Ask anyone with an ounce of experience what’s the biggest secret to speed, and they’ll tell you seat time. The more you’re behind the wheel at speed, the more comfortable you’ll be with the track, the car, the momentum — basically everything. We’ve heard it before: familiarity will give you confidence, and confidence gives you speed. But as your wallet will attest, you can’t be at the track every weekend, so the secret is to make that seat time not only affordable, but also convenient. For that, there are racing simulators.

Much like how some pros used to get affordable seat time in go-karts during the off season, sims are an excellent tool used by pros and amateurs alike. How you choose to use it is up to you, but if you do decide a racing sim is best for you, know your options.

The Sim Setup

Ergonomics are important. When you built your race car, you didn’t blindly bolt in your fancy racing seat without thought to the proximity to the pedals or shifter, let alone considering forward visibility and mirror placement. The same holds true with your sim setup.

“You can have great hardware and put it all together and go through the hassles of buying it, building it, and everything, and still have a [racing] simulator that’s pretty useless,” Spark Virtual co-founder and CEO Matt McGivern noted in a video his company produced in conjunction with SCCA and Blayze. “We refer to those simulators as track familiarity tools. You can use it ahead of time to learn where the left turns are, where the right turns are, where the straightaways are, so you can show up at VIR and know roughly where the track goes.”

The secret, he says, is aligning everything to get the most out of the simulator setup, regardless of the racing software being used. “What [Spark has] done over the course of thousands of hours and hundreds of iterations is focus on tuning, to the point that even for a driver at [a high level], you feel that you can improve your driving skills and find your actual driving line,” he said.

Spark Virtual, an SCCA partner, offers sim solutions that are a click away, but whether you go that route or construct your own out of off-the-shelf components, remember that seating position, pedal placement, wheel alignment, monitor placement, and more are all key to a successful setup. Pro racer and Blayze driver coach Dion von Moltke discusses this exact point in this video from Spark. Blayze (another SCCA partner) even offers sim driver coaching.

Back to seat time, booting up the computer and racing virtually is key to making improvements online and in the real world. How far you dive into this rabbit hole depends on your goals. Here’s just two things you can consider doing this year.

A Virtual Runoffs

Did you know the SCCA partners with iRacing for the iRacing SCCA Runoffs?

In 2022, the iRacing SCCA Runoffs drew some 1,600 virtual racers to compete in eight title races. This year, the iRacing SCCA Runoffs will take place Oct. 21, 2023. Different from last year is that the event will not include Super Sessions and there will be six races instead of eight. This year’s lineup includes Formula Vee, Spec Miata, Spec Racer Ford Gen3, Formula Continental (USF2000), GT2 (GT4), and B-Spec (Renault Clio).

More details will be available as the 2023 iRacing SCCA Runoffs approaches.

…Or Turn Pro

Do you have the skill to become a professional racer, but your budget is lacking? Virtual racing and simulators can help there, too. One company to enter that scene is Racing Prodigy, offering a pathway for those with the talent to land a ride in real-world motorsports. The company is headed by CEO David Cook, who many racers will know from his years at Mazda Motorsports.

“Advancements in gaming and software have helped prove that the skillsets from racing games translate to real race cars,” Cook explained in a Prodigy video. “Nissan demonstrated this several years ago, Mazda was next, where I proudly oversaw its shootout competitions in which sim racers competed against real-world racers for a professional contract. And when iRacing’s Glenn McGee won one of the competitions, it reinforced that gaming can help solve the access challenges.”

The Sky’s The Limit

Whether you order a slick racing sim setup, race online series, aim for the big time, or simply turn laps in practice mode, the most important part of the equation is seat time. The fact is, if you’ve got a computer and a pedal and wheel set, there’s nothing stopping you from signing up with a sim racing company, turning laps, and improving your skills. From there, the sky’s the limit — even from the comfort of your own home.