Summary

If you're one of those drivers that fears competing in the wet, then in this webinar we will go through some of the basic concepts to wet weather driving and some of the crucial do's and don'ts. This webinar will focus more on circuit racing, but some of the basic principals apply to all classes of motorsport.

00:00 - Hey guys, it's Matt from RaceCraft here and today's webinar is going to be on the tips and tricks of driving in the wet.
00:10 And in today's webinar we're going to be covering a few things.
00:14 As always this is filmed live, if you're watching it live, feel free to get involved in the chat and as always we will have a Q&A at the end where I will get a chance to answer any of those questions.
00:28 And in today's lesson we're going to be talking about a few things about driving in the wet, we're going to be talking about the steps you can take in preparation before going out on track.
00:40 We're then going to talk a little bit about what happens to the track when it gets wet and then we will look at a few different aspects of the racing line and really just how it differs between a dry track and a wet track.
00:57 We are going to look at a couple of onboard videos from some of my racing career and that really is a bit of an insight to a bit of me.
01:09 I have come over to join RaceCraft from the U.K.
01:14 I was brought over here because of my experience in the motorsport industry as a driver.
01:23 I actually competed since I was very young, I did the whole, the normal motorsport ladder, starting in karting when I was very young and then kind of moving my way up as I got a bit older.
01:40 So if we just jump across to my laptop screen, we can have a look at, this is a picture taken from my personal Instagram, this is actually the first time I ever stepped in a kart, I think I was about nine years old actually in that picture.
01:58 And really the karting scene in the U.K. is massive and the precidence that it gets is pretty substantial so quite often you'd have international drivers coming to the U.K. just to take part in our carting series.
02:17 And this really was a big eye opener for me just how big the motorsport world was and how much money people were throwing Into it.
02:26 I've competed in many different genres of racing and believe it or not karting was actually my most expensive season racing.
02:38 After competing in karting for a few years, I moved into car racing and this is the Mazda MX5 series and I started racing in that when I was 15 years old.
02:52 Now this is pretty young to start car racing and you can't actually drive in the U.K.
02:58 on a racetrack until you're 16 so I was having to learn everything on a closed racetrack on a closed airfield.
03:06 And it's probably fair to say my mechanical sympathy back then wasn't particuarly good but I did have some good raw speed and I think that really came from my karting background.
03:20 Now the Mazda MX5 series was a single make series, a lot of the race series in the U.K. are single make series.
03:29 And this really meant that almost everything was controlled on these cars so everone ran the same engine, everyone ran the same tyres, there really wasn't that much you could do in the way of setup changes.
03:44 We effectively had, well we were limited to only adjusting the suspension geometry or our wheel alignment settings.
03:54 And this really meant that it came down to the best drivers were firstly the ones who could drive quickly and secondly the ones who could dial in their setups the best.
04:05 After competing in this for a few years, I actually started driving in the white car and then in my second season raced in the black car and actually my dad took over driving the white car.
04:19 And I guess I'm the classic father son racing duo, my dad racesd Porsches from quite a young age, well from when I was quite young and I really followed in his footsteps, starting karting was all his idea and he really got me into it.
04:37 That's where my passion for motorsport has come from.
04:43 After competing in the Mazdas I actually started racing in the British Caterham series.
04:50 The Caterham is a purpose built racecar, you can get them for the road however with the weight that they have and the power that they have, I can't imagine driving them on a road would be particularly enjoyable.
05:05 Also the fact it's got no windscreen obviously didn't help.
05:09 And again, this was a single make race series so all the cars on the grid were exactly the same and again things like tyres, engine, gearbox, differential, everything was standard, nobody was allowed to tamper with them.
05:26 Although we reckon probably people did.
05:30 I was actually pretty successful in the Caterham Racing Series with a number of wins, I think I competed in 10 races over the last few years and ended up winning eight out of 10 of those races.
05:45 So I guess it's fair to say I'm quite handy behind the wheel.
