Ultimate Speed Secrets

by Ross Bentley

  Program all these feelings, these attitudes, states of mind, beliefs relaxed but intense. Calm but energized. Psyched up but in control. Focused but aware.

  See, hear, and feel yourself performing better than you ever have. And notice the result—winning—something you want more than anything else in the world but knowing it was your performance that produced the result.

  Write down on a piece of paper what success in racing means to you. What do you want to achieve? How do you want to feel? For some drivers, becoming world champion is the only objective. For others, it’s to get paid to race cars, no matter what type or level. Others still only want to race for the pure enjoyment of it, and whether they race at the amateur club level or make it in professional racing does not matter.

  Then write down why you want to achieve that level of success. Is it to make lots of money, have lots of fame, feel good about yourself, for the sense of accomplishment, to fulfill the dreams of a parent, for the thrill of controlling a car at speed, to beat other drivers, or because you haven’t found anything else you are really good at?

  The point is, the reason doesn’t matter. One reason is not any better than another. The key is to know why for your own personal motivation. The more honest you are with yourself, the more effective this information will be to your motivation level. When you need that little pick-me-up, focus on your ideal level of success and the reasons you want them to come to fruition.

  As I mentioned, success and feelings of success lead to further success. Take some time to recall and write down at least three of the best performances of your life. These do not have to have anything to do with racing or have resulted in a victory or high grade. They can be how you performed in school, in another sport, something you accomplished in a job, or about a relationship. Make note of how you felt before, during and after these performances. Recall every detail you can about them. Relive them and write them down. Then, go back and read them every now and then, or update them with new experiences.

  Every race driver makes errors. Being able to recognize and then analyze your errors are important. Until you can do that, you cannot even begin to correct them and improve. I’m not suggesting that you dwell on them, but here are a few of the most common ones so that you might be able to recognize some of your errors a little earlier.

  I know this part really well. I’ve made enough errors myself. In fact, I think one of the things that separates a good driver from a not-so-good driver is that the good driver has made more errors and learned from them. I know that I can consistently push closer to the limit than some less-experienced drivers, simply because I’ve gone beyond the limit enough to know how to survive. I know how to recover from a mistake. That only comes with experience.

  Probably the most common error for race drivers of all levels is turning into the corner too early, before reaching the ideal turn-in point (see Illustration 30-1). Ultimately, this will result in an early apex and running out of track on the exit. This means to avoid running off the track, you will have to ease off the throttle to tighten up the corner and regain the ideal line. Obviously, this is going to hurt your straightaway speed. The trick to correcting this error is to use an easy-to-identify turn-in point, know exactly where the apex and exit points are, and be able to see them in your head before getting there.

  Often, turning in too soon is caused by braking too early. A driver brakes too early, slows the car down to the speed he thinks he should take the corner at 10 feet before the turn-in point, and then turns. Obviously, the easiest way to cure this problem is simply brake a little later.

  Another common error, with the same result, is turning into the corner too quickly or sharply. What happens is you turn in at the correct point, but turn so sharply that it results in an early apex again. The correction is in knowing in your head where the apex and exit points are before you begin to turn in. That, and learning to turn the steering wheel slower.

  As I mentioned earlier, using all of the road on the exit is important; however, it can be misleading if you drive to the edge without having the speed to force the car out there. When you drive to the edge of the track surface for the sake of driving the ideal line, you fool yourself into believing you are going as fast as you can because you don’t have any more room. Instead, sometimes, hold the car as tight as possible (without scrubbing speed or “pinching” it) coming out of the corner so you have an accurate feel of where that speed takes the car. Then, once you feel you are using all the speed and track, you can work on letting the car run free out to the exit point again.

  Many small errors can result in a spin, an off-track excursion, or a crash. Most are caused by a lapse in concentration, leading to an error with the controls (usually upsetting the balance, and therefore traction, of the car) or a misjudgment in speed or positioning. The result of the error is usually determined by how calm you stay and your experience. Learn from your errors.

  If the car should start to spin (severe oversteer), once you correct the first slide, be ready for one in the opposite direction caused by over-correcting. If it happens, gently correct for it by looking and steering where you want to go and smoothly try to ease the speed down until you get the car under control again.

  As you know, weight transfer has a great influence on how your car behaves in a skid or slide. Smoothly controlling that weight transfer is the real key to controlling a spin. As this is an oversteer situation, just look and steer where you want the car to go.

  If the car begins to spin and you can’t control it, you are going to spin out completely. Nothing wrong with that, if you stay relaxed, watch where you are going, depress the clutch and lock up the brakes, and don’t hit anything. That is about all you can do, besides avoiding the spin in the first place.

