mark kibort

tell you what. you come out here , put up a bond, drive a time within a second of mine in my car and Ill pay for your flight out.

Ive driven and run up in turns againstguys like Derrek bell in cars professionally set up and highly capable. ( the TV quote was " look at those porsche brakes" as I was running up close to Derrek bell in his TT Audi at turn 11 at laguna, only to loose 20 car lengths under power down the main straight)

I would have to say, Im one of the best drivers around running sub par equip.

keep in mind, my times now, are as fast as Mark Anderson just a few years ago in a 6.5 liter!!!!!! (same tires, close to the same set up less the 6.5 liter 420RWHP, and he had big brakes) (1999, speed GT laguna seca) Now, my car has not evolved. it is still a bone stock 928 with a set of headers and big tires from 1986!!
Mark is getting faster every year too, but he was still pretty darn tough in 1999-2000, running his 6.5 liter in speed GT. (1:40.2 vs his 1:40.5 on Dot stickies)

Now, if you think your experience and drifting method can give you an edge over common knowledge, experience and a professional training ethic, then i welcome the challenge.

But if you peal back the onion a little, you will see that no one drifts, NO ONE in racing. you have talked yourself into it, and think it makes sence, but it doesnt.

And if its a challenge of any kind, im usually up for it!! your offer is tempting. thanks for the invite!! sounds like we could have some big fun!!!!


Mk


QUOTE]Originally posted by Pierre Martins
Mark, enough already! I was teasing, but man you are so cocksure and full of yourself. You know everything and everyone in Porsche racing in your neck of the woods eh?

Okay Mr big deal, only one way to settle this. I'd really love to go head to head with you. Same car, same track, same tyres, same settings, same everything...

3 tracks, Zwartkops, Midvaal and Welkom, back to back and let the stopwatch do the talking. Best outta 3 wins.

When my 928 is race ready, (soon) you come here and show me how its done, or maybe I'll show you a thing or two... or three.

You pay your own plane ticket (you'll find a sponsor because you're a professional driver and you know the right people, right?), I'll lodge, feed you and get you to and from the tracks.

You up for it?

Pierre. [/QUOTE]

Pierre Martins

Huh? I call your bluff, but I must come to the US, post a bond and ****?

I laid it down for you. You can pick up the challenge, come here and drive my 928 racer without having to post a "bond" or any other stupid complicated ****. Just get yourself here and let's rock and roll. You'll be treated like royalty when it comes to hospitality.

As for the bragging babble beating your chest about lap times and running against faster cars, famous drivers and better equipment - yeah yeah heah, been there, done that... Every good driver's got a good story to tell. So have I, but I'm not gonna bore you with statistics. Proof is in the lap times buddy. Back to back.

Actually this thread is now downright stupid and childish, but I will make good on my challenge if you're man enough to face it.

Pierre.

turbo944

I'll add two cents here. I've raced karts and up through Skip Barber, don't have the money to get further right now....

Mark is quite right in grip being the fastest way around the track. Now, when it comes to driving in corners, there are 3 ways around them. Technically you are always drifting. Tires have a natural ~7 degrees of slip angle when cornering. Race tires will be less of course and cheaper and harder street tires with taller sidewalls will have more. We all know that when all 4 tires have approximately the same slip angles, that is a 4-wheel drift. When the fronts have more slip, it's understeer and when the rears have more, it's oversteer. Different corners with different cars may require you to take advantage of something other than a perfect 4-wheel drift, however we're not talking 15 degree different slip angles front to rear, but within probably 5 degrees or so. From what I've read and done, understeer is best in longer sweepers where it allows you to help pick where you want your nose to come out at the end of the corner by how much throttle you use. In a tight, twisty section of track, oversteer can help you get your car pointed in the right direction to squirt between corners faster. This does not mean sacrificing traction for wheelspin. It means a controlled amount of additional slip angle at one end or the other of the car. If you have tires smoking or leave black marks you're already way too far. If you are getting wheelspin that means much less traction and you're losing time on the track. No two ways around it, if you are outside of the friction circle with your tires, you are overworking them, getting them too hot and you're likely to have less traction from the rubber.

