anyone know of any good sites on driving technique? i cant find any good ones
using the waybackmachine on http://www.archive.org your able to get to the site http://www.turnfast.com and it has some good stuff. thats the only one i really know of thats decent
driving technique sites?
Something as involving as driving technique can be talked about with a keyboard for only so long. Technique is a feel not a cold lab experiment. Real life interaction and hand / body gestures and inflection are the great explainers.
Technique can be studied but to discuss with proper explanation requires volumes. Who has the time?
Technique can be studied but to discuss with proper explanation requires volumes. Who has the time?
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skydragoness
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Re: (SmithSR)
Better to learn 'technique' by going out to an autocross--its the cheapest way to learn.
There's also my favorite book for tips: "Going Faster" which was written by a handful of instructors from the Skip Barber racing school.
There's also my favorite book for tips: "Going Faster" which was written by a handful of instructors from the Skip Barber racing school.
Re: (J-Spec Tuner)
here some tips for autocross and then some road racing tips below that (remember autocross and roadracing are different and require some different techniques). I got these off of a local sports car club forum i go to.
ANDY'S TOP TEN AUTOX DRIVING TIPS
By Andy Hollis (Andy is a multiple National Solo Champion and an instructor for the Evolution Solo School)
Originally posted on Miata.Net
[Just got back from a weekend of teaching Evolution schools and thought I'd share some stuff that I must have said a thousand times.]
1] Position first, then speed. Positioning the car perfectly is more important than trying to attain the highest potential speed. For example, you will drop more time by correctly positioning the car nearer to slalom cones than you will by adding 1 or 2 MPH in speed. Same with sweepers (tight line). Same with 90-degree turns (use all of the track). Also, position is a prerequisite for speed. If you are not in the correct place, you will not be able go faster. Or at least not for very long!
2] Turn earlier...and less. To go faster, the arc you are running must be bigger. A bigger arc requires less steering. To make a bigger arc that is centered in the same place, the arc must start sooner (turn earlier).
3] Brake earlier...and less. Waiting until the last possible second approaching a turn and then dropping anchor at precisely the correct place so that the desired entry speed is reached exactly as you come to the turn-in point is quite difficult to execute consistently. Especially when you consider that you get no practice runs on the course, and the surface changes on every run, and you aren't likely to be in exactly the same position with the same approach speed on every run, etc. Better to start braking a little earlier to give some margin of error. And by braking less you can either add or subtract braking effort as you close in on the turn-in point. This will make you consistent and smooth.
4] Lift early instead of braking later. Continuing with the philosophy of #3, when you need to reduce speed only a moderate amount, try an early lift of the throttle instead of a later push of the brake. This is less upsetting to the car, is easier to do and thus more consistent, and allows for more precise placement entering the maneuver (remember #1 above).
5] Easier to add speed in a turn than to get rid of it. If you are under the limit, a slight push of the right foot will get you more speed with no additional side effects. On the other hand, if you are too fast and the tires have begun slipping, you can only reduce throttle and wait until the tires turn enough of that excess energy into smoke and heat. Don't use your tires as brakes!
6] Use your right foot to modulate car position in constant radius turns, not the steering wheel. In a steady state turn, once you have established the correct steering input to maintain that arc, lifting the throttle slightly will let the car tuck in closer to the inside cones. Conversely, slightly increasing the throttle will push the car out a bit farther to avoid inside cones. It is much easier to make small corrections in position with slight variations in the tires' slip angle (that's what you are doing with the throttle) than with the steering wheel.
7] Unwind the wheel, then add power. If the car is using all of the tire's tractive capacity to corner, there is none left for additional acceleration. At corner exit, as you unwind the wheel, you make some available. If you do not unwind the wheel, the tire will start to slide and the car will push out (see #6 above).
8] Attack the back. For slaloms (also applicable to most offsets), getting close to the cones is critical for quick times (see #1). To get close, we must move the car less, which means bigger arcs. Bigger arcs come from less steering and require earlier turning (see #2). Now for the fun part... When you go by a slalom cone and start turning the steering wheel back the other way, when does the car start to actually change direction? Answer: When the wheel crosses the center point (Not when you first start turning back!) How long does that take? If you are smooth, it takes .25 - .5 seconds. Now, how long is a typical person's reaction time? Answer: about .5 seconds. Finally, how long does it take to go between slalom cones? Answer: Typically on the order of 1 second. Given all of that, your brain must make the decision to begin turning the steering wheel back the other way just *before* you go by the previous cone!!
Since this is a mental issue, a good visualization technique to get used to this is to think about trying to run over the back side of each slalom cone with the inside rear tire of the car. To hit it with the rear tire (and not the front), the car must be arcing well before the cone and the arc must be shallow. Attack the back!
9] Hands follow the eyes, car follows the hands. 'Nuf said.
10] Scan ahead, don't stare. Keep the eyes moving. Looking ahead does not mean staring ahead. Your eyes must be constantly moving forward and back, and sometimes left and right. Glance forward, glance back. Your brain can only operate on the information you give it.
