November 17, 2022

Handling Oversteer Like A Professional Racecar Driver

Dion von Moltke

Car Racing

Handling Oversteer Like A Professional Racecar Driver Image
Hey everyone, welcome to this week's Blayze video. I'm really excited about this one, this week we'll be talking about how we actually save the car once oversteer has been induced. Now, we've had previous discussions and videos about how oversteer starts, whether it's the weight transfer, a little bit of setup discussions, and wheel inputs. And if you haven't seen those videos, I highly recommend you taking a look, they'll be in the description below.

But, we haven't talked about how we actually save the car and lose as little time as possible, so we'll be digging into that one pretty deep this week. And at the end of the video we'll even go into the two phases of oversteer that is where most of the bigger mistakes start to happen. So make sure you stick around until the end. And if you haven't already subscribed to our channel, I'd absolutely love if you would consider subscribing so you can be a part, and be up to date on our weekly videos, and be part of the community. If you have any questions throughout the video, please go ahead and leave a comment below. I'll be going through the comments section every day, and be there to answer any questions. At Blayze we want to make sure that you're driving fast and safe on track, and if we can help you do that in any way, that's our goal.

So without further ado, let's dig into our weekly video. So we've switched here to an onboard camera with myself driving at Watkins Glen in the IMSA series. Now, what I want to show you here is a big moment I had coming out of the boot, and we want to go through this corner and pick it apart, and find why I was able to make a pretty big save without losing much time. And then talk about the points of the oversteer that really can cause a lot of trouble to drivers, and really where you do get in trouble.

So, let's go ahead and start playing here. So you can see I'm coming out of the boot, we're going to watch in full speed first. Coming in, coming in, big, big, big moment right here. Save, and on my way.

So, one of the critical things here in slow motion, you can see I'm already knowing I'm going to be having a moment way before I get there. You're going to see I'm going to make little small changes in the steering wheel, that's me at the edge, at the edge I think I'm about to lose, I'm try to save it, and then I'm big oversteer.

One of the best ways to prevent big moments is to realize earlier in the corner that you've got oversteer. The early you can realize that the rear's starting to slide, you'll be able to make smaller movements, and be able to stop it. But if you're in too deep you can't quite do that.

So once again, let's go even slower. So you can see here I'm making those small little movements, little movements. There's the big slide. This is where it really starts to have the compounding effects of oversteer. I've made my correction, I'm back, I'm countering that second correction. And this is in the pause section, if you make your second correction too much, you can really get the weight transferred too fast and then snap back again.

Keeping your hands in the 9 and 3 clock is really critical. So you can see, I've corrected again too far, I've had my second correction, but this is where smoother inputs become critical, because you're really starting to play with the spring unloading and launching the car one way or the other.

This is where you can really get in trouble, and smooth inputs after that slide, after the pause, become so critical for you as a driver. So let's see, just a little bonus on what mistakes can happen when you weight transfer too fast.

So, what happened there? We drove in way too deep, and we had a complete lift of the throttle, way too fast, right here. And he's going to lift, and all the weight's going to shift to the front, way too fast, so the car is going to overload the rear, and the rear's going to lift and it's going to completely lose grip.

How do we prevent that? That goes back into the smooth transition of weight's series. Again, that's going to be in the footer below, we'll have the links to that. So one more time, fast through here with the big save, pause, unload, and that's how you drive the car.

What we saw in the slow-mo is we see that once we make a correction, the load, once it reaches its peak point, there is a pause. Now, if we are too fast to correct, and we go the other way before the car is finished the pause motion, that's where we start to really get the unload of the spring, the weight transferring too fast the other side, and that's where we get the snap back oversteer that we often see.

Once we've had the slide start, remember, smooth hands, breathe, let the car pause, and then as the car starts to come back your way, that's where it's so critical to be smooth with your hands and not to counter back too much and force the weight transfer to go too far the other side.

It's an oversteer, you counter into it, which is going to become second nature to almost everyone in a car, it's just second nature to counter into the steer. You're going to let it pause. Once the pause has stopped your car is going to come back your way, and that's where the smooth next correction. And you're kind of just letting the car weight figure itself back out, and then you'll be able to carry on with the corner.

That's how you can make a correction like a pro on track, and not let that oversteer turn into something far worse than it has to be. So I hope you enjoyed this video, and I hope you stuck around and also got the bonus on how weight transferring too fast to the front can really end your day too quickly. Thanks for joining us at Blayze, hope you enjoyed the video, we'll see you around next time.
Blayze | Dion von Moltke

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About the coach

Dion von Moltke

Daytona 24 Hour Winner

Car Racing

I've spent 20 years of my life in this sport that we all love so much. During that time I was fortunate enough to have a 10 year professional career where I won the Rolex at Daytona 24 hour, the Sebring 12 Hour (twice), and became an official driver for Audi. After retiring from professional racing I became a co-founder at Blayze. My goal with building this platform is to make it more affordable, accessible, and convenient to learn personally from the best coaches in the world!

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