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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Ross Bentley
Started reading
August 24, 2017
key to the exit phase of a corner: unwinding the steering or releasing the car out of the turn, allowing you to use the tires’ traction for accelerating.
Remember what I said earlier about being a g-force junkie? Often, to fill your need to feel g-forces, you will subconsciously hold the arc of a turn just a little longer than necessary. In other words, not unwind the steering and allow the car to follow an increasing radius. The longer you hold the car on a tight radius, the more g-forces you will feel, but the slower you will be able to drive.
Driver B does something a little different: He picks up the throttle a little earlier, then squeezes fully on. In most cases (but not all), Driver B’s throttle application will result in a quicker lap time.
Many times, this early touch of the throttle also helps balance the car, as well as improving midcorner speed.
When and how you begin accelerating in a corner also plays a critical role in the exit phase. Again, the general rule is the sooner you begin accelerating, the better; however, with some cars you need to be a little patient getting back to power. If you begin to accelerate too soon, all you do is unload the front tires, causing the car to understeer, and then you have to ease back off the throttle to control it. With other cars, almost from the instant you turn in to the corner, you need to begin squeezing back on the throttle, and quickly. You need to experiment with your car to find out what
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“Going into the corners slowly and coming out fast is better than the opposite.
Ultimately, you want to carry more and more speed into the corner until it begins to negatively affect when you can begin to accelerate. If your corner-entry speed is so high that you have to delay the point where you begin to accelerate, then you need to slow down on the entry.
A comparison of two approaches to going faster. Driver A brakes later, but enters the corner at the same speed as always (“x” miles per hour) by braking harder. Driver B brakes later, but also carries 2 miles per hour more into the turn by braking as hard as usual. Braking later results in a small gain; carrying a little more speed into the turn results in a big gain.
change direction. These are
“rotation turns,
maintain as high a speed as possible through the turn. These are
“set turns.”
STEERING TECHNIQUE
Pulling down with one hand usually provides more strength but may be less sensitive and accurate (less smooth).
Pushing up with one hand is more accurate, but takes more effort.
While one hand is pushing up, the other hand should be pulling down.
A comparison of two corner turn-in techniques. One driver eases, or “bends” the car into the corner, while the other driver uses a crisp, abrupt style. Which one is best? Depends on the car and the corner.
your driving style must be adaptable. Many drivers have one particular way of turning the steering wheel and cannot adapt their style. That is one of the reasons why some drivers are better in fast corners than they are in slow ones, and vice versa.
The slower the corner, the later the apex, the quicker and crisper you need to turn the steering wheel; the faster the corner, the more you need to arc or bend the car into the turn with slow hands.
In many karts, one of the techniques used to make the front tires grip and turn in well is to crank the steering wheel in and then quickly unwind it to the point required to get the kart to follow the desired line. While this works with the type of geometry and lack of suspension on a kart, I can’t recommend it for any race car. It is one of the habits (mental programs) that kart drivers have to change when beginning to race cars.
This is why your corner-entry speed is so critical. If you enter a corner too slowly (below the limit), and then try to make up for it by accelerating, you may create a limit that is not as high as if you entered the corner at the ideal speed. And your corner-entry speed is one of the reasons your speed-sensing skills are so important. Without them, you will not be able to accurately and consistently gauge, and therefore drive, the correct speed when entering the turns.
Until your speed-sensing abilities are finely tuned and consistent, you will never know
for sure what technique (or car setup) worked and what didn’t work. This is why the speed sensing exercises I suggest are so critical.
The less change in speed through a corner, the faster you will be.
over-slowing the car entering corners,
have the “in slow, out fast” habit or program too well ingrained.
too focused on the begin-of-braking point, rather than the end-of-braking point.
not looking into the turn far enough. If you do not look far enough down the track and through the turns, you’ll drive as if you’re connecting dots.
no planning ahead.
Certainly, the technique of setting one’s corner-entry speed is universal. Over-slow any car entering a corner and you’re going to be in trouble. Too little entry speed is going to lead to too little exit speed. Sure, if you overdo it on the entry and carry too much speed into a corner, you’ll be slow exiting it. That’s where the “in slow, out fast” advice came from. It’s a shame that it’s been overemphasized because it is basically good advice, in the right dose.
over-slowing the car leads to the change of speed problem
Your instinct, then, is going to be to use it. You’ll step harder on the throttle, and when you step harder on the throttle, you’re going to cause one of two things to happen: understeer or oversteer. The understeer is caused by too much weight transfer to the rear; the oversteer is caused by asking the rear tires (in a rear-wheel-drive car) to do too much, causing power oversteer.
the midcorner phase is what separates the champions from the truly great drivers.
that it has more to do with the way he balanced the car
Small things can make big improvements. For example, compare these throttle graph traces. Between these two turns, Driver A uses less than half throttle, while Driver B gives a short stab at full throttle. Driver B is “hustling” the car. In these esses, that little burst of throttle could result in being up to three-tenths of a second quicker in this section alone.
If you ever had the opportunity to really watch Schumacher, you may have noticed what I’m talking about. If you could stand near the edge of the track, as I was fortunate enough to do, you could see that the attitude of his car (the pitch and roll) did not change as much as others. His car stayed better balanced.
The way he squeezed on the brakes with his left foot, and then eased off of it while beginning to squeeze the throttle with his right foot was seamless, perfectly smooth.
his steering technique. He had such light hands on the wheel. It was as if he was hardly gripping it.
Due to his strength, his arms and hands may have been more relaxed while controlling the steering wheel. Any time you can relax your muscles, the more feedback will reach your brain. The more feedback your brain has, the better your skills will be.
Fast midcorner speed comes from great entry speed, car balance, and early exit speed.
BALANCING THE CAR A car is balanced when there is no weight being transferred forward, as would be the case when you are braking; when there is no weight being transferred to the rear, as is the case when you are accelerating; and when
there is no lateral weight transfer, as when you are cornering. This is the car’s mechanical balance.
If you can brake hard on the approach, while being able to rebalance the car as you ease off the brakes during the entry phase, your midcorner speed will be good, without having to be too slow on the approach.
TRANSITION
This is another area where left-foot braking has an advantage, as it is much easier to make a seamless
transition. In fact, when using your left foot on the brake and right on the throttle, there is usually a little bit of overlap, making it much smoother.
Practice your throttle-brake-throttle transition until you can do it in such a way that if someone were to ride with you blindfolded, they would not be able to tell the exact point where the braking ended and where the acceleration began. That is what I mean by a seamless transition.
If you are right-foot braking, the movement of your foot off the brake pedal and onto the throttle should be practiced on the street until it is perfectly smooth.
Focus on and visualize the line you wish the car to follow through a corner, constantly trying to see through the turn to the exit.
Many drivers spend far too much time (which is any amount of time, even a fraction of a second) focusing on where they don’t want to go, such as the curbs, walls, and other things off the edge of the track. And that’s where they usually end up.
