The question of how far ahead to look is big and important one. Common wisdom is that you should be looking through a corner, to where you want the car to go. Clint is a strong advocate of this technique, and it is what is taught at virtually every performance driving school.

Why Look Ahead?
There are a couple of reasons why it may be better to look ahead. The most important is that you can see if any incidents are debris are up ahead. If you are focused 10 feet in front of your car and you miss the car up ahead that just spun, well, that is going to be a major problem very fast. The other, and most tauted, reason for looking ahead is that we naturally tend to end up where we are looking. I.e, if you start to spin and focus intently on the wall you don’t want to hit, you will tend to steer the car directly towards the wall. Obviously this example is a bit extreme, but the same argument applies to your basic line. Advocates of looking ahead cite your “hands following your eyes” as the reason to look ahead.

Why I Look 10 Feet in Front of Me
I actually do not follow common doctrine as far as where I look. I effectively play a high-speed version of connect-the-dots, literally looking and driving from one reference point to the next. In a corner, I’ll look for my brake point, then look for my apex, then look for my track out. The difference between this and common wisdom is that with the “Look Ahead” technique, you are looking at or past your track out point as soon as you hit your turn-in point.

Looking at each reference point along the way works for me because it tells me NOW and far more precisely how my Line is at any given point in a corner. If I know where I need to apex corner X and I see that I’m hitting the apex early or late, I can start making the necessary corrections NOW. This helps keep me out of trouble, and can prevent having to make more dire and drastic corrections later on. Read the rest of this entry »

Just about every form of racing involves some sort of manipulation of a transmission. The transimission is simply a set of gears that turns the rotation of your engine into the rotation of your drive wheels. Every car has a transmission, as without a transmission you are just revving an engine that isn’t attached to anything.

Why Do We Need Multiple Gears?
This is an important question. In short, there is a set range of rpms that your car’s engine will operate in. Usually this would be an idle of just under 1000rpm to around 6000-7000rpm (though different engines have different redlines). Additionally, every engine will produce the most power, torque, and efficiency in a smaller segment of its rev range. I.e., for my Miata, I get all of my power starting around 4500 rpm and going up to the redline of 7000rpm.

Different gears allow the engine be able to operate in its optimum rev range at a wide variety of speeds. Think of how a bicycle works, and you should see that the same applies to cars and car engines. The engine on a bicycle (your legs) can only turn at a relatively small range of rotations (your pedal strokes/minute). If you only had 1 gear, you wouldn’t be able to ride your bike very well. You would either have no power at low speeds, in exchange for a faster top speed, or lots of power at low speed by no ability to go fast as your legs couldn’t move fast enough. Having multiple gears (over 20 in modern bikes) lets you keep you legs moving at their optimum rate over a larger range of speeds. The same holds true for cars, but can be accomplished with only 5 or 6 gears.

What is a Clutch and Why Do We Need it?
A clutch is simply a means to disengage the engine from the drive wheels. It is needed because a gasoline engine cannot go down to 0 rpm without stalling. As such, you need a way to introduce slip in the drivetrain so that when you’re wheels are at 0 rpm (stopped at a light, for instance), you can gradually bring them up to the same speed as the engine.

Why Bother with a Manual Transmission?
This also is an important question. For most people driving to and from work, they don’t care what gear their car is in as long as the car moves like it is supposed to. This mentality does not work when trying to extract maximum performance from a car. As a driver, you want to use the gear that puts the engine in its optimum rev range for any particular corner or situation. Automatics can do this to a degree, but they do not have the foresight to downshift before a corner and hold that gear throughout the corner.

Holding a gear in a corner is very important on the track because it lets you be smooth in your throttle application. Think of what happens when you get on the throttle in a corner - you want to slowly and smoothly apply power to gradually shift the weight onto the rear tires. If you give too much gas too suddenly, the car can spin. Now imagine what happens with an automatic transmission: you go into a corner, slowly give the car more gas, then the transmission realizes it needs to down shift. Now the tranny downshifts violently, the car lurches, and all of that smoothness you are trying to extract goes right out the window. Worst case scenario: you spin.

