Learning to Drive - sticky or slippy?
 

The thread by ric-ko going to the track in the rain had me thinking.... (oh no!)

https://rennlist.com/forums/997-foru...-the-rain.html

We all fantasize about driving a blazing speeds...... but learning... that is something different. For me, blazing fast is consequence of learning to drive in slippy conditions.... not fast conditions. When I started tracking my car in the early 2000s, my instructor said I must be from the midwest (we were on a skidpad).... why? Because I was instinctively managing my tail being hung way out.... something every teenager in the Midwest learns from driving on snow (while holding a can in one hand, something burning in the other, while managing a skid with your knee).

I could never understand noobs at the track all talking about getting laptimers and slicks to go faster.... they just scared me. Why don't our track instructors teach us this or require crappy tires? Our street tires that come with our cars are more sticky than race tires not long ago.

I think everyone should learn to drive, on a track, with an instructor, and on hard, skinny, crappy tires. No way are you really going to fully understand your car and develop those instincts at super high speeds when bad things happen very fast. Senna learned in a wet environment and credited this as an important factor in his skill.

How about this from the WSJ: "Mikaela Shiffrin Learned to Ski in Vail. She Learned to Race in Vermont.The conditions were awful. Which made them ideal. How the ice of the Northeast helped Shiffrin become the best technical skier in the world.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/mikaela...ont-1518437093

Peace
Bruce in Philly

Funny you mentioned the Shiffrin reference. I was always told that learning on icy MI hills would serve me well when I started skiing in CO. IMHO, karting or autox are a cheaper, more accessible way of learning smoothness and car control.

First snow I took both my daughters, when each got their DL, to the big parking lot and taught them how to steer into a skid. I think you are right Bruce.

Fabulous video...great post.... . That car is all over the place..... great car control skills..... or... maybe not.... maybe a better driver would have picked up the signals of slip sooner and adjusted for them quicker...... hmmmmmm..... At any rate, those of us who never learned on snow or only driven fast on a dry track with our modern performance/street tires would have put that Porsche into a wall, IMO.

Peace
Bruce in Philly

Tim, there's a great book out from many years ago "Talent is overrated" which says in essence that it's skills and practice that make you world class at anything and it's what I believe with all my heart. If it's skills I can learn them and I can practice them and if I practice them longer and harder than you do I can beat the bejesus out of you whenever we compete for anything......nothing to do with being born with any innate advantage. There are no born presenters, listeners, race car drivers, hockey players etc......just ones that started earlier, work harder and practice more than anyone else. IMO ;-)!!

Kevin Schwatnz learned controlling a moto GP bike sliding by riding dirt track races in the early 80:s or if it was even late 70:s

There are many examples.

I am by no means a professional racer or even skilled amateur but I come from motorcycles.

Sliding is fun but you loose speed.

When riding bikes it was all about learning the racing line through the corners. Also braking technique.

Cars are more forgiving but my first lesson I took with an instructor was 30 minutes just focusing on steering wheel management (how to use the hands) and then racing line cornering/braking.

I drive in the winter roads a lot and controlling a slide is good to know once you enter such situation but to me it's not what makes you fast on track.

P.s I did this in Sweden two weeks ago on frozen lake: Porsche 718 Cayman, 718 Boxter snd 4WD Golf R. Look at those spikes :)

Edit: sorry but can't add pictures for some strange reason? "Internal server Error 500"

It's funny Tim...it's all I have ever experienced and it's my personal professional experience as well so I know it and believe it first hand. I don't believe nor have I observed anyone ever that's innately talented....skills and practice are the ticket IMO. Unless it's picking a car color....then I feel you Dan and I are innately talented at that.....or we just copied Dan!

Tom

OK, this topic has been bothering me ...

I grew up with a couple kids who led us to multiple state peewee ice hockey championships. Later in high school these two were All-American football, basketball, ice hockey, and baseball multiple years. One got a free ride to Yale. The other to Syracuse just after Brown and Czonka. The latter only partied, living off his innate talents. I didn't have their 6 foot 6 inch frames. I didn't have their eyes. No amount of effort and training would change that.

Another friend watched the threads on the baseball to know where it would move so he could hit it. His eyes were an incredible genetic gift.

My talent is getting along without sleep. I worked three jobs at the same time to pay for college majoring in chemistry, physics, and minoring in math. Those were my gut courses. Couldn't have done it in the humanities.

