Question: Ayrton Senna throttle blipping - Honda NSX @ Suzuka

[fourtailpipes]

i do not intend to enter a dog in this fight, but FYI i know purple derple has a very respectable driving resume; beyond the casual HPDE level.

[pixelblue]

Originally Posted by Purple Derple

Alright, good that you are here to defend your forum buddy, but do you actually agree with what he is saying? Is this how your drive your car on track once a month? Do you control understeer with your hands and oversteer with the throttle? Do you see-saw at the steering wheel? Does your car feel like it is on a knifes edge when you're cornering? Do you do any of the things he wrote in his post when you're driving at the absolute maximum of the car's ability?

If you think I'm wrong tell me why. Please don't tell me I'm not worthy because of my post count that really makes no difference.

yes, yes and yes. you can check out my youtube channel. link in my signature

[Purple Derple]

I watched your videos. If you want to point to a specific instance I am open to seeing how they demonstrate any of the things mentioned in this thread. Anyways, my point was don't go preaching on forums about things when you don't know what you're talking about. That is directed towards the other guy, but it happens all the time around here.

[pixelblue]

you know I don't mean to get into an argument with you but I still haven't heard your counter argument to any of this. all I have heard is "you really believe that?" or "he's speaking out of his butt". what is your point anyway? what do YOU believe?

[Purple Derple]

Originally Posted by Purple Derple

He's feathering the throttle trying to get the car to point while also trying to keep his momentum up.

Originally Posted by Purple Derple

You don't control understeer with your hands and oversteer with throttle that is fundamentally untrue. You control the whole car with all your inputs. Actually getting the car to rotate on power is not the best idea because it is less consistent than rotating on brakes and you're going to overdrive your rear tires in a few laps of doing that. Then you'll be left with an overly slippery car. Yes, cars are generally front wheel steering. And, "in fact, any car, when driven at its absolute maximum ability, should live right on the knife's edge between understeer and oversteer at all times" is also fundamentally untrue. It is not as if the car is either one or the other at all times. That sounds to me like a car that is skiddish. Who wants that? That sounds like a terrible car to drive and slow too.

Man, I did say what I thought. You dismissed it as armchair theory and now you want to know what I think again. I don't believe you can simplify driving into statements like

Originally Posted by The HACK

There are two schools of thoughts on what to do with your hands and feet at the extreme limit of adhesion.

One, you keep your hands perfectly steady, and use your foot to "throttle steer" the car out of a turn.

Two, you keep your foot perfectly steady, and use your hands to manage the slip angle.

and

Originally Posted by The HACK

* On a car that is rear wheel driven and front wheel steering (like the NSX, and our beloved BMWs), the gas pedal controls the rear (oversteer) and the steering wheel controls the front (understeer)

And I think he's doing a disservice to this forum community by making such statements so authoritatively. People are gonna believe what he's saying, but it is totally bogus. I wish he'd tell us where these ideas come from.

[GaryS]

I also don't want to argue with anyone, and I'm just an intermediate HPDE guy so I don't know anything about it anyway.

But Purple Derple's question to The Hack was "Where did you learn this?" I remember he posted this, which elaborates and kind of answers where he got it from. Hope that helps in some way.

Originally Posted by The HACK

We're about to take this thread off topic but...

I'll have to find telemetry data to support my claim, but if I'm correct, you'll see speed and lateral G ramp up fairly smoothly, but once it gets to the limit of the tire's grip, you'll find a really good data acquisition graph to show "vibrations" or what I called jaggedness soon after turn-in, or after the suspension sets. I recall someone relaying a story about Ayrton Senna, during the "turbocharged" 4 cylinder era, his engineers were looking at his throttle telemetry and was puzzled to find that through certain turns it looked like he was modulating the throttle very rapidly, and when the engineers asked him about it, he said that if he had gotten off or stayed off throttle, then the turbo would take a while to spool up on the exit and he would lose precious time exiting the turn. So in order to keep the turbo spooled up, he "jabs" the throttle repeatedly to ease the acceleration load while keeping the revs and exhaust pressure up to keep the turbo loaded.

Seemed counter-intuitive at the time, until I took a ride with a friend that was driving in the Speed World Challenge at the time. I noticed that at the exit of slow speed turns, he would "see-saw" at the steering wheel. I was a bit puzzled, since throughout my entire career we were told "smooth is fast," and here he is, the prior year's SWC rookie of the year, at one time my instructor, who repeated that mantra to me before, doing exactly the opposite. So I asked him about it once we pitted the car, and he said, basically, at the limit of the tire's available grip, you can temporarily increase the amount of lateral grip available to you by straightening out the wheel a little bit and then return it back to the previous "set" position, and if you do this rapidly in very small increments, you can continue to keep the suspension "set" without unloading the weight of the car, but decrease the lateral load on the tire enough to keep it from "losing grip" by going PAST the optimum slip angle of the tires.

So perhaps the way I explained it in the previous post does not describe the process in the correct manner, but the basic concept is the same. You can prevent either end of the car from losing grip, or going into "understeer" or "oversteer," by sort of "chopping" at the wheels a little bit at a time. But you must do this just right before the tire transitions from static to kinetic grip, otherwise the benefit of it to "going fast" is all but eliminated once you're in kinetic friction (because the act of straightening out the tires will only bring it back from kinetic friction coefficient to static, rather than move that boundary to a higher speed threshold).

