by Ross Bentley
HUSTLE
One area many drivers give up a lot of time in is those short sections of track where they think that part throttle is as much as the car can take, that it is “good enough,” when a short burst of full throttle is possible. Many drivers “coast” for a fraction of second, thinking that 80 percent throttle is good enough. They are not “hustling” the car.
Anything you can do that increases the time spent at full throttle is a good thing. Even if it’s for a fraction of a second between two turns, or instead of slowly trailing off the throttle at the end of a straightaway you come off the gas quickly (not forgetting smoothness). That’s hustling a car.
When trying to shave that last few tenths or hundredths of a second off your lap time, you really have to look at where you are not hustling the car. This is in those short sections on the track where you think 80 percent throttle is good enough. To be a winner, good enough just won’t cut it. You have to use 100 percent throttle, flat out. You also have to be aggressive with the car, smooth but aggressive. You have to attack the track.
I know this sounds obvious, but your feet should either be on the brakes, squeezing the throttle down, or flat to the floor on the throttle. Okay, there are some rare exceptions to this generalized rule, but they are the exception.
SPEED SECRET
You should either be on the brakes, squeezing on the throttle, or at full throttle.
Of course, just recognizing that you are not hustling the car is not enough, as easy as that is using data acquisition. Neither is telling yourself to hustle the car, to use full throttle in a few key parts of the track. Often that just frustrates you by pointing out your weaknesses. This really is a place to use the Learning Formula. Get a clear MI, and then become aware of how close are to this ideal MI by rating your own level of hustle on a scale of 1 to 10.
As you rate your hustle level, it will naturally progress from a 1 or 2 to at least an 8 over a short period of time, as long as you have spent the time to get a good clear MI in your mind. Going from 8 to 9 and then 10, the last couple of hundredths, may take a little longer, but will happen.
A “GO FASTER” PLAN
To end this chapter, let’s take a look at three specific plans (there are thousands) to go faster.
• The Late Braker: For the average racer this is the most common and most overused technique. Most drivers think that by going a little deeper into the corner before braking, they will gain a lot by maintaining the straightaway speed longer. It’s only natural to think this way. After all, when running side-by-side with another driver, whenever you brake later you end up in front.
In reality, however, by braking later most drivers brake harder than before, meaning the car enters the turn at the same speed as before. Just braking later, while not carrying more speed into the corner, will gain you little. All it does is maintain your top speed for a few feet longer on the straight. This is okay for picking up a few hundredths of a second, but not much more. Carrying more speed into the corner (as long as you can still make the car turn in and accelerate through the turn) will make a much bigger improvement.
Consider this: On an average road-racing circuit, if you can enter each corner even 1 mile per hour faster, then you will have made up to a half second improvement in your lap time. That’s a huge gain.
The big problem with late braking, though, is that you end up spending too much concentration simply on braking, when some should really be spent on more important things. In fact, quite often you’ve focused so much on the braking that you overreact and lock up the brakes. Usually, you’ve left your braking so late that all you’re doing is thinking about surviving and not about braking correctly and what you have to do when finished braking.
• The Light Braker: This is usually the first step in the right direction in trying to go faster. You brake at the same point as before but with a slightly lighter brake application. This means you will carry more speed into the corner (remember, if you can carry just an extra mile per hour, it’s going to lead to a great reduction in lap time).
• The Late, Correct Braker: This is the goal. You brake later than previously but at the original (threshold) braking rate. So now you gain by maintaining your top speed on the straight longer (small gain), as well as carrying more speed into the corner (big gain). As well, you haven’t spent all your concentration on just braking; you are thinking about corner entry. That’s how to go faster. Remember, of course, there is a limit.
Your mental approach to testing and practice is important. You want to simulate the competitive spirit and environment as closely as possible. You want the same intensity and aggressiveness in practice as you do in the race. If you practice at 99 percent, that’s how you will perform in the race. It’s difficult to get back to 100 percent.
SPEED SECRET
Practice how you plan to race, and then you’ll race as you practiced.
This programs your mind so that, under actual race conditions, you instinctively respond. Treat practice and the race with the same respect and intensity. When you practice, it should be with the same mental focus and determination as if it were in a race. Then, during a race, you will be as relaxed and calm as if you were practicing.
There is no point in ever going on a racetrack if you’re not going to drive at 100 percent. If you’re testing or driving an endurance race where you may not want to drive right at the limit, you should still be 100 percent focused, have 100 percent concentration. There is no reason to ever think that a sloppy turn-in is “good enough.” You don’t want to make “good enough” a habit. The only way to ensure that doesn’t happen is to always drive at 100 percent.
We often believe the more we practice a skill or technique—over and over again, many times—the better we’ll get. This is not necessarily true. Experience is not always all that it’s cracked up to be. In fact, every time you practice a technique incorrectly, you’re increasing your chances of doing it wrong again. It’s easy to become experienced at repeating the same mistakes.
