Agro1

I think this is the point you guys should focus on. TB is not always the fastest way around EVERY track. Some tracks lend themselves to TB, other's don't. Also, circumstances matter a great deal. If you have someone on your *** and you want to keep them there, trail braking and a defensive line MAY do the trick. But then again, they could always cut their exit short and get you on the exit if you carry too much speed into the apex.
That brings up another point, TB in relation to your exit and the NEXT turn. If the next turn comes up quick and you have to give up your exit to get over to the braking zone to enter the next corner properly, TB would be a good idea. I'm not so sure it would be such a good idea if your exit runs into a long straight... Some corners require trail braking, others don't but it still can be used if you want to take a fast, defensive line. Running by yourself when your only opponent is a stopwatch is a very different story then when you have 5 guys trying to go 3 abreast.

M758

Well out here in Arizona we have a track called Arizona Motorsports Park Fun track 2.25 miles long. THere is the 5-6-7 turn where trail braking is important.



The top speed you reach on this track at the entry to turn 5. My car is not fast, but I figure I run about 100-110 mph there.

Anyway my driving style is to brake hard in a straight line first downshift to 3rd gear. Turn in and stay on the brakes. I take a double apex line and tend to roll off the brakes just before the first apex. Just after the first apex turn the car and begin powering out of the corner letting the car drift out as much as possible. Doing this I can often gain quite a bit on the next straight. Turn 8-9 reaquires very little TB since it late apex corner. Get on the brakes hard downshift turn in roll of quickly with a late apex line. The trick is to get the car rotated quickly and hit turn in just right. Balancing the car under braking is not a key here, but it is tricky corner. My last race I seemed to get right there and all up all kinds of time. One reason is that in my 944-spec I am just below the optimal power band 3rd and too high for second. So carrying just touch more speed paid huge divdends.

Turn 10-11-12 is actualy a blast. As you approach 10 you need to turn in very early. Tap the brakes to get the front to bit then get back on the gas to balance the car. Drift out at mid track width. Then I turn to right for 11 and tap the brakes to get the car to rotate then get back under power and exit the corner. All can be taken in 4th gear.Turn 12 is good trail brake corner too ans has an extra kink not show in the picture. Get in hard on a straight line not parallel the track. Downshift to 3rd and turn still on the brakes. Aim for the little trough as you get off the brakes and get on it hard in the trough. The camber will pull you down the straight like a sling shot.

Turn 13,14,15 are also pretty good. Turn 13 is really flat out in a 944-spec if you turn early enough. Interstingly you give up the entry to 14 to max speed through 13. So exiting 13 you get on the brake super hard. The car is never really straight here so you must be carefull downshift to 3rd and begin turn in 14 while still on the brakes. The car should rotate about the right front tire as you use all the road for the exit of 14. Again you give up the entry to 15 but here you stab the brakes hard and turn the wheel hard. This shoudl make the car rotate fast around 15. Use all the road on the exit of 15. Turn 16 is pretty standard, but a early gradual turn in using all the road allows us to take it flat in 3rd gear. We need a quick change to 4th then hard on the brakes for turn 1. Trail brake a little, but don't worry to much since you can't make speed on the exit anyway. Stay to track left for the entry into 2 and 3. He brake hard in straight line with a very late apex that is 150 deg around the corner from where you start. Again trail brake to rotate the car. If you get the line just right you exit turn 2 at full power and take 3 and 4 full throttle. If you do it wrong you need back off for turn 3 and 4.

So at this track the amount of trail braking you do is varied. It is really more dependant on the shape of the corner and how my car enters it as to how much or little I. Personally I always start braking in a straight line when I want to slow the car. It is the most efficient, but I continue braking has as I need to get the car to do what I want.

By contrast at PIR Turn 2 is all trail brake since there is no place for 100% straight line braking. It is tough corner to get right since you need to balance the for what feels like eternity.

Oh, trail braking is great in racing too. Reason is that you hold you straight line speed longer this not allowing some to out brake you into the corner. In that case corner exit speed it not very important if you were able to keep the guy behind you. Who cars you had poor exit because you did too much trail braking? If you kept he guy on you a mid coner he is going just as slow as you are.