Simply put ... We are not all born equal. The best we can do is recognize our strengths and then work our butts off to augment them.

Back to Bruce. I learned driving skills on motorcycles in the snow and on ice. Balancing weight front to back and controlling throttle and brakes was critical in a way daily driving simply could not care less about. I am solidly planted in the slippy camp.

Wayne, I am with you.... anyone who has observed children can plainly see big differences in how they abosorb and interact with the world based on pre-wiring or physical characteristics. In the other camp is Malcolm Gladwell who in his book "Outliers" describes the "10,000-Hour Rule", claiming that the key to achieving world-class expertise in any skill, is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing the correct way, for a total of around 10,000 hours, though the authors of the original study this was based on have disputed Gladwell's usage." The the wiki on his book here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_(book)

I find it interesting that when folks discuss some concept or something controversial, the arguments move to addressing extremes....... most of us, by definition live in the meaty part of the bell curve...... so to driving..... most of us require learning to operate a car. We then require learning to create and establish neural pathways for fast action such turning into a surprise skid or not lifting the throttle in a turn as a reaction to the car suddenly moving. This is the difference between a reaction and a planned response. High performance driving, and the fun of it, was best described to me by a friend who had his SCCA license and raced spec racer Fords for a time. He said something about the fun of it is driving so fast the car is slipping around.... controlling the car in the slip zone... getting close to losing control. If you have sticky tires and a high performance car with appropriate suspension geometry, this means you need to be going really fast to get deep into this slip zone. This is why faster is more dangerous. Faster requires a pre-wired reaction library in your brain vs time to solve for a sliding car. Said another way, if you don't have the reaction skill, you are going to wreck (into me!).

So my point is how do we develop this library of reactions? Buying a Porsche and driving fast? Buying stickier tires and boosting horsepower? If you think this is true, then stay the heck away from me.

Bonus points: What is the difference between slipping and sliding?

Peace
Bruce in Philly

That's a great book and a worthwhile read for anyone. There is a mountain of evidence that it's all experience and that 10,000 hours of practice will get you to a world class performance - if you haven't started young its really hard to amass that level of experience later in life..

Edit....looks like Bruce beat me to it :-)

Bruce, There is a really good article (which I can't find on the web right now) from an old Car and Driver where they described the process Ford used to qualify their test drivers. They started in an old Crown Vic with crappy tires on sandy loose surfaces - i.e. learn to control the car in slippy circumstances at lower speeds. Once they had mastered this they could move up.

If you want to go faster sticky tires, more HP all help - if you want to control the car on the limit experience in the car slipping/sliding is essential if you want to be really fast. Watching the F1 last season there was some great shots of the cars at Austin going through the curves - the commentators were describing the 'slip angles' -i.e. the car is moving sideways through the curves as the tires are on the edge of adhesion. At that level through the corners are cars are moving around all the time and understanding how to control a car as it slides is essential.

Now I've done some skid pan training over the years - great fun but I've never done enough to translate that to higher speeds :-) I guess I'll be happy being the middle of the pack at the next HPDE event I go to!!

Depends upon what level you aspire to achieve. Innate talent is everything in auto racing. I know guys that have raced and instructed for 20, 30 years and have unlimited budgets, but that just lack that natural ability. Throughout the years, I have worked with young guns such as Josef Newgarden when doing some free time instructing at Skippy. One either has it or they don't and that competitive edge that lights up when lead/trail up close, the eye hand coordination and instinctive feel to take cars just over 10/10s off line for a pass, but still keep it reigned in is something that is not learned.

As far as car control, I think the better practice is to learn on dry so one can truly get the sense and subtleties of rotation, throttle steer, maintenance throttle, trail braking and consistency on racing line. Just learning to keep the tail reigned in on wet pavement may seem somewhat logical if drifting is your goal or you still sit around whacking off to the old Fast and Furious DVDs. I can teach anyone to correct over or understeer, but learning that very subtle feel and balance of car translates better on the dry. Move to mastering wet once you really know what the heck you are doing. 99.9% of all guys, even instructors, attending HPDE are not even close to 10/10s on a consistent basis throughout an entire lap, but they will sure talk about driving at 10/10s.

Master the dry and then move on to wet for TRACK purpose. Wet skid pad work though is a great idea once one has developed some car control skills.