I saw the following video, and just hammered home that tires are more important than four wheel drive when it comes to traction in the snow:
Being an SUV, this vehicle should have 4WD. But the best part is that the drivetrain is ultimately irrelevant in this situation - if you look closely, all four wheels are completely locked. Thus the only issue is the lack of traction of the tires.
Given the number of cars that slid off this road, it is likely that there is a layer of ice under that snow. While even Blizzaks may have trouble in such a situation, they will still do much better than any all season tire.
Due to some upcoming events, I have had requests for a turn-by-turn track guide to Lightning at NJMP. I don’t have time right now for a detailed right up with video, so below is a preliminary guide. I’ll base my corner markings off this map here. NJMP’s site says Lightning only has 10 corners, but there are 11 radius on the map I just linked to. I will go by the map.
Lightning is driven clockwise. Turn 1 is in the bottom right corner of the map, just after the long front straight and pit row, but BEFORE the entrance to the track from the pits.
TURN 1
VERY high entry speed for all cars - I’m doing around 110 mph in my Miata. There is a HUGE hill here that you can’t see on the map, which crests BEFORE the apex (which is therefore blind). GO SLOW UNTIL YOU FIGURE THIS CORNER OUT! You really don’t want to launch yourself over to Thunderbolt.
Braking zone has a slight hump just before it, making the car light and grip low. Fortunately, you get a TON of compression with the hill, so you can brake very late once you figure things out. Think through the hill to where the apex and trackout points are, and set yourself up accordingly. There is a mini straight right after Turn 1; stay to the left to setup for Turn 2.
Also, people enter the track right after Turn 1 and you are pretty much blind to that. Partway through Turn 1 look to the right and you should hopefully be able to see if anyone is about to enter. Adjust things accordingly.
Toyota is issuing a recall for 3.8 million vehicles because they have floormats that may cause the gas pedal to become stuck.
While this can certainly be a major problem, far more concerning is the inability of people to effectively deal with the issue. The NHTSA says that over 100 incidents have been brought to its attention, and the Associated Press has reported on a family that was killed when their Lexus began accelerating out of control. Someone in the vehicle called 911 to report that the accelerator was stuck and the brakes no longer worked. They then crashed.
The brake failure could have been coincidental, but was likely just an example of brake fade. Even the most vicious track pads will fail if you floor both the brake and gas pedals, and I’m sure the Lexus in question did not have any upgrades in that department. The shocking thing is how easy it would have been to avert this disaster: all the driver had to do was put the car in neutral. Sure the engine would have freaked out, but at least it would not have kept accelerating the car.
It is not surprising though that no one in that car thought to put it in neutral. Most people don’t really know what is going on when they make an input in their cars. And here is an example of why not knowing some of these basics can be deadly.
Thunderbolt was fun. It is pretty fast, some elevation change, and takes a little while to get used to the speeds you can carry through the corners. The corners are much wider than they first appear, and you can really fly through a bunch of them. My only gripe is that many of the corners are text book style corners, so there isn’t that much to “figure out” if you will.
Lightning is in an entirely different league. Overall it is much faster in most places than Thunderbolt, and has an excellent rhythm and feel to it, much like Lime Rock. And other than 1 text book left hand corner, every other corner is unique and takes a little thought to figure out.
In a recent decision, Massachusetts highest court, the Supreme Judicial Court, gave the green light to Police tracking suspects with GPS if they have a warrant to do so.
The facts stem from a drug bust for over 120 ounces of crack cocaine. As with any possession-based offense (and especially something like crack cocaine), the easiest way to beat the charges is to have the evidence thrown out. That is generally done because police violated some policy or constitutional right of the suspect. Here, the Defendant is simply arguing that the use of a GPS to track his movements violates his Fifth Amendment right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures.
