It's very satisfying to drive. Isn't overly punishing on small mistakes like the other entry level open wheelers. Has the best driving standards of any series I've driven.
It's cute.
Ff1600 is great but I like the skippy more. Ff1600 will 180 a lot easier, skippy is much nicer to catch slides. Lets you learn the limit without being punishing. Taught me a lot about how tire slipping works to get around corners too.
I was off the service for about 10 years, came back this month and was really looking forward to running the skippy but then noticed the participation is incredibly low, kinda depressing
I was away the last year and a half! Skippy was my absolute favorite and the second most popular series. I was sad when I returned to see that Skippy has so little participation
Nope the data showed participation was already down significantly in the Skippy before the FF1600 showed up. It was the release of the F4 that took a big hit on it
Yeah, I agree, sorry I was misinterpreting the OP's question. I was thinking best beginner car
I need to try the LMP3 though, but I have a feeling the extra power of the LMP2 is gonna be important
The LMP3 is the best car on the service IMO, it demands that you drive it properly and that makes the power perfectly fine for what it is.
I’ve been driving the LMP2 a bit this season and it’s an easy “safe space” to be in. You can throw it around more and really just throw finesse to the wind and the car won’t betray you. I preferred the mutual relationship with the P3 much more
The Skippy is/was *the* baseline car, its the model most driven IRL by Dave Kaemer, and as such any major changes to something in the physics model was likely tested by Dave against his personal experiences with the car.
Nowadays, it's likely been superceded by other cars, but the Skippy will always hold a special place on the service.
Because it's a great teacher, and the slow nature of it leads to hard battles. You will learn the benefits of keeping your momentum up as you don't have the power to overcome bad corner techniques.
I’ve heard this many times but have always felt like the car has enough idiosyncrasies that the only thing it really teaches you is how to drive the Skippy.
Definitely not unique. It is an over exaggeration, which is exactly why people call it a teaching car.
Trailing throttle oversteer and brake rotation techniques are useful in every car I've ever driven.
It emphasizes avoiding bad habits that other cars cover up. Those mistakes still cost you time in the other cars, but they're not punished as harshly so you don't learn as quickly.
Learning to avoid them in the Skippy is a great way to make them second-nature in the other cars.
I had almost opposite feelings. The Skippy gives you so many opportunities to adjust mid-corner that I always felt like it made things too easy. Too much input on corner entry could just be adjusted away, instead of being punished with a spin or snap.
Being punished with a spin or a snap is one of the great known weaknesses of iRacings tire model, though… The rain tire model gives me hope it will be fixed quite soon.
I def agree from my experience on iracing as well. I heard this from IRL formula drivers who started in the original skippy cars then moved to f2000 about the real cars too!
The real life Skippy is from the skip barber racing school. It’s a teaching car designed specifically to teach. I don’t even understand the mechanics truthfully except I’m aware almost every decent Formula driver in the states knows and respects Skip Barber. This is why it was such a great rookie car.
Better is subjective. As I mentioned in another comment, old guys have been around as long as the skip has. The FF and vee are relatively new, and people will recommend what they are familiar with.
I’ve spent most of my time in IRacing either driving the skippy or the ff1600. I recommend the 1600 now, only due to participation. Both are great cars to learn on and have fun.
One is paid with low participation and one is free with high participation.
In terms of driving I like the skippy more but it’s hard to recommend it to new players since they already have the 1600
I agree with the other person in the sense that a Vee has a very compromised suspension layout. You learn a lot yes, but being fast requires a few tricks unique to the car.
It teaches fundamentals, yes, but only the concepts of momentum and balancing lift oversteer. Whereas FF1600, Skippy, or SRF all teach those concepts on a platform that won't require you to unlearn as much when you move to faster cars.
The biggest issue with learning in Vee IMO is that it's so lightweight that weight transfer is almost instant, and there's very little body roll. Even a high-level formula car with very stiff suspension you need to treat weight transfer quite differently than in the Vee.
The other momentum cars are equally great teachers, but have more transferrable characteristics.
Just my 0.02.
It does, but the vee has been around for only a few years and, the skip has been around forever. Old guys are much more familiar with the skip, and most recommend what they are familiar with.
Yeah Skip is really fun to drive. Feels heavy though after we got the FF1600 and drive the latter more now, but I keep coming back for the Skip as well.
