Thanks for all the replies, it was a great help to have some insight and different views on this topic. I did some online racing in the past weekend, it was overall a good experience. My experience with "amateur" was less then on "Get Real". In amateur there where a lot of corner flying and corner cutting, it's just not for me to race to "find shortcuts". Especially going wide was doable without penalty, maybe i'm wrong though. Not on "Get Real" though. I did make a occasional mistake in braking up to much slower participants, if i hit you because off that: I'm sorry. But i was hit far more as a victim then i was the cause but that is OK too. I watch some replays of the match afterwards to learn how to anticipate better and learn from the faster drivers. The 30 minute Bathurst WTCC race was great fun and because of the replay i could practice the track a little better and managed to get seconds of my own pace. Sector 3 Thanks for this great feature. ;-) So if you see me online, i will battle fair for position. I use common sense and let obvious faster racers go by with the method of slowing just a little bit down on the racing line (no braking). I believe that the faster driver has no problem then passing me. I try to race only on tracks which are enough familiar, the problem is though the wide variety in cars. It needs some time to adapt to a different car then you practiced with, and the total amount of cars is the culprit if you have limited time in your free time. If i make a stupid mistake , it's not that i'm mad or eager to win at all cost but it was just that: a stupid mistake . Wow this was a longer reply then i was planning .. so i stop boring you further.
Just remember: Seems like S3 is not supporting it furthermore (?) but for those tracks it works check out "Apex Hunt" - helped me a lot when I returned to simracing after a long break. (Race Room Racetrack is a good Testtrack btw. , kinda "Mountain-Paul-Ricard"...also do some races there - sometimes its plain chaotic because of free users but on other days you can have great races there - and you surely learn to find your way through a "beasty" grid )... Cheers
I am a newer player. I think it's common decency to at least know the track you are going to race on. Goinn in blindly you are asking for trouble for you and those around you. I make tons of mistakes and normally end up in the back. Personally i need more experiences in races to get over this hump, as i get too excited during races and screw up - so i say yes, go online, just know the track.
Take the Iracing philosophy race clean, keep car on track and let faster traffic by. This way you learn to race against other people and learn clean driving. Speed comes later
seriouslly i am not complaing about unexperienced drivers, but there is a small number of players, who just start the raceroom client, to go on track and ram intentionally. spoiling other players fun. i dont think they belong on a racetrack at all.
One point I'd like to mention. It seems to me that a lot of drivers online aren't really motorsport fans. What I mean by that is that they have no clue how real drivers handle themselves around other cars. All the experience I've had online in GTR2, R07 and now R3E can't compare to actually watching full GT/Touring car races where you can learn much more. Learn when to defend, when to drive carefully, when to push, how to set up an overtake etc. I'd recommend to people who want to learn how to drive against real people to go watch races and study drivers' behavior.
This is why I prefer endurance runs with all restrictions and features activated (tyrewear, fuel, pitstrategy,strict penalties,flagrules, general management AND serenity and observation) over sprintracing . Best experience I had with the M1 30 min races so far. Just two days ago I jumped last minute into M1/Nuerburgring (cold without practise from the end of the grid, but I know track and car quiet well ). I took my time,finding my pace and rythm, observed all that "unpatient pushers" (I mostly let them pass knowing I'll get them anyway sooner or later ) had a nice guy (J.Kessinger) in front of me who was on par with me (and guess we both just waited for the usual candidates to lose their focus, kicking themselves off track due to inappropiate maneuvres) but all in all they all drove very fair and clean. From the second half on I felt more and more confident and decided to give more pressure to J.Kessinger (its always more easy to hunt instead of being hunted) and he defended great while he had more probs with late breaking and running over curbs/accelerating out of the apex (guess different brakebalance/toe settings than me) so I noticed I have a slight advantage at certain areas. As I said, he defended very well but in the end he got nervous and lost his car for a second. What I want to say is , that all that you can observe AND analyze during longer sessions developing a real strategy. So that it is often not neccessary to start overambitioned attacks but just to give (soft) pressure in the right time to force your opponent into mistakes. BTW. : I ended 3rd place (and J.Kessinger right behind me on 4th - thx again to you m8 was nice racing) with a huge gap to the leaders but who cares ? Well, thing is you got so much more fun and satisfaction out of it if you really respect your opponent, instead of yelling ME! ME! ME! (in a metaphorical sense) on the track...