The Engagement Point and How to Make Your Car Move
Thats all well and good, you say, but I just want to make my car move. So, here is how you do it: press the clutch pedal IN, which disengages the engine from the drivetrain. Now you can select whichever gear you want using the shifter. Put the shifter into 1st gear. Now slowly begin releasing the clutch pedal. At a certain point, called the engagment point, the clutch disc will begin to touch the flywheel of the engine. When it does, power will be transferred to your wheels and the car will begin to move forward. Make sure you hold the clutch at the engagement point for a few seconds to get the car slowly and smoothly up to speed, otherwise you will either stall the car or screech your tires as you accelerate the wheels instantaneously up to speed.

In its simplest form, think of 2 spinning discs touching each other. The flywheel is connected to the engine, and the clutch to the rest of the drivetrain. As you push in the clutch pedal, the clutch disc moves away from the flywheel, allowing slip into the drivetrain. This point is crucial to being smooth - without holding the clutch pedal at the engagement point for a little bit, you are just slamming the 2 discs together. If they aren’t moving at exactly the same speed, there will be much lurking and bucking as the engine and drivetrain are instantly snapped to the correct speed.

A crucial step in driving consistently around a track is being able to find and utilize reference points. Reference points are simply things on the track that you can easily find again and again that tell you where your turn in, apex, and track out points are. Sounds simple enough, but it can take longer than you’d think to find suitable reference points to let you be consistent. The most important thing to remember is that THERE IS NO WRONG REFERENCE POINT. By that I mean any reference point that YOU can find and use is the best reference point for you. If there is a dead fly right at an apex and you can spot it on every lap, that is a better reference point than a giant boulder that you never see.

Consistency Rules
Reference points are the key to being consistent because they provide a definitive measurement of where to make your inputs. Going by “feel” will get you close, but virtually everyone will benefit from the extra refinement of having a solid point at which to make any given input. Even the top-level pros are constantly scanning for and using reference points everywhere. Particularly as your speed increases, feel becomes a less and less precise measure of where to make your inputs. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the biggest problems I see when instructing students on a racetrack is that they will enter corners fast enough that they cannot slow down in the corner itself. The issue is that when you push the envelope enough, you risk spinning from either lift-throttle oversteer or brake oversteer. The threshold for either brake or lift-throttle oversteer is MUCH lower than the ultimate cornering capability of a car, and that can get people into trouble. Its not that my students intend to take these risks, they simply don’t have the exposure or experience to realize the precipitous position that they can put themselves in.

The typical scenario is I have a fast student rapidly approaching a much slower student. The fast student enters a corner at his usual pace and rapdily gains on the slower student, forcing the faster student to slow down to avoid a collision. I’m aware of the dangers that this presents and always warn my faster student well in advance to slow down and give the slower car more room.

To drive the point home, I always explain a situation I had several seasons ago. I was driving at Watkins Glen, and was very fast through the right-hand sweeper just after the chicane. There was a slower car much farther in front of me, far enough in front that I thought I would catch him on the straight, not in the corner. So I went balls-to-the-wall through the right hander and, sure enough, quickly found myself right on his tail. Now I was trouble: If I’d have lifted, I’d have spun. If I’d have braked, I’d have spun. And if I continued on the path I was on, I’d smashed into this car. And because I had banked on using the entire track, I couldn’t really use my standard straighten-the-wheel-and-get-on-the-brakes technique to slow down, as that would have taken me off the track into the wall. Fortunately, I was able to lift off the throttle and straighten the wheel enough to not hit the car without spinning.

This just reinforces the dangers of committing to a corner. There is nothing wrong with going all-out in a corner, but make absolutely sure that once you cross that point of no return you can make it all the way through the corner without incident.

Most people will naturally take evasive action when they begin to spin, or to avoid an accident. But after these efforts have failed, most people simply give up and let the car take them for a ride. This tendency is extremely dangerous, and can cause far more damage and injury than the initial inicident. The golden rule is that you MUST remember is that YOU ARE NOT DONE DRIVING UNTIL YOUR CAR HAS COME TO A COMPLETE STOP. Read that golden rule again. Once it sinks in, then we can move on.