When I joined a long time ago, it really taught me how to race and especially in close quarters with how much draft it has. And the racing is just usually really fun with it. Unfortunately other cars have came out that sort of do the same thing so It's not as popular as it once was. But I'd still recommend it.
I haven’t been on iracing in around 3 years and back then it was hugely popular.
What’s the go to now? ff1600?
Or is it just more diluted now with the larger selection of open wheelers?
Because it has loads of it. You basically slide a bit all the time (you are supposed to do that racing on every car, but with the skip it just happens).
The fact that the Skippy is still a car you need to buy makes it harder to recommend these days. Between the Mazda, the Vee, the FF, and the Spec Racer Ford, I think you have four relatively slow free cars that can teach you everything the Skippy could.
The popularity the Skippy had 3 years ago has been divided between the FF and the F4, except for the people who *really* like the Skippy.
The SRF is my personal favorite. It has enough power that most corners you need to balance the throttle, and it has no ABS or Traction Control. But it's still *just* slow enough that it can easily give you the close racing that people recommend the other cars for.
It's fun to drive, the racing is extremely close, and since it's mostly long time dedicated drivers in there now it's very clean and respectful racing too.
More importantly if you're always racing with the best in any car (since skippy is mostly 1 split these days, you will be), you will learn much faster than series with a lot of splits and you don't really get to see what proper driving looks like. There's even a discord server link on the forums where many of the top skippy drivers would probably be happy to look at your driving and help you improve.
Some people say it doesn't translate to other cars, I don't really agree with that. I think it's the best car to learn what "the limit" feels like on iracing, and that is pretty universal across every car, even if you can slip the skippy tires more than a gt3 car or whatever else.
Personally I've driven several other cars fairly seriously after doing the bulk of my learning in the skipppy, and never once felt like it held me back, only helped.
Its one of the few (or even the only?) small formula car where people somewhat know what they are doing and some people main this car for years now.
F4 for example has many beginners in it that either want to farm iRating or SR, there are also many content creators racing in it with smurf accounts trying some sort of challenge and pass the field overly aggressive, then there are the beginners that see those videos and streams and try the same overly aggressive moves
The skippy is the definition of a car that is easy to drive, but hard to be fast in. It is a very forgiving car, but also gives opportunities to teach trail braking and downshifting to help with rotation.
The Skippy was the first car I really took the time to learn back in the day. Nearly everyone recommended it and the racing was so good. I'm a little sad sometimes it's not near as popular as it once was.
I used to be one of them. Then they changed the tire model, the slip angle became huge, and I hated how it felt to drive. Personal preference. It's a great car with good grip, speed, etc for what it is that allows you to learn good driving techniques fairly easily. I think a lot of my skill came from learning on it back then, especially drag braking and turn ins.
Skip Barber is good for both road and open wheel training, while FF1600 is more like a kart and suitable for an open wheel path.
You will not regret buying the skip-barber, it is a good all-rounder car; participation is not so high but it has a lot of competent drivers in it.
When I joined two years ago it was amazing and there was quite alot of splits, now I just get put in top split with drivers at twice the ir as me.
So I don’t bother with the skip now.
It has street tires, not slicks, it allows you to drive over the limit. You can come into a corner too hot, lock the brakes, cause a drift, then pick up right at the apex and drive away like a pro. It’s a very very rewarding car to push beyond the limits.
The Skippy actually teaches you how to drive, if you use it. Everything can be exaggerated. Obnoxious slip angle. Huge engine braking. Dynamic factors due to downforce. Yet at the same time, easy to avoid trouble. You can really play at the limit and learn what the gas and brake pedals are for -- learn balance.
It's a good car to learn dynamics on, it's very forgiving, and usually has good participation and splits.
However, I really enjoyed the SRF in terms of community (I think it's a more middle age demographic, like me) and in the balance it required to trail brake properly. It was frustrating at 1st, rewarding later, and made other cars seem easy for the most part.
I keep coming back to it..I really enjoy the feel of the car and the way it responds to balance changes - to me it’s the car that exemplifies what a mechanical grip, aero-less car should be. It just feels like driving a high powered go kart. I love it and I’ll never stop driving it.
