The 24 Hours of Lemons Forums → Bench Racing → My car is better than me
Help, I need an intervention.
How do I efficiently learn to drive faster and less asinine, using my eyes more, and hopefully without spending a fortune? Tips/tricks/recommendations? I feel like it's getting in the way of me making a better car, too.
Help, I need an intervention.
How do I efficiently learn to drive faster and less asinine, using my eyes more, and hopefully without spending a fortune? Tips/tricks/recommendations? I feel like it's getting in the way of me making a better car, too.
More seat time always helps and change as little as possible between races. The more time you are in the car the better, even if it is a parking lot auto-cross. It takes time to get comfortable with a car. We only run three races a year so you get rusty between races. This is just my opinion on the topic.
If you have a street car that is somewhat performance oriented you can sign up for some "track days" at various road race tracks around the country. Many have instructors who will drive you car first and then ride with you and coach you on how to drive better and faster. Depending on the track it can run from as little as $150-400 per day. It depends on the track, the organization running the event, and the day of the week.
Weekdays being cheaper.
I have seen some "Lemons" cars show up at these events but you do need to get the OK before hand and it helps if you can install a pass. seat and belts.
Help, I need an intervention.
How do I efficiently learn to drive faster and less asinine, using my eyes more, and hopefully without spending a fortune? Tips/tricks/recommendations? I feel like it's getting in the way of me making a better car, too.
Drive it... that or de-tune it until you can get better??? Is it tagged? In Md. it need be only 20 years for Historic. Our car is tagged... Fun to drive up and down 97. Lots of back roads up here in Brookeville to "test" things. While I couldn't make the test session at NJMP in May (Lemons race) the other teammates said it was well worth the price. If any of the Chump events have a practice day/race day do it. Not a ton of cars and you can drive at you own pace and pick it up when you feel better about it. Our best driver got his best time down to 1:41 and another driver cut almost 20 seconds off his time...
iRacing. It really forces you to use your eyes more, because that's about your only sensory input.
Instructed seat time helped me a lot to get the basics of performance driving to the point where I could be reasonably fast and consistent. I try to do a track weekend every month. I just got back from three days at Charlotte, AMP, and MIR. This will be my next track weekend at VIR:
https://www.motorsportreg.com/events/20 … ntent=html
I'm an HPDE instructor and doing track days with an instructor in the right seat I believe is enormously helpful. Everyone at any stage of driving experience will benefit from instruction. Including instructors.
There are things you can practice while daily driving. Things that will make you a better street driver too. Pushing your vision up the road, awareness of all the cars around you, anticipating what drivers may do, using your mirrors. Just keep remembering - these people around me are unaware, untrained and nuts (with some exceptions).
go karting regularly with people who are better than you
Read: Speed Secrets, Going Faster and High Performance Driving
Listen to Ross Bentley's podcasts and watch his webinars: https://speedsecrets.com/
Unpopular opinion...ride a motorcycle. Your situational awareness goes off the charts. Your understanding of traffic management is hyper-sensitive.
Unfortunately, you also learn to look where you plan to be so unless you have sliding tethers on your hans...big re-learning process.
Nahh the hans tethers aren't so bad, especially in a containment seat. Bikes are great for geting the apex sight picture in. But HPDE with an instructor will help huge.
Our last A&D was 10 SECONDS faster than us. He's only done Lemons and HPDE.
Unpopular opinion...ride a motorcycle. Your situational awareness goes off the charts. Your understanding of traffic management is hyper-sensitive.
Unfortunately, you also learn to look where you plan to be so unless you have sliding tethers on your hans...big re-learning process.
Hans doesn't cut back as much as I thought it would...we have a full containment seat, so there wasn't much moving the head around before anyway.
Our last A&D was 10 SECONDS faster than us. He's only done Lemons and HPDE.
I also find that having another driver, especially one unfamiliar with the car, beat you like a rented mule, shows you that it's not the car, it's you. BTDT, and it will make you better. Watch video of the faster driver, ask questions, and compare. I also agree that being instructed in an HPDE will help.
Suprised it hasnt been mentioned yet but DATA. I agree that getting more time on track (HPDE) and instruction will help. After that, the next step is data.
The setup we use at Charnal House;
Equipment:
1) 10hz bluetooth GPS (qstarz bt818). You need 10hz minimum to get meaningful data
2) Old Android cellphone with RaceChrono App
3) Ram Mount, holding cellphone in plain view of the driver.
How we use it:
When in car, the main thing to look at is the predictive split timer. This function compares your current lap to your best lap and predicts the outcome of the current lap. Green and "negative number" means you are currently going faster than your best lap. Red and positive number means you are currently going slower than your best lap.
Once you complete a turn (and safely on the straight), glance over at the split time (predictive). If its green and -0.7, that means your 7 tenths up on the best lap. After the next turn if it's green and -0.4, that means you just lost 3 tenths. Then while you're going down the straight, you try to figure out where you lost that 0.3 tenths, and make a mental note of that turn for your next lap.
By reviewing this data at each turn, you get instant feedback. Then through experimentation, you learn the fastest way around each turn.
after the session
Upload the data to the serious-racing.com website and you can now compare laps. For my team, we generally grab everyones single best lap and graph them together. From here you can quickly see and compare these three important points:
1) The line everyone is taking through the turns
2) The braking performance (deceleration rate and braking point)
3) The mid-corner speeds
^It is also possible to sync video of the fast lap with the data analysis. We don't often do this, but it can be useful to look at later.
