Practice sessionsFrom TrackpediaYou will need to make orginised practice sessions to make sure you are indeed improving. In this article, we will disscuss the pattern, the note taking, the mental excerise and the steps from a reader to a succesfull racer, step by step.
NotesThe goal of practice sessions and driving in any condition really, is to drive effectivelly. Benefits such as speed, safety, millege, comfort, ease, impression, etcetra, are by-products of effective driving. To have further understanding of the concept, read this great article. Taking notes helps organize matters. The important thing about this is to check the car, track and driver as if they were lab rats, with the idea being to carefully examine each factor apart, changing only one variable at the time. Results are than calculated as part of a greater account, that includes several factors: The track conditions, the lap time, the tires and the handling. The key is to have a standard uniform format for note taking. Additionally, keep in store several copies of the track's map, or maybe on of trackpedia's turn by-turn guides. Mark on these maps lines, reference points, special features (a camber angle, a bump, etc) locations where understeer and oversteer were detected (according to severity), and any general location that made you do something you didn't plan for (even if you were ready for it to happen).
Track notesTrack conditions can cause a change in handling and will require different tire setups (rain or winter tires, less pressure), and might even make you change your line strategy. You need to remember that cold air is more dense, and therefore the need of Aerodynamics is more crucial, and you should also monitor tire pressure and even keep the car (and tires) warm. Hot tracks boil the tarmac, this means that the tires generate heat much faster, to the point of maximal grip, and possibly beyond it. Also, a combination of a bit of grease and dust with some moist, can create a "slick points", which are as slippery as first rain! Air flow (wind) also has it's effect on handling and aerdynamics. You need to record therefore:
Lap notesLap notes are taken from another person, equipped with a timer with a "lap" function, or with a professional racing timer. Have the observer watch for noticeable mistakes or traffic conditions as you race, and record the exact lap when it happened. This will help correspond the information against lap times, in comparison to the average lap time (Rather than in comparison to the fastest lap time). A method for improving these notes is by running through time-control or segments, checking your time around large portions of the tracks, rather than simply in one big lap. Three or four segments are a good start. Tire notesFor tire notes, you will need a professional, plastic-halloed, oil-filled, dial-gage with a scale of up to 60PSIg and a built-in bleeder valve. Keep a personal pencil tire gage. Also, you will need a professional temperature probe. Other probes are used to measure brake temperature and should not be confused. You need to check air pressure at the beginning of the session. However, you should constantly keep awareness of tire temprature. One of the ways to do this is to install a built-in gage, that reads out results into the cockpit. However, you might need to check the temperature of the tire with a professional dial gage. Keep a good pencil gage with you, though, as it is less sensitive to blows and shocks. Keep in mind that a tire has two gripping elements: The center patch, from where most of the grip is being generated, and the sides, which have substantially lower levels of grip. You will need to take reading from every element: The center of the tire, and each side. On slick tires or even semi-slicks, the difference should be very little. On threaded tires, not only will there by a difference, but you will also have to conduct the measurement slightly differently. What you need to do is to place the probe just on a threading component (a thread block), so that a generally similar amount of rubber is on each side (the imaginary center of the block). 'This should all be checked before and after sessions (hot and cold) and be compared with the tire surface state (wear, thread depth). A specific problem related to hot reading, is that it must be taken quickly, to be ready for another lap, and to have an accurate measurement. It should be made immediately, best with the assistance of at lease one other person or more. Additionally, you will need to decide on a regular checking sequence. This is done by predicting which tire is hotter before checking them. In a front-wheel drive or all-wheel drive, it will always be one of the front tires, depending on the direction of the last two corners (left corners lay more demands on the left front tire, etc). In a rear-wheel drive, the front axle is less important, and it demands on how much straight road stretch came before the pits and on the type of APEX used in the last corner. The more acceleration taking place, the greater will be the load on the rear-tires, while more cornering means more load on the front. Additionally, if a serious braking zone preceded the pits, than it's the front to begin with, regardless of drivetrain. Now, just decide which side had more load on it, according to the last corner and the one before it. If in different directions, choose the tire in the direction of the last corner, rather than the one before. Don't think of this as you approach the pits, but rather after you have passed the flager. At most, you can look back at the last stretch of road leading to the pits. Handling notesAs we said, handling, grip and traction are three different, although closely related concepts. Traction is generated by grip, and handling equals to grip plus balance. The balance of the car is effected by driving style and suspension modeling. That is why you need