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!
The nice thing with the SOLO was we were able to quickly mount it in the car and run it on the internal battery for the whole day. We were able to make quick data downloads at driver changes and then put the unit back in the car for the next driver.
So, you’re probably wondering what we looked at in the data. First, we check out speed traces. We had a member of our team who had only ever driven one day in anger on the track, so he knew very little. We were able to break a number of his bad habits very quickly, without even being in the car with him. You’ll see his first time out he was coasting significantly into braking zones (the red line). After showing him what he was doing and explaining what we wanted him to work on, he was able to improve all the way to the blue line and pick up a full second in just one braking zone!
So, you’re probably wondering what we looked at in the data. First, we check out speed traces. We had a member of our team who had only ever driven one day in anger on the track, so he knew very little. We were able to break a number of his bad habits very quickly, without even being in the car with him. You’ll see his first time out he was coasting significantly into braking zones (the red line). After showing him what he was doing and explaining what we wanted him to work on, he was able to improve all the way to the blue line and pick up a full second in just one braking zone!
Next we took a look at lateral G to see when and where the difference in people’s turn in points and used lateral G in conjunction with longitudinal G to see which corners and how much people were trail braking. We were also able to see how hard people were cornering and where in the corner they were developing the highest G loads. This helped us to see if people were early, middle, or late apexing different corners.
Finally, we used the GPS features to compare lines. Notice in the two maps shown how different the lines are. They vary by over 15 feet in different spots, but the whole laps were within .127 seconds. The GPS maps were great to work with our debriefs to be able to put real numbers to our line differences.
This was a great example of all the ways that you can use data from you, pros, or even similar cars to have a reference to compare with. It’s a great way to improve your driving along with whomever you are comparing with. There is lots to learn from you data. It would be interesting to hear in the comments how people use their data to compare with others and improve.
This was a great example of all the ways that you can use data from you, pros, or even similar cars to have a reference to compare with. It’s a great way to improve your driving along with whomever you are comparing with. There is lots to learn from you data. It would be interesting to hear in the comments how people use their data to compare with others and improve.
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