Race Driving Fundamentals: Practical Demo
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Practical Demo
05.34
| 00:00 | - Driving in the wet is one of those skills that can take a lot of practice to get good at but Andrew, we've just talked about the wet line and how that differs from a dry line. |
| 00:09 | Now we're going to go out on the track and demonstrate that line even though at the moment, the track is actually dry, we're going to have to put a little bit of imagination into this. |
| 00:18 | One of the things I want to dive into here is what are you as a racing driver trying or doing lap after lap as the track conditions change to try and figure out where that last little bit of grip is available? - The first word that springs to mind there is exploring. |
| 00:32 | You've really got to explore, look for grip, some corners there might be grip up nice and high, other corners you're better to just stick to the race line, maybe there's a curb that you can hook your wheel in to just let the car hold it nice and tight and then you're trying to avoid white lines. |
| 00:46 | Painted lines especially are a bit of a dangerous one, you want to avoid them as much as you can or curbs under brakes. |
| 00:51 | There's just so many things to explore. |
| 00:54 | Looking at other cars around you too, there might be a car in front of you that always pulls away through one corner, follow their line, see what they're doing and it's just constantly exploring, looking for ways to get faster in the wet. |
| 01:05 | - So trying to stay away from that mindset of we always have to run that same fixed line and actually varying it to see where there's maybe a potential advantage? - Yeah exactly and it's really hard to find where those advantages are. |
| 01:17 | It feels strange running high around a corner to look for grip and yes you may lose a second through that corner looking for grip but you now know not to do it but then you might run it another corner and then all of a sudden you've picked up two seconds so that little bit of a loss of time exploring and that's where it comes to just keeping your eyes forward and looking for different patches as well, that may make it a bit nicer to drive on. |
| 01:40 | - General rule of thumb as we've discussed, normally the fastest wet line is not going to be the dry racing line though? - It is correct, it is correct, there are some corners as I was saying where it's just the right line outweighs having to go wide but then some corners like your generic hairpin or something where you might want to run just around the outside of the race line 'cause there's a bit of rubber buildup so you just want to avoid that and run out nice and wide of that. |
| 02:04 | - And now another thing as well just to bring into the fold here and keep in mind when we're choosing our line, standing water, how's that going to affect your preferred line? - Yeah that again depends on how heavy the rain is, if it's absolutely pouring down, you're not exploring too much, you're literally just following the cars in front. |
| 02:21 | As you probably can't see to much through all the spray for a start. |
| 02:26 | So you're more focused on just getting a couple of laps out of the way and sticking on what would be the dryest line with the water pushed out. |
| 02:33 | And then looking out for where there are areas, before you even head out on the track have a look from pit lane to see where you can see other cars on a race before you, see if they're making massive splashes, there's just so many different things to put into perspective and just think about what is going to make it better for you when you're out there. |
| 02:52 | - Alright let's head out on the track and see where we would be positioning the car if it was wet. |
| 02:57 | Alright Andrew so we're here at the carousel and we're looking at what sort of areas of the track we'd be exploring for a wet line trying to find grip. |
| 03:05 | So at the moment we've got the inside of the corner here, we've got the curbing and we're probably about two car widths higher than that so this is a good place to try positioning the car? - Yeah definitely it's just that little bit higher, off the actual race line where all the rubber builds up and if you run the outside of that, there can generally be a bit of grip out there to try and use to help the car grip up a bit more. |
| 03:29 | - Now a bit of a balancing act here between trying to stay off the conventional racing line but already we've got little bits of rubber, conventionally we call these marbles, that we get off the racing line so this is something that we also need to factor in and be aware of? - Yeah definitely you need to consider that and it all comes back to that experimentation of giving these things a go but definitely the marbles are something to think about and the other thing to also consider as well is there could be puddles outside the actual race line and just constantly exploring and looking for those sort of things. |
| 04:00 | - Now another balancing act here, staying off the race line but of course if we run out too wide, not giving ourselves a lot of margin if something does go wrong? - Yeah definitely but for some reason sometimes right on the outside of some corners there is so much grip but it comes back to exploring that but being brave but also have the experience to do that because if you try find that and then you obviously run wide, grass becomes like ice out there so you've just got to be pretty careful with that but sometimes the brave end up winning quite a bit with that. |
| 04:33 | - Now the other thing we're going to end up affecting here with this higher line is we're compromising our exit but is this actually beneficial because we'll run across the conventional racing line into the next complex of corners? - Probably not to be honest because if you end up quite wide here, you're not going to probably go back to the outside line for the next corner. |
| 04:53 | Again it depends on the type of corner. |
| 04:55 | A lot of the time you're not actually trying to stay off the rubber the whole time, there might be some parts where it just for some reason there just ends up being a lot more grip on one place and then if you battle to get back to the other side it could affect your entry so again it's just that experimentation. |
| 05:12 | - Alright, well let's see what it looks like in the car. |
