So, you’ve decided it’s time to take the plunge and watch car racing on television. You flip on the SPEED channel and there is some kind of road racing going on. Many cars turn right and left and up and down; there are blind entries and exits, off camber turns and sometimes all of the above on the same corner. You recognize a BMW, perhaps a Corvette and then a screaming Porsche 911. Now you’re getting into it!

You may not know the players in the drama (the teams and drivers) but now you know who you like in that particular race – a red and silver liveried (the car’s color scheme) Porsche. It is not unusual for viewers to choose the car they favor by first glance. In fact, football teams are often chosen by color schemes and in tennis players are hardly chosen purely on ability. So grab a bag of chips and a beer (or lemonade) and watch that red and silver car in all its glory.

multi-class Porsches competing

As you turn up the volume to hear the sonorous sound of a flat-six strangling the life out of titanium, and other expensive metals, as it climbs into the RPM stratospher, the announcer’s voice comes on, interrupting your beautiful moment with the Porsche. He says something like “Look at that–he’s was way off the apex in that corner; that is going to open up the door for the cars behind him.” “What?” you think, “what the heck did that just mean?” Never fear, your friendly neighborhood race terminology coach is here!

In the new PorschePurist Motorsport 101 series we’re going to cover all you’ll need to know about basic motorsports terms and conditions. As we begin this series, we’ll place the racing terms in bold and hyperlink them to definitions as this series evolves. If you find a term that is not yet linked it simply means we’ll be explaining it in further detail down the road. In future posts we’ll share some in-car video with you to help illustrate these terms and heighten your motorsports experience.

In this first edition let’s look at the following terms:

* Class Differences
* Apex
* The Line
* Braking Point
* Turn-in Point
* Track-out Point

Over the coming weeks and months we’ll introduce more and more terms and concepts that will contribute greatly in your enjoyment of most televised road racing...