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Line and Smoothness

To: uunet!alliant.com!british-cars@uunet.UU.NET
Subject: Line and Smoothness
From: mit-eddie!sli.com!rdh@EDDIE.MIT.EDU (Robert D. Houk)
Date: Fri, 18 May 90 11:26:04 EDT
           I seem to think that the more conventional wisdom calls for
           late-apex method with lots of drifts and corrections.  

   Late apex, yes; lots of drifts and corrections, I don't
   think so.  That is, as I see it, if I have to correct in
   a turn it means I haven't taken it right in the first 
   place (or, with road racing in mind, that there's something
   in the turn that I have to correct *for*).  It seems to me
   that lots of drifts in a turn guarantee a slow time, because
   you're going to be hunting on either side of the limits of
   adhesion and the average will be lower than just finding it
   and sticking with it.

I remember a video by, I think, Mario Andretti (sp?), and he said (in a
voice-over of a video shot of him flying around some corner, hands con-
stantly "twitching to and fro") something to the effect that if you're
not constantly "correcting" for having "pushed" just a little too hard,
then you're not pushing hard enough [to *WIN*, anyways]. Of course, you
have to be REAL good to push "just enough too much" to be able to re-
cover control, rather than killing yourself!

Possibly a perfectly circular or "regular" corner you could take in a
perfect smooth 100.00% manner, but in real life . . .

                                        -RDH



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