TeeLew
Well-Known Member
No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no! I feel very strongly about this.Was rereading this post again, after 4 HPDE Novice track days now 3 with instructors, I've been schooled that with your feet you are either braking, doing throttle maintenance or rolling on the gas when tracking out. The goal is never to be coasting, so if there's no throttle maintenance what are your feet doing? The OP has stated he knows how to drive track and is seems to be driving HPDE type events. Curious on the statement.
You have been told incorrectly for the slower 2nd & 3rd gear corners. I can accept it for a high-speed corner, but it's wrong for most track corners. If the chassis is tuned so that you have to immediately get back to throttle to 'catch' the rear, then it's far too tail-happy and you're sacrificing all sorts of entry speed. The grip on the car goes where the driver puts it. If you load the nose with the brakes, you can turn. If you unload the nose with the throttle, you can't. I'm not interested in the guys who are crossed-up and hazing the tires. Color them slow.
There will be a point in every corner where you are able to roll to throttle in about a 1 second time period. As a driver, that's an important point to identify, because it's a good rule-of-thumb goal concerning throttle application rate. If you can apply the throttle faster than that, you're too late and probably too slow. If you have to apply throttle slower than that, you started too early (likely inducing understeer). Once this point is identified, our goal is to get there as fast as possible.
We all generally know about the traction circle. We brake as hard as we can in a straight line. As we turn in, we release the brake as fast as we can while leaving as much load on the nose as we need to actually turn the car. This keeps us on the grip threshold of the car. At the moment brake pressure goes to zero, the car is still slowing due to cornering drag/tire scrub. This is a part of the traction circle most people ignore, because when you've got both feet up, the car isn't talking to you very much. This is the portion of the corner which just takes patience. Allow the car to turn with no pedal input. In terms of time, we're talking 1/2 to 1 second in a slow corner (T11 at Laguna, for example). Just have the disciple to let the car turn enough so that you can apply throttle in one continuous motion without having to check up at the exit while keeping the throttle at an application rate of about 100 deg/sec.
So, if you're immediately back on the throttle, it's almost certain that you have underachieved corner entry speed, delayed the point at which you reach full throttle and will likely be tuning your car to reduce understeer when the opposite is more appropriate.
TeeLew-ism #1: The point where one initiates throttle is trivial, but the point at which one reaches full throttle is vital. It's almost always faster to delay the former if it hastens the latter. (Caveat: Up to that 1 second application rate.)
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