Bonus Tip: Don't forget the stuff in between the marked maneuvers! Too often we think of a course as series of discrete maneuvers. There is typically more to be gained or lost in the areas that are in between. Pay special attention to the places where there are no cones.
And of course a thanks must go out to Andy Hollis .
____________________________________________________________
And heres some tips for road racing on a road course race track
(5) Eliminate shifts. Even if you can shift blazingly fast, it'll take you a quarter of a second to nail that shift. If you're a mere mortal, figure half a second. So, that's a half a second the driveline is not engaged, and ultimately a half a second you're not on the throttle. Then you have to upshift. So that's another half a second the driveline is not engaged and ultimately a half a second you're not on the throttle. But perhaps more importantly, that's a half second you're not thinking about your line, your braking, your tires, etc. It's a half second wasted on the downshift and half a second wasted on the upshift. A lower gear feels faster, but the butt dyno will lie to you.
(4) Compress your braking zone. The number one difference between a winning race car driver and a student in HPDEs is the size of their braking zones. The shorter the braking zone, the longer you're on the throttle in the straight. Also, since it requires the same amount of energy to stop a car from a given speed, regardless of time involved in the process (area under the curve), if you compress your braking zone, you will spend less time overall on the brakes. This allows them to cool more and last longer.
(3) Open the wheel. The fastest line would be the one where you keep the wheel pointed straight forward the entire time. Don't believe me? Drag racers cover an autocross-sized race in 12 seconds. Still don't believe me? Conduct the following experiment. Get a friend to sit in your car. Put it in neutral with the key in ignition. Now, get behind your car and push it through a lot. Then ask your friend to turn the wheel. Notice a difference? Physics is unavoidable. If a portion of your tires' traction is used for lateral acceleration, it is either producing drag for the rear wheels in a RWD car, or redirecting the vector of acceleration in a FWD car. Keep the wheel as open as possible, and open it as soon as you can in a turn. If you're not exiting with two inches clearance between the side of your car and the cones/track surface, you have room to open the wheel.
(2) Get into the throttle sooner. The sooner you're in the throttle, the faster you accelerate out of the turn, the faster you take the next straight, the sooner you get into your next braking zone. This all translates into lower lap times. If you can't be close to WOT at corner apex, you're probably carrying too much speed into the corner. Slow in, fast out.
(1) Keep your eyes up. There is no greater truth than you will drive where you look. The closer to the front of your car you look, the later your reactions will be. If you can keep your eyes beyond the upcoming apex to the track out point, then your apex will come to you without you having to think about it, and more importantly, you'll be more likely to naturally choose a line that requires as few inputs from the steering wheel as possible. You'll then be making inputs to correct things that haven't even gone wrong yet. If you do nothing else, do this (on the track, but more importantly on the street where people are not looking out for you).
It may take weeks or even years to apply just one of these consistently. But that's what the science of racing is all about. Seat time.
edited for disclaimer: These are advanced driving techniques. If consistency, spatial memory of the course, knowledge of turn in, apex, late apex, early apex, track out, an understanding of the dynamics of understeer, oversteer and tire loading are subjects not yet fully mastered, this advice will not be very helpful.
ANDY'S TOP TEN AUTOX DRIVING TIPS
By Andy Hollis (Andy is a multiple National Solo Champion and an instructor for the Evolution Solo School)
Originally posted on Miata.Net
[Just got back from a weekend of teaching Evolution schools and thought I'd share some stuff that I must have said a thousand times.]
1] Position first, then speed. Positioning the car perfectly is more important than trying to attain the highest potential speed. For example, you will drop more time by correctly positioning the car nearer to slalom cones than you will by adding 1 or 2 MPH in speed. Same with sweepers (tight line). Same with 90-degree turns (use all of the track). Also, position is a prerequisite for speed. If you are not in the correct place, you will not be able go faster. Or at least not for very long!
2] Turn earlier...and less. To go faster, the arc you are running must be bigger. A bigger arc requires less steering. To make a bigger arc that is centered in the same place, the arc must start sooner (turn earlier).
3] Brake earlier...and less. Waiting until the last possible second approaching a turn and then dropping anchor at precisely the correct place so that the desired entry speed is reached exactly as you come to the turn-in point is quite difficult to execute consistently. Especially when you consider that you get no practice runs on the course, and the surface changes on every run, and you aren't likely to be in exactly the same position with the same approach speed on every run, etc. Better to start braking a little earlier to give some margin of error. And by braking less you can either add or subtract braking effort as you close in on the turn-in point. This will make you consistent and smooth.
4] Lift early instead of braking later. Continuing with the philosophy of #3, when you need to reduce speed only a moderate amount, try an early lift of the throttle instead of a later push of the brake. This is less upsetting to the car, is easier to do and thus more consistent, and allows for more precise placement entering the maneuver (remember #1 above).
5] Easier to add speed in a turn than to get rid of it. If you are under the limit, a slight push of the right foot will get you more speed with no additional side effects. On the other hand, if you are too fast and the tires have begun slipping, you can only reduce throttle and wait until the tires turn enough of that excess energy into smoke and heat. Don't use your tires as brakes!
