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 Does it make sense to put a $400 AiM SOLO in a $500 Lemons race car? Of course it does! Within our small team of 5 folks, we were each able to improve our individual lap times by comparing our speed, longitudinal G, and lateral G force graphs. Throw in the ability to use the GPS features to compare our driving line and we had one teammate lose over 3 seconds on a one minute 31 second lap. That is a serious improvement! Add Comment  Sometimes we just need to look at things a little differently to reinforce what we’re seeing. Even though two different style graphs are showing the same information, we can get more out of one. It’s important to remember this when we’re looking at our data. Remember to look at things multiple ways to see which makes the most sense to you and is the most helpful.
 This contribution comes from Dave Scott, Lead Instructor at RaceCoach.Net. Dave has experience working with many drivers across all levels of driving and has helped a lot of people learn to drive faster. Check out what is important to him in teaching folks to go faster.
I coach a lot of drivers. A majority are racers (from rookies to very experienced) or folks actively preparing themselves to race. The rest are experienced track day instructors and drivers looking to improve their skills. This weeks article is written by Neel Vasavada, Founder and CEO of Apex Speed Technology . This article is the first in a series on selecting a data system for your car. Neel draws from his experience in professional race series including IRL, ALMS, Grand Am, Speed World Touring, and many others. There is some really great info here and more to come. Make sure you check out Neel’s company and the excellent forums that they hosts.
Racing exists somewhere between your reflexes and deliberate action - its a sport where remembering what you did right or wrong isn't always easy. Its hard to see where to improve by just watching - there are sights, sounds and G-forces that just can't experience outside a race car. Practice takes a bit more planning and effort than most sports, so getting better can mean thinking about what your driver between stints behind the wheel. The thing is, simply replaying laps it in your mind isn't enough; you need to compare them to some reference to know if you were actually faster or slower. Data acquisition helps fill this gap of analysis. This weeks Featured Articles is from Neil Roberts, author of "Think Fast." Neil has experience in Indycar and has worked on many Swift racecars. I think you'll find this excerpt from his book very interesting. While not "data rich," it's information based on data is very valuable in our driving.
The secret to winning is well known: Don’t slow down! Well OK, at least try to minimize the amount of non-speed that you generate while braking. Learning how to use all of the braking capability of your car is hard to do. It is a scary, high g event that starts when you are going as fast as you will ever go. If your car produces a significant amount of aerodynamic downforce, it is even harder because the maximum potential braking rate at the beginning is very high and falls off rapidly as the downforce and drag disappear. Even without downforce, the range of tire slip velocity that you have to maintain is very narrow and there are some harsh penalties for exceeding that slip velocity range: flat spotted tires, sliding off the line, getting passed, or a high speed spin.  CDS circa 2005 In his second Featured Article for TrailBrake, Peter Krause shares with us his knowledge on a popular item – Video Integration. This is a great article detailing the many possibilities in taking your data and putting it on top of your videos. There are a lot of gems of knowledge in here….
Of all the advances that have been made in "consumer level" data acquisition over the last five years, few have been as powerful and more useful than integrating the use of video into the analysis process. Shifting technique can make a big difference in lap times. I’ve seen bad shifts take as much as 1.2 seconds on an old H box. Good shifts in a new BMW - .4 seconds! The delta of .8 seconds is time that you are not accelerating and maybe even decelerating. A good working transmission and tight shift linkage can make a big difference to quick laps times.
For all the folks that use Aim's Race Studio 2, did you know about the delta hotkey? When on the measures graph, a quick hit of the D key, then select your first point, then the second point. A look above the lap segments at the numbers in parenthesis will give you the time and distance difference in the two selected points. It's a great way to see the difference in two braking points, differences in lines, etc. Are there other hot keys you use? Please share them in the comments! We all know that we’re supposed to go from throttle to brake quickly, but many times this doesn’t happen. And we are not talking about the a high speed corner with a lift, we’re talking about an end of the straight hairpin or other medium to low speed corner. This is when the little bits of coasting can cost us lots of time.
In our second featured article, Race Coach and Data Guy Peter Krause, he'll give us a great overview of the many book options that are out there for us to read.
A good bibliography for improving the club-level racer and track day driver's knowledge of data interpretation might begin with the bible of making data intelligible, Buddy Fey's seminal work, "Data Power!" Fey, a noted race engineer and one of the "early adopters" of data logging from the the late 1980's to the present day, combines plain spoken delivery with an extraordinary depth and breadth of experience. Fey's open, authoritative tome is STILL cited in one of the most modern books because the information presented is still that valuable! Think of it as a data-specific extension of Carroll Smith's timeless "Prepare to Win" series. | Featured ArticlesHere is a collection of articles from some of the best professional coaches, drivers, and data engineers. ArchivesMay 2012 CategoriesAll |
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