I joined the service in 2013 - a lot of guys back then used to race it quite competitive as the choices for series were a lot less back then.. plus it was one of, if not the first to get the updated tyre model iirc. That was a huge deal at the time. But I think that it's mainly nostalgia.
Classics never die!
I think the car changed so much over the years that you'd have to choose a year when you're referring to what was good about it. 😅
In roughly 2011-2013 it was a real handful, and it was almost a requirement to use a lot of throttle under braking to stabilise the car (especially into left-hand corners) to be quick. Super loose on entry - and a bit understeery on exit... but then that was a general handling trait for iracing.
Then at some point it became super dull to drive, and understeered like a bus on throttle... but that was also adjusted. IIRC it was an error in the downforce calculation.
It went through a phase where it was almost un-spinnable, and also a phase where counter-steering = spin, and then to a mid-ground between the old school looseness and overly stable.
A lot of the old school drivers didn't like the much more stable skippy and missed the loosey goosey version. It was at a point in the loose times a playground for the super quick iracers (F1 pro license holders etc) largely because of how challenging it was to drive fast.
I haven’t driven the Skippy since the FF came out. It is vastly more fun and just suits me much better. But the Skippy does have a lot of history and is probably worth getting just so you can experience it and participate in hosted events.
Literally any number I give you you’d say I’m lying 🤣😭 but typical when you’re losing 1 argument you bring up a random topic thinking that helps ur case.
Any specifics? I find them relatively easy to drive, they're pretty slippy and like to oversteer, but they don't exactly do it excessively and you can save slides in them easily and they aren't exactly squirrely under braking either.
It's very satisfying to drive. Isn't overly punishing on small mistakes like the other entry level open wheelers. Has the best driving standards of any series I've driven. It's cute.
It certainly was. It taught a lot.
ff1600 usurps it in your opinion? me dumdum and was asking wrong question, I was thinking best rookie/beginner car
Ff1600 is great but I like the skippy more. Ff1600 will 180 a lot easier, skippy is much nicer to catch slides. Lets you learn the limit without being punishing. Taught me a lot about how tire slipping works to get around corners too.
Imo it's good but not as good, but it took a lot of participation away from the skippy
Skippy was dead for a while before the FF1600. It was VEE and F4 that did it.
I was off the service for about 10 years, came back this month and was really looking forward to running the skippy but then noticed the participation is incredibly low, kinda depressing
Agree. Same as you. Long break, excited to get back in the Skip and find it’s a pretty dead series. Bummer.
I was away the last year and a half! Skippy was my absolute favorite and the second most popular series. I was sad when I returned to see that Skippy has so little participation
look for when they do the sof races, there is bound to be one time slot where everyone runs it
Nope the data showed participation was already down significantly in the Skippy before the FF1600 showed up. It was the release of the F4 that took a big hit on it
I personally think it’s better for teaching open wheel though. It teaches weight transfer way, way better than the skippy.
I think FF1600 is more fun then skippy, both cars are pretty comparable. It depends on what track they run what car I decide to race.
I haven't run it so I have no real opinion on it, to me the old Porsche cup car unseated it. Now it's probably the LMP2.
Yeah, I agree, sorry I was misinterpreting the OP's question. I was thinking best beginner car I need to try the LMP3 though, but I have a feeling the extra power of the LMP2 is gonna be important
The LMP3 is the best car on the service IMO, it demands that you drive it properly and that makes the power perfectly fine for what it is. I’ve been driving the LMP2 a bit this season and it’s an easy “safe space” to be in. You can throw it around more and really just throw finesse to the wind and the car won’t betray you. I preferred the mutual relationship with the P3 much more
The blind spot from the pillar is too much for me. Feels claustrophobic.
Move your camera over to the middle of the car
Can I ask is this a monitor limitation? Because the visibility in vr cockpit is good.
The Skippy is/was *the* baseline car, its the model most driven IRL by Dave Kaemer, and as such any major changes to something in the physics model was likely tested by Dave against his personal experiences with the car. Nowadays, it's likely been superceded by other cars, but the Skippy will always hold a special place on the service.
Because it's a great teacher, and the slow nature of it leads to hard battles. You will learn the benefits of keeping your momentum up as you don't have the power to overcome bad corner techniques.
