On Thu, 29 Nov 2007, Mark Andy wrote:
> Spending time when you're not at max acceleration, max braking, or max
> cornering is rarely the fastest way around the track...
>
> With swaybars and all, you don't need to be wanting to brake much before
> that inside front will lock. ABS stops that.
But it's still slower, for a reason you touched on in your first
sentence. Ideally, we want to be at max acceleration all the time.
Obviously, we occasionally have to slow down, but when we do, we want to
use the bare minimum of time doing so. All cars will stop faster in a
straight line than they will while cornering ( for reasons already
covered in this thread ) so the optimal lap will consist only of
braking in a straight line.
My last two autocrossers were a '91 MR2 Turbo without ABS and a '92 MR2
Turbo with. Despite the fact that the '92 had a stronger engine, and
better tires ( and a little more weight ) I was faster in the '91. Why?
Because years of driving mid-engined cars without ABS had trained me to
always brake in a straight line, so I was always early on the throttle
and as Senna said, "In the end, it's always a matter of less brake, and
more throttle." In the '92 with ABS, I got seduced into trying to drive
deeper into corners and brake while corning. It felt faster... but it
wasn't. I didn't really realize how much I was doing it until I compared
some in-car video from each car. Once I swore off that mistake, I
regained the speed I'd been missing.
Braking beyond the point where your hands have stopped turning the
wheel is almost always a mistake, sometimes required by a poor setup.
--
David Hillman
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