Car Control Pointers

[KSanford33]

Hey Guys,
I'm hoping I can get some pointers from some of you about improving car control. We just had our first snowfall in the Capitol Region of NY, and I live right behind a golf course, so I went to the parking lot to see what I can learn. I drive a 2000 Toyota MR2, which is mid-engine, but I still end up with a lot of understeer. I don't want to go out there and just slide the car around though; I want to have some sort of objective to accomplish while I'm out there. Right now, I've been working on controlling (well, attempting to control) slides left and right around the light poles, and sliding around the row of trees that divides the parking lot. (Since I've watched a lot of WRC, it's a blast to try this!) But I want to learn things that will translate more into racing, and since I don't think I'll be sliding a bunch of 180's around even the tightest hairpins (at least I hope not), I wanted your guys' advice on what I should work on. Thanks in advance guys, I appreciate it.


-KS


P.S. Oldman, I'm going to start going to OTK before the new year, so I hope to see you and some of the others down there.

[robbyracenut]

If I remember correctly, the MR2s were famous for their lift-off oversteer tendencies. Thinking about what the weight of the car is doing is even more important on slick surfaces as the limits of adhesion on the individual tires are so much lower. In a mid-engine car accelerating has the strong effect of shifting the weight of the car off the front wheels and onto the rear, increasing the understeer tendency until the point when enough power is going to the rear that the tires (even with the added weight) can't handle it, at which point they begin to slide rather suddenly. The tricky part about this power on oversteer is that lifting off the throttle to reduce the wheelspin also has the tendency of reducing the weight transferred to the rear wheels, reducing their grip. A much more controllable method of sliding around is to turn in on the throttle, feel the understeer build a bit, and then experiment with lifting off the throttle and inducing a slide using the braking effect of the engine on the rear tires. Bruce recommended to me using a light lift (and hence this effect) to get the car to turn in better coming out of big bend at LRP, so there's a fair amount of commonality with the RT2000 in this technique. The advantage of this lift is that you can add in throttle to put more weight on the rears and balance the slide, in addition to the fact that you are inducing the slide (hence its predictable) and not just reacting to when the car snaps to oversteer. (Can you tell I had way too much time on my hands when I was going to college in Maine?) In all seriousness though, a deserted parking lot and slow speeds are really the only places to play around with something like this outside of a rally stage... It is so easy to get it wrong or overcorrect, especially when you're just starting out. Be careful for the sake of your car, yourself, and anyone who might happen to wander through.

[dalyduo]

You might want to check this out.

http://www.team-oneil.com/

[Slowhands]

Although playing on a snow covered parking lot is tons of fun, whatever you do, be careful and be safe.

Basically, proactive car control is creating a certain desired slip angle and then maintaining it through the corner, ie with the fronts in the wet (thereby controlled understeer, which is a lot more manageable than oversteer in a tail-happy car) or with the rears in the dry (or in the dirt). So if I were going to do it, I would define a couple of curves as "corners" and practice that. The problem is, with snow, you have to keep a huge margin for error from trees, light poles, etc, or your fun little escapade can turn ugly in a second.

Better to follow Pat's excellent suggestion of Team O'Neil. I did their 3 day school a couple of years ago in the first week of January-- there was a couple feet of snow on the ground, the course was basically packed ice by the middle of the second day, and it was skiing with cars! Absolute blast! Couldn't believe I could drive on a surface I could barely walk on without falling on my ass.

Oh yeah, we spent a lot of time pulling cars out of snowdrifts...

[oldredracer]

Originally Posted by KSanford33

Hey Guys,
We just had our first snowfall in the Capitol Region of NY, and I live right behind a golf course, so I went to the parking lot to see what I can learn.

I guess not. But last night I took my granddaughter - who missed her 2 day driving school with a broken leg - to the high school parking lot for some skid control, so we were in the same church, different pews.
She's been driving for about 6 months. We worked on skid control-CPR on ice- mostly and a lot of 'what not to do with pedals' and 'where should we be looking' exercises. Unlike the last time, when the cops stopped to ask what we were doing, we got a nod and a 'be careful' before they drove off.

Like most of the students we see, she started off terrified the car - her only car, by the way-was going to burst into flames or something. About an hour later when I declared that was enough, she insisted on another ten minutes.

She's now got a little more respect for what can happen and a lot more confidence in her ability to do something about it.

About 10 more years of instruction and grandpa will begin to relax.

[dalyduo]

Ahh... Good to have such a fine young teacher.

Originally Posted by oldredracer

About 10 more years of instruction and grandpa will begin to relax.

[rslonaker]

KS,
The best things to focus on are:
1) Where you are looking. Want to go vs. direction car is going. The former being preferable.
2) Driver inputs. Pay a lot of attention to what you do with the controls and what the result is. Try to separate hand and foot input initially to understand each controls' effect on the contact patch. Remember there are only 3 controls. Go, Stop and Turn. (2/3rds of the control of the car is done with your feet)
3) Weight distribution or mass management. The movement of the mass of the car as a result of your inputs. Notice the cause and effect. (see #2 above)
4) Translation to other surfaces. Snow only reduces the co-efficient of friction. So everything that happens at the contact patch happens at a lower speed and is easier to learn on, provided you remember you don't have much friction to work with. The dynamics are the same on other surfaces you just have more friction to work with.
5) Don't run into anything.

[PFS]

When I'm doing the vehicle dynamics talk in our driving schools prior to skid pad excercises, I spend a large chunk of the hour talking about understeer, oversteer and related issues. We talk about causes; fixes; proper use of our hands, feet, and eyes; identifying when a slide becomes a spin, and what to do in a spin. We talk about the differences between front drive, rear drive, and all-wheel drive. The list goes on.

Anyway, the best thing for you to do if you have the means, is to do an actual school. By doing this, you learn proper techniques that turn into good habits (with repetition). Short of that, you can try to minimize bad habits by getting a good book that discusses the subject . "Going Faster" (pretty much the Skip Barber text book) by Carl Lopez is an excellent book but mostly relating to dry pavement. Maybe somebody else here has a good recommendation on rally-type car control techniques.

One thing to remember is the difference between driving on dry pavement and snow at the limit. You will reach the limit of adhesion at a much slower speed on snow (as Rob mentioned), and the car will also get much less side loading on the suspension in snow. On dry pavement, the car will "lean" much more in a slide, and therefor has much more energy in the springs that has to be dealt with. All the same stuff happens on dry pavement, it just happens a LOT faster and you have to be ready for it and there much less room for error.

And as Rob said, and ANY Skip Barber instructor will say, look where you want to go. Your eyes are the most important element in car control, and usually the most difficult to bad habit for us to fix.