to monitor this, and see how the car reacts to applications of steering, acceleration, braking and shifting. The idea is again to isolate the results of driving style and lines and the car's technical handling. One of the ways to do this, is to categorize it according to the type of corner, in which understeer or oversteer appeared: was it a sharp corner, or rather a medium speed 90 degrees bend? Was it an early or late APEX and why? Trail braking or neutral throttle? What was the direct cause of the lost of adhension? Keep in mind that while the technical and direct cause of understeer and oversteer might be one thing, it can originate from a completly different thing (like lift-off oversteer, caused due to being too fast entering a sharp corner). Think about the thing that started the chain reaction (fast speed) and not only the final consequence (lifting-off of the throttle). In order to create a standart format, we recommend using a system similar to WRC pacenotes:
For an example: "Turn 11: O. R4-;D-Cut; 70->45, hard;T; TTO, TH." This means that, in turn 11, which is a moderate but tightening right-hand bend, the driver trailbraked into the turn-in/corner, and experienced massive oversteer due to trailing throttle (or braking), which was corrected by re-introducing throttle. Another example: "Turn 12: u, O; L3+;E-cut;95->0;A; P -> TTO, WL." This means that the driver was speeding, turned too early and too hard into an open semi-fast left-hander with his foot on the power, experienced light power understeer, transfered into mild oversteer due to power lift-off and stopped by locking up the tires. You might comment and add a lesson learnt to each corner gone bad. You may note the time of appearance of the corner and handling characteristic on the in-car video, in the notes. In-car videoAside from oral notes, an incar video is a great tool for personal improvement. Drivers often think they did really good, but were either too slow or unsmooth. An onboard camera, possibly with a synchronized footcam will help. Install the camera steadily and safely, but so that you can see the road ahead (way ahead) through it relatively clearly, and that you see the steering, shifting and part of the footwork. In the footage, take particular awareness to corner entry and apexing. Practice planThe ten stages of succesfull progress in the world of motorsport: First, you must understand there is more to high-performance driving than just fast. It's an art. If you think of it as art and practice to refine that art and that skill, starting slow and let speed emerge as a by-product, you won't just go fast, you will go faster. Than, give yourself a little pad on the shoulder and try to find where to improve and improve (again, not in terms of speed, in terms of efficiency) hence getting faster. 1. Learn theory 2. Practice theory in free racing simulations. 3. Practice good driving habits on winding public roads, cone-courses and large empty lots. 4. Get professional input with a personal trainer and than at a race driving course and/or race driving school. 5. Designate a particular track for practice sessions: Get videos decipting laps at various speeds, instructional videos, videos decpiting a certain driver's error. Get turn-by-turn guides, talk about it in the forums. 6. Get on a track with a personal trainer. Walk the track. Let the instructor perform one smooth lap and view/disscuss the track line through the lap. 6. Limit your RPM range and practice key techniques and common mistakes on the tack. Dedicate each lap to perfect a certain technique, and every four techniques, merge them all toghether in a single lap. 7. Segregate the track into segments and practice each segment to perfection. Built a certain plan with your trainer. 8. Summarize as much information as possible and use them for personal improvement and for feedback in online forums' like our disscussion forums. (Note: Internet-based, and any oral input in fact, should be treated with caution and a certain doubt). 9. After the session, set a certain trail for yourself with the advice of your instructor. Take aspects which you had difficulty with, and set certain goals for improvement in this area in a certain time frame of a few weeks. Post input from the experience on the forums for counseling. 10. Set another session with the instructor. At a beginning, you will not simply go over the whole track simply and train. You need to break it down into elements, and work over each one. Having worked on each technique and driving aspect apart, you can put everything toghether into practice around one corner, and than around another, practicing around track segments and, with experience, around the whole track. One problem with solo training is the lack of prespective resulting in ignoring the "Luck" factor. ("Nakhs", as I call it) I have seen drivers tackle a skid make a bad correction and recover, or make the correct recovery input badly and spin. In both cases, the driver misinterpreted the luck factor, both for "bad" luch resulting in the skid and the good luck that saved him in spite of applying a sub-optimal correction. He hence came to the conclusion that he is a splendid driver and that he did good, just because what he did/thought he did worked in situation "X" and maybe in situation "Y" too. Without a trainer, this will make the driver inherit bad habits that lasts without the realization of their problematicness up to the money-time when the wall is coming by at 60mph. Outch!! And besides, who says the net result is all that counts, where is the spirit??! This is without even disscussing the lack of skill of beginner to average drivers. There is a great difference between what you do or, more precisely, what you think you do, and what you are indeed doing. I have seen people do one thing (like brake and declutch) and yet be certain they did something else (like stay off of the clutch or