I would say make sure you have done all your braking before the apex.
I was having some problems at Mather last weekend in that I was going way
too fast into the turns. For my last run I did about twice as much breaking
on the hairpins and improved my time by over a second. I also rode with
some other cars in my class to find out that I was coming into the turns too
close and that if I started wider and took a late apex I would be able to
come out of the turn with more speed. This was my first event where the old
saying "be fast in the fast parts, slow in the slow parts" really made more
sense to me.
-Jeremy Rine
#12 STN
----Original Message Follows----
From: "Clifford Richardson" <the_brain7@hotmail.com>
To: ba-autox@autox.team.net
Subject: braking...
Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2001 14:22:04 -0700
I was at the event at Mather this past Sunday. The course was the longest
I've ever been on (4th event and counting) and a lot of fun. I posted
horrible times, but I made up for it in the fun runs. There was this
especially deceptive left turn towards the last stretch that caused a number
of drivers to spin out. It starts out mild and got tighter b4 curving back
to the right. I can extremely close to stopping my car in that turn to avoid
hitting a cone during one of my official runs. That notably cost me more
than the one second I would've had if I'd just hit the damn cone...might've
taken more than just one though...
Ok, now on to my point/question; on my second fun run, I shaved off 2.6 secs
of my best official run. One of the things I did differently was braking
HARD right before entering that wicked turn. It allowed me to go through the
turn much more gracefully and accelerate out of it. In previous runs, I was
fighting for control all the way through the turn and was going awfully slow
by the time it straightened out. My question to you veterans out there: on
sharp turns where braking HAS to be done, is it better to brake BEFORE
entering the turn or brake "as needed" during the turn? (both on street and
racing tires)I understand that because of the nature of my tires and
relatively low-torque on my car, my options might be slightly different. Oh
also, is the braking behavior different with FWD vs RWD?
My question may be a bit vague, but that's pretty much the best I can
explain it for now. I welcome any comment in regards to braking. Thanks.
-Arnold
"Gee, Brain. What are we going to do tonight?"
"Same thing we do every night, Pinky. Try and take over the world!"
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