Open wheel
F1 26
Sprints, leagues, and the occasional lap one that does not go to plan.
JUSTDAVIDE. Pretend racing, taken seriously. F1 26 and Le Mans Ultimate, live most weeknights on Twitch.
Pretend racing. Taken seriously.
F1 26 and Le Mans Ultimate, live most weeknights. Anyone can do one good lap. The hard part is doing it again.
Follow on Twitch01 The line
I am not the fastest driver you will watch. I am just still there at the end. That turns out to be the whole trick.
02 What I race
Two sims, most weeknights.
Endurance
Le Mans Ultimate
Hypercars and GT3. Mostly at night, mostly in the rain, mostly on purpose.
03 The guides
What I wish someone had told me.
Two guides, and a room full of people who will argue about the rest.
Gear
The best gear for your budget
Everyone asks about the wheel first. It is the pedals that make you quicker. What is worth buying at every budget, and what can wait until later.
Read guide one
Pace
How to be faster on track
Not one hot lap. The habits that actually take time off you: where you brake, what your right foot does on the way in, and why repeating it beats being brave once.
Read guide two
Community
Come and talk it through
The Discord is where the gear questions, the setup arguments and the race night post mortems happen. Bring anything: kit, racecraft, or a corner that keeps catching you out.
Join the Discord04 The gear
Buy it in this order.
Most people buy the wheel first, then wonder why they are still slow. This is the order I would follow if I were starting again tomorrow.
Pedals first. Then something rigid to bolt them to. Then the wheelbase. Screens last.
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01 Starting out
Get on track for as little as possible
A gear or belt driven wheel will teach you more in one month than reading about direct drive will teach you in a year. Buy it used if you can. The only thing worth paying extra for at this stage is something solid to mount it to, because a wheel clamped to a flexing desk moves every time you brake, and you cannot learn a braking point that keeps moving.
- Wheelbase Gear or belt driven. Logitech and Thrustmaster both do this job properly.
- Pedals Whatever came in the box. You will replace these first, and that is fine.
- Mount A wheel stand, or a desk that genuinely does not move.
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02 The first real jump
A load cell brake, before anything else
This is the upgrade that changes your driving rather than your immersion. A normal pedal measures how far you push it. A load cell measures how hard. Your leg is far better at repeating a pressure than a distance, so your braking starts repeating, and repeatable braking is the whole game. If you only ever buy one upgrade, buy this one.
- Pedals Load cell brake. This is the line item that matters.
- Wheelbase A small direct drive, roughly 5 to 9Nm, once the pedals are sorted.
- Mount Still whatever holds completely still.
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03 Where most people stop
Rigidity, and a base with headroom
Around 12Nm and up, on an aluminium profile rig with a real seat bolted into it. The rig matters more than the number printed on the wheelbase. Once the whole thing stops flexing, your inputs stop being approximate, and everything you learned in tier two starts paying you back properly.
- Wheelbase 12Nm and up. Past this, more torque is comfort, not pace.
- Rig Aluminium profile. This is the upgrade nobody films and everybody feels.
- Seat A real one, bolted in, in the same position every time.
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04 What I run
The rig on the stream
Listed so you can see where the ladder ends, not because you need any of it. I was doing league races on far less than this, and the people beating me were too. It is a nice place to arrive at. It is a terrible place to start.
- Wheelbase VRS DirectForce Pro, 20Nm.
- Wheel Asher Racing Artura Ultimate.
- Pedals VRS.
- Rig Sim-Lab P1-X, with a Sabelt SRS-1 seat.
Prices move constantly and new wheelbases land every few months, so treat this as the order to buy in, not a shopping list to copy. If you want a straight answer for your actual budget, ask me in the Discord and you will get one.
05 The pace
Where the time actually is.
None of this is exotic. It is the boring stuff that turns one good lap into ten.
On track
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Brake in a straight line first
Do the heavy braking while the wheel is still straight, then bleed the pressure off as you turn in. Most of the snap that fires you into a wall is trail braking too hard and too late, then blaming the car for it.
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Use markers, not feelings
Three braking references a lap, and make them objects. A board, a post, a join in the tarmac. How brave you feel changes every night. A post does not.
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Slow in, fast out, but only where it pays
A corner onto a long straight is worth far more than a corner that leads into another corner. Give up entry speed at the one that leads somewhere, and take it all back down the straight.
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Look where you want the car to be
Your hands follow your eyes whether you agree with it or not. If you are staring at the wall, that is a plan, and you are carrying it out.
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One change per run
Five laps, one thing to work on, then stop and decide whether it helped. Change three things at once and all you learn is that something happened.
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Finish it
The time you lose being careful on lap one is smaller than the time you lose in a barrier on lap two. It is a boring way to gain places and it works every single week.
06 Try it
Ten laps. How close can you keep them?
Tap once to start the clock, then tap out ten laps at the same rhythm. The gaps between your taps are your lap times. This takes about fifteen seconds and it will tell you more about your racing than a hot lap ever will.
Spread waiting
Ten laps, and then we will talk.
07 The tape
Six years of it.
The good laps are on the channel. So are these.
Clipped on Twitch
Barrichello SendWatch on Twitch
Half Man, Half CannonWatch on Twitch
Nuclear DivebombWatch on Twitch
Flying CarWatch on Twitch
Yes, they are all crashes. Nobody clips the clean laps. That is the whole problem.
The ones that got out
08 Questions
The ones people actually ask.
I am way too slow for this. Is the stream for me?
Everyone watching was slow first, including me, on camera, for years. Come and ask something in chat. Nobody there is going to be weird about it.
Do I need a wheel?
No. Plenty of quick people are on a pad. A wheel makes some things easier to feel, not easier to do. Start with what you own.
Which sims do you actually play?
F1 26 and Le Mans Ultimate, most nights. Leagues in both.
Where do you actually stream?
Twitch, YouTube and TikTok. Same stream, all three at once. Twitch is where the chat lives and where I can actually talk to you, so that is the one I would follow, but pick whichever you already have open.
Are the guides for beginners or for aliens?
Beginners, and anyone stuck. If you are already in a top split you will know most of it.
When are you live?
Evenings, most weeknights. Turn notifications on wherever you watch and you will know before I do.
See you in chat.
The next race starts when it starts. Follow and you will not miss it.
Live on the first three at once. Instagram is where the clips land, and Twitch is where the chat lives.
Got it. If it comes up a lot, it becomes a guide.