0:00
/
0:00
206 - Building Confidence
About this episode
Scott and Seth dive into the nuances of building confidence behind the wheel, discussing their recent experiences at a Rev Match event and the importance of understanding a car's limits. They explore the psychology of drivers, differentiating between those who push boundaries and those who play it safe. The conversation touches on practical tips for improving driving skills, such as braking techniques, vision strategies, and the value of experimentation. With insights from their own driving experiences, they aim to help listeners find their comfort zone while pushing for improvement.
Topics:
building confidence
braking techniques
driver psychology
vision strategies
experimentation
track driving
autocross
risk-taking
driving limits
Seth knows how to understeer a bike, and Scott goes sub-40 at Gingerman!
We talk about risk takers vs build-up-to-it drivers, and a few concrete ways drivers can gain confidence quickly in their cars.
------
Discord! Where we hang out
Robertson-Racing.com
Track Walking - Instagram
Filter:
|
Technical
Too Afraid to Ask
Car
Mazda MX-5 / Miata
"... people can run, things like that. And I took the Miata. As a good instructor does."
Car
Mazda Rx7
"a lot in rallycross. I played with steering angle in the middle of a corner because can I steer the car with the front wheels or do I have to steer the car with the rear wheels? When I was driving the RX-7, I hit a rear-wheel drive car playing around with where do I have grip because in rallycross,"
Car
Ford Explorer
"...xperience if they're more of a natural risk taker explorer behind the wheel, or if they are more of a natura..."
Select text to request an explanation
Hi, I'm Scott.
And I'm Seth.
And we are Track Walking.
I remembered the intro this week.
It's good.
We're getting back into it.
Aren't you proud?
I am.
I only follow your lead.
If I had to do it myself, I would have been like, ah, are we here?
Who are we?
I do remember there was like one episode you recorded without me and you tried.
Yeah.
I remember you tried.
Yeah.
Well, I'm here with a proper dessert cereal today.
Cocoa pebbles.
It's a choice.
They're my sons.
Don't pretend.
It's chocolate milk that you get to drink after, but it's just extra sludgy.
You pretty much have to have a kid to have a box of those in your house, though.
People judge you if you're just like a grown-ass adult with no kids around and you open a
cabinet and there's cocoa pebbles there.
Yeah.
Probably.
Because it's one of those things where they're not really a cereal.
Oh, no.
And they're kind of a half-assed dessert.
Like if you're going to buy yourself a treat, they're a weird treat.
Frosted Rice Krispies now.
Do you think really?
And they also have glazed donut cereal.
Like they're not even pretending.
Like it's part of a balanced breakfast.
I mean, that was the refrain when I was growing up.
Even if it was crap cereal, it's part of a balanced breakfast and then they'd show
you all the healthy food that you need to eat in order to maybe get away with it.
And now it's just like, God, we really are bringing old man energy today.
So now I genuinely wonder what percentage of cereal is purchased by people with kids and
what percentage is people like you who are like, you can't tell me what to do.
I mean, I would still buy sugar cereal occasionally if it was just me.
I'm aware of that.
All right.
So, well, I had a thought.
Definitely have a topic I want to talk about, but I guess I should probably talk about what
I did over the weekend, which went to a Rev Match event at Gingerman over the weekend.
And I'm helping them with their novice and HPD program.
They really would like to institute some sort of a ladder program with expectations, drills
that people can run, things like that.
And I took the Miata.
As a good instructor does.
As one does.
I was much busier over the weekend than I had planned.
Not totally dissimilar from my time with GridLife of old.
Did you just have like, I mean, I'm sure you had classroomy things and like that sort of
stuff, but did you have individuals assigned to you as well?
I didn't.
So I was kind of effectively the lead instructor, but I did the classroom sessions, which were
two a day.
We did forward Gingerman on Saturday and reverse Gingerman on Sunday.
That's fun.
And I kind of, it's been long enough where I've gotten to go to a new track and like get
more than one or two, two sessions on, like, you know, the one lap that we typically do.
So it was kind of fun to, you know, do reverse Gingerman and really like hone in on some turns
and like start to kind of get it whittled down and figured out.
So that was fun.
But yeah, so I had lead instructor duties, classroom.
I was also coaching a couple of people while I was there and theoretically like maybe trying
to drive.
I'd made some setup adjustments on the Miata largely.
I'd replaced two pretty old bushings in the rear of the car with sphericals and added
more camber that I thought I had had previously, but definitely have it now.
And the car was good.
It felt good.
I did not drive very well.
