Rocky your observation brings up an interesting issue. While we have all
seen cars on a warm up lap doing the "snake dance" as Carroll Smith
referred to it he also said that it was a complee waste of time and was
dangerous too.
I am not sure what I think about it. It seems to me that when driving a
low powered and "relatively" heavy car like a sports car or sedan I would
agree with him. However, on vehicles with much better power-to-weight (my
F500 or a kart for instance) I think I can feel some "useable" heat getting
put into the rear tires at least but not really in the fronts.
While of course it could be argued that "any" heat is better than none at
the start I wonder if Smith is right about the trade off when factoring
safety with cars behind you and the possiblilty of being too "exhubrient"
while still on cold tires while trying to put heat in them. I've spun my
F500 sideways in pit lane just heading out to the track for a practice
session just getting on the gas!
I also try and get the brakes up to temp but of course the slowing.
speeding up and braking while on the pace lap while trying to get a little
heat in runs the risk of getting hit in the rear by some driver not paying
attention.
>Next session, waggle the car back and forth for a lap and it will be mostly
>gone. We used to do that to warm up the tires (we still do, actually). Now
>we do it to clean off the tires too.
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