This drifting that's come over from Japan is a very slow way around a racetrack. Don't believe it? Go and download Live For Speed, a free driving game which has a very nice physics engine. You can get drift setups and other good setups for the cars in the game. Drive the drift setup and it's a blast....I really enjoy it, but I'm nowhere near fast time of the day. Drifters who are doing that for tire smoking fun are often running very high tire pressures to help their tires slide more. Stefan in the Ruf video is not going anywhere near as quick as he could setting the car up and taking those corners with full grip. Yes he gets around the track very quickly, but keep in mind he's got thousands of hours behind the wheels of these cars, who knows how many laps of the 'ring under his belt and a car capable of going 210+ mph on a long enough straight stretch that has been lightened and is seriously quick.

As to comparing 911s and 928s on a track, 928s are front engined cars that are HEAVY compared to a 911. It's a bit different way of driving there. Lighter cars can be tossed a bit more, heavier cars have to be placed more precisely as there is more momentum there to control. I've driven light first gen RX-7s and third gen Supras fast on the same road. The Supra although a faster car, is only faster if you are more controlled with your technique. It's less forgiving of errors to keep up your speed as you have more mass to get changing directions, slowing down, and speeding up. If you have a lot of mass and you let it get really tossing back and forth, you can easily lose it.

Hope this can clear a few things up on the whole subject....slideways is bad for speed, small changes in drift angle for the best corner exit speed and fast times around the track is good. Some drivers do better with a more neutral car, others like one that is a bit looser (Juan Montoya for instance always seemed to have a slightly loose car in Champ Cars).

mark kibort

Pierre, I appreciate the offer. I may take you up on it.

as for stories, they are not stories. Just lap times against known cars, and known drivers. All of the cars I run against on the same tires and tracks, run all over the US and its easy to judge how you are doing with a stockish S4.

Ill see if I can find a way to get out and run with you.

In the mean time, work on late braking and trail braking and get rid of the drift! It may feel faster, but I assure you, it isnt. Ill have to come out and show you! by the way, what has your 928 looked like in the past, and what will it look like when you finish your project. what kinds of mods and set up. if you are going to be racing it, we all would like to know the details!

MK
drifting is for show but is very slow.

Tony

Get in line, LOL, He has to beat Crumb first.

Pierre Martins

Mark, I'm going to try and explain myself once more, for the sake of clarity.

In one of your previous posts you reckon - "I would have to say, Im one of the best drivers around running sub par equip". What kind of a smug statement is that? Haven't you ever heard the word "modesty"? Perhaps you're the best grip style driver out there, but since you're so one-track minded about grip, what do you have to say about drivers like these -

Mark Donnehue, Gilles Villeneuve, Jody Scheckter. They were "drifters". You say they're all wrong and you know better?

Yes, they were the radical ones, but many famous drivers mastered the art of drifting to maintain corner speed in certain corners. Perhaps you should re-read my previous posts again. Let me be clear - I'm not advocating drifting around every corner. I'm saying it can be used to maintain momentum in specific corners depending on the car, track and conditions. The trick is to learn when and where to impliment drifting.

Picture this - You're on a short straight leading up to a tight off camber left hander, followed immediatley by a right hander that opens up into a long uphill straight. The esses at Kyalami. The car you're in understeers. Braking and setup entering the first tight left hander are less important than exit speed leading onto the straight, where you need terminal speed, especially climbing uphill.

In this particular scenario conventional grip style is counter productive going into the left hander, because you eventually compromise exit speed leading onto the straight that follows the next corner. So you pitch tha bastard, steer with the throttle, make sure you don't break your momentum to keep up corner speed and set yourself up with higher exit speed after you apex the 2nd corner, by widening the arc of your line to stop wheelspin and find drive onto the straight.

What's more important? Grip style under braking into the first left hander? Or higher terminal speed out of the right hander onto the straight? The latter for sure. Whatever you lose under braking you make up ten fold with higher terminal speed coming onto the next straight.

Smooth, grip style driving is the fastest way around a race track, that's a given. I don't disagree with that. But there are occasional exceptions where you need drifting. At some tracks you may not require drifting at all, other tracks you may need to apply it in one or two corners, to avoid breaking your momentum and maintain your exit speed.

That is an advanced art and skill you're obviously not familiar with (yet). You're dead against drifting, but you're never too old to learn, so get off your "Im one of the best drivers" pedestal and open your mind buddy.

