[race, long] autocrossers

[Iain Mannix <mannix@privateI.com>]

Andy wrote.....

What is the single best piece of advice you can give someone who want's
faster times. As far as technique.


                  Andy
            '79 1.9 '80 1.8 ROCCO'S

.....then added a sense of closure with.....

>Thanks for the information people it's greatly appreciated.
>
>                  Andy
>             '79 1.9 '80 1.8

But we're not done:).  I spent yesterday flying to Boston, so I am just
seeing this now(Friday 1:30p.m. eastern time).  A lot of good advice given
so far - all true, and thanks for the kind words, Paul!  I appreciate it.
Going to go to Shine while I am here, hopefully they won't chase me off
with all the front swaybars they've taken off:), maybe visit H&H swaybars,
which is 20 minutes from my mother's house, eh, who knows.  Last time I
looked around here, though, the junkyards sucked WRT VW stuff.  Anyhow.

Single best piece of advice I have heard is to look ahead(which has already
been suggested).  It works, and really is very important - as it helps you
use all of the other techniques listed more effectively.  Looking ahead
will remind you which line to take, when to brake(left foot or otherwise),
how wide the course is, etc.  Everything sorta builds on itself in
autocross, but looking ahead helps you put everything to use at once, but
there are subsets and other, smaller things to work on in the progress.

Looking ahead is important because you tend to drive toward what you are
looking at.  For the skiers on the list, ever hear the saying "look at the
spaces, not at the trees" when learning how to ski in the woods?  Same
reason.  It is not as if you run into everything you look at, of course,
but there really is a corrolation.  I went to the Tour school last May in
Devens, MA, and on the skidpad, Josh Sirota showed me something interesting
- he said that I was driving OK, but the goal was to show the students how
to drive with the throttle - I was using more steering inputs than
throttle, as my car tends to respond better to steering.  He had me work on
finding the smallest radius I could without hitting cones(it was not a
perfectly round skidpad), and then keep my hands steady.  He let me do a
lap without saying anything, then grabbed my helmet and turned it to look
across the skidpad, as opposed to 4-5 cones ahead - I was looking ahead the
whole time, but not far enough.  I hit more cones looking way (instructor
assisted) ahead at first, but there was one bizarre and telling result of
his moving my head - it was as if he was turning a smoothness knob.  He
turned it to look across the pad, the car smoothed out....stopped the
smaller inputs, it settled into a corner, ahh....then he'd turn it back,
the car would start jerking around a little, I started adjusting more for
the cones a little way ahead......turned my head to look
across.....smooth.....4 cones ahead.....rough.  Pretty neat - I had no idea
I was doing it, but I could feel it.  Very odd.  I tried it with some
students at a Denver school - same thing.  Wierd.  It is counterintuitive,
difficult to do, but it really, really helps.  On the skidpad, if I could
see the cone I wanted to get close to, and was looking out the side of the
car, I could stand on it and make a big, fast arc right to it, as opposed
to driving 4-5 cones out, get tight, look 4-5 more, get tight, etc.  There
were probably 20-30 cones in the skidpad, so I was looking ahead about 1/4
of the way, where I should have been looking 1/2way.  Looking ahead is good.

SIFO - slow in, fast out.  Generally speaking(99% of the time) you have to
set up for the next corner after the one you are approaching.  Looking
ahead:).  If you can take a corner flat out and still be on line for the
next corner, great!  Do it.  That's the 1%.  Most of the time, you have to
slow down somewhere.  Being that you _have_ to slow down, do it _before_
the coner.  Say there's a 90d right corner with a 100' straight beyond it.
If you come flying into it, then brake/turn when _in_ the corner, get
around, then get on the gas after the corner, you're spending less time on
the gas than if you slowed sooner - remember, you have to slow down - this
does not change.  So, if you slow before it, turn in, and accelerate
through and out of the corner, by the time you get to the end of the 100'
straight, you'll be going faster.  Higher average speed = faster times.

The trick is knowing how long you can put off braking and still get turned
in/back on the gas early - that takes time, a long time.  If you(any of
you, hypothetical you, etc) are doing what most to all new autocrossers do
- come in way too hot, brake in the turn, and get on the gas way too late -
you will find anywhere from 2-4 seconds by simply slowing before the
corner, turning in early/at the right time and being on the gas through and
out of the corner.  It makes a HUGE difference for new drivers, and again,
looking ahead is a big part of it.

There will sometimes be corners where the exit is irrelevant - so you can
stay in it, get sloppy and squirmy through it, simply because you know
you'll have to slow down on the other side anyhow.  Rare, but it does
happen.  For the most part, slow in, fast out will shave time quickly - I
started, like most, overcooking corners and having lousy exit speed.  I
then figured this out, and was SLOW into _every_ corner, getting better
exit speeds, and I went a good bit faster.  Now I am working on the happy
medium - braking later and later while still being on the gas early - this
is MUCH harder than it might sound, and it is taking me a while to do it.
Knowing how much brake and turning inputs you can use at the same time is
good, too, but for starters, brake early, then turn, then accelerate.
Break corners up into those three segments at first, and you _will_ go
faster.  As you get more proficient, you squish the three down as small as
possible - braking harder, then turningacclerating at the same time.  Then
even smaller - braking later and harder and turning, which can make the car
rotate, then accelerating - the goal is to spend small amounts of time
going slow, large amounts of time going fast.  You (I did, anyhow) will go
faster sooner if you approach the problem from the slow side and gradually
add speed here and there rather than trying to slow down just enough.  It
is easier to add a little bit than take it off, IMHO.  It is easier to say
and conceptualize "I can go a little faster through that one" than it is to
say "I know I have to go slower through that one."  How much slower?  Who
knows.  How much faster?  Try it.  Slow down WELL before you have to - I've
taken people on fun runs in the past, slowing down excessively and earlier
than needed to prove a point - I slow down more and earlier, but still go
faster.  They try it, voila!  Faster times.

