Re: Fleshing Out Details


"Carey Akin" <cmakin@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:81Xuf.412581$zb5.384810@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> "John McCoy" <igopogo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:Xns9740CEA137FECpogosupernews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >
> > No, I'm afraid you're completely wrong here. The stop watch only
> > tells you a driver is slow, it doesn't tell you why he's slow.
> > The way it's done today, you instrument the throttle, brake, and
> > steering wheel, and after the guy's run some laps, you look at
> > the traces. Is he getting on the brakes too soon? Too late?
> > Too gently? Too hard? Doing it differently each lap? Is he
> > on the gas late? Early? Getting wheelspin? Does he turn in
> > smoothly, or does the steering wheel trace look like a sawtooth?
> > A driver can learn a huge amount about how he's actually driving
> > the car from the instrumentation, and the good ones can change
> > what they do based on it, and go faster.
>
> And his time through the corner is an indication of the above.

Yeah, I guess I am just a "seat of the pants and stopwatch" kind of guy.
Personally, a good spotter (watching other competitor's lines) and a good
stop watch, can get a driver into the right feel for turning a stock car
IMHO. I guess real time telemetry could have it's place, though I wouldn't
want my crew picking apart my driving down to the smallest little detail all
the time personally. It is absolutely impossible, nearly, to drive "the
perfect line" when you're alone on a track, and there's no sense in even
trying to do it in traffic.

> >
> > Incidently, they do use GPS in this sort of system, it's really
> > the only way to determine where, with respect to the corner, the
> > driver gets on/off the brake & throttle. One of the Superbike
> > teams was startled a while back when their GPS data showed their
> > rider was going considerably off the track on the insides of the
> > corners, until they realized they'd fitted the GPS unit to his
> > helmet, and leaned right over his head was about 3' inside the
> > track of the tires.
> >
> Now that is interesting. As accurate as GPS is, even differential GPS
can't
> give you the kind of accuracy that would be useful to racers. It seem to
me
> that if his head was three feet inside the track of his tires, he would be
> sliding into the haybales.

I think he is getting a little too techincal for stock cars personally. The
tires on these things give up soooo fast, that there won't be a "perfect"
entry, middle or exit to any corner on any track, for more than a few laps
at the time anyway. Ok, so you can drive it off into T1 the first 10-15 laps
and not lift until the middle, but after that, you'll be lifting just after
entry, or you'll be pushing up into the wall, like a dump truck. All the
whiz bang stuff in the world can tell you where to lift, where to get back
into it, and so on, but IMO, that'd only be good for qualifying, where
there's no tire falloff, and no weight shift from back to front over the
long haul due to fuel burnoff. I mean, why do us "stock car" guys start
"diamonding" corners late in a fuel run, at short tracks especially? Why
because fuel has burned, and shifted weight bias to the front (magnified by
braking), and tread has worn of the tires, causing a loss in grip. What
would a GPS system tell you to do then I wonder? "Go three blocks, turn
left, the Starbucks is on the right."? LOL! No, it's still going to insist
on that "perfect" line, that in race conditions, is a pipe dream at best.

I still say basic telemetry works. Gas and brake tracings tell the reader
how much gas or brake was being applied (and the graph literally "draws" the
oval for you as a result). You can figure if it is too much or too little by
how long they're out of the gas. You can also tell if they're getting tire
spin by wheel speed sensors where spikes in the graph, obviously, mean wheel
spin (and negative spikes would indicate wheel slip on non-drive wheels,
since IMO, a side-slipping non-drive wheel will lose speed). And lateral
g-meters give a nice smooth readout until grip is lost as well...then it
will be a spike (maximum adhesion immediately prior to loss of grip) and
then the g-load will be reduced thereafter (or else the car will come back
in a lump after hitting the wall, likely). Maybe I've just spent too much
time with regular and "sim" racing telemetry software, but it works, even
without a GPS locator showing you on some screen, where your car was at the
time of some recorded event.

Of course, I guess a full blown wired-up GPS telemetry system may have a
place in stock car racing, but I'd have to say it would be for new drivers
(or drivers new to a specific venue), that may not have a clue of what a
good line is around a particular place. After that, I'll bet they revert
right back to seat-of-the-pants feel and a stop watch. I mean let's face it,
stock car racing "often" comes down not to who's the fastest over all the
laps, but who can fall off the least over all the laps...IMHO of course.
Otherwise, Ryan Newman would have 1000 wins to go with his 1000 poles... <g>

>
> Carey in Manvel
>
>


.

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