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.

Be Mindful of Lanes
The real world has lanes that people and the police expect you to adhere to. You cannot, for example, use the opposite lane on that favorite twisty of yours (at least not while anyone is looking). Think of this lane limitation as just making your available track that much narrower. Individual lanes are still wide enough that you can have meaningful left/right positioning in all but the largest tractor trailers. Use your individual lane markings as your track boundaries, and drive the line within that.

Play Around with Early and Late Apexes
Because you will be going slow on the streets, early apexing is not catastrophic like it is on a racetrack. Because you have this extra cushion, play around with apexing a corner very early and very late - see exactly how your line shifts in the second part of the corner, how much more or less steering you need to input as a result. For early apexing, watch how much extra turning you have to do to stay on the road. Now realize that if you were at full speed on a track, your car wouldn’t be able to turn that much and you’d be off the road (that will wake you up).

The Anti-Line
The traditional Line is of course outside-inside-outside. This maximizes the radius through the corner, and keeps lateral acceleration as low as possible for a given speed. But what if you want to maximize lateral acceleration? Say you just got new tires and you want to see how they do. You’d have to REALLY speed through a corner if you took a traditional line. But, if you took an inside-outside-inside line, you create a very sharp radius over a smaller area, and increase lateral acceleration for any given speed. Don’t go too hog wild - you do still need to make that turn before crossing the double yellow or leaving the road…

Highway Ramps
Highway ramps are the best place to play with the Line for a variety of reason. For one thing, there is usually just 1 lane, so you don’t have to contend with oncoming cars. There also shouldn’t be any pedestrians about, though you never know on any road. Additionally, different ramps can provide a series of turns, so you get to practice compromise corners as well. There are still speed limits and rules of the road on ramps too, so be it pays to be vigilant. Ask me how I know…

DISCLAIMER: MAKE SURE you are within your personal driving capabilities and the law when driving on the street. The PansyPatrol does not encourage or condone reckless or negligent driving on the part of our readers. The TRACK is where you should explore the limits of your car.