slow down to go faster. update 2

finallymysti

New member
every thing i'm talking about should be applied at the track not on the road. first lets start with a beginner. Don't try to go fast,(i made this mistake) take your first couple track days to learn what to do. if you run with a good organization they will put you in a low run group with an instructor, listen to him/her. your going to hear alot about being smooth and this is true that smooth=fast. focus on not getting tunnel vision. don't just see whats right at the nose of the car, but look ahead and through the turn. you can put a peice of tape on your window to keep your eye level up. expand your view to the guard rails so you always notice the flaggers. consistincy is another important thing to get down.
now the driving line. properapex2[1].jpg as you can see there are more than one ways to take a corner. the red line shows an early apex. with an early apex you limit your track out and can run out of track and essentially understeer off. you also can't get on the throttle as soon as you would like and spend more time coasting/scrubing speed around the corner in order to make the corner. the geometric apex is often also an early apex. now the ideal driving line is like that of the green line in the picture. it lets you have a balance of carrying speed into the corner and carrying speed out of the corner and getting on the gas sooner. you can feel when you have taken the proper line, the car just seems to go naturally. then there's the late apex which people talk alot about. it is THE slow in fast out philosophy. you turn in later sharper and slower but you sort of square of the corner so you can get on the gas really early. this is a killer weapon for our cars. can't keep up with that pesky miata going into the turns? late apex and ride his tale comeing out of the turn and down the straight. also it is more difficult to get yourself into trouble with a late apex. so if the course, car, or setup is new to you its the line to start with.(there are differences in the way rwd,awd,fwd cars choose lines. an awd car like ours will like a later apex) use all of the track. dont be afraid to run on the rumble strips. i know i didn't do a corner well if i didn't hit the rumbles. i forget what the actual ratio is but i think its something along the lines of if you enter the turn a foot in from the edge and exit a foot away you lost 5mph. thats alot think of how much a difference p***ing somebody at 65 vs 60 on the highway is.


now i want to put in a small excert about load transfer which may be technically off but sounds good to me. tires create grip based on, among other ways, how much load/weight is on them. so you think great lets put a bunch of weight in the car to give it more grip. Wrong. grip goes up but at a slower rate than weight is added. so lets say a tire creates 100 pounds of grip for 100 pounds of weight. now your cornering at 1 g. because the grip is equal to the gravitational force of the weight. now lets add another 100 pounds of weight. our grip may only go up to 180 pounds so now your cornering at .9 g's ultimatley giving less cornering speed. if you can transfer/add pounds of load but not increase weight being pulled by gravity in an opposite direction then you will go faster. this is how load/weight transfer works. you can transfer that load around the car using the controls but the pulling weight stays where it is so you increase grip. such as when you are braking and the front tire do more work and get more grip and perform more braking. that is why cars with good weight distribution handle so well. this italicized bit may be off.


now lets look at what we are doing with the pedals. driving-racing-line[1].jpg(i don't particularly like this diagram but it works) in the picture it shows a pedal transiton between full throttle and braking. this should be minimal. come off the throttle quickly but not abruptly. remember smooth equals fast. there are to schools of thought when it comes to getting on the brakes. one being just stomp on the binders and maintain threshold braking(the very point of optimum braking and not locking up/triggering abs) another school of thought is to squeze on the brakes more smooth like to the point of threshold braking. i tend to do the former but either way seems to be appropriate. also if your not every now or then hitting abs then you need to learn to brake later and harder. you want to be on the brakes as little as possible. (late braking for me was the hardest thing to learn because of that of **** i'm not slowing enough thought us mere mortal non pro racers have.) first starting out your probably gonna be told to get all your braking done in a straight line. to learn, this is true, but to go fast not so much. now we are going to look at coming off the brakes. jackie stewart once said something along the lines of "what makes me better than others is the way i come off the brakes". your brake release should blend with your turn in. this is known as trail braking. our cars love to trail brake and i think it is something that all sti drivers should master. your not threshold braking while trail braking rather you are letting go of the brake pedal. this should be done very smoothly and methodically done. this keeps load on the front tires and keeps the car turning. at this point we are getting back on the throttle pedal. this should be at or just barely before the apex. if you feel you are accelerating to the apex you messed up the corner entry.(unless you a really trying for optimum speed for the straight. but still) now there is the conventional proper way to accelerate and the way i and a lot of awd drivers do it. lets start with the former. a good mental image to have is a string attached to the bottom of the steering wheel and the gas pedal. you can't go full throttle untill the wheel is straight. you want to gently roll on the throttle as you unwind the steering wheel. again smooth and methodical is how you should use the gas pedal. its not an on off switch, think of the pedal in tenths. when you role on the throttle you don't loose all the work you have done to keep load on the front tires. you can experience weight transfer and how it effects handling on long sweepers like highway on ramps. when you are in a long sweeper just add in some throttle and see how it pushes you out and come off the throttle and see how you go towards the inside of the turn. now on to the latter and this only applies to awd cars. even more specifically ones that are set up and handle this. get to the apex and smash the gas. still roleing on but not really like you should. with our awd the car will rotate around and you can just steer where you want to go and the car will do it.