If you review this data before your next session, and just make a couple mental notes, like "I need to apex later in T2" or "Try to brake harder and later at the end of the long straight", or "Bob is getting on the throttle sooner at turn 8 exit". Just focus on a couple small improvements each session. You could even write them on a sticky note and place it on the dashboard for your next session. The most important turns are the ones before the longest straights (for any track) - so work on these first.
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I am sure there are other apps and equipment which can be used, but these are kind of the "basics" of data analysis that we have been honing in on over the last few years.
Guildenstern wrote:Our last A&D was 10 SECONDS faster than us. He's only done Lemons and HPDE.
I also find that having another driver, especially one unfamiliar with the car, beat you like a rented mule, shows you that it's not the car, it's you. BTDT, and it will make you better. Watch video of the faster driver, ask questions, and compare. I also agree that being instructed in an HPDE will help.
Ben Dawson did that for us. Got in the car at Sears Point and turned laps 13 seconds faster than us. We watched the video over and over and a year later we matched his time.
go karting regularly with people who are better than you
Karting in general.
Much of what works in a kart, also works in a kar.
Conserving momentum, driving smooth, the correct line, slow down to go fast, patience.
I did a lot of K1 a while back. Seventh on the national top 100 list one year. I thought I knew how to drive a K1 kart.
One of the kids who worked there kept nagging me to take a lesson. They do private lessons in the morning before the store opens. "I was racing when your daddy was in diapers, what you going to teach me?"
I signed up anyway.
The 'kid', Logan Calvin, is no slouch in karts.
First session we did a lead and follow, then he got out and walked the track walls while I did some laps.
Logan was pointing at a spot on the track but I wasn't getting it.
Next time by, there were a couple small cones marking the line. Took me a couple laps to adjust to the new line then, a half second off my lap.
Move on to another section, Logan is standing on the wall at the apex and pointing to a spot.
Once again, I don't get it so next lap one cone appears about 18" off the wall.
I adjust to the new line and, another half second off my lap.
I thought I knew how to drive.
Works in the real world too. I ran my best laps ever at Big Willow, on a damp track, the next time we ran out there.
Karting.
Only issue with karts is lack of suspension, I kart and and try to do some of the same stuff as I d in a kart and dreaded suspension gets in the way.
I A&D's for Sputnik this weekend at Thompson, and Alex and I had the fastest average lap times in his Sentra. I'd say we're both "average" in terms of racing ability, at least compared to the other drivers at the event. The problem, though, with comparing lap times, is that there's so many other variables out there- close to a hundred of them, actually, at most races. ;-)
I do one or two Lemons races a year and, since having children, don't do anything else racing-related. But, as others have said, just upping your "street game" can help. And that doesn't mean flagrant violations of traffic laws. Drive an old, slow car, with a manual gearbox, and practice your situational awareness. Actually think about driving- don't daydream or listen to the radio.
The biggest thing for me is looking further ahead. I find its all too easy to focus on the car in front of you- and, paradoxically, the faster and more intense the situation, the greater the tendency to do that. But if one can push the focus to the next corner, and not the one the car is currently on, it becomes almost natural to have the car set up for that turn. My best laps were the ones where my eyes were already "watching" where the Sentra was going to be going through the next turn. Wherever your eyes go, that's where your car goes.
On the way back to MD from CT, I had 3 very close calls on the highway. One was a douchbag in a VW who cut me off, flicked me off, and brake checked me...another was a Civic who jerked in front of me with exactly 6 inches in front of my front bumper...and another was a Volvo doing at least a hundred ducking and weaving around me. I was in a '91 Suburban towing a camper. Driving on the track is safer than on the interstates, these days.
Autocross? It's cheap, easy on the car, and you can learn a lot. Most of the fastest guys that I know started in autocross.
Wherever your eyes go, that's where your car goes.
Amen and I teach this to all my HPDE students.
Driving on the track is safer than on the interstates.
I tell people this all the time who think racing is dangerous. On a race track, the cars are going in the same direction (usually!) and everyone is focused on nothing but driving (mostly!) vs. talking on a phone, texting, or whatever. I fell much safer with my fellow racers on track than I do driving to and from the tracks.
Does CMP allow instructors on testing day? If so, get a passenger seat in your car and I'll bring my communicator and ride right seat with you for a few sessions. I'm NASA certified if the track is one that cares about that sort of thing. We can even use my telemetry setup to see where time is on the table.
No passengers at CMP, we've asked about it before. They don't care if you're Ross Bentley.
That's too bad. Last weekend at Thompson they allowed instruction and we were able to do so with some of our veteran drivers who haven't had instruction in a long time and we were able to make some good improvements. It is also a huge help for noobs. I know I'm preaching to the choir here though.
We can ping Jay about it . I think that they assume that a Lemons car does not have equal safety equipment for the passenger, which is probably mostly true, although the old Duff car always had passenger gear because we used it for a lot of HPDE days.
If you want to do data logging, then testing days would be a good opportunity, especially if you can put an advanced driver in your car for a session. We've done analysis on race laps, but in a crowded Lemons field they can be much less useful because so much of what you are doing is dependent on traffic. Some of my best improvements have come from pulling logs from a better driver in my car at an HPDE. I put an SCCA national champion solo driver in the Duff car once and made huge gains from what I saw him doing with the brakes. You can also get video and let someone evaluate it. I'm not great with video, I mostly use log data for analysis, but my brother is much better at evaluating lap video.
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