mitch236

Another point that I forgot to mention is that for DE we teach a late apex. That makes the corner safer but slower. The way we keep you safe is to sqare off the entrance, requiring more slowing of the car to make the initial turn in. Late apexing gives more room on exit and allowing for mistakes. To get a faster entry, you would want to turn in earlier than the school line with less initial rotation required. That allows more entry speed but removes some of the safety margin because if you don't get the line right, you will run out of track at the end. Unless you know your line so well that you know if you've missed it by a foot at turn in, you will end up off track. See the danger? That's why we teach a squared off entry. That allows you to work on the apex and exit with alot of margin for mistakes. Also squaring off the entry makes it more likely that if you are going to lose it, it will occur on entry which is the best time to lose the car since there is usually the most track to work with.

JackOlsen

Matteo, it might help you to throw out the concept of 'how much speed you can maintain through a corner.' You don't want to maintain anything through a corner (except maybe a good attitude). If you're in a corner, you should be accelerating. The sooner you're accelerating, the faster you can go through, and out of, that corner.

The simple approach to speeding up your corner exit speed is going to be to brake sooner. The sooner you get your braking done, the sooner you'll be on the gas, and the higher exit speed you're going to have. The thing that's going to make you faster is moving up the point where you can be full on the throttle. And that's not nearly as easy as it sounds.

Late braking is good for setting up passes in racing, but it contributes very little to lap times, especially in your first couple of years of driving. I think it was Mark who originally made the point that your throttle points are going to yield multiple seconds in lap time improvements. Corner entry and braking are, at best, good for tenths of a second.

M758

However I think you are overbraking for the corner. If you are slowing down then getting on the gas to rotate the car you are WAY overslowing.

I drive a car with almost zero hp. To be reasonble qucik I will slow the car with brakes and at turn in be either still braking, of the gas or maintenance throttle. If I can go WOT right after turn im WAY WAY slow. On thing you may need to do is to brake sooner like everyone says, but also make sure it more gradual. Then as soon as you realase the brakes then turn. Don't wait for anything. The reason is with weight on the nose the car will turn much easier. However to do this right you need to rather gradual and releasing the brakes must be smooth.

Personally I have never understood "using the gas to rotate the car" Seemed to be the gas can be used to catch the rear end (ie slow rotation) or used to accelerate, but if apply power and break the rear end loose you are wasting hp and are slow. Then again maybe this should be another topic.

M758

That is only ture if you are not overslowing for the corner. One thing have found is that nearly all less experiended DE type overslow for corner entry. They can overslow by trying to super late brake then overbrake or they overslow by simply slowing down too much. The later can be alot fast that the former, but on both cases they are going way slow at corner entry.

Not overslowing is not the same as nailing the braking point and maintaing max G's to the apex (this is what is good fo tenths). Not overslowing just means that when you turn in you are carrying a reasonable level of speed for the car and the corner. It can be worth SECONDS a lap and when I a 944 spec running 2-3 seconds slower than the rest it is due to overslowing 99% of the time. Most of the time they have NO IDEA the car can corner as quick as it does.

mamoroso

How do I focus on NOT overslowing?

I think am guilty of super late braking and overslowing the car. This also makes the car less balanced on turn in and more difficult to control.

Definetly one thing i am going to take home is braking sooner and more smoothly.

But how do I know when I am carrying a "reasonable" level of speed? I guess I need to raise the limit little by little until I am getting in too hot compromising the rest of the corner, right?

M758

Don't try so hard.

Sounds counter productive, but brake sooner and focus on being smoother at turn in. In order to not overslow you need to feel that everything is undercontrol at turn in. Super late braking is really bad thing as from them time you stand on brakes you feel like you are working like mad to control the car. This is not good. My advice is to slow down sooner so that the car is undercontrol at turn in. Once you feel this you can very slowly release the brakes a little sooner this carrying more speed.

Focus on SMOOTH and gentle turn in. Don't upset the balance of the car just apply brakes slowly and smoothly. Then releaase slowly and smoothly. Then turn in slowly and smoothly. Once at the apex. Slowly and smoothly roll on the throttle. Once you can do that each and every time you will have the ability to simply not brake as much at before turn in because everything after turn in is so smooth any easy.

I think you feel like you need to "charge the corner" more it will just cause you late brake more and thus be more "out of shape" than before.

I had student were on 1.2 mile track we picked up 3-5 seconds a lap and made it easier to drive for him. He was really charging the corners and doing very late braking . Each corner we were doing 100% braking and very very very last second and in may case beyond the last second. As result it was alot of work getting the car slowed down because and made it hard to get a smooth turn in. It it hard to worry about turn in when you are "Whooaa there" mode. The result was very slow turn in and apex speeds because we needed to slow the car down even more for the reall tight turn that resulted.

I had him brake 2-3 car length sooner at 80% of capacity. Then I had him turn in 1 car lengths sooner because this allowed for a much larger radius at turn in allowing us to carry more speed inspite of not really feeling like it. I also make sure that at turn in the car was nice and stable with only very gently nose down from braking. We went around like this for 5-6 laps and each lap our exit speeds increase and increase. The car was 10x more stable and the driving was almost effort less. His wife had been timing with stop watch saw him gain seconds each lap. I think the change had been form 1:25 laps to 1:20 laps. That kind of gain was huge.

Now in order to do this I did have to drive his car and show him this smoother line. I tried to explain for an entire seesion to no avial, but my driving 2-3 laps showed him exactly why he needed.

In the end we did not try to "carry" speed, but that is infact what we did. The car was now taking smooother line while being much more balanced thus allowing alot more entry speed. We never maximized entry speed, but we were able to make the car so easy to control on entry that adding 2-3 mph at turn in was now easy because the technique changes put us well below the limits.

924RACR

Amen, Joe!

PatK-Mpls

Work on corners in this order (IMO)
1) The optimal line through the corner
2) The exit speed on the corner
3) The entrance speed on the corner
4) The brake point for the corner (it is important that you work on this only after you have worked on entrance speed). It is quite easy to brake very late for a corner but quite challenging to brake late and carry big speed in
5) Mid corner speed

wanna911

I think a lot of what is being left out here is what is at the next corner and how far away it is because unless there is a long straight before the next corner can you really only concentrate on one corner at a time, mostly is a combination of the corners that makes the biggest difference overall. But for the most part people overbrake for a corner when in fact the car can handle a few more mph going into the turn and still be stable to have the ideal turn in point that allows you to maximize you throttle input for corner exit, yes you are still rolling on the throttle but the better your turn in and track out abilities the more throttle you can apply.


#4 from above post is very good, hard to settl the car in transition from hard braking and fast corner entry and would probably take more skill that just about any of us has available.

bobt993

One SAFE technique is the "no brakes" drill. This will work during a cool down lap or a specific drill for DE driving. Be focused on completing your cool down with little or no brakes (you can change gears but typically 3rd or 4th works), but maintain some momentum. You will be surprised by how much speed you can carry when the car is not being upset with the throttle. THIS NOT A 10/10ths exercise. It is more of a "balance the egg on a spoon" drill.