…might help me drive faster if they were hanging off the back of my bumper. The tremendous confidence and sense of superiority they are giving me is not helping at all in that regard.
For years, many many people have told me that I am a chronic over-driver. I push too hard, try too hard, work the car too hard. “Tone it down” they say, “and you’ll get better results and more consistently too.” Occasionally I knew that I gave good reason for people to say such things, but for the most part… I FELT LIKE I GOT BETTER RESULTS THAN THEY DID, and decided that they were talking out of there asses to me about something they didn’t understand or comprehend.
When I occasionally rode with people who were better and more accomplished drivers than myself, I noticed that some of them drove with a style very similar, but often much more precise than mine. I also noticed that others of them had horrendous car control but excellent awareness of the cars limits, putting together stunning lap times by staying very close to the limit and never exceeding it. Should the limit be exceeded though, these drivers had the ability to shock me by spinning or going off in situations that seemed easily salvageable. I found that hardly admirable, even if they could beat me up on the clock, and so I have always aspired to be like the former: hard charging, with great car control, entertaining… and occasionally a great big mess.
It sounds like something worth aspiring to. Doesn’t it?
But then I spent sometime last weekend with someone who showed me definitively that, whether I am over-driving or not, in some situations the car will perform equally well if I leave the weight of my size 13 sneaker on the gas pedal and abandon ship out the side window. Serious. In my last post I told you about hands free cornering… and it’s real. If you don’t believe, I’ll back it up after the next day of driving when I think to put a camera in the car rather than on the roof.
The real point here though, is that ever since I was young I have viewed driving as a fight between car and driver. I feel like I have been a champion in that regard.
Almost twenty years later though, I’m coming to the realization that in this dance that is driving… I need not lead all the time. If the car is going to do the same thing whether I’m flailing away at the wheel and hammering on the pedals or not, then is there something that I can do that will actually improve performance? The answer from Sunday’s experience is a resounding YES! But unfortunately, my hands of granite and hard charging persona have a very hard time comprehending and performing that task.
But it became entirely clear first hand (and I notice now that I already said it today)… I am lacking precision. My movements are oscillating and great in amplitude, averaging out to something that barely gets the job done. What I need to do is yank them tight: do things once and do them right.
So what would be the result if you were in a Rwd car?
The same I suppose, just steer with wheel spin in that low traction situation.
Is it just the awd that it’s hard to feel? So you are Using the wheel more?
Looks fun, maybe I should come drive
Certainly would be a lot more of a balancing act I think. The only RWD I found myself behind the wheel of was a truck… and it definitely took a lighter touch throwing it in on entry. With AWD when you add throttle the whole car typically washes out. That does perhaps make it harder to feel what the front tires are wanting.
And maybe that’s why I was definitely sawing the wheel a lot more mid corner than I have in the past. With RWD when the car starts losing angle you can dial back the lock a bit. With AWD and the front tires already operating at really large slip angles I tended to get into adding positive lock ( http://qrgarage.ca/wp-content/gallery/st185h/celica-snowdrift_0.jpg ) to add rotation. It works somewhat, but instead of inducing a “negative” slip angle on the front tires, the real answer seems to be to add the precise amount of steering angle to minimize the slip angle and let the tires naturally do what they do best. Hands off the wheel and letting trail and scrub radius self center the steering wheel has the potential for working quite well, but if I can put the steering wheel in the right place front grip will increase allowing more throttle to be added and faster times to be had.
The tremendous challenge is that with such low grip available, the tire works best in a very narrow slip angle range, and finding that range with power steering, minimal caster/scrub and a constantly changing road surface requires a very cool head and light touch. It’s something that I had minimal success with as one car and driver on a closed course… but later in the day when I was giving chase to another fast driver, or trying to pull one off my bumper, I instantly reverted back to old habits.
Very hard for me to correlate calm and cool with max attack.
I don’t normally comment on spelling errors, but this one is delightful:
“When I occasionally road with people …”
Please don’t fix it — it just works so well as it stands.
heck no. I fixed that. [cringe]