All News: Commodore’s Garage

Behind the Scenes: The NASCAR Peak Antifreeze Series powered by iRacing.com – And So It Shall End

October 18th, 2016 by Matt Holden

Sixteen races.  2400 laps.  3600 miles.  Over all that distance, the championship came down to two drivers, and between those two drivers, it came down to two points.  In my opinion, the finale to the 2016 NASCAR PEAK Antifreeze Series was one of the most exciting races I’ve ever seen, including real-world races.  Two points … Read the Rest »

Commodore’s Garage #10 – Track Bar

October 9th, 2016 by Matt Holden

  Before moving into initial setup options on our cars and how to go about getting what you need to race, we still need to cover the “bars” in the car.  Stock cars typically have a front sway bar and a rear track bar (or Panhard Rod), while road racing cars have a front and … Read the Rest »

Commodore’s Garage #9 – Bump Springs

September 30th, 2016 by Matt Holden

So far we’ve gone over how the main springs work on the car, but we still need to cover secondary springs, or “bump stops”.  iRacing has recently overhauled the Gen 6 Cup cars and the Xfinity cars to use bump springs, but those still fall under the category of bump stops.  To understand why the … Read the Rest »

Commodore’s Garage #8 – Coil Binding

September 23rd, 2016 by Matt Holden

Last week I went over the various thing that can influence your spring choices for a given track.  How much banking, amount of bumps, and even the weight of the car can drastically alter what you need in your race car, but can those rules be broken?  Of course they can, and it’s not uncommon … Read the Rest »

Commodore’s Garage #7 – Selecting Springs

September 16th, 2016 by Matt Holden

  Last week we looked at how springs work, how they’re rated, and the different types of springs that may be available on our virtual race cars.  The big question, however, is always “What rates do I use?”  Older sims had flaws in the physics, so spring choice was simply based on what you could … Read the Rest »

Commodore’s Garage #6 – The Spring

September 12th, 2016 by Matt Holden

In the history of sim-racing, nothing has been more associated with chassis setup than the springs.  At the same time, nothing has been more misunderstood than the simple coil spring.  There are countless different kinds of springs, from coil, to leaf, to torsion springs, and everything in between, and racing series regulate them heavily.  When … Read the Rest »

Commodore’s Garage #5 – Roll Stiffness

September 2nd, 2016 by Matt Holden

When we watch a car go around a corner, we almost always take a note of how much it rolls over, or lifts the inside of the car, but how much do we really think about what’s happening?  In the yester-years of NASCAR, it was probably never given a second thought to how much a … Read the Rest »

Commodore’s Garage #4 – Aerodynamics 101

August 19th, 2016 by Matt Holden

Aerodynamics:  the one word that spawns happiness in engineers and dread in race fans.  In the past 50-or-so years, aerodynamics in motorsports have done nearly complete 180° turn, going from slippery, super-low-drag vehicles to high-downforce behemoths with the sole purpose of bullying air molecules into doing work that they really don’t want to do.  Want … Read the Rest »

Commodore’s Garage #3 – Centers of Mass

August 12th, 2016 by Matt Holden

I hope by now you’ve got a good idea of what you’re looking for in the car and how you compare to other simracers in terms of driving styles.  If you’re still searching for what you need that’s no big deal, it can take some time to find.  We’ve still got a couple of weeks … Read the Rest »

The Commodore’s Garage #2 – Step 1: Grab a Pencil

August 4th, 2016 by Matt Holden

“We learned how to make them loose, now we need to learn how to make them fast.”  Mark Martin said this during a post-race interview after an Xfinity Series race a few years ago and it’s stuck with me ever since.  It’s a simple quote that largely went un-noticed, but carries so much information that … Read the Rest »