I didn't really go into the weekend with very good goals either.
Um, you know, my, my goal was basically just to drive, like try to get in flow again.
And, but that's a legitimate goal too.
You don't have to be chasing time, you know, but that was something I came with up with
on like Saturday morning.
Okay.
You're like, well, I have to have some great, I have to do something, you know, these
things that I ask everyone else to do.
I can't just have fun.
No, terrible.
Um, so I went out first, um, the first opportunity I had, which was after several
sessions, so it was like 10, 30 or 11 in the morning and had a warm up lap, had a fine
first hot lap, uh, mid 41s, something like that.
And then my second lap, I did a 39 seven, uh, which is another half a second quicker
than my previous best.
It was not a good lap from a driving point of view.
Like I, I shared it on my YouTube, but I was kind of, I kind of didn't want to share
it because it's not good.
Um, but I mean, I guess the good part is we made the
car better enough that it was working much better.
There's so much to analyze in how you just described your fastest lap there.
Yeah.
I mean, there's always excuses.
And no, but you're like, it wasn't me.
It was the car.
I'm still crap.
I'm bad at driving, but the car is good enough to make up for that.
So I didn't say I was bad at driving.
That was not a good lap.
There's like a whole therapy session that needs to go into how you just like didn't
proudly talk about the fact that you've, you did a good job.
Ryan Shuda from the mental agility coaching center that we had out and we're
going to again at Audubon here.
Um, yeah, we did, uh, I did like a psychological, um, evaluation on paper
where basically like you, you share about yourself along with the in-person
reaction tests and perception tests and stuff like that.
Prioritizing, organizing, yeah, I kind of all that stuff.
It was pretty funny hits, you know, by the end of that, you know, he,
we'd only met a few times and he knew me.
So that was, that was an event.
Did he, did he face you with the truths about you or was he subtle about it?
Um, no, I mean, we had had enough conversations at that point that, you
know, we, we'd shared enough about our lives that it was, we didn't have
to beat around the bush much anymore.
Um, but yeah, it was surprising that it happened.
It was good and you know, I looked at the data versus my previous personal
best, which was that 40.2 like a month before and I lost half a second before
turn two, um, and I looked back at the video.
I miss shifted coming onto the front straight to start my lap and I was slow
and turn one.
So I lost half a second there.
I lost another quarter second going into turn three.
Um, but you know, I also took out the ballast from the car that hasn't been out
since I think grid life went to AMP in 2022 is kind of what rings a bell.
It sounds right.
That's when you get the fancy ball is made and right.
And car has had ballast ever since.
So this is the first time.
I tried to get a corner balance as best as I could.
Um, car was really balanced, uh, look weight wise when the ballast was in.
It's, it's pretty good now, but that with the, uh, the extra set up in the
rear, uh, car was working pretty well.
So yeah.
Can you see corner speeds and things like that?
The cars, like, can you see the cars mechanically gripping better?
Um, yes, a little bit part of it is the car was also faster in a straight line.
Um, I certainly think that the slightly cooler weather helped.
I think it was like 10, maybe 15 degrees cooler, uh, track surface temp wise.
So that certainly helped, but even like through turn eight and nine, which
are kind of like the high speed flow, yes, portion, like as quicker through
there, which certainly you're leaning on those rear tires decently.
So that was good.
I was kind of be intended of going into the braking zone just a little bit.
So that's kind of where I was losing time.
And then turn one was just, just over slowed a bit.
So, so all in all, like kind of an quote unquote, easy seven tenths, seven,
eight tenths left to find, like compared to my other one, which I think I,
I don't want to say pretty easily, but like I did it once and felt like I was
driving decently well and the car wasn't as good as it is now.
So like, now I'm like, well, probably 38 five somewhere in there.
If I really get going, so it's the worst part about going faster.
Is it just, it opens up a door to like, well, now I need to be faster than I
was. Well, and I racing has if, because that's a much deeper pool.
Right.
And so, like, even if I think, you know, I'm like within two seconds, maybe
three seconds of like some of the fast guys in the split, I go and look at
the records and like there's another five by like the super fast guy.
So like, yeah.
So like there's always a bigger fish sort of thing.
Yeah.
Um, but tonight I wanted to talk about how to build confidence in a car.
I want to know the answer to that.
Like I genuinely want to know the answer to that.
Yeah.
Well, straight out, I don't think there's a clear cut answer.
Like I can't, there's no like drink, like Red Bull won't give you, well,
it may help give you confidence or the jitters or heart palpitations.
