turn one the trajectory of the cars is outwards, so the inside is the safest place to be; the price is a worse exit than the cars ahead, which is worth paying on lap one. The bigger rule is to be assertive rather than too safe: a driver who is too cautious on lap one becomes unpredictable, and unpredictable drivers get hit. Race starts and lap one.

What is the difference between blocking and defending in sim racing?

Defending is one deliberate, early move to the inside or the middle of the track on the straight, made before the attacker has to decide anything, so that they can read it. Blocking is a late move made in reaction to the attacker's move, especially under braking. Blocking is what turns a defence into an incident, and most series penalise it for that reason. Etiquette.