[Sauce]

Originally Posted by The HACK

"Real" racers have real race cars and they behave much differently than your average street car, or cars that have some modifications put in. It's different when they need to extract the last 1/10th of a second out of each corner to stay even with their competitor, vs. just driving fast on a track in a car without cages IMO.

Having said that. This stuff CAN NOT BE LEARNED without being properly taught, and it can not be learned overnight. What you see racers doing, if you try and do it with about a dozen events under your belt, you will surely spin out or crash. They're not doing it to "anticipate" spin or catch spins. They're doing it to ADD GRIP to the end that's losing it.

Imagine, let's say in a steady state, a skid pad maximum G achieved is 1.2 G on an entry level R-Comp. When you see a professional race car driver chop at the wheels, what he's essentially doing is, the tires have already reached the 1.2 G lateral load, and the ONLY way it can achieve more lateral acceleration, is by temporarily straightening out the tires...Basically alternating between say, 1.05 G and 1.4 G to average more than the 1.2 G steady state through the entire turn. A REALLY good driver will be able to use his or her car control skills to go FASTER, not merely to recover.

HAVING SAID THAT. These aren't the type of skills that you'll learn on your own, and they're certainly not skills you should attempt without at least some basic fundamentals down already. If you can't look and think 2-3 turns ahead, execute a consistent, nearly perfect line lap after lap at ANY SPEED, balance and steer your vehicle with both throttle and brake at will, comfortably use all the track within less than 1/2 tire width to the edge consistently, able to pick out the ideal line without the aide of someone in the passenger seat, AND be able to drive at least 1-1.5 car width from the ideal line at 95% of the lap time achieved driving the ideal line, then trying to learn to add grip through the hands to either end of the car would be like trying learn to dunk as a 4'9" midget.

To the OP: It is unfortunate, but I've found that most people have their big incident at the advanced intermediate level of driving, or anywhere from their 10th-15th day on track. This is usually the most dangerous part of any driver's development, they've gotten fast enough to keep up with guys who's got more skills, or cars that are faster, but not enough skills to gain any sort of "margin for error," and not enough experience to really know when you're in trouble. I got lucky, I had a massive spin at a track with a ton of run-off at my 5th event, where I was moved up to the "B" level for the first time. After that you certainly learn to respect your own limitations.

To anyone starting out or progressing through the sport, I highly recommend sprinkling in some additional training outside of the track, like doing indoor karting or autocross or car control clinics. I especially like indoor karting because the dynamics on a kart is like a car but multiplied 1,000x fold. All the vehicle dynamics, weight transfer, understeer and oversteer happen at a much faster pace with much smaller input. If you can manage a kart well, you can manage a car much easier. The biggest "growth spurt" for me as a driver was that one year where I was literally going to the kart track once a week after work, and doing auto-crosses 2-3 times a year, and took a wet skid pad event and literally spent close to an hour on a wet, slippery skidpad trying to keep the car going around in a nice, perpetual slide.

Lastly...If you learn only by crashing, then this is going to be a VERY expensive sport. You learn in this sport by having the right fundamentals and having your head screwed on straight. You only learn by crashing when you get to the professional ranks. Not saying none of us should ever crash...But I prefer to crash when it's someone else's car.

Some good points in here. If you watch an in car shot of a race car, even street cars on r-comps with a very high level driver behind the wheel, the car looks like it has waves of grip. What I mean by this is steering and throttle remain constant but it looks like one second the car is yanked in the next it's settling again. Slicks and r-comps are most efficient at a certain slip angle, lets say 3 degrees. That means that to extract the maximum potential of the car, you need to execute a 4 wheel slide to the tune of 3 degrees from turn in to track out. How many guys do you know that can do that? I believe that is what you are getting at in the first half of your post. And when you say pro drivers correct themselves- going from 1.04 to 1.5 g's for example, I'm going to disagree with you there. Check out some telemetry, g's are constant. Race cars are setup for oversteer on turn in and then to settle on throttle. The sooner the car rotates the sooner you can get on the gas. The downside to this is, as you said, most people can not handle this and just spin. The telemetry should be a steady swing from the max vertical g around the outside to the max lateral g, meaning that you are using 100% of your cars grip from turn in to track out. What I find amazing is where lets say an advanced/pro driver is faster than lets say an intermediate driver. Mid corner speeds and exit speeds are almost all exactly the same, the big difference comes from entry speed. Like the example I used for the telemetry, pro drivers use 100% of the cars grip from turn in to track out, slightly more novice drivers have learned and practiced the slow in fast out method. This means no trail braking, no trailing throttle oversteer etc. is used, but they set up such a beautiful exit that they leave the corner as fast as anyone. So the quicker you get, you start to look for speed on corner entry.

One more thought, I don't agree with you saying you are adding grip to either end of the car. I know what you meant, but it is misleading to say you are ever -adding- grip. There is no such thing. Your car has a set amount of grip, manipulating where the weight of the car is moves this grip around but does not add grip. I know this is what you meant, but I just wanted to clarify for anyone crazy enough to read all of this lol.