Scothew
01-15-2005, 09:36 AM
A few years back, John (Hawk1320) wrote this and posted it on SN. I figured this would be a good lil read for some of us just to reilliterate alot of the things we already know. Hope you enjoy.
Many of us have very powerful car, but do not know how to handle the car, and how to get every bit of speed out of our cars.
The following is based on many classes I have taken and experence gained in many years of driving high performance cars and motorcycles.
Control in the Cabin
One big rule. Keep both hands on the wheel all the time. Take one hand off the wheel to shift, and return it immediately. You can handle a steering wheel with one hand about as well as your car can handle the road with one wheel.
A lot of people try their skills at driving with one hand on the shifter and one hand on the wheel. Trust me, it doesn't work well.
Hand position is important as well. Keep your hands in a position that provides a lot of stability, usually on opposite sides of the wheel (3 and 9), not on top. You may find it helpful to position your hands slightly to one side or the other (two and eight, for example) prior to entering a turn.
Secure yourself.
You can't concentrate much on getting car around the curve if your main reason for holding onto the wheel is to keep your ass in the seat. There are belts for that. If you do a lot of track driving, you may want to invest in some snap or bolt-in harnesses. Some people like to lock their seatbelts. The easiest way to do this is to slide your seat back, lock the belt, and then slide yourself into the belt until it's snug but comfortable.
Reaction Time
There is no such thing as reaction time in the real world. Reaction time is for the drag strip. On a road course, what you don't act upon right now may be the end of you and/or your car. Consequently, these techniques can only be effectively developed through practice. Making a turn should be second nature, not a step-by-step process in your head. If you're thinking about it, you're taking too much time, and your driving performance will suffer. In essence, handling the road should be a set of reflexes, not reactions.
Handling the Turn
Turns are rather simple but nasty creatures. There is one, and only one, perfect path through every turn. It's the shortest and straightest path, and it begins at the far outside of the curve or turn-in, passes through the inside center or apex, and ends at the the far outside end, or exit/lead out. Learn to identify this path through every turn, until it's completely second-nature.
As you approach the curve, spot the apex and identify where you should turn towards it. Brake early while moving in a straight line. Move with "smooth inputs" in a quick but gentle transition from complete braking to complete turning, and turn towards the apex. Take a long, flowing arc to the apex, and always keep your head up, looking for the next identifiable point on the curve to aim at. By the time you make it to the apex you should have the car pointed at the turn's exit. Make a transition from the turn to acceleration and reach the exit at full throttle in a straight line.
A tip for long, sweeping, high-speed turns: instead of watching the inside of the turn right in front of you, focus your eyes up and into the distance at the farthest outside edge of the turn that you can see. If you continue this through the entire turn, it will put you at a perfect exit when the turn ends.
Throttle Modulation
The best way to keep the car balanced in the turn is with the throttle. Balancing the engine on the edge of power and overdrive can allow you to keep acceleration on tap and still retain the ability to gently bleed off a little bit of speed in the turn if necessary. This is only effective at higher RPMs where the ability of the engine to brake and accelerate is pronounced. This usually requires downshifting just prior to the turn, but be careful to downshift early or double-clutch, as a sudden lurch forward from a downshift could cause the loss of the rear in the turn.
Other Cars
Another piece of advice handed to me by a mentor driver:
If you concentrate on the rear of the car leading you in the turn instead of the turn itself, who's driving your car?
Braking Technique
When we were discussing traction we brought up the very important point that the force exerted by a tire when it's sliding is much less than that exerted while it's rolling. When your brakes lock, your wheels go from so called rolling or static friction to sliding or kinetic friction, and stopping a sliding car takes a lot more distance than stopping a rolling one with proper use of the brakes.
Modulation of the brakes enables the driver to keep the tires on the edge, sometimes into the bounds of, slippage so that maximum braking potential can be achieved.
Do a few test runs on the track, braking from, say, 60 mph. After a few runs (and for God's sake let your brakes cool in between!) you'll start to feel the threshold where your brakes lock and begin sliding. Learn to use the brake right at this threshold of slippage, and this is where the most stopping power can be extracted. If one or more wheels locks and begins to slide, a quick but smooth release and then reapplication of pressure on the pedal will get the wheel rolling again.
ABS (Antilock Brake System) does this for you, automatically. A sensor in each wheel detects when the wheel begins to lock, and releases and then reapplies brake pressure many times each second. This causes the familiar pumping and oscillation of ABS. If the ABS in your car is functioning properly it can be a very useful safety feature for panic stops.
