By Anker Berg-Sonne, Northeast Region PCA
On Thursday, January 30th, 2021, Ross Bentley, well-known author and owner of Speed Secrets Sim Racer Academy held a one and a half-hour free webinar for all PCA Sim Racing participants on race car setup, real and simulated.
The webinar is a benefit of Speed Secrets’ sponsorship of the PCA Zone 1 Sim Racing League in the 2022 Zone Group Challenge series. The Zone Group Challenge has all five-zone groups across the United States and Canada run qualification races that select 8 drivers from each of the four classes (PCA Challenge, PCA Sport, PCA Club, and PCA Pro) who will compete in three Championship Races in February and March.
The webinar was open to real-time commenting and questions from the audience and started with how to identify exactly what issue needed to be addressed with a setup change:
- what the car is doing
- where on track
- where within the corner
- what the driver is doing when the issue happens
- identifying whether it is a driver problem or a car problem
From there the webinar moved to:
- how to make the desired change
- why the change would lead to the desired effect
- how to determine how much change would be optimal
All with simple questions handled during the course of the presentation. The final half-hour was dedicated to answering questions that couldn’t easily be answered earlier.
Audience members ranged from novices to pro class drivers, real-world and simulated, and all participants were left with a deeper understanding of the process of modifying a race car’s setup for a driver’s style and for improved lap times.
PCA Sim Racing appreciates the support of professional race organizations like Speed Secrets that supports the PCA’s emphasis on sportsmanship, racecraft, and competitiveness. We especially appreciate Ross Bentley’s willingness to share his depth of knowledge of motorsports racing with us.
Ross Bentley is a performance coach, racing driver, author, and well-known speaker. His performance coaching spans executive/business coaching to sports (athletes and teams in a variety of sports) with a specialty in motorsports.