But, regardless, in order to execute said maneuver, you must be able to FEEL the car right before either end of the tire looses grip, and do the see-sawing of the wheel before the car pushes or starts a spin. And that ability comes from having done a tone of wet skidpad or karting IMO, since both will give you more opportunity to explore that boundary and find ways to expand it without wadding up your car. If you can feel the level of grip on the contact patch through your hands (for the front wheels) and your ss (for the rear wheels), and you can accurately predict when either end is going to lose grip, then you can safely try and see if you can retain more speed from turn-in to exit by carrying more speed into the turn and using your hands to "add grip*."

*Using your hands to add grip is still the most accurate and easiest way to visualize what I'm talking about, even though it technically and logically does not make sense.

[Purple Derple]

Did he post that in this thread? I'm sorry if he did I never saw it.

[GaryS]

Originally Posted by Purple Derple

Did he post that in this thread? I'm sorry if he did I never saw it.

It was a different thread. You posted in that thread too, but way before him. He hangs at e90post 3-series forum and only posts here once in a while.

[Purple Derple]

Haha oh yeah that thread. I think that is why everyone here hates me. Sorry but everything the HACK wrote in that thread is crazy talk as well. I wish he would get in here and join this discussion I don't like just ripping up his words without him. That guy Sauce is speaking truths tho.

[Focusedintntions]

Originally Posted by Purple Derple

Haha oh yeah that thread. I think that is why everyone here hates me. Sorry but everything the HACK wrote in that thread is crazy talk as well. I wish he would get in here and join this discussion I don't like just ripping up his words without him. That guy Sauce is speaking truths tho.

Hence why anything written in a forum should be taken with a grain of salt. Read it, process it, think about it...then go out drive and come up with your own conclusions. In driving everybody has their own style and has techniques that do or don't work for them. We should all strive to develop our own abilities within what is comfortable for us as long as we're still being safe.

[Purple Derple]

Originally Posted by Focusedintntions

Hence why anything written in a forum should be taken with a grain of salt. Read it, process it, think about it...then go out drive and come up with your own conclusions. In driving everybody has their own style and has techniques that do or don't work for them. We should all strive to develop our own abilities within what is comfortable for us as long as we're still being safe.

Hey what do you think Senna was doing in that video?

[pixelblue]

Originally Posted by Purple Derple

Haha oh yeah that thread. I think that is why everyone here hates me. Sorry but everything the HACK wrote in that thread is crazy talk as well. I wish he would get in here and join this discussion I don't like just ripping up his words without him. That guy Sauce is speaking truths tho.

first you say this
"My guess is he's never driven this car before and doesn't know what it is capable of so he's doing this to drive fast with no practice. Truthfully I don't think it is a fast way to drive it is way too abrupt with the balance of the car when we all know smooth is fast. Now everyone can tell me I don't know what I'm talking about because I am being critical of Senna."

then you say this
"I don't believe any of it to be true. The whole thing. I am not here to argue I just hope people on this forum don't believe what the HACK has written because it it comes straight from his butt. It sounds very authoritative for sure, but it isn't right."

hint, hint...

[Purple Derple]

I actually don't get what you're hinting at. Are you saying that I don't know what I'm talking about or that everyone hates me or both?

I said "Now everyone can tell me I don't know what I'm talking about because I am being critical of Senna" because people take it as blasphemy to criticize him as if he was the best person ever but really he was as human as you and I.

[GaryS]

Okay I watched this Senna video, and in my opinion, you guys all got trolled. Everything in this video is staged. It's so theatrical. Senna acts like a movie star. Keep in mind the cool split screen view was planned in advance. So he makes these cool exaggerated steering inputs and does all this fancy dancing on the pedals. All of that is Senna hamming it up for the camera.

[jkoral]

Originally Posted by GaryS

Okay I watched this Senna video, and in my opinion, you guys all got trolled. Everything in this video is staged. It's so theatrical. Senna acts like a movie star. Keep in mind the cool split screen view was planned in advance. So he makes these cool exaggerated steering inputs and does all this fancy dancing on the pedals. All of that is Senna hamming it up for the camera.

OK, perhaps it is exaggerated, but be sure to watch the second video, specifically Hebert's comparison of Schumacher's driving style to others (starting around 0:58):

Johny Hebert: "Well it's nothing extra special, it's just the way that he (Schumacher) controls the car almost with the throttle instead of where I think the majority of drivers that I've known, someone like Damon, I know David, Gerhard as well, Mika Hakkinen, exactly the same, when they brake, normally you brake, change down the gears and then you might go on and off the throttle and I think Aryton was the biggest example of that, when he used to be in the middle of a corner, his throttle movement was so quick, and it was always, bop/bop/bop/bop (hand motion up and down as if pushing throttle pedal), where Michael has this braking, change down and then he's constantly on the throttle straight away."

Certainly the quote above about Aryton's driving style (in bold) backs up what we see in the "staged/theatrical" NSX video.

[Sauce]

Well what the hell, I may as well throw my guess into the pot. Truthfully many things Senna did in a car are contrary to schools of thought and reason, however his results speak for themself.

I believe his abrupt throttle inputs were done for the sole purpose of manipulating the angle of the car. His goal is to get the car pointed straight as early as possible allowing him to get on the gas earlier. If you really study it, his speed remains constant. Let's try to break that down. The purpose of the throttle mid corner obviously has some other result for him than to control his speed. Lets think, what could it be?
-Traction: Maybe he was being a human computer system, however that doesn't fully explain his abruptness
-Balance: The movement of any pedal shifts weight around, maybe he is changing the character of the car
-Aerodynamics: F1 cars in that era had diffusers that were HUGELY dependent on exhaust gases, no throttle meant less downforce.
-Slip Angle: As I said, I believe this to be the most logical. The sooner you are pointed down the straight the sooner you are on the gas. The abruptness of the throttle keeps the car from sliding formula D style, but is enough to rotate the car while maintaining grip.