05:50 As well as my racing career, I also went to university and studied motorsport engineering.
05:57 And after completing my degree I went into my first job working for a automotive manufacturing company.
06:06 And my first project was actually working for Bugatti and that really gave me a massive insight into how the automotive industry really works and really the amount of engineering that goes into these cars.
06:23 It's pretty substantial.
06:27 So bringing it a bit back to what we're doing today in today's webinar, we are going to start off by talking about how we can prep for a wet race.
06:38 Now I think it's a bit of a common thing, at least with most of the drivers I've spoken to that driving in the wet isn't really something that people are all that keen on and if anything, people actually go out of their way to avoid driving in the wet.
06:55 Now if you can change that mentality and can turn that into someone who actually looks forward to the track turning wet, now that's going to give you a massive performance advantage.
07:10 Mainly because if the rest of the grid are all dreading the wet, however you're really excited by it, straight away you're going to have that mental confidence that you've got one up on your fellow competitors.
07:23 There are a few key steps that we're going to go through today that really help you prep for wet weather driving.
07:31 Now the first one I would probably say is one of the most important, is how we set up our cars.
07:39 So what we need to understand here is that on a wet racetrack surface we're going to have much less grip, that probably just goes without saying.
07:48 The reason for this is the water on the track surface means that the tyres cannot grip as well and therefore you have less friction, less force and the speed in which we can corner, accelerate and brake is massively reduced.
08:03 So what we can do with our car setups is basically run much less aggressive settings that we would in the dry for example.
08:14 And one of these things that we can consider is, say we're running a lot of camber, now that's great for dry track driving but in the wet it's just not going to be as useful and this is because we're not going to be cornering as hard, therefore the car body won't roll and the tyre won't come in contact with the ground as you would expect it would in the dry.
08:38 So things like camber, aspects like toe, can all be reduced to help keep the tyres in contact with the ground a little bit better.
08:47 Another general rule would be to soften the car up and by that I mean we can, if you've got adjustable dampers you can soften those and you can also change things like anti roll bars.
09:02 In the Caterham Series that I raced in, the anti roll bars were actually a really really quick and easy change we could make because the roll bars were fairly exposed on that car, it was no problem at all to unclip the anti roll bars, take them out, put in a more heavy duty one and that would straight away change the stiffness of the car and how much the car would roll.
09:28 Now the general rule for wet weather racing I would say is we want the car to understeer more than we want it to oversteer.
09:38 And the reason for this is that particularly in wet weather driving, oversteer and understeer can be pretty unpredictable, they can come at times when we're not expecting them and this is partly one of the reasons why people tend to not enjoy driving in the wet is because of those unpredictabilities.
09:58 So what we want to do is set our car up to understeer and this will mean that the rear end us less likely to step out and the understeer attribute is much easier to manage.
10:13 So this kind of brings us onto the next part which is another great step for learning any track, whether that's dry weather racing or wet weather racing and if you're going to a circuit you've never been to before and you're a little bit sceptical about how to go about your lap then one of the best tips I would give would actually be to find some onboard footage somewhere on the internet, whether that's on YouTube or some sort of motorsport website and really learn the track even from a visual point of view.
10:47 It's actually going to really help you when you arrive at the circuit.
10:51 Understanding what corner's coming up next, whether it's a right hander, a left hander or a hairpin or a chicane, that's actually going to make a big difference to mentally how you image the lap in your head.
11:06 You'll already know roughly where to brake by the gradient of the corner, whether the corner is a type one or an open bend and this is really going to help you prepare.
11:17 Even better, if you can find footage of somebody driving the track in the wet, again this is really going to help you understand where the lines are and what sort of route you should be taking around the track.
11:33 OK so we've made our setup changes, we have learned the track, whether that's on a video or actually another good method is if you've got a console game or a simulator of some sort, that also does help a little bit.
11:50 So you've got both of those nailed in, you know the layout of the track, you know where to go and now you're going out on track for your first few laps.