SPEED SECRET
Practice doesn’t make perfect; only perfect practice makes perfect.
So don’t practice too much at first, or you’re likely to develop incorrect patterns or movements. Instead, begin with a few laps, maintaining intense concentration and motivation. Continue practicing only while concentration and interest is strong. If you begin to repeat an error, or if your concentration or attention start to fade and you start to become casual, stop. Clear your head, get your concentration and motivation back, then go again.
A driver can practice many of the techniques required to win while driving on the street. Practice smooth, consistent braking, squeezing and easing the throttle, arcing the steering into and out of a turn, picking the ideal line through a corner, being smooth, and keeping the car balanced. You don’t have to drive fast to do this. This is not just physical practice. Just like a golfer or tennis player “grooves” his swing, you are “grooving” your car-control techniques. Each time you apply the brakes or turn the steering wheel, your actions are being “programmed” into your brain. The more your technique is “programmed,” the easier, smoother, and more natural they will be in the heat of the battle on the track.
A lot of race drivers practice bad habits when driving on the street. They don’t hold the steering wheel properly, they rest their hands on the shifter, they don’t squeeze the brake and gas pedals, and so on. How do they expect to drive any differently at speed, on the racetrack, when they’ve just programmed those techniques into their head? And, if you can’t do something at slow speed on the street, you’ll never be able to do it naturally on the racetrack. It’s the same with any sport. What do you think would happen if a tennis pro practiced hitting one-handed backhands all year, and then went to Wimbledon and played using a two-handed backhand?
One of your objectives during practice is finding the right chassis setup for the race or qualifying. For the race, you want a comfortable, consistent, reliable setup. For qual
ifying, you may want a setup that is less “comfortable,” perhaps with less aerodynamic downforce, but is fast for one or two laps. A good race setup allows you to know you can move up from where you qualified.
The first few laps of a practice session may be the time to bed in new brake pads or scrub in a new set of tires. Generally, with most brake pads, the trick is to gradually heat them up by braking heavily (but be careful as they can begin to fade at anytime, so brake hard but early), and then run a few easy laps to let them cool. As this is not always the best procedure for bedding pads, and some come pre-bedded, check with the manufacturer first.
Concentrate on the car’s setup in practice and testing and what you can do to improve it. Part of your job is to become sensitive to what the car is doing.
Check the brake bias by overbraking at different locations to see if the front or rear tires lock up first. How is the handling in the slow corners? The medium speed corners? The fast corners? How’s the initial turn-in? Does it understeer or oversteer? What about the middle of the corner?
Does it put the power down well on the exit of the corner, or is there too much wheelspin? Does the car bottom out going over bumps, or can you get away with lowering it? Does the car feel too soft? Does it roll and pitch too much in the turns? Is it too stiff? Does it feel like it’s “skating” across the track with too little grip? Are the shocks too soft, too stiff? What are the effects of an anti-roll bar sweep?
How are the gear ratios? What is the maximum rpm on the longest straight? Are there corners where having a slightly taller or lower gear ratio would help?
Consider how each change interrelates; that is, if you change the handling to better suit one particular corner, will the gear ratio still be correct, or will it be too low now with the extra speed you’re carrying? Consider the top gear ratio: What about in a draft? Will it be too low a gear when you pick up a few extra miles per hour in the draft?
Obviously, you can’t do much of any of this development of the car’s setup until you know the track well. If you’re making improvements each lap in your driving, how are you going to know if a change you made to the car helped or not? This is where consistency comes in.
At the same time, practice is where you should try different things. Try taking a corner in a taller gear. Try braking later and carrying more speed into a turn. Or the opposite, brake earlier and work on getting on the power earlier in the turn. Which works best? Follow a quicker car, watching when it brakes and how it takes the corners.
Debrief with your engineer, mechanic, or just yourself after each session. Make notes on everything about the car and your driving.
The real question you need to ask yourself is this: “What can be done to go faster?”
DEVELOPING FEEDBACK
For most, if not all, engineers, crew chiefs, mechanics, team owners, team managers, and even drivers themselves, testing and practice is for one thing: developing the race car. I would like to suggest that is only part of its role. In addition to developing the car, testing and practice should also be used to develop the driver. In fact, you should really look at it as developing the car-driver package.
How important is it for you to be sensitive to any and all of the subtle changes made to the car? You can either hope you have the necessary sensitivity, or you can develop it. A big part of testing and practice should be used to develop your sensitivity.
As I mentioned earlier, one of the most effective tools you can use to improve your performance and your sensitivity to setup changes are Sensory Input Sessions. You may be thinking that track time, whether on a private test day or during an event practice session, is far too valuable to be wasted on training. You are right, if you have no interest in winning.
