Trackday Diaries: Distraction, the Street-steer Mindset.

Hmm… quite the contretemps yesterday with regards to Web-surfing while driving. Honestly, if I’m endangering any of you by looking at my phone while driving on a freeway so empty that I can’t see a single set of headlights behind me or taillamps ahead, I apologize. And I don’t even own a Martin Backpacker. In a perfect world we’d all be driving in completely silent cars, alone, well-rested and emotionally stable. In my real world, I cover 40,000-plus miles a year on the road and track. Most of those miles are affected by some sort of distraction, whether it’s a phone conversation, personal stress, or trying to sing Douala phonetically along with Richard Bona records. I try to be honest with TTAC readers about what I do behind the wheel. Most of the people in this business are writing whatever they think will ingratiate themselves with the readers or — more commonly — the advertisers.

As it so happens, the one above-parking-speed automobile accident I’ve had since 1988 was directly related to distracted driving. My brother and I were rolling my VW Fox down Cranston Drive in Dublin, Ohio, about eighteen years ago. I was doing about 30 mph. There was a pizza guy in front of me, driving a Tercel. He made a left out of my way. Right then I saw the finest-looking teenaged girl to ever put on a pair of tiny shorts and jog down Cranston Drive. While I watched the shorts, the pizza guy changed his mind and literally backed up into the road. I saw it out of the corner of my eye but was still carrying about 10mph when I hit him. The cop cited us both; me for assured clear distance, him for reckless op. Worst of all, the girl kept running and I never had a chance to share my personal testimony with her.

This article has some of my favorite on-track oversteer photos, from Autobahn Country Club and Waterford Hills respectively. Notice how everybody likes to put up oversteer photos, but nobody ever puts up understeer photos?

Oversteer is cool. Understeer is lame. Yet very few of us really ever deal with oversteer issues during dry-weather trackdays in modern street cars. Nearly everything money can buy, from the Chevrolet Cavalier to the Ferrari 458 Italia, has designed-in understeer. If you want designed-in oversteer, you will have to go racing. I set my Plymouth Neon race car up with narrower tires in back, 650-pound rear springs, a big swaybar, and rear toe-out. When I turn into a corner, the back end steps out naturally. If I do not correct it a tiny bit, the car will crash. Do you want a car which will crash in any turn where you do not apply the proper amount of high-speed correction? No you don’t. For the record, I don’t want it either, but when you race against Miatas and Civics that have a foot less wheelbase than you do, something has to be done to keep you from falling back in faster corners.

Back to your street car, which has one of the following two features:

• More weight over the front wheels than the rear (everything up to and including Bimmers)
• “Staggered” tires with more width in back (Loti, Porsches, Ferraris, and so on)

There are a few exceptions, but not many, and most of them are Pontiac Fieros. The rest of us are driving cars which will understeer on corner entry.

Every student I have ever had, without exception, has made the following mistake on track. I’ve done it too and will continue to do it, and I’ve seen Lewis Hamilton do it on television, so read on. You are not immune.

When we drive cars on the street, the amount of steering we get from the front tires is directly proportional to the amount of steering we request at the wheel. Every once in a great while, like in heavy rain or when we are “hammering a B-road”, we might experience mild understeer. Let’s say that happens one time out of one hundred, and that’s being generous.

Since we get a precise and directly correlated steering amount 99-out-of-100 times we try it, we come to expect it. So, when a student goes bombing too fast into a corner and cranks the wheel too much, he gets understeer. I tell him, “Unwind the steering wheel.”

He can’t do it. He is convinced that if he unwinds the steering wheel a bit, the car will STOP TURNING. He thinks this because if you do that on the street, at reasonable speeds, you will go right off the outside of the turn. Try it! (No, don’t, and please don’t yell at me for suggesting it.)

At racetrack speeds, the steering wheel is a suggestion to the tires. Nothing more, nothing less. Ross Bentley, who coached me in 2007, says “At the limit of our tires, the steering wheel slows the car down, while the throttle and brake steer it.” Chew on that a bit. I’ll explain why it’s so in a future article.

With most of my students, I end up having to reach over and unwind the wheel for them a bit. They realize that unwinding the wheel actually produces more turning force because they aren’t as far past the effective slip angle of the tires. The light bulb goes on, usually around the tenth time I do it.

Sometimes the student is exceptionally intelligent and he will ask why I’m better at finding the available traction with my left hand, reached across the cabin, than he is with both hands in front of him. The answer is twofold. First, I’ve done it a zillion times and he has not. Second, I use a relaxed grip and keep my palm off the wheel.

You’ll never win a race against solid drivers if your palms are resting firmly on the wheel. It kills your ability to sense traction. The steering wheel is vibrating in your hands at a specific frequency. That frequency is generated by the vibration of tire on asphalt. Want an extreme example? Go out to a wet parking lot and deliberately steer the car too much. The wheel will vibrate heavily in your hands as you pass the traction limit. That kind of feedback is available to you, at a much lower volume, all the time.

Michael Schumacher did special strengthening exercises so he could steer his F1 car using only his fingertips. We use fingertips to steer, where possible, for the same reason you don’t do calligraphy by locking your elbow and moving your whole arm. Precise motions require precise muscles.

After a nice relaxing night, I was in much better mental shape for my second day at Summit Point and prepared to turn out some decent laps. I get distracted pretty easily during 9/10ths driving. I tried to sneak an iPod into my race car for an enduro event a few years ago but the crew caught me. I just wanted to hear some music for what would be a two-hour stint without much drama. Oh well. In my Boxster I have the stereo, but I turned it off and put my head down to do ten of the best laps I could put together.

For about fourteen minutes I was completely focused, trail-braking every entrance, feeling for grip, kicking up a tiny puff of dirt at every exit. When you’re at your personal limit, it’s wonderful. Time disappears, the chattering backmind is banished. There’s nothing but you, the motor, the tires, and the track. Nobody can touch you and you cannot make a mistake. Is two days of grinding it out worth fourteen minutes of pure focused fury? At the very least, it’s a ticket away from distraction.