RedlineMan

Hey Guys;

M758 -

Any flack that anyone gave Color for his theories likely stemmed from his aggressive stance on the matter, and his lack of experience, not from anyone specifically thinking he was WRONG in his theory. Recall that he DID say that max threshold trail braking all the way to the apex was the FASTEST way to get around EVERY corner. That is as plainly incorrect as saying that Color is an idiot regarding his theories. Overzealous perhaps, and not particularly deferential (edit - previously), but not an idiot.

Driving the DE line is the BEDROCK of performance driving. It is my feeling that the most essential lessons of swift driving are learned therein. When one is inexperienced, and trying to manage a car on the brink of control in the middle of a turn, with none of the synaptic responses of proper technique to rely on, what is the lesson being learned? How to save your ***? A good lesson to be sure, but out of sequence in my book.

Again, in the phase known as Unconscious Incompetance, what seems fast to the brain is usually slow because it is only the BRAIN that is working fast. Everything else is ragged and therefore slow. I feel STRONGLY that learning the traditional DE line is the best way to impart the lessons of speed, feel, and geometric corner assessment. Once the student moves close to being an Unconscious Comptetant, then and only then can more advanced techniques be added because to do so earlier would overload the student's brain. This, in my experience, SLOWS the learning process.

Of course, adding TB to the advanced student's arsenal will relegate them to being a Conscious Incompetant again, but we all have to start there, eh?

SundayDriver

Which takes us back to the original question. I stongly agree that trail braking is fastest is some corners. I usually trail brake a bit as the car sets. On some corners I trail brake heavily, on most I do not. When I was instructing at DE's I even taught realtive beginers to trail brake in some places.

I strongly disagree that heavly trail braking all the way to the apex is the fastest around every (or even most) corners. If there is such strong agreement that this is the correct method, why can't anyone explain why that would be the case, or supply statements from credible professional coaches supporting this concept (outside of aero cars). I just don't get how that could be fastest in most cases.

Brian P

Tim,

Another question:

Do you get your DAS data after your run session or do you have it available as you drive? The reason I'm asking is that I'm curious how you could really make that information useful while you are out there on the track.

For instance, let's say you are going through your typical 90 degree turn after threshold braking and doing an appropriate amount of trail braking. You get into a nice rhythm and you feel that you are taking that turn at the limit. When you analyze the data, you find that you could be going faster as you weren't riding the friction circle.

On your next run, do you decide to drive faster and then ignore what your comfort level is telling you is safe? If so, how specifically do you do this? Since you are trail braking into the turn, do you get off the brakes sooner? Do you decide to start braking later so that you are spending less time on the brakes?

What if you didn't notice that the track was slightly off-camber and therefore you shouldn't be able to go as fast as you might otherwise think? Do you still decide to believe the DAS data and just push it anyhow?

RedlineMan

And to clarify...

Mark-

I'm with you on this, and have been right along. I trail brake mildly for reasons of chassis stabilization during side load transition in almost EVERY turn. I do ALL of my heavy braking and H&T with my right foot, and ALL of my TB with my left. I should do a foot cam. It would be interesting.

Incidentally, I did indeed foul up my feet and miss the brake pedal once going into Turn 11 at the Glen last weekend. That was interesting too!

I realize now that there may be turns where I "could" trail brake, but don't... probably because I am a wuss. I'm probably close to being down to the last 1%, and cost/benefit is definitely on my mind.

There don't seem to be a lot of turns around here where a major flub would not result in a major biff! Turns 6 & 9 at the Glen come to mind, and I'd forgive ANYONE who was a wuss about those turns! There is NO WHERE TO GO!

And Brian...

... Is stating that DAS is great for giving you the "what," but where does the "how" come from?

sjanes

CC,

You may want to be careful with the 'banzai' method of driving even if there are no walls. Just because there are no walls doesn't mean that there is nothing to hit. There are other cars on the track I assume, and even if you only employ the 'banzai' style when you're all alone, you roof can still hit the ground. There is a track up here called Shannonville that is flat and mostly free of anything to hit. Picture a big go-kart track paved into a farmers field and you'll get the picture. Last weekend, some guy in a CRX fliped his car there and landed on the shiny side. Although I didn't see it happen, I assume it happened the way other cars turn over at Shannonville, they go off sideways, dig in and they're gone over. You've mentioned a lot of modifications you have made to that car, but I didn't see anything about a rollcage. It's easier to completly lose control than you may think. Just ask the guys that posted pictures of their cars that they wrecked at the track. If you ask them, they will probably tell you that the lap before they crashed, they thought things were going pretty well. I know that's how I felt the lap before I buried my 911 up to it's headlights in a gravel trap at Tremblant, and although I didn't damage the car, there was a stone wall there instead of a gravel trap not so long ago.