countersteer perhaps). And yet untill the drill is repeated about three times atleast, are they convinced that they actually did something else. Stage 1: PreperationThe first stage, is the theortical material, which can be found in this website on our comprehensive Race driving guide. Many of the offered techniques and driving habitbs -- Seating positions, mirrors, steering habits, pedal operation, utilization of vision, lines, elements of correct driving, etc -- can and should be practiced and used on public roads. They will help you to fortify those habits (which might be the opposite of the habits you naturally adopted/was taught to adopt) so that you can utilize them on the track, as well as to improve you road driving, and save money (on gas and mechanical car wear) for racing, and stay alive on the road to race another day. At a certain stage, professional observation in a certain sort of driving course is obligatory. As a rule, oral instructions suffer from simplifaction of matters that are in fact much more complex, we made our best efforts to refrain from this. However, since you do not drive with a keyboard, you do not learn driving over the keyboard. You need to practice, but with a controlled environment and professional supervision, you might not do things right, however sincerely believing that you are. Even pros needs inspection from a third party from time to time. The bottom line is (although it might appear moot) is that personal coaching is a must!! If you do not believe us than first, you should! But in any case, here are the quotes of two racing drivers on coaching. First, Gerardo Bonilla (US Formula 2000), himself a trainer:
And, another, from someone who is not a trainer:
Racing simulators, such as Grand Turismo, BMW M-3 challenge, and Live for speed are also beneficial for when you are not physically driving a car. You can read about their advantages and disadvantages here. At this stage, you should consider a serious course at one of the available Racing Schools, this is going to be much better than simply going on the track and trying to be fast, even by correct technical driving or a planned practice session. You might also recieve a scholarship for a loca league or even an international racing license. Make sure the instructors are experienced in driving and have good instruction methodologies and personal treatment according to our HPDE Instructors Guide. Make sure they cover all subjects in both theory and practice, according to our Race driving guide. A racing school experience is not going to be very productive without preperation at a smaller course, so it's best to built a base by learning the theory, and than sharpening it with one to three sessions with a personal trainer (be it about performance driving or even defensive/advanced road driving) and than to go to a full racing school experiene. Once you have been to one serious (3-4 day long on-track course covering all the elements of racing, in theory and in practice), or at least two shorter courses (those that last 1-2 track days), we suggest to take upon yourself certain "trails" in improving certain techniques and aspects of good driving, with which you struggled in the course, and than return after a pause ranging from five days to three weeks to another round at the track in which the instruction was held, preferably with a personal coacher and than preferably make another meeting or two. The behavioristic rational behind this is to make students that undergo training to try locally, well-defined in advance, ways of driving and/or a technical element of different driving from that he was accustomed to until undergoing the training. At a racing school, and in tracks afterwards, a certain mental state of mind must be acquired for the driver to perform well under pressure. For more information on this, read Pages 2, 6, 8-10, 15-16,18-21.A few stresses for planning in real time: 1. it is important to think of what you are about to do (in advance) and take to heart the imaginary associations and "references" or whatever than pops up in your mind suddenly, as keys for the memory. E.G. When coming to a turn, imagine you and your car driving through a certain line, before actually doing it. The earlier you can get a clear mental image of the bend ahead, the more effectivelly are you driving and thinking! 2. Making actions repetitive in your mind like "maintaining throttle", "maintaining throttle", "maintaining throttle"... "staying on the brake, staying on it, staying on it, staying on it..." and repeating the mantra in your head while doing it in practice, helps to make it "circular" and avoid pressure and distractions. When a certain task is finished, mentally "mark" it in your mental checklist. If nessecary, talk to yourself out-load. If you cannot perform the driving and "commentry" simultanously, you are driving too fast for the conditions and your level of skill! This instructor is demnostrating how to perform such a commentry:
Stage 2: Track-knowledgeNow, and only now, you may book yourself a trackday to practice on. Choose a good track (you do not want to drive around the Nordschleife, Oserschlaben, Monza or the Roebling Road Raceway for training) and look at turn by-turn guides and driving videos detailing it to be aware of things like blind corners, tricky places, common mistakes, etcetra. Note mistakes done by drivers in videos and any action that seems unusual. Watch over and over, make notes, disscuss your conclusions on our forums. Diversity and detail are the name of the game now: Watch instructional videos, slower laps, full-speed laps, watch videos of racing with traffic and without, with a camera that gives you the view of the driver's hands, and a footcam -- and without. Watch videos with a display of speed, RPM, G-forces, etceta. Watch vdeos decipting a major driver's error. Another good option is to watch a video of someone with whom