now lets focus on the things your hands are going to be touching, the steering and gear shift. first lets look at shifting. when you are down shifting all ways rev match to keep the car smooth and balanced. when shifting up you want to be very precise and deliberate. the time lost or the damage done by a missed shift is not worth the time saved by slamming the gear lever as fast as you can. the steering wheel should be held at the 3 and 9 oclock position and your hands should never move from there no shuffling of the hands unless its absolutely necessary to keep from crossing your arms or shifting. turn in should be very smooth and deliberate. you should not be moving the wheel to keep the car on line, you should dial in the steering input and lock it there. adjust the line of the car with the throttle.(unless of course you need to do something different for safety) just changing the rate at which you turn the wheel faster or slower can have an impact on turnin and balance thru the whole turn. once you get to the apex start unwinding the steering wheel. let the car track all the way out. again smooth and deliberate. now your thinking "i watch the pro races and their hands are always moving quickly" yes they are and you not at a level that requires that. and their not so much steering the car mid corner as catching it from sliding.

now remember about the early apex and scrubing speed and not being able to get on the throttle? if your not using the brake or gas pedal your losing time. you don't have to be fully on the pedals but trail brakeing or modulating throttle to balance the car.

finally how all this ties together with tires, suspension, and getting around the track. so why is being smooth, methodicall, and deliberate so important? look at grip like a string. if you snap the string quickly it breaks without much force but if you pull the string slowly and smoothly it takes more force to break the string. so if you let the suspension and tire become accustomed and form around whats happening you will have more grip and be faster.

for me one of the key words that helped me improve was deliberate. every move should be thoughtfull and measured.

try to find what is known as a rabbit car. not the slow vw but a car for you to chase. it should be about the same speed as you, preferably slightly faster. try to keep up with him/her. this will make you push yourself. if your just lapping alone you will fall into the same rythm probably have a hard time going faster. once somebody p***es you, you then want to keep up and start to push more. while you are pushing yourself to keep up some things will happen. one should be you consciously watching what they are doing differently than you that is makeing them faster. by using this technique i shaved off two seconds. i was chaseing a porsche panamara s. i was wickedly fast through the first sector of thunderbolt slightly faster through the 2nd, and significantly off pace through the octopus. i kept getting lost in the third section. so i started to watch and think about how this porsche which should be slower than my car through this section is so much faster. after a couple laps i started to figure it out and was able to p*** him and throughout the day shave two seconds. another thing that will happen is you will subconstiously adjust your driving to keep up. however don't push to hard to keep up and then really put the rally into rally car for the track.