A tip about braking quickly: It does no good for me to tell you not to panic, because at the rate of speed that errors occur on a track, you're only given a few milliseconds of reaction time to successfully begin to apply the brakes before you hit a wall. Unfortunately, the wall will probably make it to you long before this, and if you did manage to brake, your panic would cause the brakes to lock up anyway, and you'll slide blissfully into the barrier.
When in doubt (your wheels are locked and you have the room) it may actually be beneficial to throw the car into a spin to stop in a shorter distance. The reason this may (and I stress may, don't go spinning your car every time you have to panic-stop) help is because some of the linear motion of the car is given up into angular motion, and this angular motion is counteracted by friction that acts along a different axis than the one along which the car was originally sliding. It also will probably get you to hit said obstacle with a trajectory that's not dead-on, which may save your life... however, you may hit it sideways, and things get even more dangerous there.
This technique was rather helpful to me recently when I took a wrong turn on a favourite road course of mine and ended up jumping a steep entrance. I unfortunately managed to get the whole car airborne, but after coming back down, standing on the brakes and pitching the car to the left was about the only way to get her to stop before she made friends with the curb.
Sawing
The principle of sawing is much like the principle of ABS. In a turn, as the front end starts to push (slide), a gentle back-and-forth sawing of the steering wheel will allow the wheels to roll again for just long enough to regain static friction and squeeze you around. This technique is used on the absolute envelope of traction, and shouldn't be employed otherwise. Watch a race car driver on a road course, and how he handles the wheel.
Spins
Sooner or later, you'll take your car into a corner too fast, panic, and hit the brakes while squeezing around the curve. Suddenly, it seems like you're starting to oversteer... the rear end has been unloaded and is coming around fast; considering that most front-wheel drive cars distribute a good bit of the weight in the front, this can be particularly nasty as it's a lot easier for the rear to rotate around a heavy axis.
When the rear end gets loose, point the front wheels in the direction the rear end is sliding. That is, if the rear end comes around to your left, turn the wheels left to match, and point them where you want to go. If for some strange reason you got the vehicle this way on purpose, you should move on to the next section.
Drifting
Drifting is more of a sporty art form than a driving technique, and although it's not the quickest way through a corner, it's certainly the most fun.
Drifting is the technique of negotiating a turn or series of turns with only partial traction. Engine power can be used to push or pull the car around the turn without relying on lateral friction alone. The best drifting cars are light, powerful rear-wheel drive cars such as the BMW M3, Porsche 911, Honda S2000, and others. American muscle cars such as Mustangs and Corvettes can be drifted but the technique is often less successful due to the weight distribution. Front-wheel drive cars similarly offer more of a challenge and less of a reward due to the method of power application and the weight distribution.
Rear-Wheel Drive
Drifting a rear-wheel drive car is more or less a controlled spin under power. Prior to entering a turn, the driver brakes and downshifts to reach the proper entry speed. The engine should be at around 4-5k RPM's to have maximum throttle response and power on-tap. Let's assume for this example that you're turning right. Approach the turn a little more to the inside, giving yourself plenty of room on the outer radius of the turn, and forcibly oversteer to the right while releasing the clutch and standing on the gas just as you enter the turn. The rear-end will light up and lose traction, and if you're lucky, slide around to the left. Continue to apply power while turning the wheels to the left to point towards the turn's exit, and smooth out as the rear end comes back around and pushes you out of the turn. The downside of this, of course, is the tendency for the car to 180 and leave you rather stupified. Be careful.
Front-Wheel Drive
Front-wheel drive drifting is a whole world of hurt in and of itself, and it shouldn't really be done unless you've got a knack for killing yourself and your car. However, there are some ways to get it going, but keeping the rear-end loose without power on the rear wheels is a bit tricky. Once it's loose, however, driving with just the front wheels is a blast and a half.
Once again, assume you're turning right. There are two ways to accomplish the initial loss of traction, and neither of them are entirely wise.
The first is to downshift prior to entering the turn, keeping the power available, and then pitching the car into oversteer while pulling the parking brake to lock the rear wheels. This is most effective at lower speeds, say 35-40 mph. Nine times out of ten in a front-wheel drive vehicle it will spin you completely around, but this can make for some nice 180's if you can slide laterally around whatever barrier you're trying to navigate. Once the rear end is loose, release the brake, stand on the gas, and point the front wheels where you want to go. If you don't spin around, the front wheels will pull you out of the turn, and the rear end will catch up and gain traction eventually.
The second method works at much higher speeds, say 60-80 mph on large radius turns. Prior to entering the turn, downshift and leave the clutch engaged. Modulate the throttle to balance the car as you enter the turn a little early and force the car to oversteer while accelerating smoothly. Suddenly, release the throttle, and the rear will unload, the front will grip a lot better (be ready to compensate, as it may push even more if there's too much weight transfer), and the rear will come around. Again, stand on the gas and point the front wheels in the direction you want to go.
