racing question
- Thread starter bmw4life13
- Start date
![[8]](/images/smilies/icon_smile_8ball.gif "Retarded [8]"){kind=icon}
it's the same with darts, pool, freehanded biking,
that all looks so easy. hit the white ball so it ditches the 8-ball into the pocket. piece of cake. but the slightest mising of the angle just makes the 8 ball anywhere else but the pocket. throw the damn drat to the bull's eye. can't be that hard. but hit the 1 three times....geez....
see, it is the little things that make you a capable driver or a capable racing driver. everybody can throw darts. but only few really hit what they aim to.
that all looks so easy. hit the white ball so it ditches the 8-ball into the pocket. piece of cake. but the slightest mising of the angle just makes the 8 ball anywhere else but the pocket. throw the damn drat to the bull's eye. can't be that hard. but hit the 1 three times....geez....
see, it is the little things that make you a capable driver or a capable racing driver. everybody can throw darts. but only few really hit what they aim to.
Join the BMW CCA. Go to a driving school.
Buying a book would not be a bad idea, to read before your first school. I recommend Skip Barber's Going Faster!
There are no quick secrets or tips. I had been driving for 9 years, owned four different cars (all manual trans), driven about 160,000 miles, and I had no idea how to drive on a race track when I did my first school.
My first session was an absolute disaster. I was trying to figure out how to double clutch my downshifts when I should have been working on the braking points, apex and track out. Thankfully, I took a session with my instructor in his E30 M3 race car; watching him made a world of difference.
However, I offer the following to try to impress upon you what is involved.
The line is the fastest way to get around the track. It changes from the wet to the dry and from an empty track to a full one. As you approach a corner, your car should be on the outer edge of the track, opposite side of where the corner is turning. You will begin braking in a straight line. At some point you will stop braking and turn towards the inside of the corner, aiming for a point on the inside of the arc called the apex. If you have been doing it for a while you may still be lightly applying the brakes as you turn and apply the throttle. As you pass the inside of the turn, your car will drift to the outside edge, as you find the 'track out' point.
Add double-clutch downshifting, where you brake with the left ball of your right foot, and blip the throttle, while braking, with the right ball of your foot to match the revs as you downshift the necessary gears. Try to do that so you take the same amount of time to downshift (one or more gears) to the proper gear for when you get on the throttle, as you do to brake to the correct speed to apply the throttle, keeping in mind that each corner has a different line, braking point, apex, track out, etc, and you should already be convinced of the difficulty.
Don't forget steering the car by pressing or lifting off of the gas.
Then try it with twenty other people trying to drive that same line ahead of you.
You can kill yourself or someone else if you do it wrong. Last year a guy totalled his M3 sedan (he was OK) at Road America when he lifted at 120 mph in the kink. The instructor shaved off the side of the car against the concrete wall to slow it down, after the driver had been knocked out from his head, in helmet, being hit against the headliner after the side air bags went off. The average driver's instinct is to lift off the gas if you get loose in a turn. With a RWD car that can be a disaster.
Doing these things properly and smoothly take years of practice. It is not about throwing the car around the corner at the limit the whole time, but rather finding a way to get through the entire corner as quickly as possible, which is almost always slow in and fast out.
![[driving]](/images/smilies/icon_smile_driving.gif "Driving [driving]")
Buying a book would not be a bad idea, to read before your first school. I recommend Skip Barber's Going Faster!
There are no quick secrets or tips. I had been driving for 9 years, owned four different cars (all manual trans), driven about 160,000 miles, and I had no idea how to drive on a race track when I did my first school.
My first session was an absolute disaster. I was trying to figure out how to double clutch my downshifts when I should have been working on the braking points, apex and track out. Thankfully, I took a session with my instructor in his E30 M3 race car; watching him made a world of difference.
However, I offer the following to try to impress upon you what is involved.
The line is the fastest way to get around the track. It changes from the wet to the dry and from an empty track to a full one. As you approach a corner, your car should be on the outer edge of the track, opposite side of where the corner is turning. You will begin braking in a straight line. At some point you will stop braking and turn towards the inside of the corner, aiming for a point on the inside of the arc called the apex. If you have been doing it for a while you may still be lightly applying the brakes as you turn and apply the throttle. As you pass the inside of the turn, your car will drift to the outside edge, as you find the 'track out' point.
Add double-clutch downshifting, where you brake with the left ball of your right foot, and blip the throttle, while braking, with the right ball of your foot to match the revs as you downshift the necessary gears. Try to do that so you take the same amount of time to downshift (one or more gears) to the proper gear for when you get on the throttle, as you do to brake to the correct speed to apply the throttle, keeping in mind that each corner has a different line, braking point, apex, track out, etc, and you should already be convinced of the difficulty.
Don't forget steering the car by pressing or lifting off of the gas.
Then try it with twenty other people trying to drive that same line ahead of you.
You can kill yourself or someone else if you do it wrong. Last year a guy totalled his M3 sedan (he was OK) at Road America when he lifted at 120 mph in the kink. The instructor shaved off the side of the car against the concrete wall to slow it down, after the driver had been knocked out from his head, in helmet, being hit against the headliner after the side air bags went off. The average driver's instinct is to lift off the gas if you get loose in a turn. With a RWD car that can be a disaster.
Doing these things properly and smoothly take years of practice. It is not about throwing the car around the corner at the limit the whole time, but rather finding a way to get through the entire corner as quickly as possible, which is almost always slow in and fast out.