The idea behind the golden rule is that 1) your car can continue to hit things until your car is no longer in motion, and 2) you will always have some input you can do to try and avoid hitting things, even while spinning. I’ll tell you a few anecdotes to drive this point home.

The Wayward Minivan Incident
A couple of summers ago, I saw an accident in my home town. There was an intersection with a delayed green, and someone making a left turned after the other direction got a green. A minivan going straight hit the turning car. This accident stands out for me not because of what happened before the accident, but because of what happened after the accident. The minivan was probably going 15 mph when it struck the car. The impact was pretty mundane by accident standards, and most of the minivan’s energy and forward momentum dissipated when the cars hit. But after the impact, the minivan continued rolling through the intersection at 2 mph until it bumped into the curb on the far side of the intersection. The impact was definitely not hard enough to take out the braking system, and the driver was not left unconcious. This means that after the initial impact, the driver stopped driving. Fortunately, there was no additional casualty as a result, but things could easily have been different. What if a child was standing in road? What if there was no curb? What if the edge of the road was a cliff? All these things could have become catastrophic very fast, all because the minivan driver gave up instead of hitting the brake pedal. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve always been a fan of keeping things simple and accessible, so I’ve done you the favor of making this page with links to all our articles on performance driving and The Line.

The Line
The Line, Part 1: The Basics
The Line, Part 2: The Line v. Horsepower
The Line, Part 3: The 3 Stages of a Turn - Turn-in, Apex, Track-out
The Line, Part 4: Accelerating Out of a Turn
The Line, Part 5: Trailbraking
The Line, Part 6: Looking Ahead - The Compromise Corner
The Line, Part 7: Banked Corners
The Line, Part 8: The Double Apex Corner
The Line, Part 9: The Rain Line
The Line, Part 10: The Racing Line
The Line, Part 11: Is There Really Only 1 Best Line?
The Line, Part 12: Is a Clean Line Always Fastest?
The Line, Part 13: The Line and the Street (added June 4, 2008)

Techniques and Maneuvers
The Friction Circle
Understeer, Oversteer, and 4 Wheel Drift
Indepth Oversteer: Different types of oversteer and how to correct them
Threshold Braking
How to Brake in a Corner
Winter Fun - The Pendulum Turn

The first thing to remember is that NOTHING CHANGES WHEN YOU LEAVE THE TRACK. All of the things you’ve learned about the Line still hold true on the street. The only thing different is that because you are going so much slower on the street, you don’t NEED to drive on the line to keep from flying off the road.

The Line IS Useful on the Road
The Line can be useful even on the road. Why? Because it lets you drive a given speed with the least amount of lateral acceleration. This can be useful if you are driving your grandmother around and don’t want to slow down to 20mph at every corner so you don’t scare her. Or if you have a dog and don’t want it to slide around on those slippery leather seats you have. Or if you are moving something, and don’t want your load to shift mid corner. Or if it is slippey and your tires are terrible. Or … just about any other situation you can imagine…

Knowing Line theory is also useful for recognizing how obstacles will changes your line through a corner. If you have to go around a pothole mid corner, that will change how much turning you need to do in the second part of the corner.

Speed Changes Things
Driving the theoretical Line through a corner is much different at 4/10s than at 10/10. At 4/10s, you won’t have the speed or weight shifts due to power/braking to let your momentum carry you through the line. Instead, you will need to let the car drift onto the proper line with steering inputs. While not a 100% faithful representation of what the car would do at 10/10ths, it nonetheless lets you practice finding the right line and, more importantly, analyzing how well you are maintaining the line in question - it lets you practice looking for problem signs EARLY. Read the rest of this entry »

First of all, yes, there is a different technique for driving on the street with racing brake pads. General braking technique doesn’t change, for the most part. But, there are a few things that you should do, and a few things you should not to, to help keep your racing brake pads happy.

