WATCH: The Principles of Clean Racing | Ultimate Guide to Racecraft: Part 3

About a year ago, we set out on a journey to explain some of our best tips to racing against other people in a respectable, but competitive manner. Earlier this year, we released the second part of the series, which included tips on the art of defensive driving. More or less, today’s Part 3 covers how to do all of that and keep your nose clean in the process.

You can have the best attack, the best defense, the fastest quick laps, but if you don’t know how to avoid incidents, you’ll likely find yourself constantly asking why other people keep crashing into you. Sometimes, there are things that are just unavoidable. However, part of this racing thing, in real-world and simulated racing, is having the mindset to do what it takes to elongate your own race.

We’re going back to attack and defense, but this time we’re putting the emphasis on clean racing. While in some forms of motorsport, “rubbing is racing”, truth be told, most races you’ll compete in are not under that mindset. All the best moves, whether it’s on offense or defense, will be for naught if you’re unwilling to compromise with a poor move from your opposition or a low percentage move from yourself.

Here’s our guide for those situations, and it includes the overall principles of racing clean, how to make sure your defense stays clean, what to do when the sliding scale of responsibility is leaning one way or another, things you should actively try not do in any circumstance, and of course, what to do if all that fails and it goes wrong anyway.

You’re not going to be able to avoid every incident, but knowing some of these tips could help you with making it to the end unscathed more often than not. Agree? Disagree? Let us know what you think about it in the comments below! Be sure to check out Part 1 and Part 2 of our Ultimate Guide to Racecraft as well!