Another YSAR landmark: Post #400

I find myself in the unbelievable position of writing blog post #400. In the same way that breaking a 2:00 lap time is a more special arbitrary landmark than a 1:47, post #400 is more special than some number not a multiple of 100. Let’s have a quick look back at what happened at the other century marks.

• 100 – Prior to #100, YSAR was all crash analysis. It was fun to write and I think both entertaining and educational to read. But starting with #100, I started blogging about stuff I was doing. #100 is where I introduced my Yaris racecar build. That was almost exactly 5 years ago.
• 200 – At post #200, I talked about the origins of YSAR and my personal high performance driving education journey. I also mentioned some of my favorite posts and the most popular posts (sadly, not much overlap).
• 300 – It was the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and I neglected to even mark the occasion with a special post. In fact, #300 wasn’t even racing content, but some pandemic memes.

Favorites

The 7 most popular posts in recent history are the following:

1. The Vortex of danger is your fault – I’m surprised and pleased about this. The major reason I started this blog was to talk about safety. It’s nice to see others are also safety conscious.
2. iRacing: iRating – iRacing is the most popular racing platform and iRating isn’t something everyone understands.
3. iRacing: Setups – Honestly, it’s not a very good post, it just gets picked up by search engines.
4. Product Review: Thrustmaster TS-PC Racer – I feel strongly that a good wheel matters a lot and Thrustmaster makes some great products. I’ve driven direct drive wheels and I don’t feel the need to upgrade.
5. iRacing vs others – More of a commentary on how bad all the other serious racing platforms handle online races.
6. Tire pressures don’t matter – Of course they do, and in very interesting ways.
7. Didactic vs. Socratic teaching – I think this post gets hit by non-racers more than racers, which is endearing.

My favorite posts over the last 100 or so include the following:

1. This one is not mine actually, but Mario’s Twin Study over on Occam’s Racer (which I made a small contribution to). Go check it out while the ink is still wet.
2. Cliff Notes. I’ve used this video in classes a few times because it shows the typical pitfalls of many HPDE drivers.
3. Email from Alex. YSAR reader Alex sent me an email with some questions about simulator drills and coaching. It turned into an informative post.
4. The performance distribution is not a bell curve. Weirdly, lots of things from marathons to car racing to grades in classes have the same shape, and it’s not quite a bell curve.
5. 12 reasons not to buy a sim rig. It was fun to talk about the negatives of sim racing, but the undercurrent is of course all positive.
6. I did a series of posts (iRacing delta challenge) where I explored different iRacing tracks for 30 minutes without driving them before. I’m not sure how many people tried/succeeded in besting my times. It doesn’t really matter. It was really fun to check out some new tracks. Some of the tiny rovals and obscure tracks are really good.
7. Racecraft vs. Passcraft vs. Doing stupid stuff on track has a new term: asscraft.

Random Stats

• There have been about 200,000 views from 100,000 visitors over the lifetime of YSAR.
• There are currently about 1000 visitors per week.
• There are currently 100 followers.
• There have been a total of 886 comments, but only a handful of people have written them.

No More Advertising!

I’ve been using the free version of WordPress since day one. I didn’t really expect anyone to read my blog, so I didn’t feel bad about people seeing advertisements. I can’t willingly subject 1000 people per week to advertisements when they annoy me so much. So YSAR is now on a paid plan and nobody has to see ads. Sorry, I should have done this sooner. Also, the URL no longer needs to include “wordpress”, so it’s now http://yousuckatracing.com.

What’s Ahead?

I’ve still got questions that keep me awake at night weekends of experiments to perform. Some of my favorite things in the driving world are trying out new tracks and new software, so I’ll be sure to post about those. And of course, you can expect the usual race reports, coaching downloads, crash analyses, and random drivel.

Thanks to everyone who reads YSAR. I usually respond to most posts and most emails, so don’t be bashful if you want my opinion on something.