One of the, you know, take your pick, um, but like there's no drug that you
can take that will give you confidence.
Um, but kind of thinking on it, I think there's largely kind of two big
categories of drivers.
There are drivers who are willing to kind of push a car over the edge of
kind of what it's capable of doing, sliding it a lot, kind of blowing,
breaking zones, um, stuff like that.
And then there are drivers who drive under the limit of the car and just
slowly keep building, um, that those are kind of the different starting places.
And it's been, after working this year with, with drivers, I think
it's certainly, I don't want to say easier, but it's quicker to help
a driver who is willing to push the limits of a car naturally to dial
it back just a little bit to be able to go fast because they know
what the car will do when it's beyond the limit.
And so they kind of know that they've just got it.
Like if they go past it, if they blow a breaking zone, if they go
into a corner a little hot, they're like, it's fine.
I got it.
I can make this change and kind of continue on.
Does that make sense?
In motorcycles, the phrase is always it's easier to teach a fast
rider to not crash than to teach a safe rider to go fast.
Sure.
Um, and that's just sort of one of those things.
Like if you properly want to go quick, that dude who's scaring
the crap out of everybody and falls down occasionally, it's going
to go faster than the person who's safe.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think again, I don't think it's confidence and like sending
it sort of thing, but I think there's a confidence in almost
no matter what happens, I got it.
And so dialing it back a little bit or like utilizing what
the car can really do, they're more able to, um, access that
because they're willing to push a little beyond to really find
kind of where that edge is in all parts of the track.
How much of that is just, is a feel thing though, just the
ability to feel what the car is doing and be willing to
explore those feelings.
This really does sound like a therapy show, but be willing
to explore the things that car is telling you versus every time
it tells you something that you pull back a little bit, you're
like, Oh, that's new.
And then you pull back versus waiting right in and, and
figuring things out.
Um, yeah.
Exploring, exploring is an interesting word for it.
Um, yeah, it could be just exploring the limits.
You know, like what can this car do?
How fast can this car or motorcycle stop?
You know, what is, you know, what happens when I am in the
mid corner and I do this, you know, it's kind of like, you
know, poking at a, poking at a bear and being like, Hey, what
happens if I do this?
What about this?
How about now?
You know, it's just willing to try things.
Um, and that's, I think a hard thing to instill in a driver
that doesn't naturally do those things.
Yeah.
So, so people bring this to them, bring this with them.
It seems like a yes.
Okay.
Yeah.
It's not, it's not like an intentional.
Effort to like drive under the limit.
It's not, you know, maybe they've been hurt before,
figuratively or, you know, literally, um, but they've
had a scary experience before.
Um, like when I lost brakes in Gingerman years back, uh, that
took a year to kind of get over my, that like some
weird sense in the pit of my stomach when I go from throttle
to a big braking zone, just like, and just wait sort of thing.
Right.
So it could, maybe it's part of it could be prior experience.
Yeah.
Like somebody who spent ages from six to 13 driving a go-kart
around the yard and trying not to hit the fence.
Like people bring the weirdest stuff into driving sometimes.
Right.
And like, even if they've not done motorsports or, you know,
maybe it's some other sporting event, you know,
skiing downhill, skiing is always one downhill skiing.
Yeah.
It's that's an easy one to, um, kind of see who's willing
to push and who's not, you know, the, the skiers
who are willing to push, uh, their skis slide around a
whole lot more.
They're not the perfectly like carved grooves or snow
borders.
They're not the perfectly carved grooves.
Um, you know, they fly into it.
Their skis are kind of flopping around on, on initiation.
And, you know, it's a little, it's a little hairy from time to time.
Um, so yeah, I think part of it could be prior experience or
history, um, maybe in their work or home life, you know,
trying new things just isn't encouraged or hasn't been
encouraged.
And so that exploration or that testing of the limits was, has
been put down hard at some point.
I think that certainly could be part of it.
Then there's just personality.
Sure.
You know, I hate to bring this back to dad stuff, but my
four kids approach new things in risky situations in
completely different, completely different ways based on who
they are as people.
Yeah.
And then you open that up to it, like take a third grade
class on a field trip and some of those kids are going to
be like, let's go pat the alligators.
Yeah.
Take, take a group of people to the zoo and you'll, you'll
be able to sort out who's who pretty quick.
Right.
Right.
They want to be.
Yeah.
Not that that translates directly to driving, but there
is, there's certainly some, some innate personality to
some of that.
