Like with most things in life, what you get out of it depends on what you put in. If you treat it like a video game, you’ll have a good time but probably won’t learn much. But if you treat it like a sport then you open up a world of learning opportunities that go far beyond how to hustle a car around a track.

Racing is a cooperative competitive no-contact sport where the stakes are high at every moment of every lap of every race. Wheel-to-wheel racing requires an incredible amount of trust in your fellow drivers. In the real-world, decisions of one driver can have life or death consequences for the drivers around them. In the sim things aren’t quite that dramatic, but a mistake on your part can still end someone else’s race. You can’t be a successful racing driver in the sim or real-world without understanding how your actions impact others. You will ruin someone else’s day with an overzealous attempt to pass, a lapse in concentration, or loss of control. It takes humility and personal accountability to own those mistakes, apologize, and learn from them. Someone else will ruin your day, too. It takes empathy to understand that mistakes happen and they’re rarely personal or intentional. It takes restraint and control over one’s temper to not ram the other driver head-on into a wall out of revenge. I take sportsmanship very seriously at Big Rock Racing School and this is just one example of the mental side of racing. I help students develop a strong mental game so they can thrive under pressure and develop a growth mindset that is as helpful in the classroom, conference room, and interstate as it is on the racetrack.

Let’s talk about hustling a simulated car around a track. The first thing to know is it’s so much fun! You need to experience it in person to really get it, so I encourage you to join one of my free parent’s nights to try it yourself. Modern racing simulators are no replacement for real-world driving experience but the physics and concepts at play are highly accurate. I believe the simulator is the safest and best way to learn how and why a car behaves as it does. At Big Rock Racing School, I teach students vehicle dynamics and car control skills with a combination of theory and hands-on lessons. I teach them how and why of things like understeer and oversteer. How to cause it, correct it, avoid it. How does a front-wheel-drive car behave relative to a rear-wheel-drive car in these situations? What about front-engine versus mid-engine? I believe time spent exploring these concepts in the simulator can help students better understand how to avoid them in the real-world.