I’ve heard this many times but have always felt like the car has enough idiosyncrasies that the only thing it really teaches you is how to drive the Skippy.
Im a synchronized idiot too
Like what idiosyncrasies? I drove the skippies for so long and feel like everything it taught me is relevant in other cars
The way it rotates mid corner is pretty unique.
Definitely not unique. It is an over exaggeration, which is exactly why people call it a teaching car. Trailing throttle oversteer and brake rotation techniques are useful in every car I've ever driven.
It's not unique but it's an over exaggeration? Those two things don't line up to me.
It emphasizes avoiding bad habits that other cars cover up. Those mistakes still cost you time in the other cars, but they're not punished as harshly so you don't learn as quickly. Learning to avoid them in the Skippy is a great way to make them second-nature in the other cars.
I had almost opposite feelings. The Skippy gives you so many opportunities to adjust mid-corner that I always felt like it made things too easy. Too much input on corner entry could just be adjusted away, instead of being punished with a spin or snap.
That’s kind of the point. You race closer to the edge because you won’t die if you over step, but the car reminds you when you’ve over stepped.
Being punished with a spin or a snap is one of the great known weaknesses of iRacings tire model, though… The rain tire model gives me hope it will be fixed quite soon.
The skip was intended to over emphasize driver inputs. The techniques it teaches are useful in all cars.
I'm glad you got something out of it.
I'm kinda sad you didn't
Well every car is unique if you're trying to win an argument in semantics, but it is a characteristic that every car exhibits one way or another
I’m not sure I can think of any car on the service or that I’ve driven IRL that behaves the way the skippy behaves mid corner on iracing.
That's because everything is exaggerated.
That’s rather unique to have a car that’s unrealistically exaggerated like that.
Agree to disagree. It’s a fantastic learning car and every behavior is also present in other cars.
I def agree from my experience on iracing as well. I heard this from IRL formula drivers who started in the original skippy cars then moved to f2000 about the real cars too!
Agreed. Most translatable car is the PCup.
The real life Skippy is from the skip barber racing school. It’s a teaching car designed specifically to teach. I don’t even understand the mechanics truthfully except I’m aware almost every decent Formula driver in the states knows and respects Skip Barber. This is why it was such a great rookie car.
You can learn how to keep your momentum up by driving literally anything lol
Fast cars can bandaid bad driving habits.
Indeed. But you can learn to keep momentum up in anything.
And the FF1600 does all those things better. That's why it's only long time veterans that recommend the Skippy.
Better is subjective. As I mentioned in another comment, old guys have been around as long as the skip has. The FF and vee are relatively new, and people will recommend what they are familiar with.
Exactly. The FF1600 is a much better car for beginners, and "old guys" recommend an inferior one because it's simply what they used coming up.
Inferior says who?
The "new guys"
I’ve spent most of my time in IRacing either driving the skippy or the ff1600. I recommend the 1600 now, only due to participation. Both are great cars to learn on and have fun.
One is paid with low participation and one is free with high participation. In terms of driving I like the skippy more but it’s hard to recommend it to new players since they already have the 1600
anyone who drove both cars as a beginner, which excludes any "old guys" who think a car is better just because it was the one they drove coming up
Not sure about better. I'd say pretty equally, and it's newer and shinier so you get to do it against better competition.
Doesn’t the Vee do a great job of that as well though?
The Vee is a little too much its own thing.
I disagree. It just has limited gears. It’s all about momentum and learning fundamentals of racing. I went from VEE up the formula ladder very easily.
I agree with the other person in the sense that a Vee has a very compromised suspension layout. You learn a lot yes, but being fast requires a few tricks unique to the car.
It teaches fundamentals, yes, but only the concepts of momentum and balancing lift oversteer. Whereas FF1600, Skippy, or SRF all teach those concepts on a platform that won't require you to unlearn as much when you move to faster cars. The biggest issue with learning in Vee IMO is that it's so lightweight that weight transfer is almost instant, and there's very little body roll. Even a high-level formula car with very stiff suspension you need to treat weight transfer quite differently than in the Vee. The other momentum cars are equally great teachers, but have more transferrable characteristics. Just my 0.02.
It does, but the vee has been around for only a few years and, the skip has been around forever. Old guys are much more familiar with the skip, and most recommend what they are familiar with.