And I'm sure everybody who's listening like knows that one
friend of theirs, who's like, yeah, he'll, he or she will
take anything that has wheels and they'll almost crash it.
Yeah.
They're the first person to be like, Hey, let's play
Truth or Dare.
There, right.
Dare me, dare me to do something.
I'll do this.
And like, they'll come up with the idea.
Like, I'll go do this thing.
It's like, seems like you just want to do it.
Like, why don't you ride this, why don't you ride
this bike off a ramp into, you know, a dirt pit or
whatever it is.
Get any fireworks?
You ever lunch by the rackets out of your hand?
You want to?
Let me show you.
Yeah.
Let me show you how cool this is.
Um, and so the, I think the challenge really becomes as
drivers and certainly in my role as a coach, how can you
take those drivers who are more comfortable driving the car
under the limit?
How can, what's the best or quickest or most sure fat,
whatever, whatever the path is, what's the best way to
help them go faster?
Um, because cards will move around on breaking.
If you're breaking hard.
Um, they will want to rotate on entry.
If you use the break correctly and you could spend, uh, you
could spend on exit, uh, you could understeer off track on
exit and then this is high speed, low speed, big breaking
zones, uh, proximity with other cars.
If we're talking about wheel to wheel, there's all sorts of
things that like could happen all these, you know,
potential fears or worries or being nervous about what the
car may do.
Um, it reminded me of a conversation you and I had
about driving in the rain.
That's, that feels like an extreme example of this.
Because the best, the way to go fast in the rain is to
make the car slide.
Yeah.
You have to know where, when, where and when it's going to
slide and you can't know that until you do it.
Right.
And so I remember very early on, you know, driving around in
the rain and I've certainly seen, you know, plenty of
drivers in the rain because it is much slower speed, but
the breakaway happens much quicker and it's in different
places than you're used to being and it's harder to
see sometimes.
Like there's a whole host of, um, difficulties when it comes
to driving in the rain, but oftentimes the thing that holds
drivers back in the rain is being fearful of when the car
is going to slide or when the brakes are going to lock
up or if you're going to oversteer or understeer.
And so a lot of drivers just keep it right under the
limit the entire time, kind of knowing what they got and not
necessarily like bringing it home, but like drive what you
know, and that's a safe place to be.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
No, a lot of people do that.
You, you can watch whole HPD sessions where everybody
out there is driving and going, it's not worth crashing.
Everybody in, they have 15 or 20 new issue or mediumish
people on there and everybody's just doing laps because they
paid for the session and they're not going to go fast
enough to crash the end.
Yep.
Yeah.
That was me first day at Watkins, um, in the rain.
I, I mean, the consequences were certainly high there, but
like, you know, I, I knew that a couple of places that
I was kind of maybe willing to push it, but like, I just, I
wasn't going to do it that weekend.
Yes.
Wasn't going to happen, but the way to drive in the rain
well, to drive in the rain fast, you have to make the
car understeer.
You have to make the car oversteer.
You have to break traction to kind of know right where
the level is and the cripple limit is constantly trying
things, experimenting, exploring, you know, whatever word or
phrase that, you know, we want to use.
It's scary.
Those guys, I, yeah.
Yeah, I get it.
I mean, I'm sorry.
Part of what helped me get through some of my first heavy
rain weekends was the fact that we were still doing
right seat instruction and having somebody next to me
being like, you can, you can go deeper.
Like, don't be afraid.
Sort of thing as, you know, piggybacking off of the
confidence of somebody else.
Uh, I remember sliding kind of sideways into Thunder
Valley across the dry line, both of us knowing that
there's grip on the other side of it at the, but
the fast way to do it is you needed that rotation
before you got there.
So we like, I was sliding the car across the dry line
and then it would grip up like with a couple feet to
go before the grass and then we'd pull out and like,
every time we thought we were going to die and
let's like, no, it's fine, but it's fine.
But every time it's like, Oh my God, why?
So bringing that attitude or that approach into dry
driving is I think the, the task making the car do
something.
Right.
And when I say make the car do something, I mean, find
the limit.
Now, like you said, that's not safe.
That's scary.
So it's like, what are some things that drivers can do
to break traction safely?
I think an easy thing to possibly do would be
autocross.
Yeah, slower speed.
The typically the worst that's going to happen is
you hit some cones, maybe an outhouse.
If it's like positioned really poorly, definitely
shouldn't, definitely shouldn't hit anything that's
not a cone.
Unless it's a bad course.
Yeah, that's fair.
But I think that's, that's kind of an easy thing.
