Quote:
Originally Posted by The Radium King
want to start thinking about some stuff topless has been saying about 'braking with the steering wheel"; ie, that turning in and of itself will slow the car. i understand the concept, but wondering about application - presume a slower corner technique - chuck your car and get it to rotate early?
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This was a hard technique for me to master since it required a bit of balls and I often find that mine are far too small for the task at hand.
The technique consists of entering the corner slightly
faster than normal. This is the ballsy part because your brain will be saying, "Dude, this is way too fast". As you start to turn the wheel, the tires will start to slide since the car is entering too fast. The key is to let the tires slide and scrub speed for a couple of moments without adding any more wheel. Once the car has slowed to the normal speed for the corner, continue turning in and get back on the throttle to balance the car and proceed through the turn.
If you don't pause putting wheel in at turn in (for just a couple of moments), you will find that the car is going too fast and will usually want to spin around. This is where your car handling skill will be tested. The goal is to momentarily hold a controlled slide at turn in to scrub the speed.
When done properly, you can use the tires to scrub some speed at turn in, then do an somewhat abrupt lift of the throttle which will unload the rear tires, then turn hard to rotate the car (aka slide the rear around), and then go hard back onto the throttle in mid-corner to get the weight/grip back on the rear and then start to unwind the wheel and power out of the corner on exit. This is the dreaded mid-corner lift that puts 911 drivers into the wall but works well in a mid-engined car to "point and shoot".
This technique works well for me on high speed sweepers allowing a bit of gain on a competitor at corner entry since he is braking more and earlier than me. It also works pretty well on tight technical corners where you want the car to rotate quickly without having to spend a lot of time going from throttle to brake and back to throttle. On a slower technical corner, you may not have to brake at all, just turn in, scrub, lift throttle, rotate, unwind the wheel and power out.
This is somewhat (but not entirely) different than chucking the car into the corner and hoping for the best. Yes, you're kind of chucking it in there but with a plan for a controlled momentary slide and then transitioning back to normal cornering.
I'll see if I can find an in-car video where I did this well and post it.