Feel the Magic of Looking Ahead - Assetto Corsa
Part 2 of the Home Driver Lab
Assetto Corsa has been going 12 years and is generally considered the best sim for feel.
I love it.
It looks good, feels good, and like a lot of Italian products, seems to have soul engineered in.
Now, that’s all jolly nice and everything, but the way AC drives also makes it very tempting to jump in and mess around with, rather than using it as a serious experimental - racing driver maximising - piece of lab equipment.
So, if you already have a copy, I reckon you should be done with the messing around part. If you only just started with it, exhaust the novelty of sliding around, then commit to using it seriously. There are big benefits waiting to be had.
Assetto Corsa - Instinct driving and advanced (forced) instinct driving
Here’s one way to experiment with Assetto Corsa that I think will pay off big time for your kart driving.
The goal - for you to experience a magic moment where you can justifiably say ‘wow, I’m a driving God - did that just happen!?!’
The great joy of Assetto Corsa is that you can throw a car into a corner and balance an oversteer slide on the exit using feel. Last week was about iRacing, where if you get into that condition you are much more likely to lose the car, and lose patience with the software altogether
But with Assetto, you can hold a car in oversteer without it becoming a major drama. You can play with the angle of the cars in a way that feels instinctive, especially for karters who take for granted how karts are so responsive and controllable.
Of course that’s a lot of fun, but it also means you can really accelerate your confidence in your driving instincts.
Here’s how
Stage 1. Get dialled into competent driving
Choose a simple to understand car with rear wheel drive. The Giulia is well developed, or the Ferrari 458, which was the in the very early access works really well for this. The F40 is fun. Road cars are better for this one.
Go to a track you like, I use Mugello.
Run fast laps in a normal mode of driving without asking too much of the rear tyres. You could go for an iRacing style approach just to ensure you get clean laps in.
Once you have a set of consistent clean laps done, get into asking the car to lose traction on the rear, just a little. Resist the urge to drift, just go beyond the limits a bit and get dialled in with your throttle control and counter-steering for that car.
At this point you are able to put in solid quick laps, and go past the limit and play with the car at the limit. This establishes competency needed to move to the next stage.
Stage 2. Look ahead then experience what feels like magic
Practice some ‘look ahead’ driving. Set your apex points and exit markers for every corner with exact points. Fix your eyes on apex points well in advance, long before braking. Switch your eyes to your exit points way before you hit the apex. Get into the full details here if you need to:
Your eyes should always either be on an apex point, or an exit point, locked-on like guided weapon systems - the straight at Mugello is long so you can have a break there, but the rest of the time you should either be locked-on to a mark you can see, or where you believe that mark is hiding.
The Magic Part - Controlling an oversteer with your eyes remaining locked to your target.
This may happen naturally, but perhaps you are so focussed you don’t even notice. But either way I want you stay on your ‘look ahead’ driving technique, and introduce some of the oversteer driving you did in stage 1.
What you really want is the kind of oversteer that begins before the apex that you can carry through to the exit under control, without a massive drama or time loss.
BUT
Be ready for your eyes to betray you!
The easiest way to fall out of ‘look ahead’ driving, is when you slide and your brain switches modes.
Instead of saying:
‘My eyes command the car, we will head for that apex target’
Suddenly, when you slide you can switch to:
‘Oh god, where is this car taking me now, let me see where we are likely to end up here!’
It makes perfect sense, a slide represents a less predictable scenario with dangers involved. So our eyes can abandon our intentions, and go into a rescue mode.
So, if you experience your eyes looking for where you think you might be taken by the car OR even noticing where you hands are or anything else, other than the original and correct targets, then have a little word with yourself and make this resolution.
“I will keep my eyes fixed on my apex, then exit targets, with perfect timing when I slide”
OK, so….
Deliberately induce an entry slide, keep your eyes glued to your apex target despite the temptation to give up on that target.
Before you hit the apex, no matter how crossed up your arms are, switch your eyes to your exit point target with total commitment.
You might bin it! It doesn’t matter. Stick at it until your feet and hands start to work on their own to make sure you still hit your apex and exit points despite the fact your hands are steering left when your eyes are remaining fixed on a target to the right.
When this happens you might feel a strange disconnect between your physical hand and feet doing their thing, while your mind and eyes say ‘whatever! get us to that target’
At some point, if you keep the car in a nice subtle slide with your hands counter-steering, but your eyes and focus ignoring that fact you are going to glide through the apex and hit the exit point and feel this:
‘Oh YES! I am a driving god!’
And you kind of are!
The god-like feeling comes from two things:
The handing over of all driving to your subconscious and your body, because it’s that good you have total trust. Something else does the driving that you don’t even need to be aware of (feels like it might be a god!)
When you keep your eyes on the target, and despite feeling that you may have blown it, the will-power of your eyes and your focus on your target point, somehow give your now magical hands and feet the freedom to get you to those targets. And you feel like ‘how the hell did I just get away with that?!?’
So you get a lot of benefits from using Assetto Corsa strictly as a self-training device.
Greater understanding of the benefits of looking ahead
Massive confidence boost of your natural ability to do things you didn’t know were possible
Higher ability to rescue a vehicle that you thought was a lost cause scenario
All these are directly applicable to karting.
Takeaways from Home Driver’s Lab Part 2
Assetto Corsa’s forgiving oversteer physics let you experiment with slides without the frustration of constant spins, making it ideal for instinct training.
Establish baseline competency first by running clean, consistent laps before introducing any limit-testing.
Lock your eyes onto apex points well before braking, then switch to exit points before you reach the apex. The timing of eye movement matters as much as the targets themselves.
Slides trigger a survival response where your eyes abandon your intended target and start searching for where the car might take you. This is the instinct you need to override.
Deliberately induce entry oversteer while keeping your eyes fixed on the apex target, then switch to the exit point regardless of how crossed-up your steering becomes.
The “driving god” sensation occurs when your hands and feet solve the slide problem without conscious input because your visual focus refused to release the target.
The disconnect between what your body is doing and what your eyes are commanding is the goal, not a problem. That separation means you’ve handed control to trained instinct.
These skills transfer directly to karting.
Thanks for reading
Terence