Well, the Court didn’t buy his argument. Most people immediately criticize decisions like this and lament the rise of the “police state.” I have to disagree, as I don’t think this decision adds any fuel to that fire. The key to the decision is that GPS tracking is permitted as long as the police have a warrant. Searches with warrants is older than the US, and certainly within the acceptable tools available to law enforcement. It really is no different than tapping a suspect’s phone lines after obtaining a valid warrant.
So what does this mean in practice? The Police can track a suspect with GPS provided they get a warrant. So don’t worry, you can still attack the use of a tracking GPS. The argument now will simply be that the warrant should not have been issued, rather than that the use of the GPS unit itself is a constitutional violation.
We’ve talked about reference points on the ground, as a rhythm, as your engine note, and now we can talk about using your hands and the steering wheel as a reference point as well. As with other “soft” reference points, the benefit is that you have some additional frame of reference after your last “hard” reference point. But you need to recognize your consistency (or inconsistencies) and any changes in your baseline or you may be sloppy at best and get yourself into trouble at worst.
The idea of using your hands and/or the steering wheel is very close in practice to using a rhythm as a reference point. Indeed, this technique actually requires using a rhythm to be effective.
When to Use the Technique
First lets talk about when you can use your hands as a reference point, and that will make explaining what to do much easier. Basically, on longer sweepers and hairpins you are turning for a long time. And usually throughout the course of the corner you will need to make a few steering inputs. And I’m not talking about your normal, minor steering inputs, but broad changes in the attitude of the car. A double apex is the best example. Your hand inputs are 1) turn in for the first apex and hold until 2) you reach the apex and begin unwinding for the track/turn in point at which point you 3) turn in again for the second apex. Between the two apexes, you are pretty much in no man’s land. You are often in the middle of the track, and on some tracks you may not ever get all the way to the edge before turning back towards the second apex.
The Andretti Hairpin at Laguna Seca and Big Bend at Lime Rock are both excellent examples of this. Both are double apex corners in which you don’t track all the way out until after the second apex. And now that Lime Rock has been paved, both lack any visible markings on the track itself that you can use. So what do you do? How do you know where that track out/turn in point between the two apexes lies? You don’t really (unless you have a hard reference point) - you just know after your into the second apex whether you got it right or not. Read the rest of this entry »
When most people buy an auto racing helmet, their criteria is usually something along the lines of how well it fits their head, cost, and possibly the design if that is your thing. But one aspect which few consider is arguably one of the most important: how well a pair of glasses fits with the helmet on.
By design any auto racing helmet will cover your ears and temple, and a full face will, naturally, cover the face as well. Since glasses have an arm and an ear piece which keeps the glasses actually on your face, these two pieces will be directly where the helmet is going to be. How the helmet sorts out this interaction can make or brake your day. And don’t just think this applies to prescription glasses - sunglasses fall into the same boat.
To be fair, as long as glasses stay in place after they are put on, any further complaints are in a way petty. But over the course of several hours, these petty issues can become rather unpleasant distractions. And distractions are pretty much always bad.
I have a G-Force helmet, and my glasses or sunglasses fit, but just barely. There is a break in the foam right along the temple and ear, and into this divide my glasses always fall. Unfortunately, the angle of this divide is not the angle I would normally have my glasses at, and they consequently get pushed up into my eyebrows. That gets old kind of fast. If I pull them out more, they feel much better, but are more susceptible to bumps. And though tracks pride themselves on being silky smooth, there are bumps are racetracks, sometimes to the extreme. In the last season before Lime Rock was recently paved, the bumps coming out of Big Bend were very rough and there were a bunch of them. Quite a lot of real estate in the second part of the turn was bumps. With my sunglasses pulled out slightly, the bumps would cause them to bounce so violently that I literally could not see until I had hit track out and the surface got smooth again. Not being able to see at all is decidedly worse than a distraction.
It may seem silly to try on your glasses when you are trying out helmets, but you’ll be glad you noticed any catastrophic issues at this stage rather than the first time you put your glasses on at the track.