6] Use your right foot to modulate car position in constant radius turns, not the steering wheel. In a steady state turn, once you have established the correct steering input to maintain that arc, lifting the throttle slightly will let the car tuck in closer to the inside cones. Conversely, slightly increasing the throttle will push the car out a bit farther to avoid inside cones. It is much easier to make small corrections in position with slight variations in the tires' slip angle (that's what you are doing with the throttle) than with the steering wheel.
7] Unwind the wheel, then add power. If the car is using all of the tire's tractive capacity to corner, there is none left for additional acceleration. At corner exit, as you unwind the wheel, you make some available. If you do not unwind the wheel, the tire will start to slide and the car will push out (see #6 above).
8] Attack the back. For slaloms (also applicable to most offsets), getting close to the cones is critical for quick times (see #1). To get close, we must move the car less, which means bigger arcs. Bigger arcs come from less steering and require earlier turning (see #2). Now for the fun part... When you go by a slalom cone and start turning the steering wheel back the other way, when does the car start to actually change direction? Answer: When the wheel crosses the center point (Not when you first start turning back!) How long does that take? If you are smooth, it takes .25 - .5 seconds. Now, how long is a typical person's reaction time? Answer: about .5 seconds. Finally, how long does it take to go between slalom cones? Answer: Typically on the order of 1 second. Given all of that, your brain must make the decision to begin turning the steering wheel back the other way just *before* you go by the previous cone!!
Since this is a mental issue, a good visualization technique to get used to this is to think about trying to run over the back side of each slalom cone with the inside rear tire of the car. To hit it with the rear tire (and not the front), the car must be arcing well before the cone and the arc must be shallow. Attack the back!
9] Hands follow the eyes, car follows the hands. 'Nuf said.
10] Scan ahead, don't stare. Keep the eyes moving. Looking ahead does not mean staring ahead. Your eyes must be constantly moving forward and back, and sometimes left and right. Glance forward, glance back. Your brain can only operate on the information you give it.
Bonus Tip: Don't forget the stuff in between the marked maneuvers! Too often we think of a course as series of discrete maneuvers. There is typically more to be gained or lost in the areas that are in between. Pay special attention to the places where there are no cones.
And of course a thanks must go out to Andy Hollis .
____________________________________________________________
And heres some tips for road racing on a road course race track
(5) Eliminate shifts. Even if you can shift blazingly fast, it'll take you a quarter of a second to nail that shift. If you're a mere mortal, figure half a second. So, that's a half a second the driveline is not engaged, and ultimately a half a second you're not on the throttle. Then you have to upshift. So that's another half a second the driveline is not engaged and ultimately a half a second you're not on the throttle. But perhaps more importantly, that's a half second you're not thinking about your line, your braking, your tires, etc. It's a half second wasted on the downshift and half a second wasted on the upshift. A lower gear feels faster, but the butt dyno will lie to you.
(4) Compress your braking zone. The number one difference between a winning race car driver and a student in HPDEs is the size of their braking zones. The shorter the braking zone, the longer you're on the throttle in the straight. Also, since it requires the same amount of energy to stop a car from a given speed, regardless of time involved in the process (area under the curve), if you compress your braking zone, you will spend less time overall on the brakes. This allows them to cool more and last longer.
(3) Open the wheel. The fastest line would be the one where you keep the wheel pointed straight forward the entire time. Don't believe me? Drag racers cover an autocross-sized race in 12 seconds. Still don't believe me? Conduct the following experiment. Get a friend to sit in your car. Put it in neutral with the key in ignition. Now, get behind your car and push it through a lot. Then ask your friend to turn the wheel. Notice a difference? Physics is unavoidable. If a portion of your tires' traction is used for lateral acceleration, it is either producing drag for the rear wheels in a RWD car, or redirecting the vector of acceleration in a FWD car. Keep the wheel as open as possible, and open it as soon as you can in a turn. If you're not exiting with two inches clearance between the side of your car and the cones/track surface, you have room to open the wheel.
(2) Get into the throttle sooner. The sooner you're in the throttle, the faster you accelerate out of the turn, the faster you take the next straight, the sooner you get into your next braking zone. This all translates into lower lap times. If you can't be close to WOT at corner apex, you're probably carrying too much speed into the corner. Slow in, fast out.
(1) Keep your eyes up. There is no greater truth than you will drive where you look. The closer to the front of your car you look, the later your reactions will be. If you can keep your eyes beyond the upcoming apex to the track out point, then your apex will come to you without you having to think about it, and more importantly, you'll be more likely to naturally choose a line that requires as few inputs from the steering wheel as possible. You'll then be making inputs to correct things that haven't even gone wrong yet. If you do nothing else, do this (on the track, but more importantly on the street where people are not looking out for you).
It may take weeks or even years to apply just one of these consistently. But that's what the science of racing is all about. Seat time.
edited for disclaimer: These are advanced driving techniques. If consistency, spatial memory of the course, knowledge of turn in, apex, late apex, early apex, track out, an understanding of the dynamics of understeer, oversteer and tire loading are subjects not yet fully mastered, this advice will not be very helpful.