One more note I dont see here (now that my computers running again....)
Corners you have trouble with... go out and corner work at them. Its
amazing what you can see people doing from a corner workers point of view.
Sometimes it takes a lot of the mystery out of a corner.
Tom
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave Riddle" <dave@microworks.net>
To: <fot@autox.team.net>
Sent: Friday, November 07, 2003 11:40 PM
Subject: RE: Learning to Drive
> At 09:47 PM 11/7/2003, Bill Babcock wrote:
> >Oh, one more thing, a late apex is safer, a slightly earlier one is
> >generally faster if you're putting the car close to the limit.
>
> That's funny and convey's what I always tell students that show an
> appititude (those without ability I don't waste the time telling) "you
want
> to late apex as early as you can". It is hard to describe and even harder
> to do but the first time you actually "do it" it is like a little light
> goes off. Sometimes it is really only a way of visualizing a corner and
> how you want to drive through it (notice I did not say around it).
>
> For example: If you ever drive the road course at Phoenix International
> (which I don't really like myself - it is boring) you will be told that T2
> is a late apex corner, and it is. You need to go so deep into the corner
> that you think you have driven right past it and could never get the car
> rotated. Going into that corner I am looking so far through it and at T3
> that I can imagine seeing a "channel" magically appear as the curbing of
T2
> on drivers left falls away to reveal the second bit of curbing of T3 on
> drivers right (I completely look past the first bit of the curbing of
> T3). I have walked the track and from no vantage point does it really
> "look" like that, but in my minds eye I can visualize that it does exist
> and I feel like Moses parting the Red Sea. This lets me bring the power on
> earlier than other guys can and like Bill mentions I feel I can "hustle"
> the car though the corner faster.
>
> I tried to help a fairly new Spec Racer Ford guy look at that corner that
> way and he could only see it with his eyes not with his brain. He came
> back in and said "I thought you said the corner opens up". It does, but
> you have to have the ability to imagine and view the geometry of how the
> corners work together to "get it".
>
> So my advice would be to look at the track and it's corners as a whole to
> see how they work and then find the lines that tie the track
> together. Those lines are often times very different than what the
> "obvious" layout of the track is. Another saying I use with students is
to
> "drive the line not the track".
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