T&T Racing

I am confused, to me a a racer, late turn in yields late apex, just that simple. So your description is to have them late brake and apply higher brake pressure longer to get the late turn in. Makes no sense.

T&T Racing

I am confused, to me a a racer, late turn in yields late apex, just that simple. So your description is to have them late brake and apply higher brake pressure longer to get the late turn in. Makes no sense, why not brake earlier and use less brake to get to late turn in?

Manifold

I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just saying that students will sometimes turn the goal of later apex into later braking and screw up the corner entry, which can create problems at the corner exit. I'm not talking about the correct way to do it for late apex, I'm talking about the mistakes students sometimes actually make when trying to late apex.

To me, it seems safer, and better for driver development, to teach the correct apex and line, and how to manage that if they come in a little hot. Students are usually a good bit below the limit, so keeping eyes up, keeping the wheel turned, and easing off the throttle a little will normally get them through the corner just fine, and also teach them a bit about how fast they can enter the corner.

Later apexes are fine for the first slower laps at a new track (don't ask me how I know), but IMO the goal should be to keep working back to the correct apexes, even for students.

winders

Late apex means you get your braking and turning done early.....

winders

The idea of the late apex being safer is that when a student does brake too late or too hard, there is still a lot of track to use before running off the track into weeds or barriers. Teaching newbies "the line" is arguably better for driver development, but that is not "safer" than teaching the late apex line.

Zhao

I just tried teaching trail braking starting with the 2nd session regardless of skill, timidness, etc (first session is giving them a line and trying to remember the track, gluing the hands to the wheel, not shifting, looking ahead) to 3 students in the last week. One student had about 10 events, the others had 0 and 1 track day before. The student with 10 events knew what it was but was taught not to do it previously (he was pretty happy he learned a braking technique to rotate his hard to turn car and another to extend the straights when able). The other students were oblivious that what we were doing is often not taught on day one or ever by some poeple. No issues with any of them. No out of shape cars, pucker moments, no missed braking zones, etc.

A good story about my student with one prior event: He was in a FRS and had a friend at the school in a sti who had a different instructor. In the last session I made the sti student mad because he had pointed us by for a pass and was clearly very similar for speed to us everywhere on teh track prior to passing him and after passing him except for a banked carousel where there is a big advantage imo to trail braking. My student left him in the dust there and kept pulling away every lap thx to that section. When we were talking after the event and his friend said he was annoyed that he was taught something that was wrong in that section. He said his instructor was teaching him to late apex the carousel to get a big run out of it (there is another corner right after it...), but after seeing what we did he saw that trail braking it to the mid point was clearly so much faster in that section of track and there was no advantage to the 'run' out of the corner since we also pulled away in the next corner as well by running another alternate line to what he was getting taught that negated his 'run' out of the corner and then some in that entire sector (he had 450hp he said, we were in a stock frs with 200).

So I think I'm a believer now in teaching trail braking as an initial skill. Seems it's perfectly safe. I'll probably still teach the safe wrong line for very timid people that are terrified of speed though.

ProCoach

Bingo! Congrats.

ProCoach

I still think this discussion of a variable line, one that does not fully utilize the demonstrated capacity of the tires over the transition starting from the maximum percentage of the braking through maximum cornering loading, as evidenced by no significant or sunstantial deficit of gSum throughout, is just hogwash.

The fallacy of straight line braking, or even the inefficiency borne from executing a vapid "deceleration to the apex" is clearly evident using this simple measure.

I have great respect for both Manifold and winders, because I know how much time and thought they put into their driving.

This massive derail of line pros and cons is a distraction from the OP's post, IMO.

It seems to me that Manifold is desparately afraid of what might happen to newbies who don't whoa their car down enough and take painfully late turn-ins and apices. I give rising drivers, even novices, more credit than that. Most are so under the limit that the chances of them falling off are quite low, in my experience.

Scott, OTOH, is still a devotee of the "super secret race line" sauce, not the least focusing on compromising your own best execution of the fastest geometry through the corner in order to disadvantage other competitors. To go so far as to practice off-line exercises to do just that.

Maybe I'm misreading that, and God Bless Rennlist, I am sure I will hear it if I am, but let's keep it on task here, because this is a good thread. Hate to see it derailed.

C4 Pazzo

Winders practices driving off line at least partly because he spends a not insubstantial portion of each race driving offline to safely get around lapped traffic and wants to know how the car will behave on those portions of the track. When he has a giant lead, which is often, he hangs back and waits to pass multiple cars on the straights to minimize breaking up slower class battles. But sometimes he doesn't have the luxury of waiting and more urgently gets by. Not the fastest way around the track on an ideal lap, but perhaps the fastest, safest or most courteous way on THAT lap. I have the utmost respect for Scott's abilities as a racer and for his behavior on track.

winders

Thank you for the kind words, Doug!

Manifold

I wouldn’t say desperately afraid, I’m just not convinced that teaching people the wrong way (deliberately late apex) is actually safer. I’ve only had one student go off at an exit, and that was because he was too aggressive (karting guy, first time on track in a car) and I, as a new instructor at the time, didn’t do enough to reign him in. I learned my lesson.

ProCoach

As do I, said so.

On the former, that’s just a tenet of good preparation, not the least of which to build a “sight picture” for alternate placement at the entry, through as well as the exit of the corner.

Just didn’t see the relevance of the subsequent debate to the OP’s question.

And I agree with you. It is not. It’s just what the paradigm has been for a long time. Now we know better.

DTMiller

Instructing is never one size fits all. There are best practices but all of them assume a certain base line level of competence and compliance from the instructed driver. Failing that, instructors have to default to preserving their safety, the driver's safety and the condition of the vehicle, in that order.

Assuming that baseline, however, I have found that nearly everyone in that "vast middle" tall hump of the bell curve where we find most new drivers are able to execute the beginning of more so-called advanced techniques. And, that with proper communication and incremental progression, have more fun and become more receptive to instruction as a result of realizing "hey, this person in the right seat knows what they are talking about."

As for the OP, I have watched friends swear that they have to brake to apex in certain corners as they try over and over to do so and lose more and more time insisting that they just aren't doing it well enough. I've contented myself that "failing" to do so but going faster is a sufficient consolation prize.

dgrobs

This is a great thread.
Very informative and useful info for newer instructors.
Thanks guys.

ProCoach

Great post. Agree with the second paragraph completely.

On the last paragraph, this is the essence of how drivers progress and also a prime example of how doing one thing better screws up the subsequent things, until you practice enough to meld them together better.

Most drivers I see first improve their braking to the point where they don't need to "brake to the apex," in essence they overslow even more than they used to.

Then, as they extend the EoB (end of braking) further past the turn-in, they discover that the Sword of Damocles will NOT drop and cause them to spin off.

Only at the very slowest, most extended corners, would I expect to see people try and "brake to the apex."

But there is, as has been said before, no one size that fits all. Pretty cool.

When people succeed in carrying REAL speed into the corner and are up against th limit, they often need to pause to allow rotation to finish and the car to "point" further down the road. It's really cool, as a matter of fact.