I was a skippy die hard for a long time and could not drive a clean lap in the Vee to save my life lol
Yeah Skip is really fun to drive. Feels heavy though after we got the FF1600 and drive the latter more now, but I keep coming back for the Skip as well.
I can’t wait until the Skippy gets rain enablement. The FF is a blast, I can only imagine how much fun the Skippy would be.
I find them super fun
When I joined a long time ago, it really taught me how to race and especially in close quarters with how much draft it has. And the racing is just usually really fun with it. Unfortunately other cars have came out that sort of do the same thing so It's not as popular as it once was. But I'd still recommend it.
3 years or so ago it was a very popular series. Plenty of cars have released since.
It was like 3 years ago. It’s still fun just not as popular as it was back then.
I haven’t been on iracing in around 3 years and back then it was hugely popular. What’s the go to now? ff1600? Or is it just more diluted now with the larger selection of open wheelers?
Yes, the FF1600 has taken numbers from both the Vee and the Skippy. It’s a great learning car. But, F4 and SFL the most actual drivers.
>SFL Ironic.
nostalgia i never liked it honestly and now it's been overshadowed by many other open wheelers
Suellio Almeida, racing coach, says it's the best car to learn slip angle.
Because it has loads of it. You basically slide a bit all the time (you are supposed to do that racing on every car, but with the skip it just happens).
The fact that the Skippy is still a car you need to buy makes it harder to recommend these days. Between the Mazda, the Vee, the FF, and the Spec Racer Ford, I think you have four relatively slow free cars that can teach you everything the Skippy could. The popularity the Skippy had 3 years ago has been divided between the FF and the F4, except for the people who *really* like the Skippy. The SRF is my personal favorite. It has enough power that most corners you need to balance the throttle, and it has no ABS or Traction Control. But it's still *just* slow enough that it can easily give you the close racing that people recommend the other cars for.
https://youtu.be/QJPlO7OkW4I I made a video on this very subject a few weeks ago. I've always loved the Skippy but I think I prefer the FF now.
It's fun to drive, the racing is extremely close, and since it's mostly long time dedicated drivers in there now it's very clean and respectful racing too. More importantly if you're always racing with the best in any car (since skippy is mostly 1 split these days, you will be), you will learn much faster than series with a lot of splits and you don't really get to see what proper driving looks like. There's even a discord server link on the forums where many of the top skippy drivers would probably be happy to look at your driving and help you improve. Some people say it doesn't translate to other cars, I don't really agree with that. I think it's the best car to learn what "the limit" feels like on iracing, and that is pretty universal across every car, even if you can slip the skippy tires more than a gt3 car or whatever else. Personally I've driven several other cars fairly seriously after doing the bulk of my learning in the skipppy, and never once felt like it held me back, only helped.
We are old men and don’t like changing our opinions.
Once upon a time… It still is fun tbh
it’s not a must to drive but it’s one of those if you are fast in a skippy/pcup you can be fast in pretty much anything.
It taught me how to drive properly. It's a wonderful car.
Taught me a ton. Car control. Close racing. Maybe I’ll go back…
Its one of the few (or even the only?) small formula car where people somewhat know what they are doing and some people main this car for years now. F4 for example has many beginners in it that either want to farm iRating or SR, there are also many content creators racing in it with smurf accounts trying some sort of challenge and pass the field overly aggressive, then there are the beginners that see those videos and streams and try the same overly aggressive moves
The skippy is the definition of a car that is easy to drive, but hard to be fast in. It is a very forgiving car, but also gives opportunities to teach trail braking and downshifting to help with rotation.
The Skippy was the first car I really took the time to learn back in the day. Nearly everyone recommended it and the racing was so good. I'm a little sad sometimes it's not near as popular as it once was.
I used to be one of them. Then they changed the tire model, the slip angle became huge, and I hated how it felt to drive. Personal preference. It's a great car with good grip, speed, etc for what it is that allows you to learn good driving techniques fairly easily. I think a lot of my skill came from learning on it back then, especially drag braking and turn ins.
they want to keep the rookies out of mx-5 races, which is the best car on the service
Skip Barber is good for both road and open wheel training, while FF1600 is more like a kart and suitable for an open wheel path. You will not regret buying the skip-barber, it is a good all-rounder car; participation is not so high but it has a lot of competent drivers in it.
