[Fot] Good Racing

[Bill Babcock]

the rest...

Driving a really fast DSR car competitively made me a lot better driver than a
whole bunch of seat time in a vintage car or a Rabbit. You can't make silly
mistakes in a wings and slicks car that does lap times in the range of Formula
Atlantics. You have to hustle the car, you have to get the brake points right,
you have to get used to going through a turn at a couple of Gs and clipping
the apex within an inch every lap. Screw up and it's off the track, end of
story. Won the Northwest Regional Championship in 2001. Sold the Radical when
the Stohrs came out and made it obsolete.

Still race Peyote.

I think if you want to be a good driver you need to learn to hustle a car. To
push it a little harder in the corners and get your exit speed up. Seat time
is important, but if you aren't pushing, and you're not analyzing what you're
doing then it doesn't do much but wear out parts. I see people get stalled at
a certain point in their driving and never get past it. That's fine if you're
comfortable with that, but if you like to push yourself then there's always
another second to pick up. The difference between first and tenth in a vintage
race is usually about 5-6 seconds. Half a second per corner.

You should be able to feel the front end in a corner, feel what happens when
you ease off the steering pressure to reduce understeer. Feel the back end
traction and how much you can push with the throttle to get the car to rotate.
You need to play with that stuff in practice and on test and tune days to
really understand the dynamics of your car. And you need to learn to drive
around problems.

I find myself not paying enough attention to break points, turn in, and
keeping the car balance. When you do that you need to give yourself a good
slap and get back on the program. With enough experience you should be able to
work out how deep you can go in a corner without running off the track or
spinning. Most times you won't really be at the edge, but you can get fairly
close with a vintage car, because the edge isn't that far out there--skinny
tires and horse cart suspension ensures that.

I also find it's important to get to tracks you're not experienced with, and
push yourself at learning them. Makes you better everywhere.

Confidence in your equipment helps a lot too. Peyote is a good car that's been
made steadily more reliable and sound. I expect it to be really good this year
since Tony is doing the prep work. I still give the brakes a quick pump coming
into a fast turn. I could be a tiny bit quicker if I didn't do that. If silly
things are breaking, or you don't have confidence in your brakes, or you're
afraid an axle might break or your steering might fail, then you just can't go
fast.

The fast way through a big corner is to hold the throttle to the floor until
the last microsecond, get on the brakes and stay on them at the limits of
traction, ease off the brakes as you turn in, keeping the car balanced, be off
the brakes completely before the apex and be rolling on the throttle to keep
the car rotating, be at full throttle at the apex. Nick the edge of the track
with your outside rear wheel because that's the only place that physics will
allow the car to be. Lather, rinse, repeat.

If you don't do that, you are not anywhere near the edge, because the edge is
a ways past that.