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Driving

Born: Nov. 4th, 2008

Basic Driving Skills

Driving Position: Your arms should be bent at around a 45° angle with your hands at the 10:00 and 2:00 positions. While driving, keep both hands at 10 and 2 as much as possible. A good car will give your left hand very little to fool with and keep the controls easily reachable to the right hand. The gangster lean, the left arm out the window, the hand resting on the shifter... all these are no no's. When turning the wheel, keep your hands in the correct position as much as you can. One way to accomplish this is by feeding the wheel to the one hand with the other. For example, you have a sharp right corner coming up... keep your right hand at 2:00 and bring the left down to about 6:00 and feed the wheel to the right hand keeping it at 2:00 the whole time. What will happen is mid corner your hands should still be in the correct position. If something freaky happens you can deal with it much better with both hands in the right spot. It usually gives you 1 full rotation of the wheel without letting go, along with good control.

Mirror adjustment seems to be a giant mystery. Roll your driver's side window up, lean against it with your head and set your driver's side mirror so that you can just see the side of your car. Lean to the middle so your head is right in line with the rear view mirror and adjust the passenger's side mirror so that you can just see the side of your car. You should not be able to see the side of your car from your normal driving position. Use the rearview mirror for seeing the rear of your car. Now, what you can't pick up with the rearview mirror or your peripheral vision, you will be able to see with the side mirrors. Imagine that! Motorists.org has a good diagram of how it should look.

Parking Lot Fun: A rainy day is best for playing around in a parking lot because you slip easier and you can keep your speeds down. Plus it's insurance that nobody will be there. Bring some boxes or cones to practice with. Be sure to take all loose things and trash out of the car.

  1. Drive in as tight a circle as you can. Slowly increase your speed so that the car steers less and less accurately. Frontwheel drive cars will plow forward, rearwheel drive cars will mildly plow forward and then spin around with a lot of throttle. Go from slow to fast, to slow to fast, and get the feel for where your tires start to break loose. Get a feel for how your gas foot can control the sliding and the steering. Notice how smoothly applying the brakes brings the car back in line. Notice how stabbing the brakes upsets the car.
  2. Set up a slalom course with cardboard boxes, cones, or something fairly benign. Use toddlers to really sharpen your skills. Make the course tight and start out slow. Pay attention to how the weight is shifting around and how the tires are cooperating or not, depending on what you ask of them. Don't be afraid to really toss the car from side to side and get some body roll out of it. This is also a good time to practice and be aware of your steering practices. Remember to keep both hands on the wheel and at 10 and 2 as much as possible.
  3. Practice stopping as quickly as possible. This is perhaps the most important thing to be comfortable with. If you have ABS, push the pedal as hard as possible and hold it there. If non-ABS, make the car slide and then back off just a little pressure (sometimes just curling your toes is enough) to keep the wheels rolling. Get a feel for full braking and then try steering around an obstacle like a cardboard box or a toddler. You want to be braking hard, but still retaining control of steering. You're not hurting your car by doing any of this. You'll hurt it and yourself a lot more by slamming into someone on the highway. Brakes and tires are meant to wear out and a few hours of this is invaluable.

Advanced Techniques

If you have access to the F355 game at an arcade go plunk some money down because it's pretty realistic. Heel and toe even works. I'm gonna try and get some pictures here to help out but in the meantime use your imagination. The bottom line to highspeed driving is how well you can operate a vehicle at its' limits. By limits, I mean your tires' ability to stick to the ground. Since accelerating from a standstill is relatively infrequent in a race, acceleration limits don't factor in very much. Since braking limit comes into play very often, it is perhaps the most important thing to worry about. Races are won with brakes, and cornering. This is why the suspension must always be faster than the engine.

Weight Transfer: Now that you're interested in real fast driving and not drag racing, this phenomenon must be grasped.

  • Braking: weight is transferred forward
  • Accelerating: weight is transferred to the rear
  • Right turn: weight is transferred to the left
  • Left turn: weight is transferred to the right

Wherever the weight is transferred, that's where the most grip will be. It's also the first place to lose grip, so you cannot brake 100% and go around a corner because you can't ask the car to fully brake and turn at the same time. A compromise has to be made. Next lap you brake 100% in the straight and ease off as you begin turning the car which takes some of the weight and burden off of the front tires. There's a perfect scenario where you brake as late as possible and get as much turning grip out of the front tires as is possible, but it's very difficult to achieve. Racing is more about braking and not making mistakes entering corners than it is about horsepower and high speed. You can also shoot yourself in the foot by letting off the brake too much before a turn and unloading the front tires. You'll still go plowing forward in this case. The trick is to gradually shift the weight from the front tires to the outside tires to the rear tires through a turn. Going fast is about successfully shifting weight.

Corner Exit: So you're getting the most out of your brakes and your tires in a corner - exit time now. The general rule of thumb is to begin accelerating at the apex of the turn and let the car gradually drift to the outside of the turn. The apex varies from corner to corner and some have an early apex, while others have a late apex, and some have 2!

Compromise corners:
The corner before a long straight is especially important because the slightest gain (like getting on the power as early as possible) coming out of this corner can pay big dividends, in terms of top speed, at the end of the straight. Corners preceeding the important ones are sometimes called compromise corners because you'll take a less than optimal line through it in order to set yourself up as perfectly as you can for the next, and more important, corner.

Heel and Toe: Heel and toe is operating the gas and brake pedals with your right foot when downshifting by using your heel for the gas and your toes for the brake. You kind of angle your foot at a 45° angle.

When entering a corner, your right foot's on the brake and your left operates the clutch as you downshift, but the engine's not spinning as fast as the transmission would like, so the car lurches forward every time you shift as the engine catches up to the transmission. So while braking you depress the clutch, downshift and give the gas pedal a nudge to raise the RPM's and make the gear change nice and smooth. Why do this? When on the edge of traction, the slightest hiccup can send you off the track. Heel and toe prevents the sudden jerk forward as the engine catches up to the transmission. Practice it going through all the gears from about 60 mph to a stop. Then try it before you hit an off ramp so that you're in the correct gear before you ever enter the turn. It makes off-ramps much more interesting for me.

Trailbraking: Staying on the brakes almost until the apex of a turn is called trailbraking. It's used to get the maximum amount of grip from the front tires by keeping them loaded through the corner. It's tricky and is usually done with the left foot which feels funny at first. It also assumes you've heel and toed into gear before you begin turning. Trailbraking also tends to step the rear-end around a little which sets you up better for the corner exit.

Speeding

The first rule is:
speed traps = revenue | speed traps = revenue | speed traps = revenue | speed traps = revenue

Speed limits as we know them are lower than they were in the 60's when most of the Eisenhower Interstate System was built, to the tune of 10-15 MPH lower. Keep in mind that cars in the 60's were about twice as heavy, half as safe, half as well engineered as cars today. So as the limit was lowered to 55 to theoretically conserve fuel, insurance companies and law enforcement agencies found out the easy way that when the majority of drivers are lawbreakers, a lot of money is to be made. The latest trend is photo enforcement. Maybe -  just maybe, a few insurance companies provide radar equipment for state police (wink wink). Speed limits, once based on sound engineering standards and human nature, are now arbitrary and artificially low to generate revenue. This system creates friction, collisions, fines, and general ill-will towards the law. Evidence to back me up:

Another good resource for information is motorists.org. Secondly, keep an eye on your representatives - eternal vigilance my friends, eternal vigilance.