  In fact, many believe this is the best way to really find out if you’re driving the limit. So, if you do spin, learn from it.

  If you spin, you should immediately hit the brakes, locking them up. This will cause the car to continue in the general direction it was heading before locking the brakes, while scrubbing off speed. At the same time, try to depress the clutch and keep the engine running by blipping the throttle. It is hoped you’ll be able to drive away after the spin. Remember the saying, “Spin, both feet in,” on the clutch and brake pedals.

  ILLUSTRATION 30-1 Here’s an example of what happens when you turn in too early for a corner. You end up with an early apex and then run out of track at the exit. Of course, if you realize you turned in and apexed early, you can try to slow down gently (remember what happens if you lift off the throttle suddenly while turning) and tighten your radius to get back on line.

  ILLUSTRATION 30-2 If you brake too late or if you are running out of brakes and you find yourself entering a corner too fast, aim the car for a very early apex. This effectively lengthens the distance you have for slowing the car.

  And no matter how bad it seems, always look where you want to go. Never give up trying to regain control.

  In all the excitement of a spin, drivers will often stall the engine when trying to get going again. Take your time, look around to avoid being hit (and watch for signals from the turn marshals), and get going again, using lots of engine revs. Remember your tires may have stones and pebbles stuck to them, severely reducing their grip. So take your time until they clean off, otherwise you’ll find yourself spinning again.

  On an oval, once you’ve reached the point in a slide where there is no way you’re going to be able to correct it, you have to let it go. If you continue trying to correct it, you will probably spin or drive straight into the wall. You’re better off admitting you’re going to spin, and let it. It will most likely spin down to the bottom of the track.

  What if you enter a turn slightly too fast to the point where it is impossible to make the car turn in properly? Most drivers’ reaction is to continue braking. But you’ll actually have a much better chance of making the corner if you ease off the brakes slightly. Why? For two reasons:

&n
bsp; • The car is better balanced (not too much forward weight transfer), which allows all four tires to work on getting the car around the corner, instead of having the fronts overloaded.

  • Your concentration and attention is on controlling the car at the traction limit as opposed to “getting the car slowed down” or “surviving.”

  Believe it or not, knowing and using this plan will do more for making you go faster than many other “tricks.” You may discover the car will actually go around the corner faster than you thought.

  As well, if you are entering a turn too fast (probably because you left your braking way too late), aim for an early apex. This allows you more straight-line braking time to slow the car.

  If you run out of track on the exit of a corner (probably due to an early turn-in and apex), you may drop a couple of wheels into the dirt off the edge of the track. If you do, the first thing to do is straighten the front wheels and drive straight ahead, even if it means driving toward a wall for a few seconds. What this does is allows you time to get the car slowed down and back under control.

  If you try to steer the car back on the track immediately, you will most likely end up with the two front wheels back on the pavement and only one rear on. This usually results in a quick spin back across the track, quite often into another car. Or, if the wheels catch the edge of the pavement at the wrong angle, it may actually “trip” the car, causing it to roll over. Again, keep the front wheels pointing straight until you get the car back in control. Don’t panic and “jerk” the car back on the track. It won’t work.

  MINIMIZING ERRORS

  As I talked about in Chapter 22, experienced drivers don’t typically make any fewer mistakes than inexperienced drivers; they simply recognize them sooner due to taking in more sensory input, and therefore, reference points, and react to them sooner and in a more subtle way. In other words, they minimize errors.

  So the more reference points you have around a track, the fewer errors you will appear to make. In fact, you may not even notice the errors yourself; you seem to correct them before they even occur.

  This also applies to decision making. If you are making a financial investment, are you more likely to make the right decision if you have more information? Absolutely. The same thing applies to racing wheel to wheel. If you are heading into a turn in a pack of cars, the more information you have, the better your passing decisions are going to be. There are top-level professional drivers who have reputations for making bad decisions, all because they are lacking some little piece of information. For some reason, they are missing some sensory input.

  Just because a driver has more experience doesn’t automatically mean that he has more reference points, and therefore is better at minimizing the effects of his errors, or that inexperienced drivers have fewer reference points. This is more just a trend, for as a driver gains experience, the driver usually gets better at absorbing information to input into his or her brain/computer. But, believe me, it is not always the case. I have seen some novices who are better at taking in information than other drivers who have been at it for 20 years.

  SPEED SECRET

  The more reference points you have, the less errors you will appear to make.