11:58 The top tip I could give here is that these few laps are your most important on a wet day.
12:08 The reason for this is that on those opening laps, this really gives you your first opportunity to understand where the grip is on the racetrack and it usually will not be where you expect it would be on a dry racetrack.
12:27 And the reason for this is what we need to understand is that when it rains, the water hits the surface of the road and the water effectively fills any of the holes or grooves in the racetrack and effectively smooths it off.
12:43 This means that our tyres aren't going to groove or dig into the racetrack as much as they would normally.
12:50 They therefore won't generate as much heat and they therefore won't generate as much friction.
12:56 And this basically is made 100 times worse on areas of the track that have any rubber on them.
13:05 So what you need to imagine here is that on a dry day, everyone seems to take the same racing line, usually because that's the fastest way around the racetrack and driving over that same line repeatedly over and over will cause the tyres to shed a layer of rubber onto the racetrack.
13:27 And this is great in dry conditions, usually rubber on rubber is pretty sticky and this is where you want to be going.
13:35 However when it rains it's kind of the opposite effect.
13:40 So the water will actually mix with the rubber and it will release an oil from the tyre compound and this basically works as an oil slick.
13:51 And when this reacts with the water and the rubber from your tyres you're going to get massively reduced amounts of grip.
14:00 So how do we overcome this? The trick here is on those opening few laps, you need to be going on the parts of the track that you maybe wouldn't normally touch, it can be as extreme as right on the outer edges of the track and you're really now looking for grip and the way you can do this is, as long as no one's behind you, you can press the brake pedal.
14:25 Depending how quickly you slow will give a pretty good indication of how much grip there is.
14:31 And then the other thing we can do that you've probably seen Formula 1 cars do is weave from side to side.
14:38 We can put pretty aggressive steering motions in and this will show whether there is grip in that certain area of the track.
14:48 The thing to look out for though here is if we go too aggressive, obviously we can put ourselves into a spin.
14:54 So it's really about finding the grip in a way that is firstly safe but also in a way that will give you a good understanding of where that grip is and exactly how to find it.
15:11 So we're going to now have a look at onboard footage from one of my races.
15:18 This is, if we just jump to my laptop screen.
15:22 So this was one of my, I think this was my second season in the Mazda MX5 Championship and it's a wet race at a circuit called Snetterton whcih is a pretty large circuit in the U.K.
15:37 I actually qualified pretty badly, I'm in 18th out of I believe there were 30 in this grid and the reason for that was, I'd actually broken my wrists in a pretty nasty pre season crash.
15:53 I basically went head on into a tyre wall and punched the steering wheel and broke both my wrists.
15:59 And I was actually in casts right to the day before this race and ended up cutting them off just so I could take part.
16:08 So for me, this was a new car, a track I had never driven in the wet and I'd never driven this car in the wet.
16:18 Yeah we're going to watch the first opening lap and this is going to give you a pretty good indication of exactly where the grip is.
16:31 So straight away I'm looking for the gaps in the traffic, either on this right hand side or on this left hand side.
16:42 Now in single series racing it's crucial to not lose any momentum, particularly in a car that's fairly low power like this one, when everyone's got the same amount of power, if there's one split second where you're having to lift off the throttle or you're having to press the brake, you're going to lose momentum and that's going to allow the pack to pull away.
17:06 So I had a pretty reasonable start, I'm looking for the gaps.
17:10 Straight away I've passed quite a few cars, and I'm just going to pause it there.
17:15 And the first corner up here is a pretty fast sweeping right hander.
17:23 Now I've never driven this track in the wet before and I assumed that the dry racing line was the line to take because that's the only one I've ever taken around this track.
17:36 And you're going to see exactly now what happens when you try and take that dry line.
17:42 Now you're going to have to pay close attention to my steering wheel inputs here.
17:50 Oversteer, oversteer, oversteer, oversteer.