I'm learning all the time and it's fun. Perhaps you can teach me some stuff, and I could teach you some stuff if and when you get here. We'll have fun for sure, but I still think I'm gonna whip your *** buddy, he-he-he

Cheers,
Pierre.

ps - I'll post pics and specs of my car soon.

Pierre Martins

Delete Duplicate

Vilhuer

Don't mean to jump into your little contest here but this drift or not to drift reminds me a story I read long time ago in some car magazine. Gilles Villeneuve and Keke Rosberg were driving Formula Atlantic series in seventies before they both ended up in F1. They were racing in some US or Canadian track, can't remember what. There was only one corner where Villeneuve was faster, rest of the track they were equal. And he went through it drifting. Rosberg tried but couldn't quite do the same and lost the pole because of that. He wasn't slow, no one who won F1 championship before modern electronics was slow driver. Villeneuve was just faster. Now carry on.

Erkka

1992 928 GTS slow car and even slower driver
Oak Green Metallic 22L
Classic Gray MX

Pierre Martins

Thanks Vilhuer.

That's what I been trying to say all the time.

"Selective" drifting.

Though a bit over the top for some, it works if you know when and where to use it.

marton

it is a commercial organisation who do the ring fotos, they are in http://www.finestphotos.co.uk/Photos...Cars/index.htm

Yes, they do allow motorbikes on the track at the same time as the cars and there are no requirements for helmet, cape or anythingelse. drive what you bring is absurd, you even see guys going around pulling trailers.

Marton

T_MaX

but let me say, DRIFTING IS SLOWER, there is no reason to wiggle, unless you are on a very tight autocross course. otherwise, wiggling is SLOW. any car in front of me that wiggles, will be behind me in a flash. if that person is drifting, he is behind even faster!! NO reason in the world to drift through any corner in a road course, PERIOD!! no one does it in the top pro or club ranks on ANY road course.

Just for your information, drifting is NEVER a way to get through certain corners. Ive driven on a couple of the most technical tracks around, yet for some reason,......


Mark, these are very bold statements to be making. Nothing it that clean cut, especially racing.


....Pros or good clubers never get their tail stepped out, unless they are correcting for unintentional oversteer.

Is this not what Pierre Martins said?


Depending on conditions, the car and the track, you can sometimes use drifting to get through certain corners faster.

In practice the day before the race, Olly went out for 10 laps and came in bitching about severe understeer. I went out and experienced the same understeer, but what I did to overcome it was to induce oversteer in certain corners to keep up corner speed. Within 5 laps I was 15 seconds a lap quicker than Olly.

I have raced dirt and paved oval and a little auto-X. In warm-up I will always try to slide the rear out in order to find the limit. During a race, I try to run on the ragged edge of breaking the rear loose coming out of every corner.

I have also driven cars for others that were poorly set-up and the only way to get them to turn and still finish in the top 5 (where the money is) was to push the rear out lap after lap.

I say both of you are right!

"If your not willing to run on the edge, your (Me)"

bcdavis

No expert opinion here, but I do know that in motorcycle road racing, for a time, all the riders who dominated were very percise, claen, and no wild stuff. But then a batch of dirt track guys got into the game, and they were significantly faster. The only downside, was that if it was a long race, their tires would wear out, and the more "controlled" riders would gain lost ground at the end of the race. But the guys that were able to drift through corners at a higher speed would usually have faster lap times. But at the cost of their tires...

SharkSkin

bcdavis,

You reminded me of Kenny Roberts.... exact scenario you are describing. He would corner in a 3-point drift, two wheels and an engine case all sliding around corners under power. He pretty much mopped up IIRC

D

mark kibort

Pleazzzzzzz.

mk

mark kibort

you guys are confusing a 4 wheel drift, and that can be deadly fast on certain high speed corners. Funny, you look at ANY incar footage at any of the road courses, here or abroad, no one is doing the "drift" MEANING, tail sticking way out, pre-turn, tail sticking out, etc..

Ive followed some of these top pros at Sears and Laguna and never have seen a fast guy even wiggle. drifting at 100mph thru a set of S's can be, but thats not the drifting we are talking about.

once that tail sticks out underbraking, the FIELD will go by you!!

MK