you can meet in person (perhaps your personal trainer) so he can comment on the video as you watch it. * 10% driving experience discount At first, rent a trainer to drive you around the track at sub-maximum speed along with disscussing the treats and lines of the track. now, start with practicing each technique around a complete session. Do not try and drive fast early, drive correctly and speed will eventually come along for the ride. We are not saying this for safety reasons, we are saying this for efficiency over time and consistency. Do not give up, even if you seem stuck for some time (and even for quite a while) or even your progression seems to be slow, everyone goes through this stage, and here's another place where a coacher (which might rent for one one-one driving analysis) comes in handy. If you have a personal instructor by your side, you might first try to make mistakes. I.E. on the track or another more sterile environment, let the instructor demonstrate (preferably with you driving) how the wrong course of action will lead to bad consequences. I.E. Try performing a fast slalom or off-road recovery with one hand on the wheel or when seating too far back, try control oversteer with shuffle steering. Try and correct a slide by steering, different bad lines (early apex, geometric apex, late apex, last apex, outside line, inside line, dual apexing, etcetra). You need to feel and understand mistakes, bad habits and misguiding instincts before you set out to do the right thing. A few concepts of bad driving habits you are obligated to understand and experience under guidance are: Over-driving and the lack of patience that causes it, early apexing and how to correct it if you already turned-in, high-speed going into sharp corners and slow speeds into fast corners (memorize the rule: "Slow in, Fast out", it's anti-thessis: "Fast in, Wipe out" and it's exceptions during very fast sweepers), and emergency braking (not threshold braking!). Start with driving slowely, and focus on driving smoothly. Grip the wheel firmly but without squeezing on it. Shift smoothly, accelerate off the line quickly and without wheelspin. Brake regressively and smoothly (without threshold braking), steer smoothly (Don't turn-in hard, even in sharp corners), keep a constant speed (cover the accelerator pedal) through the turn. Keep your eyes up, as an order! All of this can be practiced on road cars in road driving quite easily, especially on winding mountain roads. Now, practice heeltoeing or tiptoeing, as it is crucial for smooth downshifting. Having acquired that skill, move to smooth and percise regressive braking and braking into the turn-in. From here, progress to vision, corner lines and points of deceleration and acceleration in the corner, apexing, exiting the corner, etc...Do not try and increase corner entry speed and do not refrain from trying to learn Brake-turning and trail braking. These things can also be practiced to a certain degree on roads. On the roads or track, speed in going to make you less likely to lean anything and we recommend performing this practice sessions without exceeding 3,500-4,500 RPM, depending on your car and progress. Spend the whole session concentrating on just one technique. If you're starting with heel-toe downshifts, then work on getting that smooth, and don't worry about anything else. When you get the downshift smooth enough that there's no noticeable acceleration or deceleration jerk in the car, you can work on the whole braking phase. Once you've got the feel for limit braking and have the braking release smooth, you can concentrate on optimizing the turn-in and driving line. Once every three or four techniques, train on all the acquired technique as one smooth operation. When (and not if) you want to practice skid-control, go on a skidcar, and that's an order!
Step 3: Segregating the trackOnce you've worked on each specific technique, you can put them together to increase your driving speed. Doing this at every corner at first is going to be overwhelming. Start by picking one corner to concentrate on every lap. Work on getting that one corner smooth and fast using all the driving techniques together. Picking one corner per lap gives you time to think before the turn and after the turn and focus on what you need to change for the next lap. Do not make changes mid-lap, let yourself make mistakes, learn from them and than make calculated, cold-minded, small changes -- one change at a time -- between laps. If you have an instructor with you, do the first lap as a passenger with the instructor driving below maximum speed and showing you or even debating with you on what to do. Than, perform 2-3 laps with the instructor besides you, and than 4-6 laps solo with the instructor watching from the side or in a lead-car, and than another 3-4 laps with the instructor and a summary lap for him to make comments on your driving: strong points, weak points to improve, how to progress onward from this stage, etcetra. Than, ask to perform one perfect lap as a demonstration. Having put toghether all of the techniques around a turn or two, pick up another turn or set of turns in another, remoted section of the track. ext, work on a series of connected corners so you get used to using the techniques together, and generate a rythm through a track segment. As you develop the feel of a rythm through one segment, focus on another segment half a track away. If you can hire a personal instructor now and than, ask him for a professional demonstration afterwards. Finally, you can work on increasing your speed throughout the whole track. Do this progressivelly, according your tachometer. Perform a lap limited to 4,500 RPM, than 5000, than 5,500, etc... Even after you've become proficient in the basic skills, learning a new track or increasing your speed at a familar track should be done in this segment-oriented approach. By focusing on