RickBetterley

And when you taught me that, I finally began to get it.
Though I have far to go.

333pg333

Always a pleasure to watch Sean Edwards behind the wheel. Truly a sad situation to have lost him. Seemed to exhibit calmness and control while keeping the car hovering just on the edge of grip. Made it look simple. Same for the leading Supercar V8 driver Jamie Whincup down here. The good guys really are just that.

TraqGear

Great topic Matt. I've always heard this as well. But, I believe it is car dependent. The more hp and torque the car has, the more this would apply. It doesn't mean you overslow the car into a turn by any degree.

For low hp cars, like SM, you must carry every ounce of speed through the turn. Minimum speeds through the turn are extremely vital and you may get back on the gas at or a little before apex if done correctly. This is carrying the momentum. There is literally very little power available to pull you out of the turn, so slow in can mean slow out.

However, with a higher hp car getting on the gas early as possible in order to carry that speed down the straight is more important. You may have to give up a tad on entry in order to get on the gas early to carry the speed. The key is finding the sweet spot to squeeze on the power, while avoiding power on oversteer. Of course, the straighter the car is at that point the better time to hit the power and the quicker the pedal can be on the floor. If you get on the gas and then have to come off of it to restabilize the car, then you probably are a little too hot into the corner...killing the speed you would have carried down the straight.

Just my .02.

Veloce Raptor

Thank you! Actually, if I recall correctly, you "got it" pretty well...

So true...

Hey Roger, I saw you and your neat new car at Daytona...every time I wandered over, you weren't there...sorry we missed each other...

TraqGear

Ah man..would have great to formally meet and chat! Between TraqGear and trying to race, my head was spinning all weekend. I def need some help at the track. I tried to race, take care of the car, do safety briefs and sell shirts all the same time by myself, so I probably didn't do any of it well. But, it was fun. Seen a lot of old friends and met a few new ones. Please track me down next event or let me know where you are paddocked or coaching.

Veloce Raptor

Will do, and likewise. I was working with 2 clients who were with Topp Racing, down in garage 28, and my girlfriend joined me for the weekend, so I was at various corners alot & then in the garage & trailer doing post-session debriefs...

Would love the opportunity to work with you sometime...

TraqGear

Thanks! Could have used the help this weekend. Gearing is very tall in these cars and it showed in the horseshoes. It was extremely exaggerated as the tires fell off and I had to go even slower through there.

KaiB

THAT tells us everything we need to know!!!

Veloce Raptor

mark kibort

I like that video. That shows one of two ways to do it. he bakes the entry and carries a lot of speed into the turn.... waits and feels for grip and then applies the throttle. I think its probably equally as fast as someone that brakes a little earlier to a slower speed, but is able to get on the gas a little earlier. For this discussion, I think the point is there are a few different ways to approach a turn, but all of them include threshold braking to the limit from beginning to release, to whatever your target release speed is.

fleadh

(All of this IMO, but just throwing it out here) -- A lot of you guys are over-generalizing about "momentum" or "carrying entry speed" depending on the type of car it is. It's more dependent on the type of corner it is, what is coming after it, and what the situation is (qualifying vs attacking someone in a race vs defending someone in a race vs turning clean fast laps in a race vs setting up a car in practice). All of these things dictate how you approach the corner and not so much the type of car. I've driven a lot of different types of cars and while there are some instances where you approach a corner differently because of what you're driving, it's rare.

You'll get 99.5% out of the car (compared to the fastest Pro in the car) if you can drive it properly inside it's limit (which isn't easy and is much higher than most people think!) and that's all the same regardless of the type of car as long as it has a brake pedal, gas pedal, 4 wheels, and a steering wheel.

That first 99% of pace is all fundamentals, there's no magic in it. Which is why good coaching and training is so important if you really want to go fast. That last bit is where the magic happens...

And there's very few people on this forum that can drive in that magic zone lap after lap (including myself, there's a reason I'm not paid to drive a race car). But *everyone* here has the ability to get into that 99% with enough work and the appropriate coaching. Most people think they're driving at the limit of their car, but if you put someone like Lally in it for just 4 or 5 laps you'll understand... and just imagine if they spent the afternoon in it fine tuning the setup and actually weren't concerned about breaking it.

ps: just for the record, i personally look at the 99% rule as half a second (0.5s) for every 1 minute of lap time. i.e.: if I can get within 1 second of a fast Pro driving back-to-back on a 2 minute lap time, that's really close. if i'm not that close, it's always something fundamental that i'm doing wrong or not maximizing the grip available in some particular place(s).

-mike

ProCoach

Great post, Mike.

fleadh

edit: in reply to the post w/ the video of Sean's qualifying lap record at Road America.. for some reason the site won't let me quote it.


Look at how little steering input he's using in nearly every corner (unless he's saving it). He's clearly qualifying the car as it's just over the limit everywhere but not necessarily costing him time -- that's how you get pole against the fastest guys. The reason he can have such little steering input is he's able to rotate the car so early on entry WHILE carrying stupid speed (relative to what would be normal for race lap in a Cup car). From watching the video the car also looks pretty trimmed out, which is probably not how they raced it.. but for a 2-4 lap qualifying run is definitely the fast way around Road America (if you can keep from crashing, which he definitely showed he can!).

Conversely, here's a couple laps I did in the 458 GT3 a few months ago during a test day (both these laps were on tires that had over a race stint on them but were a few tenths faster than JvO did, eg: the car wasn't going to go much faster over a lap no matter who was driving. also, the last lap even w/ the mistake was faster than any lap turned on the WC race weekend). Even with the higher downforce GT3 car, I have relatively small steering inputs because the car was working so well and I was able to get it rotated pretty early in the corner. It was also trimmed out and we were evaluating setup changes.. so you'll notice the 2nd lap is a little more aggressive than the first when I was feeling it out (skip the outlap and go straight to 2:32 -- for some reason the time index in the link isn't working):


I was driving as hard as I could, but there is a difference between qualifying and testing. If we were qualifying there might have been a few additional risks taken like Sean did in his record setting quali lap.

RIP Sean, one of the nicest guys I ever met at the track and one of the few guys to talk to me at my first Supercup race in Belgium.. even though we had only met over the internet prior!

-mike

Nizer

Yes indeed. One of the most generous and skilled pros that I've ever met.

Great posts Mike.

KaiB

Mike, what do you mean by "trimmed out"?

I going to guess aero for quali...but.