Car Control-How is it taught?

[fasthonda]

here's another vid clip from last year;  i'm in the 'fasthonda', and its at WGI.  there was heavy rain before this rungroup;  lots of puddled up water on the track.  slippery conditions.....   i didn't run my rain tires;  instead, i was running an old old set of bald A032R tires.  it made for difficult driving, which demanded really smooth inputs, especially with the brakes and throttle....

http://www.vimeo.com/1461897

the honda is much much more demanding to drive in the rain;  it doesn't have ABS (the Probe does);  it is very light (under 2200 lbs with me in it).  it has twice as much power as the probe, and shorter gearing.  its a real handful in the rain, and moreso when not running the rain tires!   but, its very very good practice for me, and makes me lethally fast in the probe in the rain...

bob t was up there in front;  i believe he was running on his dry tires (michi pilot sports, right bob?).  bob definitely is better in the braking zones;  i think it has much to do with the different car designs we are driving:  his rear engined, rear driven car is actually able to use alot of its rear weight bias to its advantage when braking in the wet;  my FWD car is basically using only its front axle to do the stopping;  so little weight in the rear that it doesnt really help....   i was threshold braking everywhere, and lap by lap was trying to shorten the brakezones -- i kept seeing bob in my rearview mirror (i couldn't shake the bastard!!!);  he would gain every brake zone, and also would gain exiting the sharper, tighter turns.  it seemed my advantage was in the faster sweeping turns (i'd pull away pretty good in T2 and up thru the esses and across the top of the hill).  we were about even in the 'medium speed' turns.  if you listen to the audio, you'll hear the wheels locking up in many brakezones;  you can hear the engine suddenly go off song;  that is when the front wheel speed is suddenly going from high speeds to 0 and then back to high speeds (lock, unlock, lock, etc).  i was trying very hard to put down the power carefully, and gradually -- you can also hear the front wheels clawing for traction and spinning when exiting some of the turns;  i was short shifting and part throttling it most everywhere...

you might wonder why i'm driving off line and seem to be 'all over the place'.  its because i was searching for the best grip, and in a bunch of places, that seemed to be off the 'normal' line...  sometimes its faster that way in the rain!    

the stupid battery in the camera gave out;  about a lap after the camera died i locked up and had to go straight at the bus stop (you can see one lap before that where i went beyond deep into the brake zone, and had to cut back thru the cones to make the turn! (this is something i ALWAYS preach when teaching:  if you can't get the car slowed down enough, DON'T TURN IN.  just keep braking at threshold in a straight line, and when you slow to the turn in speed, well, if you are still on the track, THEN turn it.  it might be SUPER late, but its the best bet.  you just need to be cool and calm!     -- the car was slipping and gliding that entire way into that braking zone, and you can see where george hadn't been able to get his car slowed, either.  looking at it now, i think i should have been driving all the way down the right hand side approaching the bus stop;  i think that oil was perking up out of the pavement on the normal line, because it seemed abnormally slick in the brakezone up there, and maybe was even getting worse, lap by lap (isn't hindsite great?)....

if bob and i had had our rain tires on, we probably would have been able to slice off about 25 secs per lap;  we could have really flown around the track, but would that have been a benefit?  i definitely learned more with the lower adhesion tires, and had more fun, too.  if it had truly been a race for me, i'd have put the rains on without a second thought;  everyone else on the grid would have had them on, and of course i want to win!  that's the nice thing about a DE weekend -- its low stress, and there is no winner or loser, and there was no frantic tire changing that weekend!  lol!

enjoy,

todd

PS   i'll type out the story about the peanut oil sometime this week.  that was a neat rungroup experience!