I'm not trying to imply that you're dangerous to yourself or others, just that a big off can happen very quickly, so don't assume that nothing can happen to you at a track with no walls.

Just my $0.02.

Premier Motorsp

Now we seem to be getting somewhere. The last few pages worth of posts have not included any haiku...

It is clear we are coming at this issue from different viewpoints. John looks at it as a teacher with a novice student, I look at it as my best possible weapon with which to run a fast lap, and CC looks at it as a goal.

I think John's reservations about TB are founded in reality, and his reluctance to teach it is understandable. I don't totally agree with his philosophy, but I see where he is coming from. It sounds like he has a great deal more instructing time than I do, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

However, I think John should fully explore the idea, at his own risk, before deciding whether to teach TB to his future students.

My viewpoint is quite simple. It is a technique to be used to drive fast. I can accomplish it safely and therefore would be crazy not to take advantage of it.

CC's goal of effective trailbraking is a good one. When he gets proficient he'll be ahead of all the guys who didn't bother with it. He does need to realize (and I think he does) that it significantly ups the risk level.

It seems now that the major point of discussion is not whether TB is faster, but whether it is safe or too risky. Like everything else in high performance driving the risk has to be managed.

Chris Cervelli
Premier Motorsports

Brian P

Chris,

I think many would agree that there are some turns that benefit from trail braking. And, depending on how we define trail braking, maybe we could construe it to mean every turn. For example, do we consider any deceleration after turn-in to be trail braking? What if my foot isn't actually on the brakes? What if I'm on the gas, but not enough to overcome the drag of the tires?

I think it's clear from CC's posts that he's a beginner and probably a lot of people are writing in response to that. Yes, if I had to teach someone, I'm not going to teach them how to trail brake on day 1. Probably not on day 10 either, but there it would be more dependent on how fast they are learning.

Put those two paragraphs together... When we finally teach someone to trail brake, is it going to be a style of threshold brake all the way to turn-in and then smoothly ease off the brakes after the turn-in? Seems to me that that's headed for disaster (in the form of bent sheet metal). Why not have them start easing off before turn-in and slowly build up the amount of TB over the course of several runs or even several days?

Lastly, I'll stand by my comment that if you aren't fast without TB, you aren't going to be fast with it either. If you can't get within a couple of seconds of the goal time, you should be looking at other things besides trail braking.

Here's my concern : a student decides that TB is the way to go. He sees that he's 10 seconds off the pace of the leader so he knows he's way under the limit. If TB is really the way to gain time, what should he be doing? He should be entering the turns even faster under even harder TB pressure. To me, this spells the recipe for a very quick spin. If he's 10 seconds off the pace, the last thing he should be doing is trying to brake harder into turns, he needs to learn more fundamentals.

sjanes

At a Ferrari event this summer, I had a student that had a couple of days (uninstructed) of track experience. We went out for the first session and on the first 'hot' lap, I would indicate to him when to brake, and he would apply what I thought was the appropriate amount of brake pressure. "Excellent" I thought, this is going to be an fun day. Then, just before he turned into the corner, he gave the brakes a sharp press and then turned. "What the?". OK, it was the first corner and it's not like we're going fast, so we'll see how it goes. Then he did it again at the next corner - braking seemed be spot on, and then the shot of brakes before turning. "How odd" I thought. When we got to the back straight I asked him if he realized he was adding extra brake pressure before he turned in, and he said he hadn't noticed it. So I suggested a nice constant brake pedal for the next corner, and just before he turns in, he does it again. Bugger.

So for the next corner, I keep an eye on his head, and as he enters the braking zone, his head turns to look into the corner, but he turns his eyes back to the track in front of the car. Then just before turn in, he looks into the corner and then the shot of brakes. "Ah, gotcha now." For the next corner, as he starts his braking, I ask him what color the car in front of us (which is already in the turn) is. Now this is really a 50/50 question since it's a ferrari event, and they were all either red or yellow, but it did get him to look into the corner. Then I told him to keep looking at the corner, I'd worry about the edge of the track. Just before the turn in, nothin. Of course, it wasn't that simple, and we spent most of the day doing vision drills, "brake - freeze - look - turn".