17:56 Luckily my exit actually wasn't too bad and I managed to pull away and I passed quite a few cars coming into this right hander.
18:03 I actually think I'm in about eighth place here so I've already passed 10 cars in the first two corners.
18:13 And the rest of the lap plays out.
18:16 Now that white car just ahead of me is actually my dad.
18:20 I do pass him later in this lap and I remember talking to him after the race and the first thing he said was that he was shocked to see me come up behind him, considering he started in sixth and I started in 18th and within the first lap I had already passed him.
18:39 It is a nice thing to say, it's a bit of a one up on your dad.
18:48 So we will pause it, yep more oversteer.
18:55 And again if we just fast forward to I think this is lap one or two.
19:09 If I can get the right point.
19:17 So again I was basically having to find the racing lines while stuck behind traffic and in those first few laps it was really about trying to find the grip without hampering my speed too much.
19:32 And really I didn't do that particularly well.
19:35 Although I got past quite a few cars early on, I really didn't find the grip as quickly as I should and this meant that the front four cars ended up pulling away from me.
19:47 We'll come back to this video in a second but what I just wanted to now show you is really those differences from the dry to wet racing line.
20:02 This is actually some onboard footage of my karting days at a track called PFI in the U.K.
20:11 Now PFI was probably the biggest track in the U.K. at the time and was always used as the U.K.'s national circuit so whenever there was an international round, you would be taking place at PFI.
20:28 So the video on the left is the track in the dry condition and the video on the right is the track in a wet condition.
20:40 First of all we're going to have a look at driving it in the dry.
20:48 And turn one is a very long sweeping right hander, hitting the apex as you'd expect, little bit of oversteer and I'm just going to pause it there.
20:59 Turn two at PFI is a 180 degree hairpin, right hander hairpin.
21:06 The most standard corner you'll probably ever get, almost every racetrack has a hairpin and why this type of corner is the most important corner on a racetrack.
21:18 Any corner where your speed is massively reduced means that you're spending more time on that corner than anywhere else on the racetrack.
21:29 Therefore if we can nail the slow corners it's actually going to improve our lap times pretty substantially.
21:37 Now this is a dry line, pretty normal, you can see up here you've got the apex to the corner.
21:45 We want to be on the left hand side braking in a straight line, we then want to turn in, slightly away from the apex here but we're turning into the corner nonetheless.
22:00 Hitting the apex, using the exit, running wide.
22:03 Pretty standard racing line.
22:07 Now if we compare that to the wet line, now this is the same track, the same day, the same kart, the same driver, the only difference here is the race circuit and the fact we're running a set of slick tyres.
22:27 So turn one, long right hander.
22:31 And now we're approaching the right hander hairpin, turn two.
22:35 And you can already see just in track position, whereas before in the dry we were right over this side, this time we're in the middle of the track.
22:47 And the reason we're doing this is that we want to make sure that we're not braking on that rubbered section of the track.
22:57 The reason for this is again just going back to the fact that when the water mixes with this rubber, it gets incredibly slippy.
23:04 In karting, I guess this is a extreme case, because karts are such lightweight and they do actually have a surprising amount of grip and the rubber compound that they use is very soft, you essentially get a really layered surface of rubber on the normal racing line.
23:24 So touching this in the wet is a bit of a no no.
23:30 So we're braking off line.
23:34 Braking, braking, braking, now we come out to the left, we cross that rubbered surface which is here, this is all that rubbered area.
23:48 And we're running deep into the corner.
23:54 And v'ing the car backwards and trying to straight line the exit as much as we possibly can.
24:01 We can see it again, turn three at PFI is a left hander hairpin, exactly the same as turn two but obviously the other way.
24:09 Braking in the middle of the track, going right to the edge, v'ing back and cutting across that slippery line to make the car go straight.
24:21 So in wet weather racing there's a bit of a concept you need to understand and that is that the car actually loses more grip front to back than it does left to right.
24:34 So what I mean here is that the car will take much longer to slow down and accelerate than it will to go around a corner.
