How do I go quicker on the track?

[davekmoore]

Sorry this goes on a bit. If you reckon you can make worthwhile suggestions I'll appreciate your reading the lot and making those suggestions. Or just jump to the questions at the end. Either way thanks in advance for your time.

I've plateaued at 1:58.3 around Philip Island. In 5 consecutive sessions yesterday the quickest lap was the first flying one and was within 0.5 seconds either way of 1:58.8. Each subsequent lap of each session went about 0.5 of a second slower as the tyres went off and there was either wheelspin or throttle lift off at a couple of corners and either too much 4 wheel drift off to the right or throttle lift off at Lukey Heights.

I'm still not brave enough at turn 1 and have not got turn 2 right yet either, but elsewhere I reckon I'm not far off the limit, or sometimes a bit beyond it. The crude cheap GPS app reckons a mid-57 is possible if I get it as right as I presently can in every sector.

The car is relatively heavy. It's on road tyres, albeit good Hankook ones. I drive with the heavy "mohair" soft top up at the track for slightly less bad aero than with it down. No plans to remove the soft top. No plans to add a fastback or a hard top. The quickest tyres it'll ever get will be R specs as it needs to be dríven on road legal tyres to and from the track. It's an SE with improved breathing, built bottom end, bigger injectors, ECU etc, but still with the OEM little IHI turbo with a conservative tune, which could easily have the boost turned up, but this won't happen until it (maybe) gets a better turbo. The brakes are little 6 pot Wilwoods and standard SE rears and seem fine apart from the rears apparently doing little or nothing, which will be improved by a proportioning valve shortly. It has Tein street coilovers with (too soft) street springs, all the SE bracing and a street/track alignment. It has a 6 speed with the standard SE diff, which means 6th is not used, even using full throttle all the way onto the main straight at PI.

So, what are the right things to do to get the combination of car and driver quicker and what are they worth to times?

A. More brave from me at turn 1 and more driver training. Possibly related to B - E below. 3 seconds?
B. R spec tyres. 2 seconds?
C. Front splitter/air dam and rear wing for more grip. 1 second?
D. Better coilovers with stiffer springs, bigger swaybars? Half a second?
E. Alignment, corner weighting, seam welding. Half a second?
F. Change diff ratio to one where 6th gets used and all the ratios are effectively closer together. Half a second?
G. Find 100kg (?) to pull out. The rest of the a/c, power steering, sound proofing, what else? Half a second?
H. Reduce driver weight by 20kg and increase fitness by 20%. Half a second?

All positive suggestions gratefully received, including comments on the above, confirmation or otherwise of the potential time saved and additions to the list above.

[Tony]

Get some proper driver training and coaching; then focus on getting plenty of seat time.

You'll need to check the applicability of using the proportioning valve with ABS.

[Magpie]

What Tony said!

What was your alignment, suspension settings, tyre temps/pressures? Where was the car oversteering/understeering entry/mid/exit corner? Have you spoken to other drivers at the track? Keeping notes about car setup will help with making changes and tracking what works or doesn't. However until the driver gets consistency your notes have to be read in context.

Remember that for some corners it is slow in and fast out.

[Apu]

Get a better driver to set a time in your car, data log that if you can, and you'll see where and how you can improve. Then practice, practice, practice.

[lightyear]

If you are not using 6th there may be a problem. I have a 3.9 ratio, with extra tall 225/50's. It is doing close to 7000rpm in 6th at the end of the straight. Would be similar gearing to your 3.6 and normal sized tyres.
I would gladly take your car for a session to see if the car is the problem. I really don't think you need to be spending money on all of your things listed.
Saturday arvo would have been a good day for me to take people's cars out. As mine wasn't working.

[rascal]

x100 on driver training.
Look into John Bowe days or similar.
You don't need to change things on your car..........not yet. It's already capable of lap times several seconds quicker.
Just spend the money you would have spent on your list above to improve the nut behind the wheel.
Will pay much bigger dividends than further modifying a good car you are not getting the best out of now.

[Dan]

^ Yep, I agree 100%. Improving yourself as a driver is the most rewarding mod you can do too.

My thought is that better and more consistent lines will reduce the amount that you need to be ‘more brave’ in corners as correct lines allow you to more comfortably carry speed.

The first thing I’d do is read books on theory (Drive to Win, Going faster etc..).

The second thing I’d do is watch video’s of fast drivers and write down on a track map references for the brake point, corner entry, apex and corner exit. If you can find someone with a similar car with an overlay or you have data you can also write down the minimum speed in the corner as well as shift points too.

Read that map and practice recalling the information to the point that you can recall every reference point and visualise the whole track in your head. Also look at the map against your driving and identify the points that you are most off line to prioritise improvement since trying to fix the whole track is difficult to do.

