What is The Line?
The most important part of high performance driving is mastering The Line. In simple terms, The Line is the fastest route through any corner or group of turns. There is a Line through every highway ramp, and there is a Line around every racetrack. If you drive on this Line, you will be able to squeeze the most speed and performance out of your car. Every car from a Mitsubishi 3000GT or Dodge Stealth to a Mazda Miata to an F1 race car benefits from being driven on the line.

The best Line is one that allows you to turn the steering wheel the least. In more technical terms, you are trying to carve an arc through the corner with the largest radius possible. Think of it this way: imagine you are driving in a circle in a deserted parking lot. You have the steering wheel turned as far to the right as it will go. The circle you are going in is very small, and it has a very small radius. You can probably go no more than about 20MPH before you exceed your tires’ grip and the circle becomes larger. Now imagine that instead of turning the wheel all the way to the right, you turn it ½ way to the right. The circle you are driving in now is much larger than your previous circle, but your maximum speed is also significantly higher.

Finding The Line
Great, you say. Now I’m dizzy from driving around in circles. How does this apply to high performance driving?

Lets look at a simple corner and the benefits of a good Line should be more apparent. Imagine a wide 90 degree right-hand corner. Pretend you are on a racetrack and don’t have to worry about on-coming cars, so you can use the full width of the road.

One line you can take through the corner is to hug the right side of the road. This is the inside of the corner, and you have to turn very sharply to stay on this line. Because you have to turn the steering wheel so much, you can only maintain a slow speed through the corner. The radius of this line is very small. This is the Inside Line.

Another line you can take is to hug the left side of the road. This is outside of the corner, and you don’t have to turn nearly as sharply to stay on this line as you did when you were on the inside of the corner. Since you are turning the steering wheel less, you can maintain a higher speed through the corner. The radius of this line is bigger, but still not as big as it could be. This is the Outside Line.

The best line through this corner is one where you enter the corner on the left (outside) of the track, touch the right side of the track (inside) halfway through the corner, and then touch the left (outside) of the track at the end of the corner. This is a basic Outside-Inside-Outside Line. This Line is best because it allows you to complete the corner with the least amount of steering input. This Line yields the arc with the largest radius. Since you don’t have to turn as sharply as with either the Inside or Outside Line, you can maintain a much faster speed through the corner.

Why does The Line Matter?
That’s all well and good, you say, but why should I care about finding the best Line through a corner? You should care because finding the best (read “fastest”) Line allows you to drive faster everywhere, and we all want to drive as fast as we can, don’t we?

The first advantage of a good Line is that you can get through the corner faster. The less time you spend in a corner, the faster you will complete that part of the road. On a racetrack, this will lower your lap time.

The second, and most important, advantage of a good Line is Exit Speed. Exit speed is simply your speed when you leave a corner and enter a straightaway. Once on a straightaway, you can be on full throttle, accelerating hard to the next corner. The faster you are going when you get on the gas at the start of a straight, the faster you will be going at the end of that straight. More speed gets you through that section faster, and can also be fun in and of itself (but you already knew that!).