24:43 So the idea here is that we want to reduce the amount of time we're cornering and increase the amount of time we're braking and accelerating.
24:53 And this is going to make sure that we can carry as much speed as possible.
25:00 So one of the things we can do here is have a look at our racing line.
25:06 So if we jump back to my laptop screen.
25:12 I've got a picture here of Snetterton racetrack from above, this is taken from Google Maps.
25:21 And if we just go back to turn one that we saw earlier in the video clip.
25:30 Now I'm just going to give you another run through of that turn one.
25:36 Approaching the corner, we're on the right hand side of the track which generally is not the good side to be on.
25:42 We're trying to take that racing line, we're holding the car tight and we've hit that rubber patch, the car's wanted to snap oversteer and it's definitely not the quickest way to go around it.
25:55 So if we draw this up on here, the normal racing line, I mean you can actually almost see it here, it's the darker grey patch coming through the bend.
26:08 Our normal braking point would be somewhere like here and we would want to brake in this section here, we want to come off the brakes and this is a dry line remember.
26:21 We want to drag the apex and follow the corner out wide.
26:28 Fine, this is a great line, it works in the dry but it won't work in the wet.
26:35 So instead of taking the corner in a long radius arc like this, we're going to want to reduce the amount of time we're turning and increase the amount of time we're braking and accelerating.
26:48 So of course, wet conditions, we're going to have to brake earlier and in cars, I guess it's not as important to brake off line and that's mainly because a car's a lot heavier, it doesn't carry the same levels of grip as karting and usually the tyre compounds are a bit harder.
27:10 So generally we can brake on line.
27:13 We can follow the racing line up to this point, however we're going to turn in much later, we're going to run to the edge of the track and we're going to veer in and end up more in a straight line.
27:29 So what we've done here is we've basically put all of our turning to this section of the track only.
27:38 Instead of carrying the turn throughout the whole bend, we're finishing our turning here, we're turning in later and we're avoiding that rubbered patch of the road.
27:50 This is going to give us a much better exit.
27:55 Similarly, turn two, at Snetterton is actually pretty similar to turn two at the cart track.
28:03 It's a 180 degree hairpin, pretty common corner, you're going to see these almost at every racetrack.
28:11 I'll start off by drawing the dry line.
28:15 Now dry line, braking point would normally be somewhere around here.
28:20 You follow the track up and you're going to turn in, apex late and that's going to give you an exit something like that.
28:28 You can excuse my wobbly hand drawing.
28:33 So how does the wet line differ? Again you're going to have the brake earlier, that's just down to the lack of grip you're going to have.
28:44 And you're going to go much much deeper into the corner.
28:48 So now we've crossed that rubbered area, we're going to v the car back and v'ing the car is something that you would probably hear a lot of you ever have some kind of driving coach, I've done a bit of driving coaching in the U.K. and v'ing the car is essentially the term used for wet driving where you reduce the amount of time you're cornering and effectively you print out this V, a loose V.
29:20 What we've done here is we've braked, we're going to have to brake earlier anyway, we're carrying the car into the corner and then we're putting an aggressive steering angle on.
29:33 Now by putting an aggressive steering angle on we're actually going to be able to pitch the car more and this is going to make the car lean more onto that front tyre, the tyre that's doing the turning.
29:46 And this is good because obviously more weight we have acting down on that tyre, the more it's going to grip.
29:54 We then want to v the car, straighten it up and try and accelerate in as straight a line as possible.
30:02 And preferably try and avoid the rubbered area on the exit of the corner as much as possible.
30:10 Now back to my Mazda video, my speed in which I learned the track probably wasn't as fast as it needed to be.
30:20 However we did get a pretty good example here of that.
30:26 If I get rid of that.
30:29 We had a bit of a run on the red car in front of me and I actually lost quite a bit of ground coming into that corner.
30:40 But I had a bit of a run coming onto him and this was purely because I changed my line into that turn one and it gave me a much better run into turn two.
