Last week a friend of mine stopped over. He's a big NASCAR fan. He loves
to watch those guys, soak up all the lingo from the television coverage,
and spew terms like "loose" and "tight" and "wedge" and so on. Despite
being an extremely intelligent guy with a pretty hefty physics
education, among other things (he's currently a junior high school
science teacher), and soaking his brain as I mentioned, he has a
puzzling lack of grasp of vehicle dynamics.
As we were hanging around, conversation turned to the oval at
Indianapolis Raceway Park. There was some discussion about the best way
around the place, so, I thought, alright, let's try something. I cranked
up the NASCAR Racing 1999 sim, set up the wheel, and loaded IRP along
with the NASCAR WC carset. I did about 10 or 20 laps to illustrate what
I'd been saying, then turned it over to my friend.
It was ugly. A demonstration of finesse and car control, this was not.
He was hacking the throttle and brakes on and off, almost at random, or
at least so it seemed. The steering wheel was being used as some sort of
saw, it appeared. He was way slow and out of control at the same time. I
tried to explain some stuff. I coached him on the corner entry, braking
and turn in. Then I took over and told him to pay attention to how the
wheel was moving through the corners. I turned it over to him and he
resumed exactly what he'd been doing. Enter the corner. Crank the wheel
almost to full lock. Eventually the over worked tires would get some
grip and turn the car, he'd suddenly feel like the car was turning too
far, and for some inexplicable reason, while still in mid-corner, would
jerk the wheel back to dead center. Then, realizing the car was heading
for the wall again, jerking the wheel back to pretty much full lock
again. This would continue through the corner, where he would exit the
corner by basically hammering the throttle, and respond to the car
trying to slam the wall coming on to the straight by cranking the wheel
left for all it was worth, usually understeering right into the wall and
ricocheting.
I tried explaining slip angle and weight transfer and all that jazz. I
kept prompting, "smooth, smooth, quit hacking and chopping around the
corner...too much steering...too much steering". It was useless. It
wasn't sinking in, no matter how many times and how many different ways
I said it. Good grief.
While I watched, I contemplated the mystery of how such a bright guy
could be so completely oblivious to the most basic ideas here,
especially considering that I was practically pounding him over the head
with it. I also thought that it was a good thing that he is probably
unlikely to ever strap himself into a real racing car. Somebody earlier
in this thread said something about the factor of talent. He was the
Antitalent.
After a bit of this, he stopped and asked how to get into the car setup
page. I showed him. Once there, I asked what he wanted. He said
something about wanting to get the front end working better, it was
pushing too much. I'm not certain now, but I may have actually
whimpered. I tried to tell him there was nothing wrong with the setup,
the problem was how he was driving it, but he kept saying stuff like
"hey, I'm experimenting! I need to adjust the setup to me".
I've been thinking about this episode as I read the current discussion
thread.
JLE
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