It's not very practical to have vital controls like DRS, engine modes, ABS, Traction Control etc mapped to your keyboard in iRacing since it will be difficult to access them during a race especially when you need to make a change quickly.
Most sim racers use not only the information windows that iRacing provides by default during a race or practice session but also use overlays like Racelab or SimHub. This, combined with apps like Crew Chief can mean that you have a huge amount of information thrown at you with very little capacity left over to worry about where certain buttons for critical functions are.
Black Box Screen Information
This information window provides critical data during all iRacing sessions. We consider the Relative window, usually mapped to F3 on your keyboard, to be the most vital window on the black box. We suggest you map the black box to a rotary encoder on your steering wheel or use two buttons to move between the various black box windows. This allows you to see your fuel remaining, lap times etc by pressing a button or rotating a knob.
At a minimum, we think that you should map the Relative window to a single button so that when you leave the pitlane or spin, you can quickly press this button and see if there's a gap big enough for you to safely join the track without risk of collision.
Other important controls
- Pitlane speed limiter
- Voice chat (inform other drivers you're about to pit)
- Brake Bias
- ABS and Traction Control
- ERS and DRS on supported cars like the Mercedes-AMG W12 F1
Final thoughts
We discussed the importance of the Relative black box when safely joining the track. This information can stop you from ruining your own race or, worse, someone else's.
There are several other controls like engine modes, differential settings, fuel info etc, that are also important to have close at hand but everyone will have their personal preference. However, we consider the Relative black box and the other controls that we've listed as the ones that can decide if you finish a race or not.