30:50 So I'm going to pause it there.
30:53 Again, braking on the racing line here, not that big a problem in car racing.
31:02 Bit of a wiggle.
31:04 And you can already see I'm turning in much later whereas before I was running right over this right hand side kerb.
31:12 I've left the turn in much later, I've definitely missed the apex, the apex would be somewhere over here.
31:21 And I've found that grippy area of the track and now look at the run it's given me on this car, I've already pulled maybe five or six car lengths just in that one corner.
31:33 Unfortunately couldn't get past him there, he was pretty defensive.
31:38 Again v'ing the car back, getting a bit more of a run, much bettter acceleration out of the corner and I'm right up this guy's back.
31:51 Again, running the wider line, giving me much more grip on exit and look again, much better exit, much more speed carried and I actually think I pull a bit of a lunge on this guy and pass him into the next corner.
32:11 Again, handfuls of oversteer.
32:14 So another clip that was taken during this race, if we just forward back a bit.
32:24 And here's another great example of exactly how slippy the racing line can be.
32:31 So the corner that I am referring to here.
32:37 Second to last bend is this really long right hander and this actually leads into probably the most important corner on the track, this really narrow, tight left hander before making our way down the start/finish.
32:54 Now nailing these corners is crucial to this lap because like I said before, the slow corners are where we can make our most amount of time.
33:04 Now coming into this corner I naively follow the car ahead of me, thinking that he must know what he's doing, that must be the best line and usually that's not always the case, we need to be able to find the grip for ourselves.
33:20 So here's a bit of a clip of what happens when you try and follow the racing line on a corner like that.
33:29 So you can see with my steering inputs, back end's trying to step out, back end's trying to step out.
33:35 Braking through the corner, massive amounts of lock.
33:41 And that's really killed my exit.
33:44 The thing to notice here is that because I'm actually on the racing line, when it comes to the braking point which is here, you can see already that the car has tried to step out, I'm actually steering the wrong way now.
34:00 Because I'm having to deal with that oversteer so much, I've actually missed a gear change.
34:09 Now this corner should be a second gear corner and because of that bit of a dramatic slide I've missed the gear change, I've ended up putting it into third instead of second and there you go the car ahead pulls a massive gap.
34:29 And I guess this comes back to what I was saying before about really easing yourself into it.
34:35 You need to do it obviously in a race condition like this, easing yourself into it is not exactly the fastest way but for someone who is driving on a track day or a test session and the track has become wet, you really need to go out there and find the grip before you're pushing the car this hard.
34:56 For me, I was pretty young at the time and I was really trying to not lose as much ground as possible and I kind of followed into the same old trap of following the car ahead because that must be the best way to do it.
35:11 What's important to take away is that finding your own lines and finding where the grip is, can vary from car to car.
35:19 Just because you've seen a car take a racing line and you thought that racing line looked quick, he was going fast, that must work for me.
35:30 That's actually not always the case and it's something that maybe you will come to find on your first track days that following the car ahead of you isn't always the best idea.
35:43 So I've covered a few things here on wet weather driving and particularly racing lines so if there is anything that maybe you want me to explain a little bit further or you have a general question about driving in the wet or how to set up your car in the wet, then fire those into the chat and we will get those through to me and I will try and get those answered.
36:13 Another thing that I should probably mention is that part of your car prep and setup, that a lot of people tend to underlook or forget about is actually prepping your helmet or your windscreen for wet weather driving.
36:30 Products such as Rain-X and Anti-Fog are actually a bit of a necessity, especially if you have a closed car.
36:40 And by that I mean you've got windows and a windscreen and a roof.
36:45 Steaming up windscreens can actually be a bit of an issue if you run a racecar that has no air conditioning or no heater unit.
36:54 So prepping that is pretty important.
36:56 As well, if you're like me and you wear glasses, those actually have a tendancy to steam up as well.