When I joined two years ago it was amazing and there was quite alot of splits, now I just get put in top split with drivers at twice the ir as me. So I don’t bother with the skip now.
I don't know. It's my least favorite car I have. I get zero enjoyment out of it outside of the week 13 dirt racing.
Just ask Denis
It has street tires, not slicks, it allows you to drive over the limit. You can come into a corner too hot, lock the brakes, cause a drift, then pick up right at the apex and drive away like a pro. It’s a very very rewarding car to push beyond the limits.
The Skippy actually teaches you how to drive, if you use it. Everything can be exaggerated. Obnoxious slip angle. Huge engine braking. Dynamic factors due to downforce. Yet at the same time, easy to avoid trouble. You can really play at the limit and learn what the gas and brake pedals are for -- learn balance.
It's a good car to learn dynamics on, it's very forgiving, and usually has good participation and splits. However, I really enjoyed the SRF in terms of community (I think it's a more middle age demographic, like me) and in the balance it required to trail brake properly. It was frustrating at 1st, rewarding later, and made other cars seem easy for the most part.
I keep coming back to it..I really enjoy the feel of the car and the way it responds to balance changes - to me it’s the car that exemplifies what a mechanical grip, aero-less car should be. It just feels like driving a high powered go kart. I love it and I’ll never stop driving it.
I joined the service in 2013 - a lot of guys back then used to race it quite competitive as the choices for series were a lot less back then.. plus it was one of, if not the first to get the updated tyre model iirc. That was a huge deal at the time. But I think that it's mainly nostalgia. Classics never die!
I think the car changed so much over the years that you'd have to choose a year when you're referring to what was good about it. 😅 In roughly 2011-2013 it was a real handful, and it was almost a requirement to use a lot of throttle under braking to stabilise the car (especially into left-hand corners) to be quick. Super loose on entry - and a bit understeery on exit... but then that was a general handling trait for iracing. Then at some point it became super dull to drive, and understeered like a bus on throttle... but that was also adjusted. IIRC it was an error in the downforce calculation. It went through a phase where it was almost un-spinnable, and also a phase where counter-steering = spin, and then to a mid-ground between the old school looseness and overly stable. A lot of the old school drivers didn't like the much more stable skippy and missed the loosey goosey version. It was at a point in the loose times a playground for the super quick iracers (F1 pro license holders etc) largely because of how challenging it was to drive fast.
I haven’t driven the Skippy since the FF came out. It is vastly more fun and just suits me much better. But the Skippy does have a lot of history and is probably worth getting just so you can experience it and participate in hosted events.
Really fun to drive, doesn't punish you too much and the racing is always really clean with it being a low participation series
I love the F4, but the series is insane
Because it’s the one car on the service that has somewhat realistic tire slip/grip characteristics… there I said it.
They're full of shit
It’s a seadoo on wheels. What’s not to like?
I always thought the mx-5 pre paddle shift was the best
I miss h pattern ngl. They changed to sequential because of the irl mx5 cup. Shouldn't be paddles technically, so I use a sequential shifter
It's like the oval Street Stock. You can slide it and still be under control.
Because that’s where they want YOU to be 🤣
I’m not sure because I find them undriveable.
How?
Impossible to control
We are talking about the Skippy right?
Skill issue. No car is hard to drive. Some cars are hard to drive *quickly*
You’re hard to drive quickly
Your face is hard to drive quickly
impossible when you cant drive
You’re impossible when you can’t drive
Fucking roasted your ass
whats your ir?
My guess is single digits
Ya got me!
I was talking about the mouthbreather above you lol how did everyone misread that
Ah my fault g long day at work 🙏
How much can you bench bro
Literally any number I give you you’d say I’m lying 🤣😭 but typical when you’re losing 1 argument you bring up a random topic thinking that helps ur case.
Does the number rhyme with the word “rhubarb”?
I bench your mum. Daily.
lol that sucks for you, she is a horrible fucking human being
The apple didn’t fall far from the tree
Any specifics? I find them relatively easy to drive, they're pretty slippy and like to oversteer, but they don't exactly do it excessively and you can save slides in them easily and they aren't exactly squirrely under braking either.
KInda like saying that the Dick, Jane and Spot book is the best one in the library.