This year, Coanda Simsport was the team to beat on the road circuits of iRacing. They won both the Blancpain GT Series World Championship, as well as the World Championship Grand Prix Series. VRS is partner and sponsor, and we catch up with two of Coanda’s Grand Prix drivers, Martti Pietilä from Finland, and Martin Krönke from Germany.

When did you start to use telemetry? 
Martti: “Actually, this was over twenty years ago. In Grand Prix 2 there was a plugin with some telemetry data, which I used to optimize ride height and racing line. I’m still using telemetry for that today, only more functions have been added. In iRacing, I started using telemetry in 2011 when I started driving the Williams FW31. That was a more difficult car than anything I drove before that, and on a certain level, telemetry was a necessity.”

Martin: “When I started with iRacing in 2010, there wasn’t any telemetry, but in the summer of 2011 there was. I downloaded it, opened it and was overwhelmed and immediately closed it again. But late 2012, I was getting a little frustrated in the iWCGPS and results didn’t come, despite hard preparations. I bought a few books on telemetry and on how to use it, and I learned how to look at telemetry. I read through over 800 pages to learn what happens with a car during races, and from that moment I use telemetry as much as I can. Although I must say, VRS is a lot easier than earlier generations of telemetry software.”

How is using VRS for the Grand Prix Series?
Martti: “For me, its mainly for setup perimeters and comparing my driving against my teammates. There’s always gains to be found, mainly in racing line or braking. I compare my data mostly to Martin, because Mitchell (deJong) is in a different timezone and we rarely practice in the same session.”

Martin: “There are different uses, depending who you ask. I mostly use VRS to do simple tasks very quickly, like checking fuel consumption across a stint. I also compare my driving to teammates, but in most cases there are only minimal differences. I can sometimes gain a couple of hundreds in sectors by looking at Mitchell and Martti’s data,”

Has VRS contributed to Coanda’s success?
Martti: “Definitely. Before, we analyzed with different tools, but VRS is way user friendlier. You don’t need to transfer telemetry files between users via FTP or email. You just do a couple of laps and within seconds you can load the data to see what the effect is. That speed, along with all the functionalities, greatly eased our preparations and speed up the process, allowing for more exploration.”

Martin: “Yes. We were already using it last year, but this year we improved our methods. VRS and telemetry in general is a superior way to practice. You can do certain things by feel, but chances are you won’t hit the ideal point. Telemetry is faster and more analytical, more reliable.”

Are there different driving styles within the team?
Martti: “Only tiny differences. I think the biggest difference with Martin is that I’m usually a bit harder on the brakes in the final phase of the braking. That’s also where Martin usually gains time on me.”

Martin: “I think all Coanda drivers have a very similar driving style. Also setup-wise we’re very close, with the biggest variable being the throttle shaping.”

What do you think of Mack (Bakkum) possibly joining you in the iWCGPS next year?
Martti “It’s always interesting, having a new driver join and to see what his style of driving is. I’m used to seeing what Martin does, so it’d be nice to see what Mack does, maybe we can learn from him.”

Martin: “I think he’s a great addition. Back in 2014 he already prove to be extremely quick in the Williams FW31. As a pro-licence driver he’s been performing well. He also showed it in last week’s race at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. Maybe he has to improve his qualifying pace a bit, but the talent is there. I’m sure there’ll be corners where he will be competitive and faster than me, and we can all learn from it. That was also the case with Mitchell. So yeah, as far as telemetry goes, I’m looking forward to having another source of data.”

Meet Chris Beaufait: sim racer, real life racer, and a student of Coanda Simsport’s David Williams. We catch up with Chris to chat about his life behind the wheel.

Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
Chris: “I grew up in Indiana, US, and worked in the military. When I wasn’t overseas, I’d watch Nascar with my brother and we’d play Papyrus’ Nascar game together, iRacing’s predecessor. I started with iRacing the day it came out. I now work at a Danish company called Vestas, and still travel a lot.”

How did you get into racing?
Chris: “There’s a racetrack close to my home, the GingerMan Raceway, and as a sort of weird stress release, I took my car to the track. I enjoyed that, and decided I needed a new challenge, so I stepped up my racing effort. I lost weight and joined the Skip Barber Racing School. After that, I joined a regional series in a Mazda MX-5, which was great because iRacing had that same Mazda. I then moved up to the Continental Tyre Series in a Mustang, and now I’m in the Pirelli World Challenge in a GT4 car, the Sin R1 GT4 from Racers Edge Motorsports. It has been quite an evolution for me.”

How’s iRacing helping you with that?
Chris: “All the racing I did before the Skip Barber Racing School was sim racing. I never raced in karts. It was a good preparation, but it’s really when I moved into the GT4 car that I started upping my training in the simulator. It’s also because, on the real track, we have very limited track time. Each weekend, we have four session, totalling around two and half hours, provided you have no yellow flags or mechanical issues. Sim racing can fill that gap.

The Sin R1 GT4 is very similar to the Audi R8 LMS, in terms of its braking points, steering, gear shifting. iRacing also provides many tracks in which we drive on in real life, like Mosport, Road America, Mid Ohio and Laguna Seca. In sim racing there’s virtually an infinite amount of time to train, and the physics are very comparable to those in the real world. It translates really well.”

How’s the VRS telemetry software helping?
Chris: “I am an engineer by training, thus I always look at data to understand, analyze and improve. From the driver’s perspective, pace is just as much a mental thing as it’s raw talent. Observing a faster driver’s data is key to improving. A car is capable of a certain performance, and so theoretically, another driver should be able to do the same. Telemetry backs that up.”

And how’s David’s coaching helping you?
Chris: “Sometimes, in the sim, I’d feel like I’d hit a plateau and David would look at the telemetry. Every time we’ve improved, and we’ve solved things like me braking too much, not trailbraking enough, or getting onto the throttle too soon. Also our other drivers, Jade and Scott, have looked at David’s videos in the sim and learned from it.

I generally drop seconds after coaching and reviewing data. If you want that pro-experience, schedule a session with David or any of the other instructors at Virtual Racing School.”

And the results?
Chris: “I’m now genuinely fast enough to race people in iRacing, and now I’m finally getting fast enough in the real world as well. The last race from last year is a good example. I started twenty-first because I hadn’t qualified, but the whole race I had the pace of the field. I finished twelfth after lots of good racing. It was probably the first time I really had to overtake other cars, and sim racing prepared me with that racecraft.”

Last question: in what way is sim racing similar to real life racing, and in what ways is it different?
Chris: “Aside from the G-forces, I think in sim racing it’s harder to drive a racecar below its limit. It’s very easy to spin out in a simulator while not driving so fast. But it’s extremely accurate at the limit, you have that same knife’s edge feeling, the tyre at the slip angle. Another big difference is the money factor. Real life racing is extremely expensive and for a very small fraction of that, you can have the same experience that translates really well, more than you’d think.”