37:04 We actually took part, my father and I, in a endurance race series and we were racing in a Citroen 2CV, closed car, soaking wet race for the entire 24 hours and just naturally the car began to take on water, just whenever we would have the doors open or making a pitstop, the car would take on water and we'd steam up, to the point where the steam actually got so bad that we were having to make unscheduled pitstops just to help that out.
37:36 So that's one of those things that people tend to forget, one of those things that people should try and prepare for.
37:44 So like I said, the main things to take way from today would be that car prep is a big part of it, you need to adjust your car settings to accomodate for wet weather.
37:56 You also need to learn the track, whether that's through simulations or through videos online, it's always helpful to have an idea of which way the track's going to be going.
38:10 The next thing to do is on those opening laps you need to find the areas of grip.
38:15 Usually that will be off the normal racing line and can be as extreme as the edge of the tracks and really that's up to you to find those areas of grip.
38:28 The final thing to really take away from this is to make sure that when we're on track that we gradually build up our speed.
38:36 There's no point going out on track, assuming that the braking point will be the same as it is in the dry, pressing the brake, locking the wheels and going straight on.
38:48 Obviously we want to avoid going off the track but what you will find is that wet race driving will naturally promote spins and quite often things like driving standards will drastically reduce when driving in the wet.
39:07 So OK that is the end of today's webinar, I will now jump across to the computer screen and see if we've got any questions.
39:25 OK so we've got a question from Tim, has said, any tips for dealing with standing water? Yes actually that was probably something I should have covered.
39:40 Standing water obviously will cause the car to aquaplane, especially if we're taking that at some speed.
39:48 Now aquaplaning is where the tyre is unable to displace the water faster than the ability it's spinning.
39:58 And when this happens the steering will become very light and the car will become very twitchy.
40:05 So normally we want to avoid standing water in fast areas of the circuit.
40:11 Now in slow areas, like hairpins for example, running through big puddles actually isn't that bad and what you'll find is a lot of drivers do tend to try and avoid puddles in slow corners and really you don't need to.
40:26 Unless the water is incredibly deep then I would suggest trying to avoid it but most likely you can just drive straight through it.
40:39 If for example there is a big puddle on the apex of a fast bend then yes we don't want to be touching that water as it can cause the car to slide or react unpredictably.
40:58 Super7, first question, who is faster, Matt or dad? He's going to hate me for saying this but actually I have outperformed him in almost every race we've both taken part in.
41:17 He has a big history in Porsche racing, competing in the Porsche Club race series in the U.K. and I think he struggled to move from a car where the engine's in the back, very rear end happy, not very rear end happy I should say, and then moving into something like the MX5 where basically the fastest way to drive that car was in a bit of a slide.
41:43 I think it took him time to adjust to that.
41:47 Whereas I kind of got in the car and was like yep I can do this, I'm going off ahead.
41:52 So yeah in answer to your question, I actually ended up beating him but he's going to hate me for saying that.
42:01 Question from James, he has said, any issues with driving on the marbles on the outside of the track if you're running off the racing line in the wet? No, basically driving in the wet, those marbles are actually going to increase the amount of grip that the tyres will get.
42:19 If you imagine them as, they're like extra grooves or notches in the racetrack and this is going to work as a bit of a abrasive surface to actually drive on.
42:33 And believe it or not, picking up those bits of rubber on the surface of the tyre is actually going to help the grip of the tyre.
42:41 It might make things like vibration through the wheels slightly worse but it's actually not a bad thing at all.
42:49 So driving off line, even if there is a lot of marbles, not that big a deal.
42:59 MR32i has said, any tyre pressure changes in order to get the grip back in the wet? Yes so tyre pressures again are a big part of wet weather driving.
43:14 If you do run a slick tyre for the dry and a wet tyre for the rain, the main differences are going to be obviously the tread pattern.
43:25 So the reason a wet tyre has a big chunky tread pattern like this is because it needs to be able to cut through the water more efficiently and basically these grooves allow for that to happen.
