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Race
Driving Fundamentals Chapter 1 Much has been written about race driving. When broken down into its simplest form, it is the ability to negotiate a given circuit or course of whatever configuration in the quickest time lap after lap until the end of the race. Courses are a series of straightaways connected by turns or corners. Also, corners connected by corners, etc. A. Straight-aways are driven flat-out with the gas pedal to the floor. B. Turns or corners are negotiated in one of three ways 1. Early apex 2. Middle apex 3. Late apex An apex is the defining location in a corner that enables you to reconfigure the corner’s shape to suit your needs. You would use an early apex to line up the car to have the highest exit speed out of the corner going onto a straight. For example, let’s say you take a center apex and your exit speed out of a given corner is 50mph. The straight after the corner is 1000 feet long and you attain a speed of 120 at your braking point preparing to take the next corner. By taking an early apex you are sacrificing entering the corner to be lined up correctly coming out. Now your exit speed out of the same corner is 52 mph. This time you hit your usual braking point and you top speed will be at least 122 mph! This traveling down this 1000 ft straight at a higher speed will translate into a lower amount of time spent to cover the 1000-ft distance. Possibly saving as much as a ½ a second. We’ll say that the racecourse has a minimum of two straights. That is one full second from a single lap. When you have a thirty-lap race, which puts you thirty seconds ahead when compared to using a center apex! Granted you sacrificed a minimum of time taking the early apex. Next let us take the late apex. Corner “A” has corner “B” following it this is what is termed a garbage turn. Nothing is lost by going as deep as possible into this corner because your exit speed has to be slow anyway. What we gain by taking a late apex is a later braking point. Like I said earlier, time is made on straights, so the longer we make a straight the better. On our theoretical 1000-ft straight we may attain a top speed of 123 mph or more simply because of a later braking point. We can easily gain another ½ second per lap. Just think of what you are gaining with no changes done to the car! Lastly we have the center apex. This is the compromise apex. Smart times to use it are when there is a straight before the corner and a straight after the corner. “Indy” to the layman has two corners and to straights, but most drivers treat the Indy circuit as three straights and three corners or four straights and four corners. Much is dependent on your driving style and how the car is handling. Plus what the track temperature and wind conditions are. It’s easy to see that in order to plan our racing “line” through a racecourse it’s a simple matter of getting a map of the course and mark with “x”s all of the early, late, or center apexes you plan to use. Many courses even have them marked on the payment. They were usually put there by driving schools that rent tracks. Draw a line fluidly down the straights and across all the little “x's". You will also notice that tire and oil drippings from previous drivers will show the general “line” through a given course. By driving your race car as hard as you can on this “line” you will be in the ballpark as far as looking like you know what you are doing. The next part of race driving is to go through every segment of the line or just this side out of losing control. We will use a scale of one to ten to measure the distances to the ragged edge you are driving to. Have you ever watched a race driver negotiating a course lap after lap, then for no apparent reason he spins off course? The reason was the driver stepped just past the ragged edge. The ragged edge is measured on a scale of one through ten. If he were driving at "8/10’s" the danger would have been much less. It reminds me back in 1976 when I was negotiating through the dreaded S’s of the Riverside raceway. My 911 Porsche was staying just ahead of another Porsche who had much wider tires, but a smaller engine. It was a classic duel. I would pull away on the straights and he would catch up to me in the turns because of his wider tires. Upon entering the S’s, I would tap my brake for a millisecond and reduce my speed by one-mph. Lap after lap this played out. On that final fateful lap my ego took over my head and I didn’t tap my brakes. Immediately my tires lost adhesion and I went spinning out of control. (Later the Porsche driver I spun out in front of came over to inquire what had happened because he was only at say "7/10’s" of his adhesion (because of his wider tires). Luckily for me, my car came to rest a few feet short of a concrete wall. Only my ego was damaged. I was driving my car at "10/10’s" through those S's by tapping my brakes, but by letting my ego take over, it did me in. The way we drive any car to its maximum potential is to know its characteristics. Much like shooting a gun, it shoots high so we can compensate by aiming slightly low to hit the target as best we can. Driving really fast is much the same. You are shooting at a target. There is no perfect driving, only degrees of accuracy to get your lap times down below your competitors' times. The door handle to door handle duels are far and few in-between. In the overwhelming majority of times you are competing against the stopwatch. The lowest times around a course for the most laps is what wins races! The characteristics of car dynamics are explained in terms called “understeer” (“push” for the stock car members) and “oversteer” (or “loose”). To illustrate these often misunderstood terms, when driving faster and faster on a perfect circle, the rear tires of the car will lose grip to the road surface before the vvfront, and this is “oversteer.” Something has to give. You will notice the condition when you see the rear of the race car start to swing. The car will swing out and spin 360 degrees and over until it hits something to stop it. Sometimes the driver can catch the “oversteer” by turning into the direction of the swing. Suddenly backing off of the gas pedal usually makes it worse. Also, “oversteer” can be induced by spinning the rear tires with a high horsepower engine. “Understeering”, simply put, is when the front wheels lose grip before the rear and all steering control is lost. That’s what is happening when you see a race car that looks like the driver just steered straight into a wall. The true fact was that the driver had no steering control at all! It is the most unsettling feeling to experience. (At least with oversteering you have some control over the steering wheel!) All that can be done is to get off of the gas pedal and apply just enough braking to reduce speed without making the tires lock up and have the rear wheels lose grip too. There are many other dynamics
involved, such as braking, sliding, drifting, etc., and these will be explained in the
following chapters. A Neutral Attitude is when the car loses adhesion front and rear at
the same time.
Chapter 2- Mental
Attitude
Motor Meister Inc. 12262 Woodruff Avenue Downey, California 90241 Motor Meister is not
affiliated with Porsche Cars North America or Dr. Ing. h.c.F. Porsche AG. |
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