something that doesn't apply to sti's in general but i still think shoudl be addressed is aerodynamics and how your driving and car can effect your times. aerodynamics take more effect the faster you go. they tend to start to take effect if well designed around 40mph and do more the faster you go. so lets say you are having trouble with the rearend getting light over a crest with a slight turn when taken at 60mph. if you go faster you you will inturn get more grip. so consivebly you could be better off going 70mph through the turn you were having trouble with at 60mph. also realise that with aerodynamics aiding your car as speed changes the behavior of your car can significantly change so you as a driver need to be able to cope with these changes. realise that if you have a wing heavy car that the faster you go the more understeery and with a splitter heavy car the faster you go the more oversteery it becomes. compared to say the balance the car has at 30mph.( i am not very knowledgable about aerodynamic based cars like a formula car or real competetive time attack car but i understand the princepals enough for the article)

in this paragraph i'm going to talk about why consistency is important. one of the reasons consistency is important is so you can plan what you need or what needs to be done/changed. so lets say you want to have as little gas in the tank as possible for a set amount of time. lets say 30 minutes. if your consistent with the gas pedal and use it 50 % of the lap and only use 3 gallons then you know you don't need to add any more gas to the tank than 3 gallons plus a little extra for a cushion. however, if your in consistent and are sometime on the gas for 50% percent of the time then on the gas for 60% of the time you may run out of gas if you use a set amount. that is mainly for racers that have to worry about gas though. so why is consistency important to an hpde'er? SAFETY. if you go around the track at 8 tenths some of the lap and your lines change and then you go around at 10 tenths you will find yourself out of control and surprised by the way the car acted. this will cause you to have an off road excursion. heres anothe example of how consistency helps. lets say turn 1 is giving you trouble on laps 1-5 but on lap 6 it felt good, then on laps 7-10 turn one is giving you trouble again. if you are in consistent you want be able to recognize what you did different that worked and be able to replicate it.

now lets talk a bit about tires. there are different ways tires make grip. 1. the compound or what the tire is made of 2. how much tire is on the ground aka the contact patch 3. tread design 4. load which can be both aerodynamic and actual weight 5.tempature is sort of in this category but is linked to compound. so lets look the ones we can control on/at the track assuming we dont have a choice of what tire. so this eleminates 1. 3. and somewhat 5, you will see why i say somewhat 5. i will try to do one element at a time but there will be some crossover. ok so lets start with number 2/the contact patch. we as drivers and pit/maintnence crew have control over this. what can we do in the pit. we can control alignment such as toe and camber(i'm not going to get into much detail here). we can also control how much air is in the tire which will effect the shape of the tire and the way it deforms. basically with the alignment you want it so that the tire is as flat/level with the road surface as possible during high g turns. to much camber can affect braking. now lets get into what everybody talks about TIRE PRESSURE. there is no overall exact right tire pressure, individuals will prefer different ones, but there is most definatley a wrong. before getting into how to find and get the right pressure lets first look at how tire pressure affects the contact patch. to much pressure will cause the tire to "crown" or the middle to push out and be what is contacting the surface. this will minimize the amount of rubber on the road thus minimizeing traction. now with to low a pressure the tire will start to cup essentially and the sidewall would be make most of the contact again not utilizing the whole tire. another thing with low pressure is tire rollover. wiht low pressures the sidewall won't stand up in a turn, causing the tire to roll on to the sidewall which has less grip and is a potential hazard. so now we see that we want a pressure were the tire is evenly touching the ground. so how to figure this out? the cheap and fast way is to draw line with either shoepolish or chalk from the sidewall of the tire to the tread. the correct pressure will be when you just start to wear off the line at the beginning where sidewall meets tread. if your not wearing the line off you need less pressure and if your wearing to much off you need more pressure. the more expensive and accurate way is with a pyrometer. right when you get off the track check the tire temperature start with the inside then middle then outside. the temperature should be within ten degrees all the way across the tire with the inside being slightly hotter and cooling as you go to middle to outer. if the outside is hotter than the middle it means you need more pressure. if the middle is hotter than the outside it means you need less pressure. check tire temps before cooldown. with pressures you want to check them when hot as air pressure goes up with heat. this means as a day gets hotter you will need to adjust pressures.
now lets look at 5. or heat in the tire. each tire is made to operate in a certain heat range. we can heat up or cool down a tire based on the way we drive. if we use a more aggressive sliding style of driving this will be harder on the tire and make them heat up more. if we are smoother and slide less the tire won't heat up as much. this is very important for those of us that use a street tire that doesn't take heat the way an r comp can. also understanding how to get an r comp up to operating temp.
4. which is load, i'm going to add a splash of contact patch as well. when you are on the track driving you are manipulating the contact patch and amoutn of load constantly.tires create grip based on, among other ways, how much load/weight is on them. so you think great lets put a bunch of weight in the car to give it more grip. Wrong. grip goes up but at a slower rate than weight is added. so lets say a tire creates 100 pounds of grip for 100 pounds of weight. now your cornering at 1 g. because the grip is equal to the gravitational force of the weight. now lets add another 100 pounds of weight. our grip may only go up to 180 pounds so now your cornering at .9 g's ultimatley giving less cornering speed. if you can transfer/add pounds of load but not increase weight being pulled by gravity in an opposite direction then you will go faster. this is how load/weight transfer works. you can transfer that load around the car using the controls but the pulling weight stays where it is so you increase grip. such as when you are braking and the front tire do more work and get more grip and perform more braking. that is why cars with good weight distribution handle so well. this italicized bit may be off. a tire acts somewhat like one of those squishy stress balls. now lay the ball on the table and see how much of the ball is touching. this would be like the car sitting still. the ball or tire has a set amount that it is touching. now push down on that squishy ball. see how it deformed and even gave you some more area on the table? its the same thing with a cars tire when you apply more load to it in a turn or under braking now lets take four squishy balls and place them in a rectangle with them being conected on the top by a rectangular piec of wood like a frame. push down evenly on the four edges. you can see at this point you are the most balanced. now only apply force on the left side see how the left balls squish and will have more grip but the right balls have less. it is the same with a car and load. now just hit the left side quickly and see how it flips up wtihout much control. but if you apply the same force smoothly all four balls stay in contact with the table with the left squished down. that would be like in a right hand corner. its the same concept that works with driving smoothly. it keeps the load more evenly distributed. now as we know load equalls grip so we can move this load around the car to our benefit. you can do this by using the controls. such as lifting to put load on the front or adding some gas to put load on the rear.

