Getting Banned from iRacing Made Me a Better Driver
764Growing up as a NASCAR fan, the concept of iRacing seemed almost too good to be true - an ultra realistic stock car MMO with a surprisingly large and dedicated userbase. Yet by asking basic questions about why the cars seemed to violently spin if you breathed on the accelerator too hard, I suddenly found myself unable to log in to the member site; administrators citing a draconian rule that forbids criticism of their product.
As a sim racer, this ended up being the best thing to ever happen to me. I was forced to learn how to road race after surrounding myself with a community who acted allergic to it, fell in love with hundreds of different cars I otherwise wouldn't have been exposed to, mastered car setups once and for all, and learned vital lessons in car control from rival racing simulators that I then promptly and successfully applied to the real world.
None of this would have happened if I continued to put up with iRacing's unrealistically difficult handling model, grinding out hyper-aggressive races for trace amounts of Elo rank.