Mark Dreyer

Take him up on the offer. Rich knows Sebring. Some of what I do right there can be attributed to his instruction back in my pre-solo days. :-)

aalencar

Thank you! Will sure pass by to chat for a few.

dennis macchio

I did some private coaching during a Chin event at VIR. Was really impressed with their level of organization for the size of the event......even more impressed at their level of cooperation for an outsider.........egos checked and happy to help out.......agree with pro coach entirely..........and as I said in another thread there are lots of people who "think" they know what they are doing.......and don't .......do your research

sbelles

Chin runs great events. So does PBOC. Two of the few things I miss about living in FL full time.

dave morris

Enjoyed that one Scott.

caymannyc

How serious are you about racing? Do you just want to track once in a while, or do you actually want to enter races and do well? Based on your GT4, I'm guessing the former, unless you are wealthy. Then, you may take what I am about to say with a grain of salt.


Background about me: I grew up go-karting since I was 6, did some car racing afterwards, was on a sponsored team and earned my way up to a FIA International C class license before deciding to go to college. Former teammates of mine have gone on to race on the WRC, WEC and LeMans 24 hours.


Racing in "official" events with a "stock car" car with the appropriate mechanics, transport, tools, parts, etc. for a GT4 will cost you hundreds of thousands a year if you go cheap, well over $1,000,000 if you want to be competitive. Unless you started young, you're just not going to have the skills to compete at a high level. Racing is like any sport, you need to start young, and without sponsors, well it's basically financial suicide.


Now if you're just into "tracking" and want to improve your skills:


-Skip Barber is a great great program. My team would send karting prospects over there once they were seniors in HS and had to make the choice between sticking with open-wheel or moving to cars. I'd try to do BOTH the open-wheel and the "car driving" programs at Skip. Spend a week vacation and spend the week there. Fantastic and that will REALLY make you a better driver, far better than what you will learn in some Porsche Driver's Ed, since Skip Barber has programs catering to young, turning professional drivers and those are taught at a very high level of sophistication, whereas Porsche's Driver's Ed caters more towards the limitations of your vehicle and the ability of its drivers.


-If you have not go-karted at a serious level, this is BY FAR the biggest investment you can make into your driving skills. BY FAR. Numerous Formula 1 drivers go-kart in the off-season to polish their skills, and for good reason. It's relatively inexpensive ($10,000 or so for a high quality racing kart), tires and parts are far cheaper than a car. The great thing about karts is that because you have a relatively small engine with limited RPM control, it's all about "momentum" driving. You take a bad line, or your braking or acceleration is not 100% optimal, and you will bleed speed very quickly and loses tenths on each corner. In other words, karting is brutally unforgiving of mistakes given the limitations of the engine. You just can't shift out of mistakes in a corner.

-Another great thing about karts is that they are rear-engine, rear-wheeled, which will mimic the balance/weight distribution you will experience in a Porsche (even the mid-engines). Learning to sense where the limits of grip are will be priceless for you. Also, since it's a kart, you will learn just how late you can brake going into a corner and how to accelerate/brake in the corner and when to accelerate out. You make a mistake, the worst you can do is bend an axle which costs $300 to replace.


-Downsides to karting = no shifting (yes they have shifter karts but the major competitions are all non-shifting 125cc), so you don't really RPM control. You can also drive like a maniac in a kart whereas one wrong move in a car and you're looking at a potential total loss of your vehicle. Many people who go from karts to cars/formula straight away tend to cause costly accidents.


One more thing:


BUY A SIMULATOR. Not even joking. Get a cockpit with high quality steering wheel and screens and install software that has the tracks you will be racing on. EXTREMELY cost-effective way of getting countless hours practicing on a track. Many if not most professional racers spend hours in the simulator. Only downside is you don't experience the g-forces, but in a car, those are pretty minimal anyways.


I got out of the racing since I "aged out" for my skill level and didn't have enough money to try to buy my way to the next level, but it was dam good fun while I was doing it!


Good luck!

caymannyc

This sounds right maybe if you're on a hot lap on a qualifying, but if this is the only thing you learn, you'll be in a heap of trouble when there are other cars around!


Record line, yes, brake late and hard, downshift to 2, until you hit your desired entry speed, start accelerating through the corner as you upshift.


Now if you have other cars that are either trying to pass you, or that you're trying to pass, you may try braking earlier or later, and you may try a very lovely thing called "trail braking" where you brake late before the turn and then continue gently braking in the corner to counter the understeer you have from braking too late.


There's basically no real reason you should ever brake "too early" other than being scared or you're intentionally trying to impede and/or cause an accident or your brakes are about to catch fire.

ProCoach

A few observations on your posts.

Agree with the simulator observations. Suggest anyone considering to "try one on" before purchase, knowing that like a car on track, it takes a while to become acclimated. Most folks don't realize that to get benefits from simulation training, they don't need to become ace sim drivers... They just need to integrate it into their practice plan.

Many coaches I know (and I have been doing this since 2008) remotely coach clients using private, hosted sessions online. They are in their sim, I am in mine, we both have headsets and mics and we do "virtual" track walks, lead-follow and basically, put to bed tracks not only that they know and are familiar with, but also new tracks they haven't been to before.

