What is Valuable Slide?

My friends and I have a simracing team that competes in 24-hour endurance racing events in iRacing. These are simulated versions of real-world 24-hour races, where the 5 of us take shifts driving a virtual racecar.

Each of us has a simulator setup with a force-feedback wheel and pedals. Some of us, including me, use VR. My sim rig is something I made out of scrap wood and a seat from an exploded Mazdaspeed 3. It looks like this:

Racing for charity

My favorite achievement of ours thus far is competing in Race for a Cause 2024 organized by Prismatic Motorsports, a transgender and non-binary simracing team. Race for a Cause 2024 was a professionally broadcast 24 hour race at Le Mans, with the goal of raising money for Rainbow Railroad, an organization that helps LGBTQI+ people escape state violence. The race ended up raising $1,753.15.

In addition to RFAC, our livestreams for the iRacing special events typically involve a charity component, and we have raised thousands of dollars for organizations including The Trevor Project, My Brother’s Table, and the UN Crisis Relief.

What goes into racing

There is a lot of prep work that goes into our races. In addition to the logistics challenges of scheduling stints, we also have to practice each track extensively and set up the car for each race. iRacing, being a simulator, mirrors the real-world setup changes that can be made to the car. Each of us needs to be familiar with these setup options and how they affect the car’s dynamics. Often, this involves iterative improvements where each of us gives feedback on the handling of the car and then we use this feedback to inform changes to everything from damping and spring rates to wheel alignment settings, anti-roll bar stiffnes, brake pad compounds, differential settings, and more. Sometimes this involves analyzing telemetry.

iRacing has fairly high standards for driving considering that it has simulated collisions and repairs. A single crash can cause hours of repair and end our race. As such, we need to have a good understanding of the rules of racing and be very careful.

We also design the livery for each of our cars, which is a fun design challenge. iRacing allows you to apply a texture to each car, so we usually have some sort of cool design or silly theme.

Media

Here are some pictures of our silly virtual racecar:

Rules of racing

Our team is governed by a set of rules handed down to us by our elders.

1. Use all the track
2. Breathe
3. It’s ok if you’re fat because plenty of nascar drivers have been fat and they’re all way faster than you’ll ever be
4. Don’t race anyone
5. Guy who starts should qualify
6. Set the car up tight
7. Push the wheel don’t pull
8. Shift using only your arm
9. Don’t have caffeine right before your shift
10. Slow car stays on line
11. If you fast lap is 9:10, don’t try to run 9:05
12. It’s not about having the fastest laps, it’s about having the most laps
13. Sandbag qualifying to give yourself options (unless you’ll get pole)
14. While driving don’t get emotional
15. If someone is faster than you, then they are faster than you