Here’s an example of a track map I made for SMSP South before I first drove it


The third thing I'd do is get a good datalogger like an AIM Solo and learn how to use the data to analyse your driving (I made a post a while back on webinars for data analysis viewtopic.php?f=19&t=64886), this will allow you to look for inconsistencies in your driving and possible area's for improvement.

The optional suggestion is to get iRacing and a wheel to practice driving Phillip Island in the MX5 over and over in practice mode (I’m jealous you Victorians have a track!), That game is so realistic with it’s car models and laser scanned tracks making it a good place to practice outside of being on the track for real.

[davekmoore]

Thanks for responses.

Points taken about driver training.

There was certainly no plan to spend large amounts of money on the car, and certainly not all at once.

Will have to further research the brake prop valve. Rear pads outlast front by about 6 to 1.

Anyone got a map like Dan's but for PI although:

Don't do iRacing but have spent a lot of time watching videos of quicker drivers and remembering lines, braking points etc.

Yes David, you could have dríven BARMY on Saturday and that would have been a very useful exercise. Think we should seek specific permission from the organisers this time though!

[Magpie]

Dan's track maps work!

As an example this is a plot from going into turn 3 at Queensland Raceway National. Again I will prefix this with I'm not a fast driver and still have lots to learn...

Red - fastest lap time (kmh)
Maroon - TPS
Purple - Brake pressure

Green - kmh
Blue/Green - TPS
Aqua - brake pressure

I braked about 10m later on the fastest lap, with more brake pressure, a little trail braking before getting on the gas. On corner exit I did get on the gas but oversteer caused the small lift off at about 1500m.

Contrast this with the green lap, braked a little early did not use the full capacity of the brakes and very bad modulation. Then getting on the gas was very erratic as can be seen in the trace. This is not fast!

QR by Eipeip, on Flickr

Thanks to Google this is Caterham F1 Telemetry Data - Spa. See how neat the brake (brown) and TPS (orange) plots are. Yes the scale is different but you should be able to get the idea.

[Dan]

I don't have one for PI but I do have one for another Victorian track - Winton. I made it since I planned to go down there in November last year but some work travel came up which stopped me so this map is just based on footage (mainly a 911 video, Beavis and Lightyear

[ManiacLachy]

I always feel that making changes to the car (if it's running properly) to improve your times is kind of missing the point, right? If you add power, reduce weight or add grippier tyres, etc - the car is going faster sure, but you're doing the same things you were before (mostly), and if you went back to the old set up you'd be at your old pace. If you just want to go faster, then I guess that meets your goals, but I think you want to get better! So unless the car has issues, you need to focus on you. But I think you already know this

[1600Dave]

I tend to agree with this ^^^^^. It is relatively easy to throw money at a car and get faster lap times. It is much more difficult as a driver to get the absolute best lap time possible out of the car. In the last few months I have moved from using my old modified Datsun 1600 as my track toy to using my newly-acquired MX5. The MX5 is 100% stock standard. It is eye opening seeing the lap times that other people can get from an identical standard car, in the Datsun I had no car with similar specs to directly compare my lap times to.

As a result, I have booked into a day of one-on-one training with Trackschool up in goulburn in 3 weeks time, will report back after that.

[lightyear]

I don't think you need to worry too much at looking at data to make you faster. Do driver training day at the next Winton. Seat time is the most important. So do more track days. You have to know what the car is telling you by the messages it sends through the seat and steering wheel. Seat time is the only way you will become one with the car. Then you can feel confident, and push the car closer to 100% (or like my video without the wing 105%). Obviously taking the right lines is important too. And watching videos will help there.
It must come easier to me than some others. As I don't look for brake markers or anything. I just do what makes sense in my head, and what feels right.

[Lokiel]

I'm also betting you've started forming habits for the track which can be hard to break unless you really focus on breaking them.

Have an instructor show you the lines you should be taking and brake points (take track video of the session because you'll forget a lot), then focus on one or two sections until you nail them and move onto the next sections.

Also, try sitting behind a more experienced driver and tail them (resist the temptation to overtake them on the straight with your greater power though), you can learn a lot by following an experienced driver through the curves.

I was also told to "learn the limits of your car", which essentially means you need to actually go "just past" to find them. The logic here is that many cars handle far better than you may expect so you can push harder than you think - once you've managed to really nail a section you'll have no fear and know you can do it again. Whilst not recommended at circuits like Lakeside, there are usually safe-ish sections on tracks where you can find these limits.

[Magpie]

I think some of the people commenting have ignored driver training to their detriment...

As per lightyear if you have not invested in data logging yet I would not worry too much about it, however something like AIM or Driftbox would be worthwhile looking at in the future. Most serious driver coaching uses video/telemetry as a tool as they are not always in the car with you.

At the general practice I attended recently I followed around a few Excel cup cars and whilst I had more power on the straight their ability to go through corners more than made up for it. Plus the drivers just had so much track time. Actually Lokiel this sounds like a conversation we had on Saturday