It's much slower, lots of turns, but it also
happens very quickly.
So you don't get a lot of repetitive time doing it.
Yeah.
When you're at a busy event and you get three runs,
it's awfully hard to learn something and build on it.
You generally make mistakes and then it's ready to go.
You're ready to go home.
This is part of, man, I dream of owning a big ass flat parking lot.
We have separate dreams, Scott.
Because really put a skid pad on there, put a figure eight on there.
Yeah.
You know, like run drills, if, and if nothing else really just a figure eight,
because you can do circles, you can learn how to kind of drift and hold an oversteer.
Right.
And then with a figure eight, you can learn how to induce understeer on entry,
how to induce oversteer on entry, and you get it like every five seconds,
you get a chance to try it again.
Right.
And so you just get to hammer in the quote unquote laps and just get this repetitive
skill practice.
So if you have a skid pad near you, dear God use it.
Right.
Because not all of us do, and it is a very good thing to learn a whole host of things,
but I think it can also, again, provide a safe repetitive environment to test the limits of
your car.
Or if your autocross region does, most regions will have what they call a test day during the
year, non-competitive go out, they sell it as car setup and getting ready at the beginning
of the year or some regions do it before nationals.
And the number of people who don't take advantage of that is always interesting
because they're like, no, I want to go compete.
No, like what you really want to do is go do 25 runs in a day because that's rad.
Yes.
Yeah, I think we all want that.
Yeah.
Those are the most fun I ever had autocrossing was definitely running test days and running 25,
35 laps just going and going and going.
It was so cool.
Now, some of us don't autocross and a lot of us don't have access to
a big flat area where we can go be hooligans with our cars.
So let's assume that we only have access to our local track.
What are some things that we can do on our local road course track where we can work
and make the car do something break traction safely?
First off, I know you already have a plan.
No thing.
But first off, any track that you're at, you have to identify the appropriate places
to take risks because most tracks have, I mean, gingerman's pretty safe kind of all over.
But there's a lot of tracks where they're like, look, don't screw around at this corner
because there's a wall right there.
Like it's not the place to screw around.
Right.
You know, if you've got a braking zone with a wall at the end,
that's seriously not the place to play with braking late.
When we were at the track in Florida, I can't remember the name.
Sebring Daytona.
Sebring.
Yeah, Sebring.
Sebring has got like almost all of the corners are horrifyingly breaking into
cement walls and stuff.
But there's a couple of them that have runoff.
That you can really sail and send something off.
Yeah, like you could go off into the dirt.
You can go off into old Air Force bases.
You can get lost out there forever.
But those are corners worth laying.
If you're going to play with braking, play with it someplace that you,
like if you have a serious oh shit moment, be like, whoops, went into the dirt.
Not whoops, went into a wall.
So you need to identify at your track where safe places to experiment first.
Okay, Gil Scat, give us real information now.
That's a good note because we all don't have access to the same safe tracks
or slow tracks or big fast tracks.
Yes.
I think the first and probably easiest one is braking.
There are, I think, quite a few drivers out there who are genuinely like a little nervous about
big braking zones from high speeds.
Really pushing how fast they can get off the throttle and go to brake.
And then how hard and how quickly they get up to peak pressure.
Because there's a lot of, it's really interesting to watch drivers kind of ease off the throttle
and then gently push on the brake when they're nervous about braking from high speed.
Because just physics and how cars work, it feels like the opposite
of what you'd really want to do if you were nervous about the speed of it.
But I don't think that's the nervousness of the speed because if you're nervous about the speed,
the best way to bleed speed is to get over to the brake pedal as quickly as humanly possible
and to smash it as hard as you possibly can.
Yeah, but almost everybody is doing it, it's doing it early.
But yes, but I think that's the point for this exercise, like how to build confidence and
brakes is do that exact thing early where you've got...
It's going to be like, ah crap, I slowed down way too much.
Exactly. Now this is also assuming you have ABS, but if you don't have ABS,
you still need to find the limit. When do you lock up the tires?
Like you need to chirp the tires if you don't have ABS and you want to be as quick as you
possibly can. So if you're coming into a braking zone from like 110, 120, whatever it is,
into a big braking zone and you've got five brake markers and you know from video or data,
whatever, that a lot of the fast people are breaking up the three.
Brake it to five, but get to the brake as quickly as you can with as much pressure as you can and try
to engage your ABS or try to chirp your tires without like fully locking it up.
Because you know you're braking early, so you know if something does go wrong,
you've got plenty of runoff, you've got a minute to like reset, try again.
