Thank you Rob! I hadn’t noticed this. What parts of the track are you seeing it? Turn 1 entry? Turn 9.5 exit curb? Others?
In the words of the magnificent Norberg (paraphrasing actual quote from a video of his)…
If you find yourself wide mid corner you carried too much speed into the turn.
Maybe back up the speed reduction bit a foot and get back on a foot earlier with a more settled kart?
1 Like
@tjkoyen thank you! I have a few questions:
Where are you seeing this? Turn 1 or somewhere else? I do this in turn 1. When I come off the brakes, I feel like I have to coast into the corner and wait for the kart to grip up before I can get back on the throttle. Should I be going straight from trail braking to throttle with no coasting? I feel like the kart carries more mid corner speed when I’m coasting than it does when I’m trailing the brakes.
- How can I set up my race studio to show splits for 3 sectors instead of each individual turn? I don’t know exactly where each sector starts and ends on the track. I estimated where the sectors were by looking at another competitor’s lap on alpha timing that had a similar overall lap time to me and then seeing what part of the lap I was on at each of his sector times, if that makes sense. Can race studio automatically know where the sectors are on this track and show me those splits?
He takes a different line there (turn 5 entry) as well. You can see on the gps trace that he stays closer to the inside and then brakes towards the outside. There is a bump in the braking zone there, and I struggle to avoid it when I go inside like Daniel is doing here. Maybe he hit the bump on that particular lap you are looking at and that made him lock up.
I’m gonna look at that tutorial video when I get home this afternoon.
When you go to make a new track map in RS Analysis, delete all sectors it provides and then you can split it up as necessary.
He did the same in both laps I have watched so far.
Daniel is back to power earlier here.
You
Daniel
I can relate. Try to visualize driving through the apex with building throttle as opposed to managing the speed down to the apex.
You are on power at the apex, but, Daniel is starting his run through the apex earlier.
From memory, I noticed it entering and exiting 5 (righr hairpin) and coming off 9. I’ll look closer later and see where else.
Red - these are places you are braking too early.
Green - here you can see where you release the brakes earlier than your coach, and because of this, you are rolling more speed in the entry phase, but you are much later to throttle because of this. You haven’t gotten the kart slowed and settled down, so you have to delay throttle input, and sure, maybe you make up 0.05 during the very final phase of braking, but you lose multiple tenths on exit and down the following straights. One of the first things I take a look at doing data is the braking traces and you can see the blue lines are all on a steeper trajectory than your lines. That shows strong and more optimized braking, as he is slowing down quicker than you. And then you can see the traces diverge in the final few feet of braking as you release the brakes and coast into the apex more. Any time we are coasting, we are letting the kart set the inside rear wheel down and not loading the kart or tires to their max.
Blue - another example of trying to carry that speed into the corner too far, and being delayed on throttle input. More easy to see the effects here as this is a rhythm section.
Also note how you are achieving less top speed because of your poor corner exits, but even though you are still going slower than your coach as the braking point, you are braking earlier than him.
We want to be rolling into throttle and driving through the apex so we extend the following straight as much as possible, rather than coasting with excess speed into the apex.
If we say a corner has a maximum potential apex speed of 30 mph, it is MUCH better to accelerate through the apex at hit that 30 mph max apex speed on throttle than it is to be scrubbing speed off all the way to the apex and decelerating to 30 mph at the apex.
1 Like
Daniel chicane
Your chicane
Width perhaps Rob spoke of
In general,… For me I think the sound of the driving tells you a lot. Daniel is more on boil, constantly. The pauses you interject from the coast bits get in the way of being on boil. Shorter harder braking, maybe backed up a tad here and there, in service of finding that relentless feeling of being fast out of corners (as opposed to pushing into them).
Btw I think your driving looks really good and bear in mind I’m comparing you to a really good driver who’s a TJ. You are close and getting gud. More laps!
Wow, I was looking at the wrong corner. Embarrassing. Anyway, I can totally see what you are pointing out. He’s on the throttle before the apex. He got the kart rotated so much faster than me on entry.
Yes, he took more curb than me in turn 11, and this gave him a better line into 12/13.
And thank you for the encouragement!
1 Like
Maybe you weren’t, it’s the turn before the turn you were wide on that I was saying to back it up a touch. He does a brief brake with wheels straightish and perhaps is rotating a bit. But, it’s hard enough to audibly hear chirping.
Maybe instead of coast phase try to transition to maintenance throttle very briefly. You can hear Daniel’s throttle doing it in one of his laps… lemme find it.
Crackle crackle then full
Ya, turn 5 is the right hander and turn 6 is the left hander there. I always have a hard time picking a braking point into turn 6 and other corners with gentle radii/arc as opposed to sharper corners where the optimal line is more obvious. It seems like there are many different lines you can take there, and I’m not sure which is fastest. If I focus on getting on throttle early like Daniel, then that will help narrow my choices down.
Man, this is great stuff. I guess I convinced myself that more entry speed would save time, but it’s actually costing me time because I’m sacrificing exit speed.
Your points make great sense to me (red areas, blue, green, etc.).
3 Likes
The common saying “slow down to go faster” is really true. Slow down quicker in the braking zone and you’ll go faster overall.
My son races Tillotson sr there, he was convinced he was down on motor compared to me (I raced it the first part of last year too). We looked at the data and I was getting back to the throttle 10-15 feet before him everywhere. I told him to do whatever he needed to do to get back on the throttle asap, and he immediately dropped a half second and podiumed the next race (race 7 of O-cup last year).
@ApexGRT ya, I’m going to try telling myself this as a cue. As with any other sport, its one thing to understand what you are doing wrong in your mind, and it’s another to force your body to actually change your mechanics when the bullets are flying so to speak. Sometimes it helps to have a simple verbal cue to focus on. “Get back on the throttle earlier” seems like a good one because if I focus on that then my mind might automatically tell my body to brake more so that I will have the kart slowed down enough to get back on the throttle.
@tjkoyen next time out, I’m gonna make a video of me just braking as hard as I possibly can and post it here so y’all can critique my brake application. Is there a practical way to measure and record brake pressure on my kart? We can estimate Daniel’s brake pressure by lookikg at speed and RPM or by watching his leg/foot move on video, but I would love to be able to see a trace of how quickly he ramps up to max brake pressure and how quickly or gradually he releases the brakes.
1 Like
maybe a way to think about it is like the throttle and brake are connected like a planes rudder. Meaning that one goes in the other foot goes out. I try to drive with the understanding that I never want to be entirely off throttle unless I am in brake but also that the moment I come off brake the throttle comes back in, overlapping.
If you ditch the coast you’ll find that you’ll be carrying more throttle and as a consequence will have to brake harder and/or back up a bit. You can’t coast in that scenario (no coast) and therefore will have to find the timing and balance of the entry.
Dollar to donugjts the maintenance throttle crackle represents the min speed he wants at apex… but since he’s already in throttle due to that min maintenance throttle, his engine is ready to pounce when he transitions to full!
It’s a feeling. You just have to force yourself to explore it. Once you see it you can’t unsee it, sorta.
1 Like