If you do have some interest in winning, then one of the reasons practice and testing is so valuable is the opportunity to improve the car-driver package. That means developing you just as much as the car.
If you need any further convincing, then think of it this way. The better you get at soaking up sensory inputs, the better your feedback will be about the car. I’m sure you will agree, without good feedback, you cannot do what it takes to maximize the race car. You need your feedback to do your job properly.
LEARNING
Rarely does a team go to a track for a race and have to be on the pace right out of the box. While that would be nice, at most events there are one or more practice sessions prior to qualifying and the race. So think about it. When do you (and your car) have to be as fast as you can possibly go? For one lap of qualifying and then in the race, right?
Use the practice sessions for learning, learning how to be as fast as possible for your qualifying lap and for the race. This strategy provides better results in the race.
If at all possible during a test day, try to end the day on a positive note. People tend to recall most vividly the last piece of information they had. This is referred to as the “recency effect,” meaning that what was most recent is now most deeply programmed into the brain. In other words, you will recall and mentally replay your last session on the track more than any other. Mentally recalling and replaying creates programming. I’m sure you would rather program a technically correct, positive experience than the opposite.
This also suggests how important it is that you recognize when you start to become tired, either physically or mentally, so that you can stop before you begin programming errors. Remember, practice does not create perfect; only perfect practice creates perfect. It is far better to quit a test session early than to practice and get good at, making errors. Of course, if you have physically or mentally tired before the end of a test day, you need to create a fitness-training program that will ensure it doesn’t happen again.
ADAPTABILITY
Certainly, there are times you want to drive the car in the exact same way as you have in the past. Without consistency it is difficult, if not impossible, to determine if changes to the car’s setup helped or hindered. That is what being a good test driver is all about.
But there are times when it is important for you to be able to adapt to whatever the car is doing. That is what being a good racer is all about. For example, if the car develops a turn-in understeer in the middle of the race, you had better hope that you know how to adapt to it. Otherwise, you are going to have to watch yourself go backward in the pack.
How many times have you heard a driver complain about how his “car began to push in the middle of the race”? More than once, I would bet. But how often have you heard that same driver follow that statement up with, “and I didn’t know what to do about it”? Never. And yet, it’s often the case.
How do you develop the necessary adaptability? By educating yourself on the dynamics of the car, and giving yourself the time and opportunity to practice, to learn, during a test session.
The overall objective is to learn to be more adaptable to a car’s handling problems. Most drivers try to force a bad-handling car to do what they want it to do. That won’t work. A driver can’t make a car do what it doesn’t want to do. The only option is to adapt to it.
To improve your ability to adapt, spend a portion of a test day going through the following routine. Begin with a warm-up and set a baseline with the car fairly neutral in its handling. Then, work on adapting to understeer. Tune the car’s setup to make the car understeer during the entry to the corners, the midcorner phase, and while exiting the turns. Then try adapting, lessening the negative affects of the understeer. Take time to play with different turn-in points and techniques, varying the amount of trail braking, and so on.
After that, work on adapting to oversteer by altering the line, changing the speed at which you turn in, when and where you release the brakes, and then get back to power.
The method you use to adapt depends somewhat on where in the corner the understeer or oversteer begins, whether the car is in a steady-state or transient state, and what you’re doing to it. Therefore, when making the changes in the car’s handling, try
using the shocks, anti-roll bars, and maybe even springs and aerodynamics to vary the timing and severity of the handling problem.
In adapting, you need to compare rpm at a reference point on the straightaways as well as lap times to see which method works best. You may want to do that as well with the data-acquisition information. One method may work in one type of corner but not another. Though it may have helped in one corner, you might have lost at another part of the track, so the lap times will not tell the real story. That’s why it is important to compare straightaway speeds as well as lap times.
Ultimately, which method works best does not matter. The main goal is for you to be able to use any and all of the methods, for at some time any one will be the best choice. You should become aware of how to do each method, how it may or may not help, and what to expect from each one. This is all about adding information and knowledge to the data bank in your head.
Earlier, I mentioned that there is not one style that suits every car and corner. Rather, a great driver will vary his or her style to suit the situation. One of the ways you learn how to do that is through practice, and this adaptability exercise is one of the best ways to learn to vary your style.
If you have time, as a complement to the above exercise, you might want to try another, one that shouldn’t take too much time but will be valuable as well. This time, starting with a balanced car, you (with your driving) make the car understeer at entry, in the middle of the corner, and at the exit, and make it oversteer at entry, midcorner, and exit. The idea is if you know how to make it do these things, you may recognize (become aware of) yourself doing some little bit of this at some time. If you realize you may be causing some of the understeer or oversteer, it becomes easy to fix.