We talked previously about using rhythm as a reference point. Another useful reference point you can use is your engine note. Engines of course sound different at every different RPM, and you can get a very accurate picture of your revs just by listening to your engine note.
Using your engine note as a reference point is really just an extension of using rhythm as a reference point. By that I mean you are once again feeling your way to your next input. The benefit of using your engine note is that this gives you an additional reference point past your “hard” (on the track) reference point.
Take the Lefthander at Lime Rock again. The “hard” reference point will still be my track out from Big Bend, and I will use my rhythm to feel my way to my braking point for the Lefthander. But, in addition to just “feeling” when it is time to brake, my engine note can give me another “floating” reference point. If all goes as it should, the engine note and “feel” points should correspond exactly, and that will be when to hit the brakes.
Consistency is Key
As with using rhythm as a reference point, your engine note is only as good as you are consistent! If you mess up the previous corner, you will be slower on that straight and consequently will not be as fast at the end of that straight. This means your revs will be a bit lower, and your engine note different. If you wait until you hear the “correct” engine note, you will be way too far into your braking zone and then you are in a world of trouble. So, if you mess up the previous corner at all, either 1) make your next input at a lower engine note/rev, or 2) forego the engine note completely and go by feel or some other reference point. Read the rest of this entry »
This is a turn-by-turn guide for the full 4.1 mile, 20 turn course. There are a few general things you should note. 1) the course is LONG and there are a TON of compromise corners, so make sure you learn the track so you can think ahead several corners. 2) the straights are long and fast but the corners are tight and slow, so be vigilant about your braking zones. 3) as the track existed on July 31, 2009, there is virtually no runoff anywhere, ESPECIALLY at the ends of the two fastest straights! So again, BE VIGILANT IN YOUR BRAKING ZONES!
There are actually two different pit areas, so where you consider “Turn 1″ to be can be rather fluid. This guide will use the standard turn numbers as listed by Monticello Motor Club, so Turn 1 will be the tight left hand turn at the end of the Pit Straight.(see the numbered track map here) (Note that the SCDA used the pits along the Back Straight on 7/31/2009, so this is not what many of us would consider “Turn 1″ to be)
Here is some footage of a lap with the corners marked:
Turn 1-2
Pit Straight is quite long and has a fairly steep decline, so speeds at the end of the straight are very high. I can push upwards of 90 mph in my Miata, which doesn’t easily push upwards of 90 mph. Turn 1 is a very tight left hand corner so you need to slow WAY down. Additionally, this corner has the worst runoff of the entire course. There is about 30 feet of grass, then a row of tires and then the armco wall. The runoff and gravel trap as depicted in the online track maps is NOT actually on the racetrack as of July 21, 2009. BE ABSOLUTELY VIGILANT OF YOUR BRAKING ZONE. There is NO room for error! And because you are still going downhill, there is not all that much braking grip.
Turn 2 is the important corner in this section as it leads out the mini straight before Turn 3, so compromise Turn 1 hard and late apex Turn 2. This whole section is VERY slow, so late apex as needed to be able to get your power down as early as possible. Use all the curbing on the right inside of Turn 2 unless it hinders your car’s ability to put down power.
Rain Line
The inside of Turn 1 on the left, right over the curbing you want to drive over, forms a lake when it rains. It can be 6 inches deep, and probably about 10 feet or so in diameter, so your usable track is MUCH narrower. Go in deeper, turn slower. The curbing on the right inside of Turn 2 is obviously slicker, so the issues noted above are amplified. Adjust your line around the curbing as necessary. Read the rest of this entry »
Here I am doing two clean laps around Monticello Motor Club in July 2009 with the SCDA. This is the full, 4.1 mile course with 20 corners. It looks like I’m not using all of the track, but that is just because of the view. My wheels do extend quite a bit farther to the side than the camera and are on the edges of the pavement.