That's one of the kind of easy button ways of building some confidence under brakes.
I was very good at that in autocross and I'm still very bad at that on the track.
And I don't know the psychology associated with that. When I ran data on the car for a little
bit in autocross, I could see myself braking like too late, like five runs in a row.
Way to David, five runs. And I could look at the data and it was like I'm one car length
late, like five runs in a row. No problems breaking late, no problems breaking hard, like it's fine.
Get me on a track and I am a coward. I most wonder if like if you just have too much time,
like if the braking zones are just too long. I just see it like I get in my own head. Yeah.
I get to think about it and thinking about anything bad. Oh god, oh god, oh god. Okay,
now the turn is here. Instead of like autocross, brake, turn, go. Now I got another braking,
like it's just one thing after another. Yeah. Yeah, I think the reason I don't like going fast,
and I've said this more than once, like I don't really like fast cars, don't like going fast.
I love going around corners. Sure. Fast, like I'll go around the corner as fast as the car will
go and that's largely dictated by geometry and tires and everything else. It's not dictated
by horsepower. Speed is dictated by horsepower, like ultimate speed. Don't like it. Don't do
not like speed on track. And I do think that that comes down to braking,
because I don't like big, long braking zones from high speed. Sure. I did not like going into a corner
at 140 in the Cadillac. Like do not want to do that. Super scary, horrifying, would much rather
go into the same corner at 110 in my accord than the Cadillac at 140. And that's purely
a braking thing. So I probably need to learn to do that if I ever start track driving again.
But I'm the same way with motorcycles, right? Like I still, I drive, I would rather ride a
motorcycle if two bikes had the same mid-corner speed, but one of them was just a matter of
rolling off the throttle in having super high roll speed. And the other one was
grabbing a handful of brake and knocking down 10 or 15 miles an hour and having the same roll speed.
I 100% want to do it on the bike that I don't have to touch the brakes on
and achieve the exact same roll speed. It's much harder. I actually just talked to a driver
last week about this. It is much harder to, especially in a high speed corner,
or like anything above 50 or 60 to come into a corner with 30 more miles an hour than you need
and try to find that sweet spot for your men's speed. Then it is to come into a Sunday cup car
and like have to do the smallest of lifts. Like trying to judge that speed differential
and is very difficult. So yeah, so that's something you can do for braking. I think another
big skill thing is vision. And this should probably have gone in the first part of all of this
is if your vision is low, if it's close to the car, it's going to be very difficult to judge speed,
judge distance, and know that anything really exists outside of where you're directly focused on.
Because oftentimes when you are looking down close to the car,
we are not, our eyes and brains are not built to gain detailed visual information above our
sight line. And so that's why when you hear drivers, coaches, whoever talk about keeping
your eyes on the horizon or trying to keep your eyes on the horizon, that's because everything
at that line and below, we get much clearer, better detailed information.
But the lower your eyes are, the less detailed information we get.
So we're just designed to look at the, or to perceive the ground rather than perceiving
this guy? Yes. We perceive light much better above our horizon line.
But in terms of detailed information, it's at our horizon line and below.
Interesting. I didn't know that.
And the other part is that when there are two types of vision, there's focused vision where
you look at something and you're studying it and everything else. Like it's kind
of like looking through a paper towel tube. Like you're studying this one thing.
The difficulty in that is that we perceive speed and rotation and everything like that
in our peripheral vision. And so if you're using focused vision that you're looking
at one object, very detailed, your sense of speed is not there. It's not very good at all.
This is something that SIM racing can really help with. If you have a good monitor setup,
is that it's very good at training your sense of visual perception of speed.
If that makes sense. Are you with me?
Yeah. So like perception of speed has more to do with how we perceive things moving
in our peripheral, moving past us in our peripheral. And if we're not,
I don't say if we're not aware of our peripheral, but if we're not, like if we
can't see it because we're focused too much like. Exactly. Yeah. Didn't know that either.
Yeah. Yeah. So that's why vision is such an important thing. It's one of our only
ways of gathering detailed, quick information. And so just keep that in mind as you're on
track, especially if you are one of those drivers who can get nervous or is nervous
about the car doing something is feeding your brain the best information you possibly can.
And that's by trying to keep your eyes up as much as possible and trying to use more of
your peripheral vision when it matters. Now we always will need to use our focused vision.