memorizing your plan for a specific segment each practice session, you'll memorize the whole track much faster than trying to memorize everything on every lap. As you more adept at recognizing the proper driving line through corners, you'll be able to focus on one segement in the first half of a session, and a different segment during the second half. Anyone can hop in a car and attack a track (and squeal the tires, and spin off, and look like a hot-shot fool). If you really want to learn how to drive your car as fast as it can possibly go around the race track, it takes the self control to learn basic skills, and to "learn to walk before you run." Allow yourself three to four events to work on the basics. You'll be getting faster during this time just like everyone else, but as the hot-dogs peak, you'll have the skills to continue to get faster yet. The next major thing to practice after getting "faster" is to work on consistency. It's one thing to concentrate well enough to put together a really fast lap once in a while, but it's another to be able to do that fast lap over and over again back to back with only 0.1 or 0.2 seconds difference. The pros can often put together consistent laps within 0.0 or 0.1 seconds. Start with a goal of .5 seconds, and get tighter from there. A reminder that in every session, something to practice is a light hand grip on the wheel, and smooth shifting. Don't forget to relax your hands and arms, and don't slam the shifter between gears. With all that's going on and the adrenaline rush of being on the track, learning to relax your muscles can be one of the difficult things to master, and must be worked on every time you're on the track. The first few laps of every session should be used to be sure the car still feels mechanically sound, and to warm up the tires and brakes. Warming up the tires is accomplished simply by driving on them. However, they will not be at their maximum grip level to start, so the car must driven quite a bit slower through the corners than during racing speeds. Warming up the tires typically takes 3 full laps, so take it easy during these laps. The zig zagging you see race cars do on the track is not for warming up the tires, but rather to scrub the tire to get debris off. A more effective method of warming up the tires is to use short acceleration and braking bursts. Likewise the brakes (especially when using carbon racing pads) need to be warmed up. This should be done gradually. On the first lap, start braking much sooner than normal and don't use as much pedal pressure. On the second lap brake closer to normal race levels, and by the third lap, the brakes should be ready for full race braking. This is done to prevent warping the rotors by shocking them with a sudden heat buildup. As said, use two distinguished track portions to practice on. Having warmed up the car in one session, and felt the track in the next, you may now move to focused training. As you ride around these corners in speed, make notes for car handling and road handling, according to driving line, acceleration and deceleration points, notes on problematic points.
In Addition to this priority set, we must look at the speeds of the corners involved. The high speed corners are more important than the slower ones. This is due to two factors: first high speed corners are usually long which means the car spends more time in them than in slower and shorter corners. Secondly, the car cannot accelerate through or out of a high speed corner as quickly as it can a slower corner. It is harder to make up for lost speed when the car is at high speeds than at slow speeds. If the driver's line or the car's handling is below optimum, more time will be lost in a 100 mph corner that should be 102 mph, than in a corner driven at 58 instead of 60 mph. For example, let's compare two track segments. The first features a long high speed turn leading onto a long straight that takes 35 seconds to drive through, and that's 30% of the lap time. The second is a series of 3 short bends that make up the esses section which takes 8 second to drive through and ends up with a short braking zone for a right turn. It is far more important to make sure that the driver's line and the car's handling setup are optimized for the first segment. First, the car spends more time there. Second, it is important to maximize the corner speed leading onto the straight to maximize the top speed on the straight. The second segment is shorter, but it also connects to a short braking zone. There is not much time to be gained, so it is a lower priority to optimize. This type of analysis has to be applied to the whole track. Each turn and segment must be prioritized. A segment can be a series of corners, or may be a single corner if it is preceded or followed by a major straight, or is a high speed carousel. Once experience is gained, you can practice complete laps, every weekend or once-twice a month. The original practice and experience is best obtained with a professional instructor or a racing school. Ameature practice sessions can carry randomal and unconclusive results and fortify the presence of bad habits. You can carry your practice sessions with a personal instructor and ask him to demonstrate potential mistakes and misinterpertations for each track segment and also to illustrate the correct manner of driving through each segement after you perform it in a sufficient level of skill. For more information on how to read and/or compose accurate data collection, read: Stage 4: Post-session improvementAfter the trainer perfoms a conclusive, full-speed lap, disscuss your fibble points with him to decide on certain "goals" to be set for improvement untill a future session in the range of a few weeks. On that time, practice and supply your imformation (video, data collection, session logs, driving videos) for input in our forums. Further information External links |