Why Does it Matter? - Different Operating Temperatures for Racing Brake Pads
The whole reason why there is an issue with driving on the street with racing brake pads is because race pads are designed to operate in a much hotter temperature range than normal street tires. In regular street driving (e.g., when your mother drives to the store), braking is mild and spaced far apart. That means that there is very little heat generated each time she stops, and enough time in between stops that the brakes can cool down sufficiently. Thus, street pads are designed to operate in a much cooler temperature range, since the pads are never heated up on the street.

Now think of what your braking looks like on the track: 1) full acceleration until the last possible second, 2) full braking, 3) full acceleration until the last possible second, 4) full braking. Repeat for 20 minutes. Needless to say, braking so hard so often generates a LOT of heat - so much, in fact, that if you use street pads, you will overheat them and then you’ll have no brakes. That would be bad. So, instead you want to use a compound designed to work in a much hotter temperature range, something like Hawk Blues or Carbotech XP8 or AX6 pads. Read the rest of this entry »

As Clint reported, our ice racing season started this past Sunday. I found it interesting to see how my dry-weather track experience would help me on the ice. Overall, the body of technique is more or less the same. Basic concepts of The Line and car control apply on any surface, in any car, and I certainly made good use of both during the races.

The Line
All of my track experience regarding finding the best line really paid off. The key to driving any stretch of pavement (or ice, in this case) is figuring out which line to take. For most corners, I found that the traditional line worked best, which wasn’t that surprising. What amazed me was how far down the straights I could feel the affects of different lines. Because turning is such a long process on the ice, if your car is not pointing exactly where you want it to be at track out, you need to lift off the power for a LONG time in order to rotate the car sufficiently. This problem could be compounded by a lack of traction at the track out point, making rotation even more difficult.

Most competitors recommended looking for traction, and taking whatever line coincides with the highest areas of traction. I actually found that this was not the best approach, at least not for the course we ran on Sunday. As a general rule, and certainly as the day wore on, there was more traction on the outside of the corners, and less at the apex. But, if I took a rimshot, I would yield the inside line to one of my competitors and they would get by me. So I actually found the best approach was to go slower through the inside, making sure to hit the apex and close off any daylight for the other racers.

Racing Mindset
The biggest shock to me was getting into the racing mindset. At SCDA track days, there is no problem getting passed, and I always try and get out of the way of faster, higher horsepower cars. This of course is exactly the opposite of what you want to do during a race, so it took a few laps to adjust to ignoring whoever was on my tail.

Overall, probably the most important thing to do while ice racing is damage control. By that I mean both controlling your car so it doesn’t hit a competitor, and so that you don’t fly off of the course and get stuck. This involves assessing your entry speed and changing conditions of each corner, and entering damage control mode as soon as you realize that you are going too hot. I had a few instances where, early on, I realized I was carrying way too much speed into the corner. I then immediately began to scrub speed and do what I could to keep my car on the track, even if it meant a very slow exit speed. Any exit speed is better than getting stuck in a snow bank, which would give you no exit speed at all. This skill is absolutely critical, as the longer you take to realize you are too hot, the less time and distance you have to fix your mistake and the more likely you are to leave the track.

Common wisdom has held that you will always be faster around a track if you are not skidding. I.e., as soon as even 1 wheel loses some traction, you are going slower than you could be. On it’s face, this seems to make sense. After all, you should be faster when you are working within the limits of your tires.

But I have found that this principle does not always hold true. Sometimes, a “sloppy” line, one where you are understeering, oversteering, or drifting, can be faster. Clint has been saying this for a long time. He claims that in many places on NHIS, he feels faster in his Protege if he drifts the car through the corner rather than go slow in, fast out.

At my last few SCDA track day, I played around with a sloppier line through Corner 2b of NHIS. During my other sessions, I was hitting about 6700 RPM right when breaking going into Turn 3. When I went into 2b hotter, using the throttle to hold the tail out ever so slightly, and generally feeling slightly beyond the grip of all 4 tires, I found that I was going into Turn 3 at about 7100 RPM (yes Miata’s redline at 7000 RPM, but the rev limiter doesn’t kick in until about 7400 RPM - I’m using all of those revs!). That is a noticeable increase in speed!

Why might this be? Let’s look at a few factors: Read the rest of this entry »