This is for things like checking our gauges or checking our mirrors and for spotting detailed
reference points in the far distance. So like as you're coming out of one corner,
like you're at the apex of one corner exiting spot your breaking point for the next corner,
but then look somewhere else and use your peripheral vision, especially in the middle of a corner
or in a big breaking zone. That's where that, you know, bleeding off speed and trying to
find that point where you want to start releasing the break. That can be a timing thing that can
be a reference thing, but that's also heavily a vision thing. So. Interesting. That's that.
Making me think about stuff now. Yeah. Well, part of it reminded me when you were talking
about big break zones, because I bet you were looking at the ground in front of the car
or like directly at the apex. I tend to look at a break marker. Yes. I tend to watch the
break marker come close to me. Yep. That's that's how I determine whether or not I'm hitting it.
I'm like, watch the three, watch the three, watch the three, we need to the three break. Yeah.
And then as soon as I hit the breaks, then my vision goes somewhere else and it's very scary.
It's, I had this conversation over the weekend. Had some novice drivers, you know, wanting
to use cones as references. And I said, you can, but know that that is one of the worst,
most unreliable reference points you will ever have.
And just behind that are breaking markers because breaking markers can disappear.
They can move, but they're also almost universally in one of the worst spots,
which is on the outside going into a corner. Right. Why tracks by and large don't put
breaking markers on the inside rather than the outside. I would love to know that reason.
Can, can somebody tell me why that has become like an adopted thing? Because it makes no sense.
It's a way from where you want to be looking, you want to be focused.
I think you're even more likely to like, if that can be a safety thing, I think you're more likely to
go off on the outside. Right. That's, that's my thought as well. I have no idea. I mean, at least
put one on both sides. I mean, you know, Watkins was another one of these places.
I had a lot of break markers on both sides and it's great, but that's by and large,
not the rule. That's the exception. So anyway, so vision, the breaking drill of breaking really
hard really early, like finding out what your car is capable of under breaking is good.
I think another thing that's easy to do, I say easy, but in a corner and it could be a fast
one, it could be a slow one, could be a long one, short one, whatever, is that once you're
off of the brakes in the middle of the corner, but before you are on throttle is just give the steering
wheel more of a turn. Okay. And largely what this can do is if you turn the steering wheel
a bit more now in high speed, it may be a little bit slower, maybe a little bit smaller of a movement
versus slower corners or long corners. You can kind of do a saw blade,
like really kind of shake the wheel in, which can give your butt and your body more of a sense.
But if you do that and the car just kind of understeers like the car doesn't turn at all
anymore, then you know, you're kind of have found a limit with the way that you're managing the
load that the car's got no more front grip. It's not going to turn anymore. But if you give that
steering wheel a little bit more of a turn after breaking before acceleration and the car just
kind of turns a little bit more, then you know you can probably carry a little bit more speed in.
Interesting. Trying to think about how to translate that to motorcycles only because sometimes I'm like,
I go into the corner and I'm like, that won't turn, bike's not turning. And you know,
in general at that point, I have to slow down to regain the bike's ability to turn because
I'm sliding the front tire, which is just a little bit right because you're going into
and you're basically understeering a motorcycle, which feels super weird,
which is not crashing it because that's different. But you think you're trying to aim at a place,
you know, you think you're trying to turn and the bike isn't turning. You can't add more lean to
it because adding more lean to it doesn't do anything because the front tire's sliding a little
bit. Have you tried adding like at any point adding more front brake like to increase the front
load? Yeah, I mean, at that point actually, I usually tend to add some throttle to the bike,
which sounds counter-intuitive, but it's a bike dynamics thing because it tends to
stand the bike up a little bit and regain some things. So there's a difference between cars and
bikes. So this is not really relevant to your conversation at all. I'm just thinking in my
head. In cars, I've certainly done that before, played with steering angle. I used to do that
a lot in rallycross. I played with steering angle in the middle of a corner because can I steer the car
with the front wheels or do I have to steer the car with the rear wheels? When I was driving the RX-7,
I hit a rear-wheel drive car playing around with where do I have grip because in rallycross,
there's a lot of places where you're in a low grip situation and the car's kind of half
slidey anyway. Can I steer it with the front or do I steer it with the rear here? And that
depends on what you feel as you play with the front wheel. I'm much less good at doing that with
track cars maybe because I mostly do front-wheel drive track cars.
I don't know, I guess with that particular drill since the car is neutral at that point,
it doesn't really matter what the drive wheels are.
