slvr993

Are there any good resources / books to help better understand what the data I capture on my traqmate is telling me.

Jeff

VERBOTN

A coach that uses the same system (I am not a coach). I have and continue to do that not only do you get help understanding how it works but you also get to benchmark yourself against the hot-shoe laps. You can glean surface info or you can really get deep into it. I recommend the former at first.

Tom W

Do you have a throttle position sensor or rpm input or just the GPS? The rpm and TPS sensors will really allow you to get the most out of it. The other thing is to get a better driver to drive your car and compare your results to theirs.

Overkill for GPS only via Traqmate and biased for MoTeC, but the SAE book "Analysis Techniques for Racecar Data Acquisition" by Jorge Seegers is a good reference. It's $80 from Amazon.com. I have another simplified book too, but I can't find it right now.

TRAKCAR

I met the traqmate guy at PRI, I asked him when they are going to produce a good manual, but he said theirs was great, so I guess never....

Love what the system does, but so user-unfrienly for a retail product...

986

The most important part is to have data from a good driver to compare/learn from. Doesn't have to be a coach, just a good driver, in a similar car (and have the same DA system makes life 10x easier).

Attached are two books recommended by Race Technology. I have the one on the left ("Analysis Techniques..." and would recommend it.

http://www.race-technology.com/books_8_7571.html

sbelles

I think that I've seen this addressed before but I haven't found it. Is there anyone who rents traqmates? I'm going to purchase one this year if business picks up but there are a number of other things higher on the list at the moment.

sbelles

I think that I've seen this addressed before but I haven't found it. Is there anyone who rents traqmates? I'm going to purchase one this year if business picks up but there are a number of other things higher on the list at the moment.

jrotsaert

I suggest you buy COMPETITION CAR DATA LOGGING by Simon McBeath (Haynes publisher), then read the Motec manual (easy to download). The simplest useful curves are rpm vs distance and speed vs distance. This tells you what speed you are doing where on the track. Then look at your theoretical best by adding together all the "best" sectors you've done and aim for that consistently.
Have someone that drives better than you show you their curves, or better yet drive your car. There are endless possibilities on what to do once you have many sensors. For example, if you have front and rear wheel speeds with simple equations you can determine under or over steer. It gets better if you have ride height etc... I did all that on my RSR and loved the data interpretation bit. It kept me going between sessions!!!
Good luck
JM

jgrant

I've also found that one of the most beneficial data points is brake pressure (not position). That was the real eye-opener for me.

amondc

Kenny Gorman from Gorman Motorsports I think rents them. His user name is kgorman I believe. I will send him this way.
Go here for info http://www.gormanms.com/ they have rentals on the website not sure of the details.

SundayDriver

I hired a pro data engineer (Indy, ALMS, etc) to coach me on data and what it means. He not only helped me understand how to better interpret the data, but also provided some comparisons vs. those sort of fairly high level pros.

So here is another real eye opener for you. Look at the time from when you lift off the throttle until you achieve max braking pressure. The pros do it in 0.15 seconds.

And I completely agree, brake pressure is great info to have. And if you have both front and rear, you can see the real brake bias and diagnose problems in the braking system.

va122

So here is another real eye opener for you. Look at the time from when you lift off the throttle until you achieve max braking pressure. The pros do it in 0.15 seconds.

This is my main loss of time, per my coach. I can't carry more speed in the corners so therefore my problem is in the straights. I thought he was nuts until i looked at the data and saw how much of a lazy foot i have.

He also told me that data is not very useful until you are consistent enough to do every lap within .1 s of each other. Food for thought.

Data is a very useful tool but don't let it drive you nuts.

jgrant

My experience is the exact opposite of this. I found the data I collected, when starting DE's a few years ago, to be the absolute best teacher out there.

I made my TraqMate portable, and put it into a few other cars, as well as had some hot shoes drive my car, and was able to view the difference between me driving my car and someone more experienced driving my car. It also eliminated all of the guesswork out of what I was doing... I had the data to review, and it doesn't (usually) lie. I knew exactly what speeds I was doing, where, and didn't have to rely on my memory to fill in the blanks or let my ego massage the results.

That was, by far, the easiest way for me to see how I should be doing things compared to just having people try and describe it from the passenger seat. That, and doing hot laps as a passenger.

The data has also helped me figure out the proper gearing I need for my local track with my new race car.


In retrospect, I wish I started collecting (and properly interpreting) data sooner.

As it is, I'm now lucky enough to be "the data guy" for a Grand-Am team (heading to Daytona tonight for testing, actually), and am working with a bunch of seasoned pro's on interpreting it. VERY eye-opening, to say the least.

$0.02

va122

depends on the individual. Some are seat of the pants and some are analytical.

kgorman

Jeff,

I am not sure your level of comfort with the Traqview/Studio software already, and others have posted on more of the complicated end of interpreting data, and great books to learn from. But there are lots of us out there who just want to learn the basics and quantify that we are getting better. Sadly there is no cliff-notes to this level of using the Traqmate data that I know of. We will have some stuff out there that will help in the future, but it doesn't help you now. If this is too basic, I apologize in advance.

Your best bet is to try to load up two or more 'drivers' in Traqview. One can be a friend, a better driver in your car (or worse I suppose) or more of your own sessions. Compare both 'drivers' with the Time Gap vs distance graph. Keep the track map up as well so you can easily see where you are on the track at the point where the cursor is on the graph. Notice where that plot diverges from the other. This is where the time was lost or gained. Now turn on more channels (more graphs) and see what the differences where when the time as lost or gained. For instance, turn on the velocity vs distance graph, and you may start to see that you over-slowed in the brake zone, or carried more speed in X or Y corner. If you have RPM or TPS turn those on and look at those too. Turn on video and watch to see what was going on. Focus on where the largest delta in time was to start.

Now here is the important part (IMHO). Take what you learned. It might be a very small thing, and go out and practice just that thing. For instance, over-slowing in the braking zone compared to your fastest lap (one of the two drivers above). Come back in and compare the data. Did you fix your problem? Rinse and repeat. Once you have a new fast lap, use that to compare against. Pick a different corner try again. Get your coach/instructor to help you.

This is a simple way to use Traqmate to get faster, and to start understanding your data. This is more geared towards DE'ers, so sorry if you know all this already. Start there, see how it goes. Hope this helps, hope this was clear enough (like mud eh?)

Yes, we rent Traqmate's too.