  ILLUSTRATION 30-3 The more reference points—the more sensory input—you have, the earlier and more subtle your error corrections will be. When faced with the same section of track, two drivers may not perceive or pick up the same amount of references. Notice how much more information the driver in the upper scene is taking in than the driver in the bottom scene.

  Let’s try to tie all this altogether. Where and how does a driver acquire more reference points? Is it only through more experience, more seat time? Well, that usually helps. But a driver can speed up the process. How? Simply by focusing on it. By practicing being more sensitive. By increasing the quality and quantity of sensory input.

  Of course, I’m talking once again about doing Sensory Input Sessions. Most drivers have never done these. The ones that have often end up with a reputation for being very fast, not making mistakes, and being great test drivers because of their sensitive and accurate feedback on what the car is doing. The ones that don’t do these, well, you know what their reputation is.

  Let’s go back to the most common—“the classic”—error made by race drivers: apexing a corner too early. This is caused by either turning in too early or too abruptly. In either case, the ultimate result is a line that ends up with your car running out of track at the exit point and either dropping wheels off the outside of the track, spinning back across the track (when the driver makes a last second correction by turning the steering wheel more), or hitting the wall. That is, unless you make a correction in the middle of corner. Which shouldn’t be too difficult if you recognize the problem early enough.

  The problem is that some drivers, way more than I think should ever do this, either do not recognize the error soon enough, or don’t know how to correct it. Which is surprising, considering how easy it is to do both, recognize and correct it.

  If your car is against the inside of the corner before the apex, you have made an error and have early apexed. The cure is simple: an adjustment in speed or steering is all that is required. If you are normally at full throttle and unwinding the steering wheel at the apex, then you are going to have to ease up on the throttle slightly (a big lift is probably going to make the car spin) and hold or tighten the radius until you get back on your normal, ideal line.

  Of course, this is assuming that you know exactly where the apex of the corner is. If not, then you had better get a well-defined and recognizable apex reference point. If you don’t already have one for every corner on the track, that may be the root cause of an early turn-in. In this case, it is a matter of not knowing exactly where you are going. The old saying, “You’re never going to get somewhere if you don’t know where it is you’re going,” certainly applies to this situation.

  Again, this is why having as many easily recognizable reference points as possible is so critical, and that comes from absorbing them through your senses during practice.

  SPEED SECRET

  Minimize errors through maximizing sensory input.

  One of the most frustrating things I see race drivers do is assume that if something doesn’t work once, that it will never work. It’s a common “error.”

  Let’s say you think that you can carry a bit more speed—1 or 2 miles per hour more—into Turn 6 and still get great acceleration out of the corner. You know this will make a significant improvement in your lap times. You head out onto the track, and after a couple of laps you carry a bit more speed into the turn, the car understeers a little wide, and you can’t get the car down to the apex. Your conclusion is that the car cannot handle that little bit more speed, and you go back to your original corner-entry speed.

  Sound familiar? I bet it does. And no, this conclusion is not made at the conscious level but at the subconscious level. You may not even be aware it is happening, but your sense of self-preservation will automatically adjust your speed back to the original “I won’t crash at this speed” corner entry.

  ILLUSTRATION 30-4 The three most common errors made at turn-in: turning in too late (the yellow-striped line), turning in too early (the blue-shaded line), and turning in too abruptly from the right spot. The keys to eliminating or minimizing these errors are to have a strong mental image of the turn-in point and the turn-in steering motion, as well as looking around the corner and not just through it.

  ILLUSTRATION 30-5 A common error that many drivers make is “crabbing” into the corner, easing the car away from the edge of the track prior to turning in. That’s cheating, and it’s going to cost you. Be aware if your car is right against the track edge at your turn-in point.

  In many cases, the problem is not the added speed but rather a lack of technique adjustment to go along with the speed. In this case, perhaps if you had trail-braked a little more as you carried more speed into the turn, the car may hav
e rotated toward the apex nicely, and you would have been much quicker. In fact, sometimes, when drivers work to carry more speed into a corner, they simply ease off the brakes earlier. They trail brake less. Yes, that will result in more corner-entry speed, but without the ideal amount of trail braking, the car may not handle it.

  It may be a case of blaming the wrong “cause.”

  So, just because you can’t make a small increase in speed seem to work, don’t discount it entirely. Rethink how you approach that section of the track. Maybe, by altering your technique slightly, you can make the car stick with the added speed.

  Remember the four stages I mentioned earlier: the line, corner exit, corner entry, and midcorner. As your corner-entry speed increases, you may need to alter your line, for example.

  SPEED SECRET

  Just because a change doesn’t work the first time, rethink and retry it again. Alter your technique to make the increase in speed work.