Someone else said it - don't coast.  Brake 100% or accelerate 100%.  If you
are coasting, you're wasting time.  Simple.  Accelerating 100% does not
always mean "floored," as in a big, constant radius corner, you might only
be able to use 50% throttle without overpowering the front tires, creating
a push - but you are still acclerating 100% of what grip is available.
Most of the time, I see non-100% stuff entering corners - people lift while
thinking about braking, then brake a bit on the way in....then BRAKE.  I
still do it sometimes, gotta work on that.

Stay on line.  Prepare for the next corner - look ahead - the reason you
slow for a corner early and be "late" on it is to be in the right place on
the course for the next one.  Generally speaking, you want to "late apex."
Late apexing is simple, really - picture a 90d right hand corner.  You want
to have the car "touch" the inside of the corner at some point.  If it is
an intersection with a curb on the right, picture a cone at the point of
the curb - that'd be a neutral apex, so you start out wide, by the yellow
lines, say, turn in to create an arc, come close to your theoretical cone,
then drift out to the yellow line.  Neutral apex.  An early apex would be
if you started out right next to the curb and turned at the corner - think
about it - if you had speed, it would be tough to stay tight & in your
lane.  Early apexes are generally not used, but sometimes.

A late apex is if the cone is not at the point of the curb, but farther
around - picture a 90d right corner followed immediately by a 90d left.  If
you are neutral around the 90d right, you'll wind up out at the yellow line
- creating an early apex for the left.  Yuk.  So, give up the speed on the
entry to the right corner, turn in so you come close(inch or two) to the
cone on the right side, so you are set up for the left, which depending on
what is past it, you'll want to take neutral or late, typically.  Make
sense?  This way, you can accelerate all the way through the left turn as
opposed to slowing through the right turn, creeping around the left, _then_
accelerating.  VWs are not fast cars - you need to spend as much time as
possible ON the gas, which means setting up for corners and accelerating
through them - you don't have 300hp to fall back on(even with 300hp,
though, the same stuff applies, but a lousy driver in a 300hp car can turn
"fast" times due to the power - a good driver in the same car will go
faster).  Late apexes oftentimes allow for bigger arcs.

Make big arcs.  A car will carry more speed through a corner if it is not
turning as much - the car that turns least goes fastest.  Using the whole
course is part of this - you have to use as much space as possible to
maintain a high speed through the corner.  VWs do not like to drive to
something and turn - they tend to turn in quickly, but abrupt, jerky
motions break the front wheel's limited traction.  Make large, smooth arcs
through corners, carry as much speed as possible.  On roadcourses/highways,
this comes naturally - you are going fast, and it is intuitive that abrubt
motions will unsettle the car.  At autocrosses, you are going slower, so
there tends to be a tendency to throw the car around, jerking the wheel,
which unsettles the car.  Think of pushing a refridgerator.  If you walk up
to it and gently push it, trying to slide it, it'll take a lot of effort to
slide, and it'll slide slowly.  If you get a running start and throw your
body at it, it moves.  Same with a steering wheel.  If you turn it gently,
smoothly, the tire will turn and change the car's direction, whereas if you
jerk the wheel, the wheels break traction, and slide.  If you are making
big arcs, you turn in early, get the car to change direction smoothly, and
slowly bring the tires up to their maximum grip level - if you jerk the
wheel, you can bring the tires up to max grip so fast that it goes right by
max grip and pushes.

If your front wheels are pushing, don't turn the wheel more - turn OUT of
the push.  REALLY counterintuitive - the car is not turning, so you turn
the wheel more, right?  No.  Back out of the gas a little(or brake less,
depending), turn out of the push, let the tires regain traction, and wow,
the car is going where I want it to.  This becomes second nature, but you
have to think about it at first.

I guess this is a start - these are the big things.  Look ahead, be
smooth(jerky motions are bad), make the fewest steering inputs possible,
and exit speed - if you don't have to slow down, don't, but if you do, slow
down early to spend the lognest time on the gas.  Know where the sides of
your car are - the closer you are to important cones, the better off you
are.  As far as using the whole course, this is good advice most of the
time, but some course designers give you more room than you need - I do
this when I design courses - which makes it tricky.  If you go way wide
because you can, you are travelling a longer line than neessary.  Too tight
is too tight, and slow.  I like to give options - this is dependent on the
designer.  So, of course, walk the course.  Walk it alone, with others,
fast people, slow people - I often learn a lot from slower people, as they
say "I want to be over here," which makes me think harder about what I want
to do, and oftentimes, their mistakes highlight the ones I might have made.
Stop on course and walk back and forth on the course - get the inside line
picture, walk to the outside, look again.  See the difference 15' of car
placement makes?  The "right" line is elusive, but by looking at a known
BAD line, you can often see the good lines better.  OK, I'll shut up now,
this is a huge subject, but I think that the basic ideas are here.  Hope
this helps someone!


I.Mannix


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