When looking at the location of where our minimum speed should come in any corner, a key question we should ask ourselves is how long we should spend at that minimum speed.
The longer the radius of the corner, the longer we will spend at our minimum speed. For this week's newsletter, I'm going to use Road America as our example race track to make this point.
If you don't know Road America take a look at the Blayze Road America video track guide here. We'll be focusing on Turns 8 and the Carousel.
For turn 8 we have a pretty tight and short radius corner and then in the Carousel, we have a very long radius corner.
Because Turn 8 is such a short radius we don't need any time spent at maintenance throttle. As soon as we get to our minimum speed spot we can unwind the steering wheel quickly, which allows us to get back to full throttle quickly. All of this means we hit our minimum speed for a brief moment and then accelerate hard away from it.
But, when we look at the Carousel because the corner is so long we have a prolonged period of time where we have a lot of steering input, which means in most vehicles we can't get back to full throttle. It's also too long of a corner to roll in enough entry speed to wait until you get the car pointed toward our second apex before getting to the throttle. That means we're going to need some maintenance throttle in here.
So, when we're in a corner that requires a certain level of maintenance throttle what should we focus on? That's the core idea behind today's article.
My overall goal in these long-duration corners is to steer the car with my feet. What does that mean? Well, it all comes back to weight transfer. The more throttle I add, the more the weight shifts toward the rear of the car, and the more my car understeers to a wider radius. As I slowly reduce the throttle, I shift weight to the front, which then helps the car hold a tighter radius.
If that doesn't make sense then I recommend experimenting with a simple skid pad-style drill that you can even do on the sim. On the skid pad start driving in a consistent radius circle. Slowly add throttle and you'll see the car will start sliding wide and not be able to hold as tight of a circle as you initially were able to hold. Then slowly reduce a little throttle and you'll see the car starts to turn more and will be able to hold a tighter radius.
My goal in these long-duration corners where I need some maintenance throttle is to understand where I want the car to take me to a wider radius and then when I want the car to come back to a tighter radius.
Looking at the Carousel I work the corner backwards once again. I figure out where I want my second apex to come and what car angle I need at that apex.
From there, I want to figure out where my rotation point needs to come to get the car down to that apex with the right angle. Once I've identified this point I've identified where I want to release off the throttle to get the car to be able to hold a tighter line.
From there I focus on rolling in as much entry speed as I can to delay my initial throttle as late as I can. Once I pick up the throttle I want to be as aggressive as I can on the throttle (the limiting factor here is how wide the car takes me) so that when I get to my rotation point I have enough speed to where I need to lift off some throttle to get down to my second apex point.
More easily said, in these long-duration corners, I want to be more aggressive on the throttle when I want the car to take me wider and then reduce off the throttle when I need the car to turn to a tighter line. By turning the car with your feet and using weight transfer you're going to not only be able to have a higher minimum speed through these long radius corners, but you'll also be able to get back to full throttle earlier in these corners as well.
If you look at your video and or data from these long-duration corners and just see a very consistent maintenance throttle you're likely not using weight transfer to your advantage. Always think about how your feet and hands can work together and think about steering the car with your feet, especially in these corners.