Race Driving Fundamentals: Prioritising Circuit Corners
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Prioritising Circuit Corners
03.09
| 00:00 | - Now that we have a good understanding of the apex and its importance, let's talk about prioritising a combination of corners. |
| 00:06 | So what does that actually mean and why would we want to do it? It's firstly about understanding which corners on a circuit provide the largest potential to make up time and secondly where we have a complex or corners, where we can gain an advantage by manipulating our line. |
| 00:23 | The end goal for any type of corner, whether we're talking about a single corner or a combination of corners, is to always be as fast as possible at the exit without sacrificing too much time through the middle. |
| 00:34 | In a way every corner, every section of track really is always going to be a compromise. |
| 00:39 | A trade off between slowing up enough in the mid section of the corner or corner complex to get the best possible exit and a higher speed carried in the mid section which means less rotation and a sacrifice in exit speed. |
| 00:53 | With this in mind, we need to examine our track, breaking it down section by section in order to work out which corners take priority in order to get the most speed overall and the best lap times. |
| 01:06 | This is something we'll be doing in the practical demonstration module coming up next, so for now it's just important to understand that a circuit needs to be considered in its entirety in order to identify what needs to be prioritised. |
| 01:19 | It's hard to make an across the board generalisation but usually the key corner or corners on a racetrack will be a slow corner that's followed by a long straight. |
| 01:29 | This really comes back to our module on driving lines and hopefully as you now understand, sacrificing a little entry speed in this type of corner can pay big dividends by opening up the exit and allowing us to hold that speed advantage then entire way down the next straight. |
| 01:45 | It's important to understand that no two corners are the same shape or length so you can't just quickly look at a track map, do a couple of laps and make a decision. |
| 01:54 | We need to look at the data to find what works best for each individual situation. |
| 01:59 | If you're on the fence about investing in a logger, this is one example that should be a big selling point to get you over the line and behind the laptop during the lunch break. |
| 02:09 | Let's assume a data logger just isn't an option at the moment so what's the next best thing? It is still possible to get a feel for what's working by checking your speed at a pre defined point somewhere down the following straight and then comparing it as you prioritise different parts of the previous corner complex. |
| 02:27 | It isn't exactly the most scientific way to go about things and it won't paint the full picture but it's better than nothing. |
| 02:34 | To summarise, prioritising corners is all about understanding that we need to make sacrifices in some sections of the track in order to better set ourselves up to go faster in other sections where that speed is going to make more of an impact on our lap time. |
| 02:49 | So that's the idea behind prioritising circuit corners out of the way and now it's time to put it to practice in the next module. |
| 02:56 | This is going to show you exactly how we analyse a course or track and make calls on which turns need to be prioritised and what that actually looks like in the real world. |
