Grand Prix of India F1 2011 Sim to Real Life Comparison

Driving as Mark Webber for Red Bull-Renault, this is how I stacked up against the top session time, my Red Bull teammate, and the real Mark Webber. I'll be comparing both my time in the session and my fastest lap time overall to the real results from each session. Times rounded to nearest 1/10 of a second for comparison.

FP2
(comparison made only to my fastest lap time from Q2, since I didn't record my FP1 & 2 times, and dynamic weather gave me rain in the first 2 practices)
+0:01.4 MAS
+0:01.3 VET
+0:00.6 WEB

FP3
Session
+0:03.6 VET
+0:03.2 WEB

Fastest Lap
+0:02.3 VET
+0:01.9 WEB

QUALIFYING
Q1
Session
+0:01.9 VET
+0:01.6 WEB

Fastest Lap
+0:00.9 VET
+0:00.6 WEB

Q2
Session
+0:02.4 VET
+0:01.8 WEB

Q3
Session
+0:03.2 VET P1
+0:02.9 WEB P3

Fastest Lap
+0:02.9 VET
+0:02.6 WEB

REAL LIFE QUALIFYING POSITION
18th
(15th if Q1 time had put me in Q2, 19th /16th if not replacing the real Mark Webber)

I'm pretty sure my lost time could be found in the following places:
-more optimal use of DRS & KERS
-steering wheel control instead of thumbsticks
-custom setup instead of 'engineers's special' dry preset

Not a bad performance, all things considered. Not nearly as bad as I thought it would be! The closest I came to real life was against the real Mark Webber in Q1, followed very closely by Q2, where I set my fastest lap of the weekend.

Hoping to come back and update with a total race time and fastest race lap comparison after the race tomorrow!



UPDATE 10/30/11

RACE
Race Time
+0:00:11.1 VET P1
+0:00:02.7 BUT P2
-0:00:13.2 ALO P3
-0:00:14.4 WEB P4
-0:01:13.0 HAM P7

Fastest Lap
+0:01.1 VET
+0:00.9 WEB
+0:00.430 BUT
+0:00.444 ALO
-0:00.3 HAM

I threw Hammy in just for fun hee hee...

REAL LIFE FINISHING POSITION
P3

FAST LAP
5th

Wow. Pleasantly surprised by those results! Did not think I would make the podium. Must have been consistently faster over all the laps than Alonso, probably in sector 2 or 3. To put it in perspective, I beat Alonso by a larger margin than Vettel won by. :)

I'm definitely going to do this whole sim & compare thing again for the remaining races. It was really interesting and a lot of fun finding out how I did and how I theoretically might have qualified and finished. I think I will go back and do the races from earlier this season too...Give me something to do during the off season! Lol