Heck, age is just a number, if you're reasonably fit and healthy. While people can and do age out of top tier international sports car racing, there are plenty of septuagenarians I have worked with that win races, over pro drivers fifty years their junior... Racing is a thinking persons sport.

I think the point of the post you're responding to is different.

It's to inculcate and help build a belief system into an inexperienced driver's mind that the brakes are INDEED, MUCH more powerful than they can conceive of.

Skippy has an exercise that Bruce MacInnes shares on his site called "The Procedure" to find the optimal brake point for every corner.

It begins by braking (slowing the car) maximally at a predetermined, early point. Then, noting the "end point" (where you slow to the desired speed), take HALF the inevitable remaining distance to turn-in FROM THAT "end point" OFF the leading (initiation) point. This way, you ALWAYS brake at the same decel rate (which you can count on and repeat), but you "walk in" the ENTIRE brake zone to the desired point, without adding risk...

Few drivers, at any experience level, utilize the brakes in a very efficient way and in the right place relative to the corner.

Fewer still maintain gSum (load on the tires in all axis) through the transition from brakes to max cornering g's.

Trail braking (or brake-turning, as Skippy now calls it), is certainly a start, but Mario Andretti said it best. "It's surprising how many drivers think the brakes are just for slowing the car down..."

caymannyc

And that's when they start calling you a "gentleman driver" You see lots of those times on touring car races, but obviously not at the Superlicense or International A levels. I believe Ferrari/Porsche class races have International A/B/C segments and there are quite a few gentlemen in their 40s/50s who compete at the B/C segments. Last time I heard Ferrari requires you to attend a 1/2 week training school where you pay $60,000 to get the license and then they let you enter the C segment race. Pay to play.


Only point I was trying to make, is that there are several different "correct" braking applications. Case in point, there is no such thing as an "ideal" braking point - this is a moving target for every turn:



-The temperature of your tires and brakes can have a massive impact on your braking zone, so you need to constantly re-examine the state of your car and adjust when and how hard you brake,
-The incredibly high fuel burn that's happening during a 15+ lap race at maximum RPMs will obviously lighten the car which will also impact your braking distances.
-Slamming on your brakes is generally never a good idea since you will lock-up. If you need to brake hard, it should be a gradual (not slow), aggressive and swift motion. Forceful and swift, but not "as hard as you can" or "as fast as you can". You may also need to be feathering the brake as you repeat this motion to avoid overheating your brakes and locking.
-Another factor is the quality of the pads. On a race setup, this isn't such a huge factor, but if you have stock or "upgraded but not race quality" pads and calipers and wheels, aggressively using your brakes is a sure way to ensure your brakes fade by lap 5


This is not even getting into the academic discussions about forward-aft and lateral weight transfers that occur as you're braking and downshifting, when to engine brake, whether you should introduce intentional oversteer before turns by over-braking.


As you can tell, I'm a YUUUUGE proponent of braking skills, at least that's what my coaches always focused on when I was racing

TXE36

One warning about the simulator is don't do it too much before the real thing. Perhaps it was just a personal brain fart of mine, but I didn't try driving on the track until after simracing for over a decade (Anybody remember Grand Prix Legends? $5 game, $2000 computer to run it. Then NASCAR Racing 2003 which in turn evolved into i-Racing). I hit a very bad plateau as an advance intermediate.

About the same time, I started doing some instructor training and it was scaring the crap out of me. It turns out I wasn't feeling the car and my comfort as a passenger was almost 100% based on the driver's reputation (obviously no bueno for instructing). I had gotten so used to driving the sim that my driving was almost 100% visual and I was ignoring all the chatter coming up from my butt. It was an epiphany for me and very likely could have been avoided if I'd not had so much sim time.

That said, sims are great and a whole lot cheaper than the real thing. Oh the millions of dollars of equipment I've wrecked on the computer for "free".

-Mike

caymannyc

From Texas? Did you get to make it to the F1 race this past weekend? Incredibly jealous...


BY THE WAY, you know what's going to revolutionize sim racing? These brand spanking new VR goggles! It's going to be INSANE and I can't wait to try the sim with VR!

TXE36

Jealous? I drove CoTA last month.

What is sad is I've been so busy with work and F1 has been so boring that I didn't even know it was last weekend until I saw the recording on the DVR.

If that happens screw racing, I'll be too busy knife fighting in a WWII prop sim.

-Mike

the_vetman

That is sad!!! It's been interesting lately with Nico vs. Hammy and whether Vettel and Hulkenburg are going to crash out yet again in the first lap! Sure it absolutely isn't what it used to be, but lately it's been interesting (I thought)!

Let's face it: non-Mercs have NO chance whatsoever at championships. But it's been interesting to watch the best of the rest and the in-fight inside Mercedes. I can't decide whether I want Hams to lose or Nico to win.

nwGTS

THIS! I work for a BIG software company. Some of the developers rigged some Oculus V1s to I-racing in the game room at one of our offices. My wife asks why I work so late in the winter.

Every track is your home track. Obviously your car and tires are different than what's in the game but you don't waste a full day learning lines and markers. You're ready to go after the outlap of a real world track day.

winders

VR goggles? I would think it would be difficult to use them since you can't see your hands or the shifter. How does that workout?