Pressing the brakes just before turning in wasn't the problem, it was just the symptom. Not looking far enough was the problem.

sjanes

Brian,

I don't think trail-braking itself is going to make up 10 seconds, well, unless you on the Nordschleife a the Nurburgring. If you are that far off, there are obviously going to be other skills that missng. The thing about braking is that it's not only when you come off the brakes that's important, but how. A good smooth brake release will help keep a car balanced during turn-in, and that goes a long way towards determining how fast you can corner.

Here are a couple of quotes about brake release from the book "SpeedSecrets".

"Jackie Stewart claimed one of the reasons he won so many Grand Prix was because he eased off the brakes more smoothly than any of his competitors. Hard to imagine how that could affect the outcome of a race so much, isn't it? But it allowed him to enter the corners a fraction of a mile per hour faster because the car was better balanced."
Ross Bentley

"Ross helped with it all: braking-not only how and when to apply the brakes, but more importantly as I have learned, how to come off the pedal..."
Craig T. Nelson
Owner/Driver, Screaming Eagles Racing

A student with an abrupt brake release is not going to benfit from trail braking since the car will be unbalanced anyway.

SundayDriver

Craig T. Nelson. He is a freakin' actor. What does he know about driving.

Can he drive?

RedlineMan

Chris;

I would'nt know if I have more instructing experience than you. Likely not. CERTAINLY not more high speed driving expertise!! However, I think you're right. I DO indeed need to explore it further to expand my own resume, not only as a driver, but an instructor. Now, finding that safe Northeast turn to try it out on...?
---------------------------------------------------
From my own experience, it occurs to me that it might be best to teach LFB before teaching TB. I know that there are many single foot brake/gas men out there who are quite successful, but I'd wager they have to be REALLY quick with the countersteer too!

I myself do ALL of my TB with my left foot, after turn in. My right foot is at least poised over (usually moderately ON) the throttle so as to add balance if things get a bit oversteer-ish, which they do tend to do. With this seamless ability to add brake and throttle simultaneously and independantly, I have ultimate control.

If the front skips, I dab the brake with no let up in throttle. If the rear goes, the brake eases and the throttle goes down for rear shift. If the whole thing goes wrong, both brake and a little throttle go on and the car just slows with perfect front/rear balance.

Jumping back and forth smoothly between peddles with one foot requires dexterity not many people have. It also takes time. If you are quick with the wheel, you might save it, or not.

I'm on ALL controls, ALL the time. Satisfies my instinct for self preservation if nothing else!!

Bob Rouleau

Redline - Here I have to disagree. I teach trail braking to a student who has smooth inputs and has good braking technique. I transition them from the soft release of the brake pedal just at turn-in to a longer but very gentle release of the pedal continuing after turn in. As Chris observed this is a fairly low margin technique (safety margin) and I won't encourage just anyone to do it.

With the modern cars (2000 and on) LFB is pretty much useless because E-Gas cuts the engine power if the brakes are applied for more than about a second while the throttle is pressed. This can be quite an adventure in a 911 in a high speed turn. All Porsches from the 2000 model year have E-Gas and the 1999 C4S had it a year earlier. It is a pain that the GT2 also has the same E-Gas in spite of not having PSM.

I thought the comment about Jackie Stewart trail braking without being conscious of it to be revealing. It made me wonder if I was doing the same thing. I looked at a track video of my car dicing with another virtually equal car. We swapped positions frequently. My GT3 was clearly faster in certain sections and his highly tweaked 951 had the edge elsewhere. Looking at my tail lights it was clear that I was trail braking more than I thought. What was also clear was that on the high speed corners, I was not trail braking at all. From my own in-car video the sound showed I was using the same technique as Larry Turner.. fade off the brakes and roll on the gas long before the apex. In the GT3 (and all other 911's I've driven) the back end of the car will be loose unless I transfer some weight back there. In turn six I am flat out long before the apex whereas in seven (right hand, downhill off camber high speed) I am just balancing the car until shortly before the apex when I squeeze it to the floor.

John: are you signed up for the Tremblant event next week? If so, I'll look forward to meeting you at last.

Best,

Skip Wolfe

John - what size shoe do you wear. I find my size 13 gunboats make it tough to get the left foot over, but I really haven't worked on it to much.