And that's again because you're off of the brake, you're before the throttle, the front to rear load
is should be pretty steady. So you're not hopefully dealing with much oscillation. You're not,
you know, the load on the front versus rear tire should be pretty static at that point,
pretty close anyway. And so just by adding more wheel, you'll know if you, what kind of front end
you've got. And that front end can dictate how fast you go into a corner, kind of the amount of
steering that you have left. And it can just give you kind of an easy level, like an easy
indicator of how much more the car has. That sounds fun. Yeah. I remember using this feature a lot
when I first got into data on the Apex Pro was the Apex has that live grip, gripometer,
but it's an Apex score that it'll show you real time what level of grip you've achieved
in any particular incident. So like under braking on entry, on exit,
it kind of learns what the car is capable of. And so it's a kind of an easy reminder going
into braking zones. I was like, Oh, I still saw a couple red, red dots when I released the brake.
Okay, I've got, you know, the, you know, this, this thing has learned that the car is
capable of more there. So I was like, all right, fine, I can, I'll push a little bit more here.
So, but yeah, I'm, it'd be interesting to, to hear from everybody about their experience if
they're more of a natural risk taker explorer behind the wheel, or if they are more of a
natural work up to the limits kind of driver. And I guess strategies that especially the former
drivers have used to try to get to the or even past the limit. I think going past the limit
has to happen at some point to be a very fast driver.
Yeah. I mean, you have to make a mistake. I mean, you have to make mistakes to know where they are.
Like if you stay consistently below the limit, you have no idea where that is. So I'm trying to
think of friends of ours that like, like people who are naturally like that, like Nick Coors,
someone who lives on, certainly when we met him, somebody who lives on the other side of grip.
Maybe. Well, when we met him, when he was doing one lap the first, the first year or so.
Oh, yeah, that's fair. Yeah. I'm not saying he was always like that,
but like his, his natural inclination was just like live on the other side of grip and see what
happens. Yeah. I think another easy thing that drivers could try to is the speed of turn in
or the speed. And this is with the hands, with the steering wheel. Okay. Speed on turn in and
the speed and transitions from left to right. Like if they really want to see, like test the
limit of what a car can do, like steering quicker, transition with your hands quicker.
What does that do? You know, it's almost the scientific method of like,
fuck around and find out, you know, but that's can be very nerve wracking for a lot of drivers.
So do you find your drivers have slower hands or faster hands? Is it, is there any correlation?
It depends. Okay. Higher speed corners. Typically drivers have slower hands,
um, kind of out of just car dynamics at higher speed, things happen quicker. So your hands naturally
need to be a little bit slower, a little bit softer. Um, but at slower speeds, like especially at
autocross speeds, like you'll see the fast autocross, like they've got quick hands,
right? Um, kind of out of necessity. But like, again, transferring some of that,
like, how do you know if too quick is too quick with your transition hand speed unless like you do it?
That's true. Yeah. But yeah, well, I think I'd be interested in kind of hearing from, uh,
from people about things that you've tried and have worked or things that you've experienced
that help you get to a point, um, where you can explore those limits and maybe even go pass
them when you were nervous or scared to, uh, before. So I'm clearly a work up to a driver.
Like that's, that's, that's my personality. What do you think about yourself?
Um, I historically have been the same and I'm really working on that. I'm like the risk taker.
I'm, it's never really been me, but I also see and fully understand the importance of
knowing what a car can do, especially like if you want to get in somebody else's car
and give them some feedback on it. You've only got like one session or like a few laps.
Like you kind of, you need to know what the car can do
quickly. Yeah. And that's, that's a skill that is a skill that needs to be learned or can be
learned by great many drivers. It's not innate in a lot of people. So yeah, work on it. Let us know.
Um, yeah, we are at track walking podcast, uh, on all the things, but really the, the link
to the discord is kind of where we're trying to funnel people because it's easy to, uh, to
have conversations there and, uh, topics and threads and all that good stuff. So
everybody should go congratulate Scott on his sub 140.
It's, it's an achievement and I'm going to go faster.
Make him feel awkward.
All right. Well, that's going to do it for us this week. Uh, we'll be back next week
with an interview. I'm Scott and I'm Seth. Talk to you then.
Request an explanation for:
3 cars
3 cars featured
Request an Explanation
Heard something you'd like explained? We'll add it to this episode.
Sign in to request explanations for terms you heard.
Want to learn more?
Browse our glossary for plain-English explanations of automotive terms, jargon, and concepts.
Help improve this episode
See something that's not quite right? Our annotations are AI-generated and can sometimes miss the mark. Click the flag icon on any annotation to suggest a correction.
Report incorrect info
Suggest better explanations
Flag missing cars