43:38 Obviously when we're on a wet racetrack we're going to be generating less heat into the tyres and this is really going to mean that the slick tyre just wouldn't gain temperature the same way a wet tyre would.
43:54 A wet tyre has these big tread blocks, these tread blocks are free to move when we're out on track and they create more friction, more temperature and therefore we need to manage this with our pressures.
44:08 I guess the general rule here would be more air in a wet tyre and this is to help the tyre bulge through the centre if we're running more air and will therefore generate a little bit more heat.
44:25 So in answer to your question, I guess more air here would be better.
44:31 Another question from Ben Herron.
44:34 I'm assuming staying away from curbs is a good plan? Yes you're right, painted areas of the racetrack do actually tend to hold the same sort of properties as running on a rubbered part of the track.
44:50 So some circuits have massive painted areas of the track, these are pretty bad.
44:57 Similarly to the curbs, they're painted and they do tend to be quite slippy.
45:02 There is an advantage in some situations where you might want to run the curbs if for example running a curb in a chicane.
45:16 It can allow you to straight line that corner and reduce the amount you're steering that steering wheel.
45:25 And like I said earlier, what we want to do is accelerate the car in as straight a line as possible and brake the car in as straight a line as possible.
45:33 And if that means straight lining a corner by attacking a curb quite aggressively, then we can do that but again it's very track dependent, it depends how big the curb is, how aggressive you're hitting it.
45:47 There are lots of variables and like I said, part of our preparation is trying to find the areas of that track where doing that would be OK.
45:56 And really it's a trial and error kind of thing.
46:03 Terry, any products you can recommend to prevent the windscreen fogging up? Rain-X, I've always used Rain-X on my helmets and my glasses as well as the windscreen on the racecars.
46:19 There are hundreds of products out there.
46:21 We actually had a good one for a while, I can't remember the name brand but it was effectively like a lipstick, like a wax crayon and you basicallly rubbed the wax crayon into the inside of your helmet visor and onto my glasses lenses, rubbed that in and it stopped any steam coming on at all.
46:45 Unfortunately I can't remember what the name of that is.
46:49 Maybe if you drop us an email which I'm sure one of the guys will drop in the chat, and I'll have a bit of a dig around for that.
47:00 Luke Jefferson has said, oh he's given me a bit of tip, wipe your spectacle lenses with toothpaste and then clean off, they won't fog up.
47:10 OK, that's a new one, I've not tried that.
47:14 I have heard about people trying things like nail polish remover to buff out your lenses on your glasses but toothpaste is a new one, maybe I'll try that one.
47:31 And this brings us onto our last question from James.
47:35 How about when the track begins to dry and you're on a wet tyre.
47:41 Yeah great question here, so wet tyres will generally generate more heat than a normal tyre and like I said this is because we have thick tread blocks.
47:53 These move around a lot, generate a lot of heat, generate a lot of friction.
47:57 Now they work great in the wet when the track temperature is cold.
48:02 When the track dries it actually... to the grip that the tyre's going to have.
48:10 So a big tip here would be if the track is drying but you don't have an opportunity to come in and change the tyres, we want to be finding the areas of the track that are carrying the water.
48:21 And this is going to allow us to cool the tyres off more quickly.
48:25 So a great example with this would be coming down the main straight of a racetrack, if there are puddles way off line on the opposite side of the track but it doesn't really make much difference to us to move to that side of the track, then we can do that to pick up the water and help reduce the temperature of the tyres.
48:46 Another thing here would be to gradually reduce that wet racing line and move back onto the normal racing line as the track dries up.
48:57 And as we do that, we're reducing the amount we steer, we're reducing the amount, the aggression that we're putting into our steering inputs and this is really going to help us save our tyre life.
49:10 So hopefully that answered your question.
49:13 And that brings us to the end.
49:16 Thank you for joining me, I've been Matt, this has been my first gold webinar, and hope to see you all soon, thanks.