a trick i like to use but is dangerous is throttle lifting. like in a double apex i'll come off the throttle to get the car to rotate for the second apex.

if understeering try reducing the steering angle. sometimes i'll rock the wheel to get the front to hook.

try a session only using half throttle so you can learn not to rely on power.

never think your the best or can't use advice

talk to other drivers with similar cars and compare driving style and lines espescially if they are faster.

if you can't get the car dialed in maybe you need to adjust your driving to work with the car

try different things whether its lines, speeds, or the way your using the controls.

be sure your comfortable in the car and can reach everything you need to. adjust everything before your time to grid.

and a huge thanks to my sponsor racecomp engineering.


Tell me what you think. feel free to discuss, recommend, or disagree with something. or just tell me good job:cool:

still being added to
 
Last edited:

IGOTASTi

System Operator
Staff member
Re: slow down to go faster.

I agree with you 100%! Great write up.
 

finallymysti

New member
would somebody better with physics and polar dynamics if thats such a thing write about load transfer and pm me it so i can integrate it
 

HolyCrapItsFast

Drinks beer!
I could take a stab at it but Fuji would be a better candidate than me.

Nice writeup... I learned allot from this one post. Once everyone agrees I would like to sticky this and add it to the index :tup:
 

Alin

Diehard Car Enthusiast!
slow down to go faster.

Oh hell yes! Definitely great sticky!
 

SMASH

New member
I have learned to cut times by shifting less. In some cases (dry pavement) the time it takes to shift and throttle up is spared by taking advantage of low end (3500rpm) torque to muscle thru curves I would normally downshift into. I have a wing with splitters and this weekend in the rain it was crystal clear to me why it is there. I had great stability and downforce in the wet at over 100 mph and avoided lifting when I used an apron to rotate on. I noticed some hydroplaning at speeds below 60.
Shift less be smooth in fast out...
Tire temp and pressure are important to track if you want to understand consistency patterns. I run all weather street rubber and my best lap s are 4 and 5 out of 6.
 
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