Don't try any of this stuff at home, okay?
Many of us have very powerful car, but do not know how to handle the car, and how to get every bit of speed out of our cars.
The following is based on many classes I have taken and experence gained in many years of driving high performance cars and motorcycles.
Control in the Cabin
One big rule. Keep both hands on the wheel all the time. Take one hand off the wheel to shift, and return it immediately. You can handle a steering wheel with one hand about as well as your car can handle the road with one wheel.
A lot of people try their skills at driving with one hand on the shifter and one hand on the wheel. Trust me, it doesn't work well.
Hand position is important as well. Keep your hands in a position that provides a lot of stability, usually on opposite sides of the wheel (3 and 9), not on top. You may find it helpful to position your hands slightly to one side or the other (two and eight, for example) prior to entering a turn.
Secure yourself.
You can't concentrate much on getting car around the curve if your main reason for holding onto the wheel is to keep your ass in the seat. There are belts for that. If you do a lot of track driving, you may want to invest in some snap or bolt-in harnesses. Some people like to lock their seatbelts. The easiest way to do this is to slide your seat back, lock the belt, and then slide yourself into the belt until it's snug but comfortable.
Reaction Time
There is no such thing as reaction time in the real world. Reaction time is for the drag strip. On a road course, what you don't act upon right now may be the end of you and/or your car. Consequently, these techniques can only be effectively developed through practice. Making a turn should be second nature, not a step-by-step process in your head. If you're thinking about it, you're taking too much time, and your driving performance will suffer. In essence, handling the road should be a set of reflexes, not reactions.
Handling the Turn
Turns are rather simple but nasty creatures. There is one, and only one, perfect path through every turn. It's the shortest and straightest path, and it begins at the far outside of the curve or turn-in, passes through the inside center or apex, and ends at the the far outside end, or exit/lead out. Learn to identify this path through every turn, until it's completely second-nature.
As you approach the curve, spot the apex and identify where you should turn towards it. Brake early while moving in a straight line. Move with "smooth inputs" in a quick but gentle transition from complete braking to complete turning, and turn towards the apex. Take a long, flowing arc to the apex, and always keep your head up, looking for the next identifiable point on the curve to aim at. By the time you make it to the apex you should have the car pointed at the turn's exit. Make a transition from the turn to acceleration and reach the exit at full throttle in a straight line.
A tip for long, sweeping, high-speed turns: instead of watching the inside of the turn right in front of you, focus your eyes up and into the distance at the farthest outside edge of the turn that you can see. If you continue this through the entire turn, it will put you at a perfect exit when the turn ends.
Throttle Modulation
The best way to keep the car balanced in the turn is with the throttle. Balancing the engine on the edge of power and overdrive can allow you to keep acceleration on tap and still retain the ability to gently bleed off a little bit of speed in the turn if necessary. This is only effective at higher RPMs where the ability of the engine to brake and accelerate is pronounced. This usually requires downshifting just prior to the turn, but be careful to downshift early or double-clutch, as a sudden lurch forward from a downshift could cause the loss of the rear in the turn.
Other Cars
Another piece of advice handed to me by a mentor driver:
If you concentrate on the rear of the car leading you in the turn instead of the turn itself, who's driving your car?
Braking Technique
When we were discussing traction we brought up the very important point that the force exerted by a tire when it's sliding is much less than that exerted while it's rolling. When your brakes lock, your wheels go from so called rolling or static friction to sliding or kinetic friction, and stopping a sliding car takes a lot more distance than stopping a rolling one with proper use of the brakes.
Modulation of the brakes enables the driver to keep the tires on the edge, sometimes into the bounds of, slippage so that maximum braking potential can be achieved.
Do a few test runs on the track, braking from, say, 60 mph. After a few runs (and for God's sake let your brakes cool in between!) you'll start to feel the threshold where your brakes lock and begin sliding. Learn to use the brake right at this threshold of slippage, and this is where the most stopping power can be extracted. If one or more wheels locks and begins to slide, a quick but smooth release and then reapplication of pressure on the pedal will get the wheel rolling again.
ABS (Antilock Brake System) does this for you, automatically. A sensor in each wheel detects when the wheel begins to lock, and releases and then reapplies brake pressure many times each second. This causes the familiar pumping and oscillation of ABS. If the ABS in your car is functioning properly it can be a very useful safety feature for panic stops.
A tip about braking quickly: It does no good for me to tell you not to panic, because at the rate of speed that errors occur on a track, you're only given a few milliseconds of reaction time to successfully begin to apply the brakes before you hit a wall. Unfortunately, the wall will probably make it to you long before this, and if you did manage to brake, your panic would cause the brakes to lock up anyway, and you'll slide blissfully into the barrier.
