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10-25-2009, 05:06 PM
betegh9 wrote:
Honest question Nick -- with your autox experience do you think it's better to come out of the carousel pushing/sliding wide at the exit? Or is it better to go a little slower and not slide?
The big decreasing radius is a great turn for driving and I think also for instruction. We teach straight line braking. We also teach that a tire has X amount of grip that can be used for braking or turning...in other words if we use 80% of the available grip for turning then we have 20% grip left for braking, theoretically.
In practice it gets over 100% -- that is if you are braking and turning at the limit then you are exceeding the total amount of grip you'd be able to get from just doing one of these things.
Thats why I think this long decreasing radius turn is great. I go full throttle in the 996 for about 1/3 of the turn, then trail off throttle, then get on the brake and turn. I ABS all through that section until I turn left. I don't lift totally off the brake until I'm just about ready to turn left. My car (2002) has 4-channel abs, I don't think it would work quite so well on an older car (99-01 996 or older car).
I take the turn almost the same way in my Acura, front wheel drive, no ABS, totally different car and that line works just as well. The entry into the carousel is totally different depending on car and driving style, in my opinion. With students, since it is a big skid pad, I like to ask them to try slightly different lines through there and we find one that seems to work for the car and that they like.
Turn 2 is another great turn. Have you noticed how difficult it is to make the turn if you turn in a hair too late? Again, like the decreasing radius, our traditional way of teaching runs into some challenges. We like to teach that late apexing is safer and in 95% of cases that is true. For T2 at Thunderbolt you really need to apex exactly at the right point, but if you apex late it's difficult to stay on the track! You run out of pavement!
When I started racing and really pushing hard I found that the truth of early apexing is that if you realize it exactly when you turn in, way before the apex, you can move the apex in further, into the curbing in many cases. T3 at Summit Point is exactly like this. If you turn in too late, it's hard to make the turn. If you turn in early you can apex up into the curbing at the apex and have no problem many times. I was suprised I had never learned that in DE. I think you'd have to be in the white group for that to make sense and by then you're solo
Quote:Nice video Joe!! Look at Darren's line to and thru the octopus and you'll shave some time off your laps. Treat it as 2 skidpads, the first is a right hander decreasing radius and the secondI like that way of explaining it, that carousel really is a skid pad. Were you running a camera Nick? It looked like you were really running good.
Honest question Nick -- with your autox experience do you think it's better to come out of the carousel pushing/sliding wide at the exit? Or is it better to go a little slower and not slide?
The big decreasing radius is a great turn for driving and I think also for instruction. We teach straight line braking. We also teach that a tire has X amount of grip that can be used for braking or turning...in other words if we use 80% of the available grip for turning then we have 20% grip left for braking, theoretically.
In practice it gets over 100% -- that is if you are braking and turning at the limit then you are exceeding the total amount of grip you'd be able to get from just doing one of these things.
Thats why I think this long decreasing radius turn is great. I go full throttle in the 996 for about 1/3 of the turn, then trail off throttle, then get on the brake and turn. I ABS all through that section until I turn left. I don't lift totally off the brake until I'm just about ready to turn left. My car (2002) has 4-channel abs, I don't think it would work quite so well on an older car (99-01 996 or older car).
I take the turn almost the same way in my Acura, front wheel drive, no ABS, totally different car and that line works just as well. The entry into the carousel is totally different depending on car and driving style, in my opinion. With students, since it is a big skid pad, I like to ask them to try slightly different lines through there and we find one that seems to work for the car and that they like.
Turn 2 is another great turn. Have you noticed how difficult it is to make the turn if you turn in a hair too late? Again, like the decreasing radius, our traditional way of teaching runs into some challenges. We like to teach that late apexing is safer and in 95% of cases that is true. For T2 at Thunderbolt you really need to apex exactly at the right point, but if you apex late it's difficult to stay on the track! You run out of pavement!
When I started racing and really pushing hard I found that the truth of early apexing is that if you realize it exactly when you turn in, way before the apex, you can move the apex in further, into the curbing in many cases. T3 at Summit Point is exactly like this. If you turn in too late, it's hard to make the turn. If you turn in early you can apex up into the curbing at the apex and have no problem many times. I was suprised I had never learned that in DE. I think you'd have to be in the white group for that to make sense and by then you're solo