When in doubt (your wheels are locked and you have the room) it may actually be beneficial to throw the car into a spin to stop in a shorter distance. The reason this may (and I stress may, don't go spinning your car every time you have to panic-stop) help is because some of the linear motion of the car is given up into angular motion, and this angular motion is counteracted by friction that acts along a different axis than the one along which the car was originally sliding. It also will probably get you to hit said obstacle with a trajectory that's not dead-on, which may save your life... however, you may hit it sideways, and things get even more dangerous there.
This technique was rather helpful to me recently when I took a wrong turn on a favourite road course of mine and ended up jumping a steep entrance. I unfortunately managed to get the whole car airborne, but after coming back down, standing on the brakes and pitching the car to the left was about the only way to get her to stop before she made friends with the curb.
Sawing
The principle of sawing is much like the principle of ABS. In a turn, as the front end starts to push (slide), a gentle back-and-forth sawing of the steering wheel will allow the wheels to roll again for just long enough to regain static friction and squeeze you around. This technique is used on the absolute envelope of traction, and shouldn't be employed otherwise. Watch a race car driver on a road course, and how he handles the wheel.
Spins
Sooner or later, you'll take your car into a corner too fast, panic, and hit the brakes while squeezing around the curve. Suddenly, it seems like you're starting to oversteer... the rear end has been unloaded and is coming around fast; considering that most front-wheel drive cars distribute a good bit of the weight in the front, this can be particularly nasty as it's a lot easier for the rear to rotate around a heavy axis.
When the rear end gets loose, point the front wheels in the direction the rear end is sliding. That is, if the rear end comes around to your left, turn the wheels left to match, and point them where you want to go. If for some strange reason you got the vehicle this way on purpose, you should move on to the next section.
Drifting
Drifting is more of a sporty art form than a driving technique, and although it's not the quickest way through a corner, it's certainly the most fun.
Drifting is the technique of negotiating a turn or series of turns with only partial traction. Engine power can be used to push or pull the car around the turn without relying on lateral friction alone. The best drifting cars are light, powerful rear-wheel drive cars such as the BMW M3, Porsche 911, Honda S2000, and others. American muscle cars such as Mustangs and Corvettes can be drifted but the technique is often less successful due to the weight distribution. Front-wheel drive cars similarly offer more of a challenge and less of a reward due to the method of power application and the weight distribution.
Rear-Wheel Drive
Drifting a rear-wheel drive car is more or less a controlled spin under power. Prior to entering a turn, the driver brakes and downshifts to reach the proper entry speed. The engine should be at around 4-5k RPM's to have maximum throttle response and power on-tap. Let's assume for this example that you're turning right. Approach the turn a little more to the inside, giving yourself plenty of room on the outer radius of the turn, and forcibly oversteer to the right while releasing the clutch and standing on the gas just as you enter the turn. The rear-end will light up and lose traction, and if you're lucky, slide around to the left. Continue to apply power while turning the wheels to the left to point towards the turn's exit, and smooth out as the rear end comes back around and pushes you out of the turn. The downside of this, of course, is the tendency for the car to 180 and leave you rather stupified. Be careful.
Front-Wheel Drive
Front-wheel drive drifting is a whole world of hurt in and of itself, and it shouldn't really be done unless you've got a knack for killing yourself and your car. However, there are some ways to get it going, but keeping the rear-end loose without power on the rear wheels is a bit tricky. Once it's loose, however, driving with just the front wheels is a blast and a half.
Once again, assume you're turning right. There are two ways to accomplish the initial loss of traction, and neither of them are entirely wise.
The first is to downshift prior to entering the turn, keeping the power available, and then pitching the car into oversteer while pulling the parking brake to lock the rear wheels. This is most effective at lower speeds, say 35-40 mph. Nine times out of ten in a front-wheel drive vehicle it will spin you completely around, but this can make for some nice 180's if you can slide laterally around whatever barrier you're trying to navigate. Once the rear end is loose, release the brake, stand on the gas, and point the front wheels where you want to go. If you don't spin around, the front wheels will pull you out of the turn, and the rear end will catch up and gain traction eventually.
The second method works at much higher speeds, say 60-80 mph on large radius turns. Prior to entering the turn, downshift and leave the clutch engaged. Modulate the throttle to balance the car as you enter the turn a little early and force the car to oversteer while accelerating smoothly. Suddenly, release the throttle, and the rear will unload, the front will grip a lot better (be ready to compensate, as it may push even more if there's too much weight transfer), and the rear will come around. Again, stand on the gas and point the front wheels in the direction you want to go.
Don't try any of this stuff at home, okay?